Ellen Gray: Two takes on marriage

SECRET LIVES OF WOMEN: POLYGAMY CULT. 10 tonight, WE.

FARMER WANTS A WIFE. 9 p.m. tomorrow, CW.

ONE MAN, way too many women.

Depending on where you're looking these days, that's either a horror show or a "reality" series.

On the women's cable network WE, whose series "Secret Lives of Women" tonight looks at polygamy from the viewpoint of two women who fled the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the sect currently embroiled in a dispute with the state of Texas over the custody of more than 400 children, the emphasis is clearly on horror.

On the CW's "Farmer Wants a Wife," which premieres tomorrow, it's strictly entertainment. Assuming that's what you call it when one guy's ordering 10 aspiring brides through a series of ridiculously staged agricultural challenges to find the one who'll win the right to have her name mentioned in People magazine when they break up.

In a country where marriage is such a hot-button issue that some people think we need a constitutional amendment to defend it from same-sex interlopers, you'd think we'd be able to get equally worked up over shows that treat the search for a mate with less gravity than the choice of a briefcase on "Deal or No Deal."

But then no one, after all those bolting "Bachelors," really expects "Farmer" to end in a wedding.

Not even the CW.

"Like many of the dating game shows that you've seen, the reality shows, I mean, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work," CW entertainment president Dawn Ostroff told reporters last summer, even while insisting that "everybody's intention is genuine."

Right.

One look at "Matt," the often shirtless focus of the CW's latest effort to twist "reality," and you'll wonder why they didn't just call this one "Farmer Wants a Modeling Contract."

Matt, we're told, is 29, college-educated and the owner (or at least the son of the owners) of more than 2,000 acres in Portage Des Sioux, Mo., population 351, where he has yet to find a mate.

"So he's decided to give city girls a chance."

Though several of the women, said to be "sick of big-city relationships," have clearly been chosen for their willingness to behave as much as possible like Paris Hilton in "The Simple Life," Matt seems unfazed, a sure sign he's not quite as eager to settle down as he claims.

Because surely he could do better at farmersonly.com (though that online dating site, featured in a story in Sunday's New York Times, comes without "Farmer's" first elimination ritual, which involves checking under chickens to see if they've laid eggs - a bit of theater that puts "The Bachelor's" much-vaunted rose ceremony to shame).

But if it's hard to imagine things working out for Matt and any of these wannabe wives, it's even harder to imagine a happy ending for women in the arranged marriages of the FLDS, no matter what you may have seen on HBO's "Big Love."

Admittedly, WE's documentary relies almost entirely on two former members of the sect, neither of whom has anything good to say about plural marriage.

Carolyn Jessop, author, with Laura Palmer, of the best-selling book "Escape," talks about her life in a polygamist community in Arizona where she was the fourth wife and mother of eight of the children of Merril Jessop - who'd later become one of the leaders of the FLDS compound in Texas.

In her 30s, she fled FLDS-controlled Colorado City with all eight, including one son with severe disabilities, in tow.

Flora Jessop, her cousin by marriage, ran away from the sect after being married to a cousin at age 16, and now works to help others trying to flee polygamy and the abuse she says it inevitably entails.

"I've never seen a happy polygamist family," she says flatly.

Given some of the stories we're hearing from the case in Texas, that's easy enough to believe.

Still, it's telling that Texas officials are reportedly making sure that the FLDS children it's holding in shelters are kept away from television.

That may be part of keeping things as normal as possible for kids who've been removed from the only homes they've ever known, homes where TV and radio weren't part of their daily diet.

But as our mainstream society seeks to convince them that those of us who show a bit more skin and marry only one person - at a time - are the normal ones, it might be better if the TVs stayed off.

Because a few hours of prime time could just blow that case straight to hell. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.