Flavor of Love

From LoveToKnow Reality-TV

Flavor of Love is the series that made VH1 celebrity dating show ground zero. One of the crown jewels in VH1’s dizzyingly successful Celebreality franchise, Flavor of Love has spawned many imitators - not to mention a seemingly never ending run of spin offs - but some may say that the original is still the best.

Flavor of Love – The Back Story

The seeds for Flavor of Love were sewn on another successful VH1 series, The Surreal Life. In one of the seasons of The Surreal Life, which put a group of C-list celebrities in a house together Big Brother style, the odd romantic couple of a lifetime was born: Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielson. Somehow, these two developed a romance in the house and viewers were hooked on seeing their romance play out.

The fly in the ointment in this love affair - or, as some might suggest, one of the many flies in the ointment - was that Brigitte Nielson was already engaged to an Italian man many years her junior. That didn’t seem to stop love from blossoming in the Surreal Life house, and viewers were left wondering what would happen when cameras stopped rolling. Would Brigitte leave her fiancé? Would Flav and Brigitte live happily ever after?

Of course, this being VH1, the cameras didn’t have to stop rolling. They gave us the aptly titled Strange Love, which followed Flav to Italy where he tried to win Brigette’s love and then followed the pseudo couple around as they tried to fit into each other’s worlds.

As you might imagine, that didn’t happen. At the end of Strange Love, Brigitte left Flav to return to her fiancé and her life in Europe. Enter the idea for what would become one of the most popular reality shows of all time: create a dating show, based loosely on The Bachelor, to help Flavor Flav find true love. Flavor of Love was born.

The Flavor of Love Premise

The idea behind Flavor of Love was simple: put a host of girls in a house to live together and vie for the attention of Flav. Every week, during the clock ceremony he would award the girls he wanted to keep around with a clock (a reference to the ubiquitous clock Flav has been sporting since the 80s) and send one girl home until he had whittled the selection down to his true love (in theory). Each week, the girls would compete in some sort of challenge to win alone time with Flav.

The show was ratings gold almost right out of the gate. Music fans had long been familiar with Flav’s antics, and VH1 fans had come to know how him through his other series. The girls cast in the show delivered as well, with constant shouting matches and extreme behavior. The first season of Flavor of Love spawned one of reality TV's most memorable moments ever, when "Pumkin" spat in "New York’s" face, and of course, one of reality TVs most memorable characters in the aforementioned New York.

Third Time’s The Charm?

The first season of Flavor was a winner with the fans, but it didn’t work out so well for Flav. He narrowed his picked down to New York and Hoopz, and in the end picked Hoopz. By the time the reunion show had rolled around, the two had split.

Flav came back for a second season, and in mid-season invited New York back into the house. He again narrowed it down to New York and one other girl – Deelishis – and again, he sent New York packing and went for the other girl. Deelishis and Flav made it to the reunion but split soon after.

So, Flav tried again. In the third season of the show, he whittled the crop of girls down to Thing 2 and Black, and this time, he picked Thing 2. When the reunion show rolled around, however, he surprised everyone by breaking up with Thing 2 during the show and proposing to the mother of his most recent child. He swore off dating shows and promised to settle down for good.