It's Queer Eye Wednesday--so hard to get to these things the night they air--and in honor of the great joy it brings me, I'll belatedly comment on their big Tonight Show makeover.

As I've so often said, reality TV is all in the casting, so this was by far the weakest effort to-date. It's wasn't just Jay's Buddy Hackett sense of humor--he actually got off a few mildly funny lines. Two big problem, though.

First, the queers had already been there. This big jolly goofball has already been coifed and dressed to death by an army of queens--not that they've been able to foist much style upon him, but they've taken him as far as he's likely to go. Normally the Fab are dealing with a very rough exterior. Jay had already been polished to a gleaming fake glo, so all they could do was dress him a bit wilder, and they just made him look like a pimp.

The bigger problem was personality. Jay's pervasive phoniness was all wrong for a surprisingly earnest show that hinges on authentic emotional involvement from the straightguy. Jay remained skeptical and removed, and of course, totally fake. He proved just how much each episode revolves around the emotional center of the straightguy. Hollow center equals hollow episode.

Katie Couric actually would have worked, except she's so visually effervescent already, what the hell could they do to improve her? Katie would have been the perfect guest if they could have found her in some before state. Oprah would have been great, of course, as well, though I think the show actually works best with a man in the pivotal role. It's watching a rough-hewn guy find his inner Oprah and embrace her that makes this show so amusingly moving. From now on, stick to straightguys with soul.

Just watched Boy Meets Boys.

It's that bad. And getting worse with every passing episode.

This alone explains the gay backlash.

If you're straight and somehow torturing yourself with this show, please seek out a more positive representation of gayguys for some balance: your local manbla chapter would be an improvement over this travesty.

The show did contain a few unintentionally entertaining moments, though. First, we were treated to long, dull, interminable footage of Prince UnCharming continuing through his job-interview checklist on each one-on-one encounter--as if under the impression that he was pre-screening candidates for the dates, instead of actually attending them personally. Several were peppered by voice-overs from the datees expressing the obvious: really tough to make an emotional connection with this icecube. All this was wrapped up with James emphatically gushing about the chemistry firmly established among all six remaining contestants. Unfortunately, it occurred to no one on the production team to justapose any of those remarks in the editing room.

But the real howler came in the closing moments--for once the perfect conclusion, because it captured Prince UC so utterly. After 55 minutes of audience torture, the host tart sat James down to reveal the show's shocking twist: one of the three finalists is straight! James responded with the longest blank look in the history of intelligent life in the universe. Finally, a confused smile crept across his face, and he slowly let out a big blonde "wooooooow."

That's our James.