Game Show `Studs' Proves Once Again That TV Will Never Fail By Overestimating Viewers' Sleaze Quotient -- Doing It '90S Style

"There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror." - W. Somerset Maugham

Welcome to the show, Som. Dug your book "Of Human Bondage," even though it had nothing to do with harnesses or handcuffs. Now tell us which of the three studettes said this about your date: "I'd heard the pen was mighty, but I almost fainted when he whipped his out and headed for my ink well"?

YHAAAAA!!

Imagine if Maugham, instead of dying in 1965, a year before "The Dating Game" first aired on television, had lived to see - let alone appear on - the kiss-and-tell show "Studs."

Love - OK, in some cases it's just rutting - is back on the air and wooing plenty of viewers.

What better time than Valentine's Day to contemplate the most popular of the so-called "relationship shows": state-of-the-genre "Studs," and the big daddy "Love Connection"?

Love it. . . love it not.

On "Love Connection," a contestant chooses from among three candidates who reveal something about themselves during a few seconds on videotape. Then, sitting on couches that look borrowed from Barbie's Dream House, host Chuck Woolery debriefs the contestant about the date. The lucky date-ee, from the safety of backstage, gets a chance to offer another version of how the night unfolded.

It can get juicy. Well, damp. Like the time Royalee went to a restaurant with John.

"He ordered me a steak. . . then he cut my steak, then he fed me," says Royalee.

Finally, Woolery reveals which candidate the audience voted as most likely to hit it off, and gives the contestant a chance to take an all-expense-paid whirl with that person.

As far as socially redeeming value goes, it ain't exactly "College Bowl." Then again, some TV critics seem to think you'd need a bathyscaph to make the descent from "Love Connection" to the bottom of the barrel.

Which brings us to "Studs."

Two men. Three women. Six blind dates. One former improv comedian, Mark DeCarlo, bringing them all together and wringing out the sordid details. The beauty part comes when the guys try to match each double-entendre-laden statement describing the date with the woman who said it.

Example: "One stroke of his stick and I totally surrendered."

Soft-core prose like that is the audience's cue to yowl like sailors on shore leave at a strip bar: YHAAAAA!!

After the caterwauling dies, it becomes clear that the studette in question was talking about shooting pool. In "Studs"-speak, dinner at a Thai restaurant becomes, "One lick of my niblets and his tongue began to glow."

"We don't put words in their mouths or make it contrived," explains the show's 29-year-old host, recounting how producers conduct 90-minute phone interviews with the contestants after each date to mine these gems. Producers "may change a word here or there. But the people who come to us watch the show. They know what's expected of them."

Later, the studs guess which of them the studettes voted most likely to buy a woman sexy lingerie, wear a woman's sexy lingerie, scream out his own name during sex, and so forth.

Finally, the guy with the most right answers gets to select the woman he'd most like to date again; if she picks him, too, they get an expense-paid trip to some horny hideaway.

Not quite a year after it rolled out on seven Fox-owned TV stations, "Studs" can now be seen in about 80 percent of the country. In several cities, including Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, the show goes head-to-head and beats the ratings of network newscasts.

"It's a real easy show to bash," admits DeCarlo, whose previous brush with game shows came as a contestant: Fresh out of UCLA, his $115,000 take set the record for winnings on "Sale of the Century."

"A lot of people saw this show as the burning of Rome. The very reasons the show was kicked so hard when it came out are the same reasons it's successful."

(In Seattle, "Studs" airs on KCPQ, Channel 13, weeknights at 11.)

"Love Connection," watched by more than 4 million people each day and available in about 93 percent of the country, might be the show you'd be less embarrassed to take home and meet the folks; "Studs" is the one you'd want to pop out of the cake at a bachelor or bachelorette party.

Most the studs are in their 20s, and appear to be chiseled out of granite.

The young studettes, who sit side-by-side, legs crossed, miniskirts creeping north on a collision course with the south-plunging necklines, generally resemble refugees from a music video.

A USC drama major named Lori recently tried to explain, when pressed by DeCarlo, why she's interested only in handsome guys. "If they're not good-looking, why would I like them?"

The nine-year-old "Love Connection," which airs locally weekdays at 10 a.m. on KSTW (Channel 11) in a "best of" format and 4 p.m. on KOMO (Channel 4), doesn't appreciate being lumped in with the upstart - the show's creator turns down interviews for any article that intends to mention the programs in the same breath.

Next to "Studs," "Love Connection" looks curiously old-fashioned. Not surprisingly, it excels in attracting viewers age 50-plus. The dopey Woolery relies on the nudge-nudge, wink-wink school of cross examination, and many of the contestants look as if they wandered out of bus stations.

Like the lingerie model named Kat who complained that her date took her to the wax museum then "at every dark corner he mauled me." Later, she went to his house to see his Corvette. "Love Connection" is a car wreck: You're relieved when you see that no one you know is involved.

"Studs" is a self-mocking, skin-deep joy ride. It's a hoot because of its utter shallowness, its knack for taking a mundane meal and trumping it up into a Freudian wonderland.

On the one hand, if an alien master race is contemplating us Earthlings, trying to decide whether to hit the death-ray button and microwave the world like a giant popcorn kernel, you hope they're watching "Masterpiece Theatre" and not "Studs."

On the other: "His hand shot up my leg like a heat-seeking missile."

YHAAAAA!