In over three years of covering reality television, we've heard some whoppers from reality TV contestants over the years, but the hubris exhibited by Average Joe 2: Hawaii star Larissa Meek during her initial media interviews has been second to none.
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Meek is a 25-year-old artist/model and former Miss Missouri 2001 who will be following in the Average Joe footsteps of Melana Scantlin -- who herself had previously followed in Meek's pageant footsteps as Miss Missouri 2002. And if the early buzz is any indication, if audiences didn't care for Scantlin, then they certainly aren't going to care for Meek.
NBC's initial Average Joe 2 promos have positioned Meek as a possibly even shallower beauty than Scantlin -- which is quite a statement considering that Scantlin, among other things, continues to harp on such superficial details as the less-than-perfect appearance of her selected suitor Jason Storm's eyebrows in post-series media appearances -- and so far, Meek's own initial media interviews aren't doing anything to dispel the initial perception.
While Meek has admitted that she was "surprised" by the type of men that the producers gathered to be her suitors, "it wasn't what I expected" Meek told the New York Daily News, her publicly stated reasons for initially being interested in appearing on the reality relationship show appear to be bizarre at best.
"It's something that's gonna be written about in history books," enthused Larissa Meek during a Newsday interview.
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Meek, who, despite being identified by NBC as a "artist/model" in promotional materials described herself to Newsday as a "full-time artist" who "wants to start a marketing and Web-design company," also told the paper that "as an artist" she liked the idea of appearing on a reality show because of "the whole idea of being part of a movement in our history" which she can "add to my art."
Of course for Meek's sake, she just better hope that Average Joe 2 isn't listed next to The Next Joe Millionaire in the "All-time Sequel Bombs" section of those upcoming "history books." And as far as "adding" anything to her art, unless Meek was in need for some male models of various shapes and sizes to help her better understand the human form, we fail to understand her comments... which understandably, Newsday reporter Frank Lovece apparently wasn't sure how to attempt to address with a follow-up question.
For his part, Average Joe executive producer Stuart Krasnow also seems to be pleading ignorance of any apparent cerebral intentions. "I don't think we went into this with any great moral lesson to be told" he told the paper.
None the less, a preview of the eighteen average joes who will responsible for launching Meek on her self-proclaimed march into the history books can be seen in our Average Joe photo gallery.