To tempt: to try to persuade, induce or entice, especially to something immoral or sensually pleasurable.
Meet Tom Ritchie, one of the 13 tempting singles on FOX's highly publicized - and highly criticized - reality show "Temptation Island." One month after the show's finale aired, the third-year Law student says his life really hasn't changed that much, but what he took away from the island, he will not soon forget.
The premise of "Temptation Island" was to send four couples, all in committed relationships, to an exotic locale where they would be separated for two weeks and be surrounded by beautiful singles. The couples would test their bonds to the fullest and discover if their relationships could withstand even the most trying situations.
"Everything you saw happened," Ritchie says of the hour-long episodes. "The story lines that evolved were really there."
For six weeks, America obsessed over the relationships in limbo, watching to see how far each couple would push the boundaries of their love, to see if someone would be lured to cheat. For six weeks, America obsessed over the fact that a show, whose central theme was temptation, was even aired.
From the original infiltration of racy promotions to the finale of confessions, we watched, debated, shunned FOX for sponsoring such debase programming, and then we tuned in again.
"Before the show aired, people asked, 'How could FOX try and break these couples up?'" Ritchie said. "But at the end of the show, they asked, 'How come none of the couples broke up?'"
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What came out of the show, Ritchie said, was much less scandalous than it had been hyped to be. It was a test of relationships as well as a study of them. An emotional experience for both the couples and singles involved. It became less about air time and more about discovering your values, which were being questioned by all watching.
"I was never nervous about the concept of the show, no moral or ethical problems," Ritchie said, looking down at his cradled cup of coffee. "Going into it, I thought, 'It's a reality show on FOX, it's just gonna be a party.'"
He paused and looked sidelong at a passerby, who is oblivious to Ritchie's celebrity.
"It was so much more consuming than that," he said. "It was such an emotional ride."
The audition
Ritchie was living in Los Angeles last year, taking time off from the University to start up the Web site www.luvv.com. He went downtown one day to buy some concert tickets and was stopped by a casting director for "Temptation Island." The casting director asked Ritchie to fill out an application for the show, and what had started as an errand downtown turned into a three-hour audition process. Ritchie completed on-camera interviews, off-camera interviews and a 30-page application asking questions that ran the gamut about the culture of dating. Yet at the end of the day, Ritchie did not mention the audition to anyone.
A month later, he was notified that he was a finalist.
"I didn't tell my mom that much about the show before I went," Ritchie admitted. "I sort of sent an e-mail to my friends and family saying, 'Reality television has come to the Ritchies ... I'll be back in two weeks to tell you about it.'"
Before the finalists were confirmed as contestants, they had to submit to a series of tests for sexually transmitted diseases including chlamydia, gonorrhea, HIV and AIDS. All contestants on the show had to be free of STDs.
Then the 12-hour voyage from his home in L.A. to Belize began, including red-eye flights and a "rinky dink, tiny little plane" that took the contestants to the remote island.
The first day, after the couples had been split up and sent to their respective sides of the island, all contestants met at a central pool to introduce themselves and turn on their charm for the first time. The couples surveyed the selection of tempting singles and began to assess who they would choose for their four dates throughout the stay.
"One thing about the show that I hope came out was that the singles had a lot of respect for the relationships that were there," Ritchie said. "The singles were never given instructions to break-up the couples."
Still, the threat was there, so for an added twist that first day, the female half of the couples had the opportunity to kick-off a single female who they did not want on the island with their "committed" boyfriend, and the males were given the same chance. Then throughout the two weeks, the field continued to be narrowed as the single contestants, who were not making a connection with the couples, were voted off.
"No one wanted to be kicked off," Ritchie said. "There's the sense of rejection, and the longer you're on the island, the more air time you get."
The dating game
Ritchie ended up with a great amount of air time, chosen to go on dates with three of the four women, including Mandy, who described Ritchie on the show as "the perfect, ideal boyfriend."
But it was the connection he found with Shannon that brought Ritchie into the spotlight.
"Shannon is exactly the type of person I could always see myself with," Ritchie said.
Their relationship became increasingly intense throughout the six weeks, leaving viewers wondering if Shannon would leave her boyfriend, Andy, at the final campfire confession.
"It was as intimate as you can get without anything physical," Ritchie said with a knowing smirk. "It was hard to come so close to someone so quickly."
Shannon chose Ritchie as the single she wanted to spend the final two-day date with, her last chance to find out if the committed relationship she was in could endure the temptation of someone new, with whom she admittedly had found a strong connection.
When the two arrived at their isolated resort, music was playing, drinks had been ordered and were sitting out, and their private chef, private butler and masseuse made sure their every wish was fulfilled.
"When am I ever going to be treated like this again?" Ritchie remembered thinking. "We spent the whole day relaxing and indulging."
After a midnight kayak ride, a sleepless night filled with questioning and an early morning sunrise talk, the camera-invaded "private" escape came to an end.
"People question, just by participating in the show, how could I have any respect for commitment," Ritchie said. "It wasn't as though Shannon and I disregarded her relationship with Andy. We talked about it all the time. The relationship we built was always in the context of her relationship with Andy."
In the end, Shannon and Andy confessed to their explorations during the two-week test, but decided to stay together, with Andy proposing 10 minutes after the cameras turned off.
"It was much more like Frustration Island than Temptation Island at times," Ritchie said, extending this analogy to the restricted relationships between the single women and the single men on the show.
"In the end, I think it was the singles who were tempted more than the couples," he said. "We have no say. It's the couples who make the decision."
But Ritchie has not lost touch with Shannon. After the show the two were both back in L.A., still eager to maintain the relationship they had built on the show. To do this, Ritchie took Andy to lunch so he could both keep in contact with Shannon and not feel as if he were sneaking behind her fiance's back.
"There was a specific context to our relationship that I feel Shannon can share with Andy and not bury it," he said. "But it is strange that we are in contact with each other as pretty good friends."
Beyond the island
What Ritchie has taken from the island, he said, is the ability to analyze relationships in the specific context in which they are set.
"You may think you are with the ultimate person when really it's only the context you are in," Ritchie said. "It's easy to get lost in an environment."
And this analysis extends beyond the realm of "Temptation Island" for Ritchie.
"If you take a person in college and put them in the outside world, they can be an entirely different person," Ritchie said. "I probably spend way too much time thinking about this, but I think there is a person out there for me that will be right in all contexts. And when you've found that person, you will not be tempted by someone else."
So for Ritchie, the setting FOX created was a type of false reality -- a contrived setting that one would not encounter in the real world.
"What we were in down there was not reality," he said. "No relationship is going to really go through that. It was an extreme."
But it was an extreme that was easy to get wrapped up in.
"For all of us, it became much more serious than we expected," Ritchie said rubbing the back of his neck. "I didn't realize how entirely consuming the show would be. You quickly lose touch with reality -- ironically it's reality television"
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