A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila
MTV knew it before the first season of the show even wrapped: A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila was the epitome of trash. It named the weekly recap episode “One Shot Too Many” — as in, “you might as well be trashed if you’re watching this” or “the entire cast and crew was trashed throughout the duration of the show.” But Tila didn’t care, so why should MTV? A 27-year-old Vietnamese woman made famous by her mass e-mail plea for friends on MySpace — to promote her Playboy pinups and singing career — Tila professed her bisexuality to 16 heterosexual men and 16 lesbians at the outset of the show’s first episode, which aired in 2007.
From there she whittled her options down to one man and one woman. In the end, she chose the man — but not before a lesbian slapping spree and some illicit groping in the giant communal bed shared by the contestants. Unsurprisingly, her pairing with New Yorker Bobby Banhart fizzled quickly. She recovered with a second season, and MTV got two spin-offs out of the deal.
