MY REVIEW OF RICK AND DARVA ON LARRY KING

Darva then promotes her new website, Darva's House.com: "It revolves around fitness, nutrition, health, tips on lifestyle, book reviews, movie reviews... it also draws upon my nursing background. Much of what I loved about nursing was interacting with patients, giving advice, advocacy, et cetera. I can do this with the Web site."

Rick entered the set after the commercial, opening with a joke: "Hi, Darva... I've been worried sick about you!" [ facetious ]. Larry hadn't gotten it, asking "What were you worried about?" Rick let him know that he was joking.

Darva takes the opportunity to apologize: "... because I think we both, in a sense, did things that were not in our best interests but I'm not going into that. What I'd like to say is that I don't hold him responsible. I don't blame him. I'm not angry at him.

"It's not his fault I chose go on that show. It's not his fault he chose me. I put myself in that position and I am the first one to say I should never have been there. I was initially, very defensive, very taken aback and I was less kind to him in the press than I should have been.

"I am apologizing to him for things that probably should not have been said in the sense that it didn't matter to me: your aesthetic value, the person that you were, nothing like that mattered to me in my decision not to carry on that marriage. I should never have been there. I should never have married you and I'm so sorry that I put myself in that position."

Rick gratefully accepted: "I think it's great. I never understood it from the start...why it had to be Rick versus Darva..."

KING: "But you blasted each other publicly. You were publicly removed. This is your first time together in a year."

ROCKWELL: "I was doing no blasting."

CONGER: "You did a whole comedy series based on blasting me!"

ROCKWELL: "Actually, my comedy show is self-deprecating as anything. I mean, my whole take on this is, you know, "What a dummy I am. I can't pick the right line at the supermarket. I think I'm going to get a wife in two hours on Fox." [ At this joke, Darva raises her eyebrows, and touches the tip of her tongue to her upper lip.]

KING: "Let's go back a little. The program is 'Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?' It airs in February last year. The viewership goes from 23 million for the final 30-- jumps to 23 million in the final 30 minutes. Huge female audience, a third of all women between the age of 18 and 34 are tuned in. How did you get on the show?"

ROCKWELL: "My... "

KING: "Because we learned later you weren't a multimillionaire, right? [ Rick scowls at this inference ] Or was that -- well, I'll get to that later. How did you get on the show?"

ROCKWELL: "My journey to the show was completely unorchestrated. I had gotten an anonymous e-mail, and the weird thing about it is in my book I have all the chronicle, all the history between myself and the producers, because I..."

KING: "You write in the book?"

ROCKWELL: "Yes, and I archive all my e-mail. So I have the written word about how this whole thing evolved as it came about"

KING: "All right. But you eventually get selected, right?"

ROCKWELL: Correct."

KING: "And you go, intending fully to marry someone and love them."

ROCKWELL: "And attempt to build a relationship, yes."

KING: "Wasn't that weird to begin with?"

ROCKWELL: "Yeah, when I first heard about it, I thought it was the craziest thing I ever heard. But after I got to know the producers and I talked to them for a while and I realized their sincerity in it, and I -- again, when I was here the last time, I said, you know, there's 6 billion people in the world. Somehow my path led me to this show, and I just -- I thought that that was my destiny."

Darva then explains her reason for appearing: what she'd said before about attracting her boyfriend's attention, and that "a doctor I worked with at the hospital in the emergency room told them about me. She was friends with one of the producers... Apparently -- in our little talks behind the scenes -- and her husband's a producer -- we assumed, we thought, we figured no way this show is for real."

KING: "So you went as a lark?"

CONGER: "I went as a lark thinking that I was an extra, I was filler, thinking that they had the girl selected. [ To Rockwell: ] I thought you knew the girl. I thought I knew who it was. And when you walked past her on stage to get to me, I'm like, "Oh, no, that's not in the script!" [ I'm just going to guess that it was Jennifer Mann, who'd stood next to Darva. Actually, she was not even his second choice--Stacie Mohowich was. Jennifer was likely third, Shanti fourth. ]
"I never thought it was me. I thought there was no way that they would have two strangers marry each other on TV. And I -- all I can say is that I froze. I didn't know what to do. I thought I had to go through with it. I thought I would ruin everything.
"I don't know what I thought. I thought a lot of dumb things and did a dumb thing. And I'm just here to say, can we all move on? It's over." [ suddenly, at this point, Darva is uncomfortable, would rather have it over with. ]

Rick reiterates that HE was completely sincere about the marriage, and wanting to make it work; but "now that I have some perspective on this thing, now that we're a year down the road and I'm able to look back and kind of try to make some sense of it all, because I can empathize with where Darva is coming from -- it was a whirlwind. I don't think anybody knows what to do when a situation like this hits." Rick goes on to say that he was astounded at the reactions of the press and public: "... It was strange. It's -- you know, I use the analogy that you're like a pinata, and the media is at your birthday party, and you're the guest of honor, you're the pinata. And they keep whacking you with this stick, and when one reporter sees another reporter hit you and they make a dent in the pinata, the next reporter has to hit it harder, or else he hasn't made an impact with anyone.
"And it's Lewinsky, Bobbitt, Rick and Darva, and then as soon as they're done beating the pinata until the point where it's grotesque, you don't want to see it anymore, they take the gifts and they go down the street to the next house where they're going to have the birthday party there."

Larry asks Darva what she'd thought of Rick, during his appearances on talk shows, like this. But she claims not have seen them! ( odd; because on the View, she'd let them know that she'd seen his appearance, and had thought little of his jokes! ):
CONGER: "And it's not a situation of enmity. I just -- quite honestly, you know, you and I are not two personalities that will ever mesh, no fault of either one of ours. We're just not two people that will ever... see eye to eye."

KING: "I think he still likes you. I think he still looks at you like..."[ Larry, trying for a bit more attention to this show? ]

CONGER: "Oh, come on! Let's not -- let's not do that." [ Rick laughs at Darva's worry ]

KING: "OK, all right, never mind."

CONGER: "This -- this was never a relationship."

(LAUGHTER)

"This was a bad TV show. That's all it was."

Rick says that he'd like the answer to a few questions:
CONGER: "We'll clear up what I'm comfortable speaking about. There's nothing to know. You know, I just think it's time to move on. How does it matter?"

KING: "Darva, it ain't a trial. You don't have to answer. But he might have some questions that..."

CONGER: "And I may or may not answer them."

[ As they go to break, Darva takes a big sip of coffee. It's going to be a lo-ong night! ]

Once back from the commercial, we see the clip of Darva delivering her final plea for the Millionaire Groom to choose her:
CONGER: "If you feel that I am the perfect woman for you and you choose me to be your bride, I will be your friend, your lover and your partner throughout whatever life has to offer us. We'll have joy, maybe a few tears, but more ups than downs, and you will never be bored." [ Darva grimaces at this: ] "Mmm. Ooh. Famous last words." When Darva first had appeared on TV, in 2000, she'd insisted that she wasn't speaking to the Groom; she "was speaking to my romantic ideal, that Mr. Right that is maybe in every woman's heart and her mind." Today, Larry seems to think that she's telling us that she was speaking to Dennis Klifman, her ex-boyfriend--whom she'd reportedly tried to get to accompany her to the "Marry a Millionaire" Show--but he hadn't been able to make it. Larry remarks that it was like using Rick "as a prop." Darva agrees, saying that she'd thought that she could say whatever she'd wanted to, as she hadn't thought it would matter--because, as she told us, she'd believed that the bride was pre-chosen. [ Which WASN'T true, it turned out! ]

In answer as to why he'd chosen her, Rick asserts that though Darva is beautiful, "It was more beyond the physical. There were other women there that I thought were very attractive, and Darva had a job; she had an education; she had a career. And I thought -- she was a little closer to my age. I thought we had, you know, more of a chance of making something gel."

At this point, Darva tells Rick that at first she "had very much wanted to have a friendship with you" --that she "hadn't wanted to villify" him:
CONGER: "I don't hate you. I wanted very much to be friends. I did find that impossible, and I'm not saying, oh, because you're a bad person. I just found it -- I found it impossible because our personalities just conflict so much. So this is not me trying to jump on the "Bash Rick Rockwell" boat. It wasn't that I wanted so much of this public enmity. I -- I just -- we could not meet at a friendly level. And I feel it's a shame that we couldn't initially face the media gamut together, and say, "Hey, you know, bad idea for both of us, but we're friends." "

ROCKWELL: "Well, I offered the olive branch and said "Let's -- let's face the media together." And I got numerous messages to you, and you didn't respond to them. And then I started saying..."

CONGER: "At what point in time did you get a message -- what timeframe was that? Because I've never received a message from you."

Rick tells of how he'd left numerous messages with the woman who'd acted as chaperone, sent e-mails; but Darva claims not to have had an e-mail address at that time. He said/She said, all over again! Rick believes that if Darva had accompanyed him on his rounds of talk shows, after his having been burned by "spurious" claims of his having beat his ex-fiancée, it would've made all the difference. Darva counters that "in every interview I said 'I don't know anything about it. He was never that way toward me.' It was not an issue for me. I didn't care. I didn't care about it at all...I didn't like you based on our interactions, not those." Rick counters then, that it wasn't fair that she had used his 9-year-old restraining order in her annulment petition. She informs him, that because of the stringent laws reguarding annulment in Nevada, she had had to supply as many reasons as possible in order to secure it: "I couldn't simply use "'bad idea, I was dummy' for the reason to get an annulment. They don't accept that. I would have if I could have, believe me."
Rick is not satisfied. He's upset that she named him as a "fraud" in her court document, when she had admitted that she had gone on the show for fraudulent reasons! Darva reiterates that all she'd cared about was what the court would accept--that she "couldn't sue him for annulment and charge myself with fraud. I want to make that clear. If I could have, I would have. I wasn't out there to paint him to be a bad guy."

Footage is shown of Rick on radio station Star 107. He's crying, upset:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP OF RICK ON STAR 107, FEB. 25, 2000 )

ROCKWELL: [ crying ] "So many nasty things have been said about me that if -- if Darva wanted to turn around today and say that she didn't want to be with me because I was cruel or mean or a bad person, she could have deflected all the criticism that she's taken. She never did that."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: "That was Rick Rockwell on a radio show, right?"

ROCKWELL: "Yeah."

KING: "Really emotionally upset."

CONGER: "I disagree. I couldn't have deflected anything. Any criticism he's received is based solely on his own actions."

KING: "Nothing you could have done?"

CONGER: "Nothing I could have done. And my criticism that I've received is based solely on my actions. We need to take responsibility for what we did."

ROCKWELL: [ shocked ] "I was-- I was praising you in that interview. You weren't listening correctly. I was thanking you."

CONGER: "OK. That's not what I got from the sound bite."

ROCKWELL: [ incredulous, but laughing ] "I was thanking her."

CONGER: "Maybe I'm having a blond moment, but that's not what I got."
[ Indeed. Rick was praising her, complimenting her for not having used him to deflect criticism away from her, as she was getting shredded by the media, called a prostitute. Rick is saying that she could've told people that he was horrible. In fact, she had, by more oblique means, inferring that he was poorly mannered. As Jay Thomas had observed: "Somehow, Rick thinks she's being nice to him. I haven't seen that one yet. She's not being nice at all. She's acting like she'd never date the guy. She's really doing a little character assasination on him." The entire section of Rick's interview would've been more clear to Darva: "A lot of people have been disparaging Darva, and I take offense to that, 'cause I know what it's like to be disparaged; you know, all she's done is be honest about her feelings, and why she did the show, and to be cruel to her now, hurts me....so many nasty things have been said about me, that if Darva had wanted to turn around today, and say that she didn't want to be with me, because I'm cruel or mean or a bad person, she could've deflected all the criticism she's taken; she never did that." ]

From there, Rick accuses Darva of having stolen a few lines from fellow contestant, Laurel Heske. Darva objects: "If someone tells you that, I'm sorry. All I can say it's not true. And I -- believe me -- regret saying that....Those were my words, and I regret them greatly, but I do claim them."
[ Of course, Laurel Heske is likely glad that she didn't get to deliver that winning speech, considering her reaction to Rick's restraining order, on MSNBC, in Feb. 2000: "I'm glad it definitely wasn't me. And I'm sure my family's relieved as well. I just hope Darva's OK. I hope she didn't see those characteristics in him." ]

In answering as to how/if they resent the press intrusion, Darva says that she hadn't liked them going through her trash, but now she diminshed such raids, by disposing of her pug dog's poop on those cans! So now, she has mellowed out: "...they did a lot of mean, nasty things. It's over. Whatever the press writes about me doesn't define who I am."
Rick, on the other hand, has had a lot more damage done to his reputation and career. He cites an example of a New York Times reporter [ Bill Carter ], who'd falsely claimed that he'd padded his resumé -- and that despite his mailing proof of his employment at the disputed company, he hadn't received an apology and retraction. He tells that he's planning to have a libel attorney contact the paper. "There are 50 stories in this book just like that about all the weird stuff that people would do, the lengths they will go to..."

Callers differ on whom is more resentful: one accuses Darva of being angry; the other accuses Rick of the same. Another inquires as to whether each had found romance elsewhere. We know about Darva's boyfriend, Dennis; but Rick delivers a surprise: "I am with a wonderful woman who has my best interests at heart, and I certainly do hers, and it is... " [ which certainly IS a surprise; for I, myself, through my research, had known that as late as November, Rick had STILL been contacting dates throught the Internet! Whoever she is, she shouldn't start picking out china patterns, yet. That description hardly sounds romantic; it sounds a little too generic, and even somewhat platonic; I think it's possible that this statement about this "wonderful woman" could apply to any one of a dozen different women --even his own MOTHER!; and perhaps, that's why Rick chose those words! So that the dozens of women he's dating will each assume that he was talking about her!
[ Sadly, readers of Darva's website had learned, on June 1, that she and Dennis had split, possibly due to lack of commitment on his part. Perhaps it's NOT the end! Rick, meanwhile, according to one source, had resumed dating others. C'est le Amour! ]

The show wraps with a plug for Darva's House.com. and Rick's upcoming book, titled: "What Was I Thinking, I Got Married on FOX TV and Didn't Even Get a Lousy T- Shirt."

Darva tells that although she wasn't thrilled with the show and it's aftermath, she'd had the happiness of being reunited with her two long-lost brothers, through her website e-mail.
Upon being questioned by Larry as to his current source of income, Rick tries a joke: "Well, I have passive investments and some things like that going, and I've got my second interview with Hot Dog on a Stick tomorrow and..."

KING: "What's that?"

ROCKWELL: "I'm going to do the millionaire shift from 3:00 to 7:00."

CONGER: "That's comedy." [ Explaining that Rick was making a joke. ]

KING: "Oh, I'm lost." [ It's good that Darva got it immediately! I hadn't! I'd assumed that he was scheduled for an interview at a radio station, with an odd name--as many DO! Such as "Morning Zoo"! It wasn't until I checked out my local mall, that I realized that "Hot Dog on a Stick" is a fast food place, where the servers wear uniforms in gaily-coloured stripes of red, white, blue, and yellow. Rick really ought NOT to have used such an esoteric, regional fast food place. Rick! Remember! You are on international TV. If he wanted to be funny to EVERYONE on the globe, he OUGHT to have used a globally-known fast food place--like McDonald's!

MY OPINION:

KING: "Are you going to tell us about it?"

CONGER: "Sure, I am."

It was nice that she'd apologized for any insult she might've given him, in the course of her interviews over the past year; but when she opened her site, Darva's House.com, she'd been unable to resist making additional insulting remarks about Rick, in answer to the many questions several readers had of her. Either she'd be saying such, in the course of defending/explaining her actions; or she'd post someone else's insults about Rick, and follow it up with a remark of her own, which seemed to agree.

Darva really ought to understand that her refusal to talk more fully about this, is part of what had fueled interest. By only giving out small teases: "I didn't like the way he treated me afterwards. I'm not going to go into details. But the way I feel about him is based solely upon my interaction with him after the show," she only causes people to speculate even more, perhaps wildly so. [ When she had told this to Howard Stern, in the 7/29/00 interview, he, and the others had assumed the worst of Rick--that he was a masher. Darva has denied this, over and over; yet what are people to think, when she makes him sound so very horrible?: "I don't dislike people easily, but I just developed a huge antipathy towards him, and I had to really work at not being mean to him. I just kept away from him." ibid. ]
Rick, too, has teased. He's threatened many lawsuits, but to my knowledge, has brought none to fruition, which in itself, creates a bad impression. He's reportedly had a difficult time in selling his book, though it HAS an audience eagerly awaiting it! He ought to work at other venues besides comedy clubs, in order to increase his fan base.

I really support BOTH Rick's upcoming book, and Darva's House, which is a wonderful site, well-run by Darva, herself. Darva, despite her busy schedule ( as she's since gone back to nursing ), has taken the time to answer people's questions about health, nutrition, etc., as well as about her personal experiences, and about being on the Show. She exhibits a great deal of bravery and fortitude.

Rick's Annulment Tour was a rousing success, drawing in an audience new to comedy clubs--many of whom became repeat customers, thanks to Rick Rockwell. We, in Brea, would welcome a return appearance--if only you would, Rick.

All in all, Darva seems to be correct, in that they do NOT gel as a couple. The only moment they really click, is when she explains Rick's joke to Larry. He hadn't gotten her motives, nor did she understand when he had praised her. [ nor had she gotten it, even when I, myself, had e-mailed her my transcript of the sad radio show, and had explained it. She still prefers to believe that Rick never had any real feelings to hurt, that he was only doing the show for publicity purposes, not to marry, "As for Rick...I have nothing else to say about him, except that we both made a mistake and he knows that his actions toward me immediately after the show were reprehensible and that's the only reason I am uncomfortable around him. I also know that it was his full intention to use that show as a career launch, which is fine, since he is a comedian. I just wish he would be honest about it, instead of acting like his heart was broken. Nothing could be further from the truth." which seems presumptuous on her part.

"I have chosen not to publicize his actions, because that would just create more controversy, but he knows the truth..."
Darva, Darva. People have told you, time and again, that you discredit yourself, by continuing to put Rick down. Consider--one of the biggest reasons that THIS show, unlike even the more shocking reality shows, has engendered so much attention, is because of the "man vs. woman" aspect. That is a classic, in comedy or drama. Of COURSE it got attention! My opinion is that if neither had bashed and complained about the other, it would've faded much sooner. But it is understandable why Rick cannot let it go: whereas a public career is not that important to Darva, compared to her nursing career, Rick's career and reputation had suffered; and he needs to put things straight. Rick is JUST that kind of man! He DOES have a need to get to the bottom of every conflict--he's done so, all of his life. Darva was frustrating him during and after the honeymoon, and even on this show, when he'd asked for answers. [ On the other hand, Rick had been INFORMED by ME, as well as others, as to the reason for Darva to include his restraining order on her annulment petition: because the law, as many legal experts agree, is tough. It wasn't out of spite. But Rick needed to get that said, and answered directly. ]
When Rick DOES finally premiere his book, one hopes that things will settle the way he--and we--like it to be.

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