She's better off single.

Gay, Straight or Taken?

* Mondays at 8 P.M. * Lifetime

Sometimes a television show just needs to die in the pitch stage. For instance: the messy love quadrangle that is Gay, Straight or Taken? Lifetime's new reality series featuring a woman on a date with three guys, each of whom is ... well, you'll figure it out soon enough.

The setup isn't too complicated. In the pilot, swinging-single Jenner meets three guys: Luciano, Mike, and Chris. Over the course of a single day Jenner spends time with each of them individually, searches their cars for "clues," and makes assumptions about them and their sexual orientation. Her profound observations include: "Mike had a lot of clothes, has a clean car, and is a promoter. Maybe he's gay," and "I would have to say that Chris is the gay one, just because of the shorts and the opera."

Taken is so inherently silly and lighthearted that it's entirely innocuous--in many ways a retread of Bravo's Boy Meets Boy. More than anything it reminds us how quickly gays stereotype each other. Queer viewers will play right along with the shoves ditzy heroines--you'll pick the one who simply "seems the gayest." It's the system we use every day to seek out potential partners and friends, so even we have to admit that certain stereotypes have a ring of truth--just not the ones Jenner highlights for us.

Lifetime is, you know, 'Television for Women," and yet Taken's concept exploits straight women's most cliched insecurities about men and relationships: that all the best ones are not available to them. In the end you feel sadder for the woman who uses a reality show to find a boyfriend than you do for the gay man who uses a reality show to demonstrate to the world how straight he can pretend to be.