Secret Millionaire stinks, though not quite as badly as Oprah's The Big Give. Oprah's show suffered from a bizarre concept, criticizing people for helping others. "You raised money for a little boy's kidney dialysis?" a judge barks. "Well, Sharlene found a home for a handicapped orphan. So. Get. Your. Lame. Ass. Out. Of. My. SIGHT!"

SM sticks a rich person into a poor environment, to show them how the other ninety-nine percent live and convince them to help out. Unlike Oprah's show, it's forty minutes of bragging and five minutes of charity. We meet our "secret millionaire" in scenes straight out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. There he is on his yacht! Look at his Bentley! He's got nine homes! Oh, how wonderful it is to be rich!

The producers obviously want a stark contrast with the selfless, thoughtful person the millionaire becomes at the end, so they paint him as a real asshole at the beginning. They did a Grade-A job with Gurbaksh Chahal, who's supposedly worth three hundred mil. His seven-million-dollar penthouse is so tacky it makes Donald Trump's gilded pad look like an Amish barn. His monogram is carved into everything but the upstairs maid. He calls himself "G," which naturally means that penthouse is called The G Spot.

We're immediately sucked in. It's the opposite of Peter Pan: clap your hands and think happy thoughts, kids, and we'll all see an asshole shot down! We're on the edge of our seats as he's shoved out onto the mean streets. To, uh, wander around.

Hey, I thought he was supposed to get a job! Dude's just wandering around San Francisco. What, is he going to buy clam chowder for a homeless guy? And wasn't he was supposed to leave all that luxury behind? He's got at least a hundred thousand worth of gel in his hair.

G isn't drawn into the new surroundings: we're drawn into his. We too are filthy rich folk slumming in a soup kitchen. Ohmigod! What hideousness! Here's a hundred dollars: just please stop touching my coat.

He breaks down in tears at one point, so we've got our fingers crossed. We can't wait to see how this catharsis plays out in cash. He awards thirty-five thousand to a soup kitchen. Uh, whaaa? He's got a quarter-billion and he won't even round off? Yup, it's an omen: another thirty-five thousand goes to a homeless shelter, and two people each get ten thou.

Ninety thousand dollars. (There's no explanation why he didn't cough up the hundred thou they require.) That's like a guy with thirty thousand in the bank giving away NINE DOLLARS. Judging by this criteria, my grandma should make the news every time she sends me a birthday check.

One $10,000 recipient literally says, "I can't accept this," because there's something distasteful in G's face. He's not even remotely involved. He's tossing a quarter to a cripple and waiting to hear "Thanks." Besides, it's hardly transforming. In San Francisco, it'll barely cover a month's rent and an iced latte.

With the help of this episode, I narrowed down exactly what I like about the program. Giving money to poor folk? Eh. Sticking rich people in cheap motels? Nope. No, it's making rich people work. Their money doesn't even remotely correspond to any effort they've made, so that's always the part that stuns them, that sends their plucked eyebrows sliding up their botoxed foreheads. If they strung together the middle bits of every episode and called it "Attractive People Do An Honest Day's Work," I think Fox would have a hit on their hands.

Still, the show teaches a valuable lesson. That's why G's rich and we aren't, we realize as he drives back to the G Spot in his white Bentley. We saw Secret Millionaire as a show about giving. He saw a chance to pay $90,000 for an hour of primetime PR.