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In Average Joe: Hawaii, 18 men were sent to vie for the attention of one woman, Larissa. Among them was Tim Long, an independent contractor in financial planning from Little Rock, Arkansas. Eliminated by Larissa in Episode 2, Tim graciously agreed to make an appearance here at The-Trades.com to answer questions from the ever-curious Molly.

Molly: How did you get cast on the show?

Tim: I was cast on the show basically by going out into town with some friends of mine. NBC sent casting crews out around the nation, and they happened to have a casting crew here in Little Rock. We have what we call the River Market, it's kind of a downtown, open market/bar area, and I was downtown with friends of mine, and they came up and asked me if I wanted to come down for a screening. I didn't really believe that it was legitimate at first. I thought someone was seriously trying to pull something over on me.

I guess one of the guys from Boston -- there were eight guys from Boston, and one of the guys from Boston actually ate the business card that they initially handed him, kind of saying, like, "Hey, whatever, I'm not that stupid." And they handed him another one, and said, "Well, in case you want to second guess that, or rethink your decision, here's one more chance."

So after they came up to me and asked me if I would be interested, I said, "Okay. I don't fully trust you, but at this point, why not?" They had a film screening or an on-camera screening the next day, and I went down, filled out the 30 pages of questions they asked about us, and then went up and talked to a couple of casting folks on camera. They told me, "Okay, we'll call you." And I said, "Okay, sure you will," and expected never to hear anything more of it. Then about a week later I got a call that let me know that I needed to be ready to get on a plane, because I was going out to meet the producers.

And at that point I knew my bluff had been called, because I tried to call their bluff, and lo and behold, they called mine. So that's how I ended up on Average Joe: Hawaii.

Molly: And did you know at that point that it was a dating show?

Tim: What they had told us was that it was going to be -- obviously they're from other networks, but the analogy they gave was that it was going to be The Real World meets The Bachelorette. That kind of environment.

Molly: You know, that's actually fairly accurate.

Tim: Really, it is. But what we didn't know, literally until just as the show's filming was beginning, just prior to that, was that it was only going to be one female. They had been telling us, and all the paperwork that we filled out at that initial screen test, everything that we interacted with once we got out to Burbank, everything was called The In Crowd. And they had implied -- or maybe purely we allowed ourselves to believe -- that it was going to be more a combination of couples being married up or put together and then seeing which of them could become cohesive the most quickly. That was the understanding. The reality, of course, became that there were 18 guys from a myriad of backgrounds and obviously many different shapes and sizes competing for one woman.

Molly: And what did you think of her when you met her, this one woman?

Tim: When I walked off the bus, she definitely was a breath-catcher. Very beautiful woman, and the evening gown that she was wearing combined with all the lighting (they had a very mellow glow on her, with the lighting that they'd used) ... just a gorgeous woman. And it's difficult when we finally -- after she went up and, as we saw in the episode, cussed us to the producers bitterly, that was kind of -- I know she wasn't talking about me specifically, but for some of the other guys, that was kind of mean to say.

But when she came down and spoke with us, I thought she was really pleasant. You could tell, obviously, there was a little bit of tension in her, but who wouldn't be tense, being thrown into 18 guys, obviously not what you're expecting? There's no way that that woman had any idea that the 18 of us that showed up were the 18 to expect. So I think she regrouped well after going up and talking with the producers and kind of figuring out what the situation truly was.

Molly: Were you surprised when you saw Episode 1 of the show and saw how extreme her reaction was?

Tim: Well, her extreme level of reaction I guess did catch me off guard a little bit. We knew she'd been gone for a while, but we figured -- just as we had been inundated with interview after interview after interview on camera leading up to going over to meet her, I figured they were doing the standard interviews with her. "Okay, you've now met them for the first time. What's your reaction?" I didn't realize it was all going to be via hidden cameras as she vented with the producers.

But I think it was a little bit extreme, because anyone that signs up for any reality anything, on NBC, ABC, CBS, has got to realize there's got to be some kind of ratings catch in there. And The Bachelor and The Bachelorette had already been played out, For Love or Money had already been played out. So if those angles were gone, she had to figure that something new was coming. I just don't think she was expecting quite what she got.

Molly: How much time were you actually able to talk with her? Because when we watch the show, it looks like you only have maybe ten minutes total to talk with her.

Tim: They definitely control contact with her, to ensure that everyone is kept on an even playing field. At the very beginning, that evening, we had a little bit of time. Those of us that were able to pull her aside for a moment got two or three minutes each, and then when we went up to the photo booth, I think that probably lasted about five minutes. So she made her initial eliminations off of some casual group conversation and then maybe a total of seven minutes of interaction with each of the guys.

Then on the group dates, they also very much controlled access to her. Unless the cameras were rolling, we were not allowed to interact with her in the least bit. They kept her in one place and kept us in another, unless they were actually filming it. And then again, some group setting where you kind of got in what you could in the conversation. But then, as they showed me walking over with her on the lava flow, we were allowed I think five minutes there as well. And then again at the group party there was some more -- I think we got an additional two minutes. So again, outside of group interaction, seven to ten minutes.

So I think by the time she had eliminated me, she and I had talked one on one for maybe a grand total of fifteen minutes, tops.

Molly: Did you get an impression of what she was like as a person?

Tim: She is very much into her art. Her art is her passion, and that was one thing that she and I had discussed the very first night. It didn't show up in the episode, but when I did have the time to pull her away from the group and talk with her, I asked her what her passions were, and she talked about how she's very much getting into the 3-D graphic art and web page design.

Molly: I'm sure that when you're on the show, where there's one woman and a lot of guys and everyone's attention focused on her, that that would lead to everyone having a heightened desire to be with her, regardless of what she's like. Do you think if you'd met in another context, like a friend of a friend, that you'd be interested in her?

Tim: You know, that's a really good question, Molly. I think meeting her -- either just being out and coming across her or meeting her through a set-up from a friend -- I think there's enough physical attraction (she's obviously a beautiful woman) that I would at least be interested in getting to know her.

Beyond that though -- and "hey, the guy's eliminated, of course he's going to say this" -- but really in the little bit that I interacted with her, and just as much as she may have had a false impression of me being a little bit intense and a little bit of a bully (which my friends are laughing extremely about, because they're like, "Who the heck is she talking about?"), I think equally I might have maybe a little bit of an only partial impression of her. But I didn't get the impression that, while she and I might have some things that were similar, there was enough in common between us that we would have been able to hit it off for the long term.

As you see in some of these reality dating situations, as you say, the intensity of the moment causes a bond or an attraction to occur that may not have a lot of staying power otherwise. And what we find out is that as the shows go away and the couples are left on their own, they really don't work out, because it's more the situation than it is true chemistry.

Molly: It sounds like you have watched Reality TV before.

Tim: A little bit. To be honest, I had watched the first Survivor. After I left active duty in the Marine Corps, I was bartending a while, just to kind of -- it was nice to not be in charge for a while. And the bar that I bartended at was actually where the local CBS affiliate did all of their watch parties, because it was like a new thing at that point. It was kind of like the original Reality TV other than The Real World. So I watched that one, if nothing else, just because that was on the television. And then, to be honest, I really -- I never saw any of The Bachelors, any of the Joe Millionaires, I never saw any of those.

It wasn't until after I was cast by NBC and I was locked up in my hotel room in Burbank that I very voraciously consumed everything I could about Reality TV shows via the television. I watched everything that NBC had on the air at the time, which at the time was Meet my Parents and For Love or Money 1 and 2. I watched all of that. I watched some of what was on the other channels as well, because I wanted to find out what kind of things to expect, what were they doing with the shows right now, what kind of twists were they introducing, what were they putting the characters through, just to know what to expect. Because at that point I really didn't have that much exposure.

Molly: Then of course you saw the first season of Average Joe, when it aired.

Tim: I did.

Molly: How did you feel when that came out? Did it play out the way that you would expect?

Tim: You know the first reaction I had? Actually, I was a little bit upset, because I realized how unoriginal our season was going to be. Because so many of the constructs, the physical portions of the show -- the bus pulling up, the photo booth, all of those things -- same scene, different actors. Using the photo booth in both episodes. I was watching it, and it was like, "Okay, I don't really know what people are going to tune into the second season for, because it's just going to be different people doing the same exact stuff over again."

But beyond that, I wasn't that surprised when they brought in the jocks, because it just seemed a little bit suspect that they would leave Average Joes completely to their own to try to woo this woman.

Molly: Now, is that the first that you heard of the twist, when you saw it on the first season?

Tim: Of course, that Palm Springs season had just finished filming. It was still being edited when the producers came out to film ours. Realistically, we were being told that this was the first of its kind, the one that we were actually filming was the first of its kind and it was going to break new ground in Reality TV and we were going to be part of it. They really led us to believe that. We had no way of even suspecting.

But at the same time, I think the first time I suspected something was coming was how rapidly they were cutting the guys at the beginning of our show, and then coming home and watching how quickly they cut guys from the first season. Because if you figure over half the cast is gone within two weeks, that doesn't leave a lot of variety of personality on the show for an extended season. If you've got four episodes of the same five guys, it's like, "all right, make the decision already." So it seemed like something was coming up, the fact that within two episodes with us of filming that she had eliminated 50% of us that had arrived. So it wasn't at all a surprise to me when lo and behold the reason why was because they had every intention of putting us really to the test by bringing in the guys she had anticipated meeting in the first place.

I knew something was up, but I didn't know that it was going to be hunks coming in. And I say that, but at the same time we even among ourselves were kind of joking about "Okay, when are the hunks going to show up?" That sort of thing. We knew that the producers had enjoyed their casting process and some of the guys that they had cast.

And all of the guys were terrific, terrific guys, Molly, but to be honest -- and maybe some people would even include me in that group, I'll leave it to their own discretion -- but some of those guys, if they were put into a social setting that Larissa, or even in the first season Melana, if they were all at the same function, the likelihood of those ladies noticing half the guys that they were introduced to is very slim. And so even being one of those guys that's in that group and looking around, and personally thinking, "You know, these aren't my guys either" (a lot of those guys I would not consider peers in a suiting situation), it wasn't hard to think, "I wonder if this is how they're going to leave it." But we did not know in fact that there were, in our case, eight guys on a boat coming to try and humiliate us in any way that they could.

Molly: How did all of you guys in the house get along?

Tim: We got along really, really well, from the very beginning. I think part of it was because we'd been locked up in seclusion in our own hotel rooms for so long, the fact that we were actually able to come out and interact with other human beings again was in itself was a release.

Molly: So were you kept isolated from one another?

Tim: We were. While we were in Burbank, we weren't allowed out of our hotel rooms without being accompanied by a casting member. We had to get all room service. The blinds had to stay closed. In Hawaii, once we got to the hotel, they gave us some freedom, but by then, because of flying over on the airplane, we'd at least seen who the other finalists were going on to the show. We were basically told that if we went down to the restaurant, we had to be at least four tables apart. If we went out on the beach, we had to be at least a hundred feet apart. They wanted to make sure there wasn't any polluting of the initial meeting, because they wanted that all pure and all raw right on the camera.

And I don't think any of us could have anticipated David Daskal. Even my farthest imagination reaches cannot go to portraying that person exactly as he came across.

Molly: How is he, compared to what we see on TV?

Tim: That is David.

I've gone and looked at the NBC message boards, to see what different people are saying, and I guess people went out and found links to a web site that is David's acting bio. [Note: David Daskal is registered with an L.A. Talent Agency.] Just like with [Dennis] Luciano in the first episode who was also an actor, once again there's all these speculations that NBC actually has plugs on the show. I couldn't tell you that. David may happen to be someone trying to get into the acting industry that was also a single guy cast on the show. He may have been an actor. I don't know.

If he wasn't acting, the guy definitely has some really dear friends, because anyone that could spend an extended period of time around him has a world's amount of patience.

But even David -- we'd pick on him a lot, but even David had qualities that, when you're in a house, and with that varied of a mix, even he had his place. If nothing else, it gave us all something to talk about.

But some of them, really good. My personal roommates during the show: Robert was there until he was eliminated after the first round; and then Justin and myself, who both left at the second round; and then Fredo was the last of the four of us that was there. And that was purely by chance. We were allowed to pick our own arrangements within the house. But those are the three guys I initially ended up with as roommates.

Molly: Would you say that they ended up being your closest friends?

Tim: Looking back, I don't know if I had anyone that I was truly close to. I think I probably related more so to a couple of the individuals, like Fredo.

Fredo's a really great guy. His appearance definitely is deceiving. He's got a heart the size of a giant bear, I think. He and I hung out a lot around the house; plus, both of us being business owners -- he owned a business of a much larger scale than do I -- had similarities as far as that goes.

I really enjoyed talking with Michael a lot. I know a lot of people are reacting negatively that he was very up front about his faith, and the importance of Jesus in his life, with Larissa when we were on the volcano, but I respected the heck out of the guy for that, because my faith is equally strong. On my bio page, it mentions that any woman that I'm attracted to better have a strong faith in G-d. But the fact that he had the fortitude to stand there and the conviction to bring that out very early, very open and not at all hide it, I'm very respectful, and he and I had a lot of great conversations about that as well.

Molly: Hearing that you guys really did have such a limited amount of time to speak with Larissa, it makes it even more impressive that Mike brought it out like that.

Tim: Indeed. But his whole point was the fact that if he were going to allow himself to start feeling things for her, if he were to remain on the show, he had to know it was something he could even potentially pursue. And, as with me, there isn't an option for him of a girl who's not a Christian to enter into a relationship.

Molly: Had you brought that up with Larissa?

Tim: I actually had not. I was too busy trying to explain to her that I wasn't a Marine 24 hours a day any longer in my life. After the fight with Tony, after the boxing match, I pretty much spent my entire time trying to tell her about things of me that didn't involve beating up a bald-headed guy in a boxing ring.

Molly: Yeah, her body language definitely indicated that she was not happy with you at that point.

Tim: She was not very receptive.

Molly: Now, what was your Marine background?

Tim: I went through the University of Notre Dame on a Marine ROTC scholarship, and commissioned into the Marine Corps, originally flying for the Marines, and then due to purely personal decisions decided to get out of the flight program, and I ended up being a logistics officer in the Marine Corps. I spent a total of four years active duty. I left the Marine Corps as a captain.

Molly: Had you been in fights before? Boxing fights, not street brawls.

Tim: That's the one thing that I think made me a little bit at a different focus going into that boxing ring. In the Marine Corps, in some of our initial training, we spend over a week of doing nothing but hand-to-hand combat training, where it's full force. I mean, you are leaving bruises all over your roommate during this training. And then on top of that, we do a lot of training with pugil sticks, which are basically giant jousting sticks with hard foam on either end of them, to learn how to do basic close-in combat with a rifle and bayonet without actually bayoneting one of your fellow friends.

And then I had a lot of friends that boxed at Notre Dame, because Notre Dame has an amateur boxing program. I had not gone through the program, but just for no other reason than to stay in shape for the Marine Corps I'd done some training with them for that as well, with my friends who were in it. So it wasn't the first time I'd ever been in a close-in, very contact-oriented combat situation before, I guess.

Molly: Right at the moment when the fight was over, did you have a sense of how it went? Did you have any inkling before you saw Larissa that people were going to have that reaction?

Tim: No. I didn't.

I specifically remember one time getting a shot in on the back of Tony's head, and every one of those was purely incidental, never intentional. The producers put me up against him, and I probably had a five-inch arm reach on him. So every time I went in and threw a jab with my left hand, his natural instinct was to duck and turn away from me.

One time, I know, I remember hitting him on the back of the head, and that's when -- even we saw it on the episode -- Roy [Jones, Jr., a professional boxer visiting the show and training the guys in boxing] stepped in and said, "Watch the back of the head punches." And I truly was trying to. But at the same time I wasn't going to just dance around the ring with my glove. I wasn't going to kind of dance for the camera.

So when it was over, my initial thought was, "Hey, I did what I was supposed to do. I won the fight." And when she asked me afterwards, she's like, "Don't you think you were kind of intense?" I said, "Hey, when you're in a boxing match, you fight to win." And that is my perspective. Whether it is for television or you're an actual boxer for a living, you don't go into the ring thinking, "Hey, I'll take the fall," or "Let me see how long I can stall the clock and that'll be great film."

What really surprised me the most was my roommate Fredo on camera, kind of calling me out for cheap shots, because he and Sam had bludgeoned one another very violently in the ring. The fight actually -- and this was creative editing on the producers' part -- Fredo and Sam actually fought after Tony and I, but in the editing of the show it looked like Tony and I were kind of the big fight of the day.

More than anything, the comment from Fredo that I saw on last week's episode caught me off-guard, because I know for a fact that he and Sam had every intention of trying to knock one another out in the ring, and it just so happened that they were both large enough guys. Tony was just physically much smaller than I.

Molly: Do you think if you had laid off more, it would have made a difference in Larissa's decision?

Tim: I think so. She knew that I had a background in the military. And I think that the moment she saw me in the boxing ring, as I came across, that very much typecast me. And at that point, I think the damage had been done, and there wasn't much else I could do. Had I not been as much of an active participant in the boxing round, potentially I may have stayed around for a couple of more eliminations.

Maybe not. Maybe she felt that we didn't click, and it was time for me to go no matter what. Hard to say.

Molly: Is there anyone left on the show that you're surprised is there, at this point?

Tim: My personal opinion, nothing against them as individuals, but I think, like, some of the larger guys, like Sean. Sean is a phenomenal guy, and I hope to definitely stay in touch with him down the long run. But whereas in the first season Melana pretty quickly got rid of the guys that were on the extreme, size or appearancewise, Larissa kept back. And that may be her own personal decision.

But especially David. Again, he comes up in conversation a lot. But I truly -- call me an ugly person, but I truly believe that if David thinks that anywhere outside of a television show on NBC he stands a chance with anyone of Larissa's attractiveness or stature in society, he's deceiving himself. And I think I even told him that on the show. I remember him making the comment several times that he hoped that this gave hope to all the guys like him that they could go up and talk to a supermodel as well, and when he went home he definitely wasn't going to shy away from those opportunities. And I tried to gently let him know that he may not have those opportunities when he got back home.

Molly: What has been the reaction from people since you've gotten home?

Tim: I think there's a very clear line among people that were my fans and people that were not my fans. There's no real middle ground. Either people think that I got a bad deal because I went in and boxed like I was told to do and then was thrown off just for winning my particular round, or people think that I was a bully and psychotic and that I needed to go before Larissa endangered herself.

But I've got a great group of friends, here and around the world, that I knew at Notre Dame, that are now in the military and out in their own civilian jobs, living their own lives, and I've heard from many of them. Very supportive. And it's been great to hear from some of those old friends as well. But then there are those that question -- even people locally. People that were all excited I was on the show. I've noticed a couple of people not as excited to talk to me about it after the show. So either they're just upset that I was eliminated, or they didn't like what they saw of me either.

Molly: Have you been recognized by other people? People you didn't know before?

Tim: Actually, it's funny, but I haven't had that experience, going out to the restaurant or the grocery store or wherever. But then I really haven't been out that much since Monday night, and after the first episode it would be difficult for anyone to recognize me because they saw my head above water in the fountain. I think that was the one scene other than my initial introduction that we had any film time of me. But I haven't run into the "Oh, you're the guy from --" I haven't gotten that much. I've had two autograph requests. That's about it. So I think my fifteen minutes is starting to fade.

Molly: Have you been able to stay in touch with any of the guys from the house?

Tim: We are not allowed to stay in contact. The producers at one point -- I don't know where it is now, or if it will ever happen -- but the producers at one point were considering a reunion of the guys from both Average Joe 1 and Average Joe 2, much in the way that they did right before the final episode of For Love or Money 2, when they brought back the guys and girls from both of those seasons that had previously been eliminated. And at this point we're still not allowed to be in contact with one another, because they want -- just as at the very beginning they want our reactions to be on camera, in the same way. And I'm sure some of the guys are communicating, people share e-mail addresses and phone numbers, but officially we're not supposed to be able to, because if they do have a reunion, they want that all on camera. After the show has finally aired, they said they would release a contact list for us so we'd be able to re-establish contact with some of the guys.

Molly: Do you think that things might have gone differently if you'd been on the first Average Joe instead of the second one?

Tim: That's a tough question, to say would my odds have been better, having not spent any time around the guys from the first one and obviously knowing that portrayal on television isn't necessarily reality. I'd like to think that really my odds on either of the seasons would have been better than they ended up playing out. But that really -- I don't know. Yeah, maybe.

I think a big difference -- and going back to the boxing match again -- is Larissa has a loathing for athletic events. She is far, far from enjoying anything sports related. And she wasn't really keen on the idea of the boxing rounds in the first place. Whereas Melana, having been a cheerleader that had worked in television with sportscasting and everything else, I think potentially, if the show had stayed a little bit more physically oriented, then I might have had a better chance with Melana than Larissa, because there wasn't an adversity there. But beyond that, it's hard to say, because I really don't know the guys as they really were from the first season.

Molly: There are plans for Adam Mesh, the runner-up from the first Average Joe, to have a series where women vie to date him. If NBC were to call you and say, "Tim, you got a raw deal last time, and we're going to make it up to you and do a 'Date Tim' show," would you be interested?

Tim: Right now, I wouldn't be, because I've actually been fortunate to find a really incredible lady right here in Little Rock, but if she and I were to not be together at the time they approached me, sure, I'd go do it.

And the reason I say that, Molly, is because the reasoning I went to the first episode with wasn't about meeting somebody. I've never had a problem dating. That was the one thing, where you had guys like Matt saying that he's never had a girlfriend before and the rest of it. That's never been my problem.

I went because I truly believe what Thoreau challenged us to do, and that is to live our lives so that, when we approach the end of them and look back upon them, we know we've lived them as opposed to wasted them. And I think any time you have an opportunity to do something that is outside of your everyday world, that exposes you to opportunities you wouldn't have otherwise, you should take it.

Many thanks to Tim for participating in this interview!

Average Joe: Hawaii is on Mondays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time, on NBC.

On the Internet: NBC.com's Official Site | SirLinksaLot.net

Transcript edited for length and clarity.