“How loud do you orgasm?” – Patti Stanger
This edition of The Millionaire Matchmaker slides into action by featuring Patti Stanger and her boyfriend, David, having lunch with Jonathan Cheban, who is described as “being known for being Kim Kardashian’s best friend.”
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If that’s not a strikingly weird anecdote about the state of celebrity these days, I’m not sure what is.
This of course leads to Patti “serendipitously” inviting Jonathan to attend a Millionaire’s Club mixer that she’ll set up for him.
The Millionaire Matchmaker, Jonathan Cheban & Eric Berman”: client intros
When Patti – who is wearing some kind of insane and gawdy sparkling silver cross, so I need to squeeze that in – tells the new assistants at The Millionaire’s Club (the names of which I doubt I will ever bother remembering) that Jonathan Cheban will be a client, they all say in unison: Kim Kardashian’s best friend.
Meanwhile, Eric Berman is introduced as “41, Jewish, beautiful.” Patti deems him “dorky cute.”
But this gets interrupted when Patti segues into giving her new (for this season) staffers a strange speech that’s punctuated by statements like, “My ass is grass karmically if I don’t do right by these people.”
Anyway, Berman is an entrepreneur, lives in a high rise in downtown San Diego, and has a celebrity crush on Mila Kunis. He’s also a self-described “playboy” who likes his ladies young.
Eric also has “20 goals” for his future wife. Patti reacts to this by saying, “This is sick – this is mental illness.”
The Millionaire Matchmaker, Jonathan Cheban & Eric Berman”: Patti meets the clients
Patti meets Eric at the Warehouse Restaurant, where she immediately tells him that his “long list” of things he’s looking for in a woman is “insanity” and asks him if he’s been to therapy.
Underneath the surface of Patti’s typically cringe-y vernacular (talking about finding a woman who knows herself and “not just her cooch,” for example), she expresses the reasonable opinion that Eric needs to loosen up on being a perfectionist and look for someone who is both a little older and more mature that he won’t soon grow bored with… if indeed he’s serious about settling down anytime soon.
Back at The Millionaire’s Club office, Patti explains that she’s going to treat Jonathan “like a client” even though they’re friends. And speaking of friends: we’re reminded yet again that Jonathan is super besties with Kim Kardashian.
And after doing some research, I picked up on the fact that Jonathan Cheban is credited with being in 26 of the whopping 238 episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians between 2007 and 2021.
Oh, and Cheban’s requirements for a relationship include that it’s “all about him” because he “has to be right.” That and a body that’s Jennifer Anniston-meets-JLo, and that’s the total of what our guy says he’s looking for.
Also: “My life is very busy and I need somebody who keeps up with me,” Jonathan says. So it’s no shocker that bro is single at this point in time.
The Millionaire Matchmaker, Jonathan Cheban & Eric Berman”: the recruiting session and mixer
Highlights of the recruiting session include:
- Patti’s makeup in this scene looks particularly clown-like.
- Meanwhile, Patti tells Stacey, a fashion stylist: “That dress needs to be burned… with those shoes.”
- Mary, a pre-school teacher, is deemed “grounded” and an Eva Longoria-lookalike. She’s also an appropriate potential match for both Jonathan and Eric.
- One woman is asked, “How loud do you orgasm?”
- And to another: “I hate your hair. You need extensions.”
The mixer is both a “black tie event” and a “reverse mixer,” the twist being that the guys are put in the position of “going up to the girls to get to know them” individually. Also, no “mini date” round in this edition of The Millionaire Matchmaker.
Patti describes Jonathan’s interactions with the ladies as “snobby/snarky,” and she’s right on the money. I’d add “rude/obnoxious.” It’s clear this guy sees himself as a superstar, thanks to his affiliation with Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and not the humble variety of superstar. And then meanwhile the ding on “Bigger Better Berman” is that his “eyes keep wandering” to the other ladies while he’s having a one-on-one conversation with potential romantic partners.
As the one-on-one conversations with The Millionaire’s Club and the ladies continued, I realized that I personally find Jonathan to be intensely annoying and intensely annoying looking, somehow.
Finally, we get the big reveal that Jonathan chooses Jenn for the “master date” because she “popped the most” while Eric opts for Ashley, a hair stylist who also lives in San Diego.
The Millionaire Matchmaker, Jonathan Cheban & Eric Berman: Eric and Ashley’s first date
Eric takes Ashley to Del Mar Racetrack for their date, where horse racing is on deck. It’s kind of a good choice for a first date, I guess, as there’s a nice combination of action going on mixed with opportunities to have first date banter.
Their conversation and rapport seem to come pretty easily, and things go very well early on as they chitchat and then later visit the stables.
Later that day, dinner takes place at a restaurant than Eric is involved with called Searsucker (so product placement in effect there, I guess). The conversation gets a little deeper here as the two discuss their version of marriage and lifestyle.
Things go well enough that Eric invites Ashley to a second date, which she accepts. However, Ashley reveals to the camera that she’s not sure if there’s a romantic “spark” in their new relationship as yet.
The Millionaire Matchmaker, Jonathan Cheban & Eric Berman: Jonathan and Jenn’s first date
It’s a lunch date at Aventine in Hollywood for Jonathan and Jenn… where Jonathan is late to arrive.
Jonathan tells Jenn that he’s starting a company called Billionaire Burger and that “he has so many companies to run.”
“Busy guy,” Jenn responds.
He then asks her what she thinks about Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and at that point I tuned out.
They then head to “the hottest club in Hollywood,” which I believe is called Beacher’s Madhouse. Which in of itself reveals Jonathan to be a very club-y, Hollywood-y dude, as if we didn’t know that already.
“This place is nuts,” Jonathan says, and he’s not wrong there, as we soon see a little person dressed up as an Oompa Loompa out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory serving people by way of a wired up zip line of some sort.
“I was freaking out,” Jenn says, and we’re not sure if that’s meant to be in a good or bad way. We then see a montage of a stage show that includes things like an older guy dressed up in S&M-style leather, another little person rapping, and other kinds of side show-esque antics.
The Millionaire Matchmaker, Jonathan Cheban & Eric Berman: post-dates upshot
Patti and Marisa call up Jenn to find out her date with Jonathan went, and it was interesting to hear that Jenn thought the club-y part of the date was worse than the first part. “It was hard to tell if there was a romantic connection because it was so loud,” she reports. However, she did say that she would go out with him again if asked “to see if there was something there.”
At the office, Jonathan said that he wanted to “freak her out a little bit” with regard to going to Beacher’s Madhouse. Patti then congratulates him because Jenn is open to a second date, and I’m convinced that she takes it super easy on him only because he has some kind of station within the reality television show ecosystem.
Patti and David then call Ashley, who relays that Eric was a “perfect gentleman,” but that the vibe was more friendship versus romantic. Patti’s take is that he should have gone in for a kiss but didn’t, and that’s what tilted things into the Friend Zone.
In the office, Patti tells Eric that he must kiss the girl on the second date.
“I wonder if Eric really does have a penis down there,” Patti then says to the camera.
The end of episode captions then tell us: “Jonathan Cheban is back on the East Coast and has been talking to Jennifer. They hope to see each other again when he is back in L.A.” And:
Ashlet gas bit returned any of Eric’s calls. Eric now wishes has had gone in for that kiss.”
So it’s a huge 0-2 for Patti Stanger on this edition of The Millionaire Matchmaker.
The Millionaire Matchmaker, Jonathan Cheban & Eric Berman: where are they now?
I have never seen a single episode of any reality show involving the Kardashians, so I searched Google News for the latest doings on Jonathan Cheban and quickly saw this headline: “What happened to Kim Kardashian and Jonathan ‘FoodGod’ Cheban’s friendship?”
So first of all, apparently Cheban is now known as “FoodGod,” so there’s that. The article speculates why the two may no longer be friends but doesn’t seem to have anything more solid than that Kim Kardashian has a “pattern of broken friendships.”
Meanwhile, Eric Berman is the “founder and partner at Brandetize Inc, a San Diego based interactive agency that partners with personalities and brands to expand their reach, monetize their business, and leave a positive impact on the world.” Link here.
Some stats and info about The Millionaire Matchmaker – Jonathan Cheban & Eric Berman (“The Know-It-All and Bigger Better Berman”)
TV SHOW – The Millionaire Matchmaker
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 7, Episode 2
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – Bravo
AIR DATE – December 12th, 2013
GENRE – Reality TV, Dating Shows, Trashtastic TV
STARS – Patti Stanger, Jonathan Cheban, Eric Berman
GOOGLE PLAY DESCRIPTION – Kim Kardashian’s BFF Jonathan Cheban is a 39-year-old entrepreneur living in New York and Miami, who says he’s ready to let Patti set him up. But can she get Jonathan past his jet-setter “know it all” ways and be open to finding love? Patti’s second millionaire this week is Eric Berman. He’s a 41-year-old entrepreneur who’s always looking for the bigger better deal. Patti wants to help him stop looking for greener grass and truly settle into a long-term relationship. But, it’s up to Eric to keep his wandering eye in check and focus on the girl to make sure he knows who is “The One”.