Review of Girl for Rent

Girl for Rent, a web-based weekly television series, is the story of a single woman who, after having been used and abused by lying and cheating men, has decided to interview single men before she dates them by tricking them into applying for a lease on her house.

The videos are written, produced and edited by Kenneth Wajda through his Colorado based video production company, Denver Boulder Video. Wajda studied film at New York University, worked as a staff photographer at The New Jersey Trenton Times for thirteen years, and contributed his photography to many well-known publications and newspapers. He is also the founder of the Professional Association of Artistic Nude Photographers. The first episode of Girl for Rent aired in October of 2006.

 Episodes can be accessed on the Girl for Rent site or blog, which also includes comments posted by other viewers and links to Wajda’s other production projects. The installments are between 3 and 4 minutes long, each one focusing on a different character who Geena (Kelly Whitaker) interacts with in her unusual search for a nice guy.

These are simply shot, one-on-one conversations with fairly conventional dialogue. The sound and production quality are both good, and although the writing is not overly edgy, the use of monologue allows the viewers to gain a deeper understanding of the characters. Geena converses with a variety of characters: her friends Kirsty (married for ten years) and Beth (single, outdoorsy Boulder-type), her unwanted potential renters Margie (a fast-talking North Easterner) and Joe (who is excessively enthusiastic about moving in…and is also gay), and her possible romance, Jim

(a tall, attractive man that works in computers). By episode ten, when the focus is more on Jim, we have a good idea of the complexities of Geena’s personality, a kind of optimistic pessimist who is, above all, frustrated.

In light of the overabundance of dating services available today, I think many women, and perhaps men too, can relate to Geena: an attractive, self-sustaining woman in her mid-30’s who has trouble finding successful and attractive guys that are simply honest with her. She swings from one polarity to the next, telling her friend Beth, “maybe I should just decide to be single,” then going into detail as to how she could met men at church later on in the same episode.

It seems as though everyone around her (both her married and single friends) is satisfied with their lives, while Geena has come to the end of her rope, willing to do something desperate to fill the void her previous boyfriend left behind. It is no wonder then, that during the first “date” (“In most places on earth, a date would be in a bar over drinks…In Boulder, we have tea and granola.”) with Jim, he asks, “who are you?”

Geena is not only trying to find a man, she has embarked on a dating world odyssey, in which a girl has to meet a slew of unappealing men in order to discover the perfect match, and hopefully, find herself in the end.