Five Other Female-Skewing TV Shows That Need Video Game Adaptations

Though we should know better than to be shocked when a two-headed Hollywood abomination born of unholy congress between the TV and gaming worlds is unleashed upon the world, the recently released trailer for The Bachelor: The Videogame still locked us in gape-mouthed thrall for, oh, fifteen to twenty repeat viewings of its mind-smoothing footage of poorly animated avatars vying for a shot at a virtual rose. So much straddling and massaging! But once we finally broke the unhealthy "click to play again" cycle, we wondered why there aren't more female-skewing TV programs making their way onto the world's most popular gaming platforms: as the demographic-spanning Wii has proven, video games are not the sole province of teenage boys screaming slurs at their Halo opponents. And so here are our suggestions about shows whose video game moments have come.

Army Wives

With a military-themed concept that could easily be broadened to appeal to men as well as women, Army Wives: Modern Domestic Warfare seems like the perfect title to make the jump from its Lifetime network incarnation to the gaming world. After working together cooperatively through the main relationship storylines, couples could experience first-person-shooter-style levels tying in to the Army husbands' various deployments. We'd never make the sexist suggestion that the ladies handle the domestic journey and the men the shoot-em-up adventure -- the whole point of the game would be the bonding experiences of shared emotional and physical combat, creating the most engrossing marital/martial simulation ever.

The View

Assume the identity of your favorite View gabber in this role-playing adventure based on daytime TV's most popular group-chatfest, working your way through the a list of Hot Topics updated daily through your internet connection. Handling a touchy subject, like a new Supreme Court nominee's opinion on Roe v. Wade? Choose Elisabeth and take an inevitably unpopular conservative approach, lighten the mood with a wisecrack from Joy or Whoopi, or derail the conversation with a series of wildly entertaining non sequiturs from Sherri. Play all the way through the game once and gain the ability to become creator/den mother Barbara Walters, whose executive-producing gravitas earns you the right to declare any debate over as you throw to an interstitial interview segment with the latest Dancing with the Stars cast-off.

Gossip Girl

Playable on any SMS-enabled mobile phone, the game would consist entirely of sending bitchy text messages about the primetime soap's scheming characters to the GG Gaming Community. Points are awarded through social-media vote-up/vote-downs of the texts, scored for viciousness, sexual-triangularity and real-world implausibility.

Private Practice

Though a Grey's Anatomy game does, however unbelievably, actually exist, there's no way the entirety Shonda Rhimes' horny-doctor empire (soon adding a third outpost!) can be serviced by a single video game adaptation. All your favorite minigames from the Grey's Seattle Grace-set original adventure (motion-controlled cranial surgery/McDreamy hair-product application, Choose Your Own Melodramatic, Hyper-Verbal Romantic Confrontation, etc) would be ported over, then scaled down to make sense in Dr. Addison's more intimate universe.

Everything Bravo's Ever Broadcast

With a programming slate far too rich in material to limit to one individual game, The Bravo Arcade would offer a retro-gaming, 8-bit-style experience exploring almost every blockbuster franchise the network offers:

· Sell charmingly pixelated, high-end real estate in the Million Dollar Listing chapter;

· Wrangle your seven quirkily named progeny as they wreak havoc on a home you're renovating in 9 by Design game;

· Assemble an intimidatingly complex lunch order from ingredients flung by your OCD-addled boss in the Burger Time-esque Flipping Out;

· Blast away with blazing bitch-lasers at the bored, pampered frenemies hiding behind marble-topped kitchen islands in any one of six different city scenarios in the Real Housewives module; kill them all and gain access to the opportunity to ruin a bridezilla-overplanned wedding and steal a baby in the Bethenny Getting Married? bonus game. It's countless hours of trashy, basic-cable-inspired action!