I’m always looking for the latest and greatest in simplistic, unrealistic, far-fetched, and preposterous reality television to add to my DVR series record list. As usual, good ol’ MTV didn’t let me down. MTV’s latest reality romance competition, Are You The One?, puts 20 singles (10 men, 10 women) in a huge mansion in Hawaii to find their one true love match.
Professional matchmaking experts, along with their family, friends, and exes, have paired these individuals with their ideal match of the opposite sex (of the people who applied for the show, not in the entire world). Each week, the contestants compete in challenges to go on “dates,” and the couples that win these dates are eligible to be voted into to the Truth Booth. The Truth Booth is the only definitive way to determine whether a given couple is a perfect match or not, which leads to a lot of mind fucking and hurt feelings (beyond the burning during urination virtually all the contestants will soon experience from banging each other during filming). If a couple is revealed to be matched up correctly in the truth booth, they go off to Gilligan’s Island or something. At the end of each episode, all the contestants couple up for the Match-Up ceremony, which tells them how many couples are configured correctly, without actually telling them which couples are right. If all ten contestants are paired with their perfect match by the tenth Match-Up ceremony, they get to split a million bucks (which comes to about $50,000 per person after taxes).
Truth be told, I’ll always have a special place in my heart for hook-up driven reality shows—it’s been my guilty pleasure since FOX aired Paradise Hotel waaaay back in 2003. Are You The One? seems so much more compelling than its contemporaries like The Bachelor, but perhaps because I’ve been watching this drivel for over a decade now, I’m starting to crave a little more substance, and I’ve come up with some suggestions that MTV should really consider incorporating before filming seasons two through twenty of Are You The One?
1. All the contestants on Are You The One? come from diverse backgrounds, but much like the dating pool in real life, all the eligible singles are 20-something hotties who are all in impeccable shape—oh wait. During my single years, I must have been swimming in the gross public dating pool that can’t afford chlorine, because most singles do not look like this:
How great would it be if among all these stereotypically “hot” people, there were actually some normal human beings thrown in the mix? You know, a guy that doesn’t have a six-pack or a woman with frizzy hair. Is it so impossible to think maybe someone’s perfect match could have a mole with a hair growing out of it? Or a long jagged scar?
2. Wouldn’t it be a huge twist of one of contestants had two perfect match options, and one of them had none? Let’s just set up a “This little piggy…” situation. The contestant with two perfect matches would have to convince one of the other contestants to share their perfect match with them Sister Wives style. The contestant with no perfect match would have ten episodes to discover they’re a relationship pariah, or risk putting the shared million dollar prize in jeopardy.
3. What if one of the contestants (and someone’s perfect match) was currently serving a life sentence for double homicide? Surely there’s a creative defense attorney out there (probably from the state of Florida, where no one gets convicted for anything) who could argue that a stint on an MTV reality show is comparable to actually serving time in a penitentiary. Let’s really push the bounds of this so-called “dating experiment.”
4. What if one of the male contestants and one of the female contestants were included to serve as strategic match-up decoys whose sole purpose is to deceive all of the real contestants and win the prize money for themselves? The only hope the contestants have of winning the money is ousting the impostors! But then, in a shocking turn of events, both decoys fall madly in love with two of the legitimate contestants, and it complicates everything! WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?!
5. There should be two contestants who are 60 plus years old. Who says your perfect match is necessarily within your age group? Wrinkle-bearers and AARP members need love, too! Think of how much more interesting it would be to watch everyone tiptoe around the fact no one wants their match to be one of the senior citizens.
Instead of sticking a cautious toe into the get-ratings rabbit hole, I think it’s time to just dive in headfirst—that’s what made Jersey Shore so great.
How much do you hate me for loving reality TV? What changes would you make to Are You The One?–short of having the contestants fight to the death Hunger Games style? Are you obsessed with dating-driven reality TV, too?
Filed under: Opinion, Pop Culture Tagged: are you the one?, funny, humor, humor, mtv, reality tv, sass & balderdash
