MTV Launches New Dating Show Are You The One?
Contributed by: kellyseal on Saturday, February 22 2014 @ 10:52 am
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Are you ready for a new reality TV show about dating? MTV is betting you are.
The new show doesn't center around one bachelor or bachelorette. Instead, the goal of this show is for the 20 singles participating to find true love with the other contestants, which makes the playing field a little more equal. The twenty contestants are stranded together at a resort, which makes for a lot of drama and temptations.
Here comes the catch - each of the contestants has been matched in advance with another contestant on the show - thanks to a staff of dating experts. But the contestants don't know who their matches are. If they all figure out their matches by the show's end, the whole group splits one million dollars. Now, that's incentive to find love. Or is it?
It's an interesting premise, because it allows us to see on the screen how these participants think of connection and love, and what qualities they might consider for someone to be a good match. Do they look for physical chemistry, or what interests they have in common with someone else, or do they look for contestants who share similar backgrounds or careers? Often, what we think makes someone a good match for us doesn't necessarily translate to a real-life connection. Maybe we fall in love with someone who is very different from what we pictured. So maybe these participants will have to let go of some of their assumptions.
At the end of each episode, all the contestants are required to couple up, and they are told how many couples are correctly matched, but not which ones. From the beginning, you can see that some singles are motivated to follow their hearts, while others are looking at strategy and who seems the likeliest fit, whether or not they feel anything for the person. I guess a million dollars can make you rethink your own intuition and judgment.
Jon Caramanica states in his review posted on The New York Times website: "It's striking how casually and easily the participants try one another on for size, and how quickly they're willing to mistrust their own instincts in favor of what the show - via the "truth booth" -tells them about their compatibility. Shanley and Chris T. bond within minutes, but when it's revealed they're not a match a day or two later, Shanley moves on with barely a thought, leaving Chris T. slightly stunned."
I'm interested to watch the show because of this human element - what we value, and how much we trust our guts as opposed to what others tell us might be good for us. Would you be willing to be paired with someone who didn't make you weak in the knees if it meant that you got financial reward? That's reality TV, I guess.