Will anybody ever actually find love on a Netflix reality show?
The short answer is no.
If Nick Lachey is on your screen, two things are for certain.
You’re about to watch the cringiest show you’ll ever see, resulting in your body genuinely revolting in anxiety.
You’ll only see him for a total of five more minutes of airtime for the rest of the season.
I’m not sure who over at Netflix HQ decided that he would be a great choice to host nearly every bizarre dating show they produce, but besides all of this, he’s honestly the least of their problems.
The problem Netflix truly has is that no one from their Love Island knockoff shows is ever going to find true love.
This week, my roommate and I chose to binge Perfect Match as our T.V. time subject. We sat down for nearly TWELVE full hours throughout the week to find out if single people from different previously released shows such as The Circle, Love Is Blind, Too Hot To Handle and The Mole could all come together in Panama and find their actual perfect match (because clearly it didn’t work out with one of the 10+ people on their original shows).
Some of these contestants included notable ones such as Francesca Farago, Damian Powers, Bartiste Bowden, Shayne Jansen and Georgia Hassarati, as well as people I had literally never seen before.
This got me excited. Despite the precieved “success” some of these people have found (i.e. Francesca and her bikini line, Georgia dating Harry Jowsey and becoming a true influencer, Shayne going viral online for being a freak) upped the ante a little for me, giving me a sense of false hope that maybe this would actually work out.
The premise of the show went as follows: it would alternate each episode if there were more guys or more girls in the house. Whoever was left without a match each night would be sent home, sort of like in Love Island. The matches were both determined by social interaction, however, if you and your chosen partner won a challenge, you were allowed to step into a low-budget board room, where there was a giant iPad that held 4 new people, 2 of which you could bring in, and the other couples. The winning couple would then decide if they wanted to switch things up, send other people already in couples on dates with two new people, or, they could even break up their current couple, sending themselves on a date with one of the new prospects.
Shows that follow a voting or group’s choice format often perform well. Survivor being one of the main examples. It shows whether or not they genuinely care and want the best for the people around them, or if they want to sabotage and throw a wrench into a game for their advantage.
However, this show was about love, not throwing wrenches into other people’s relationships. A prize was never announced until the end (which didn’t even end up being that great for people who already had some sort of social influence and capital, a free trip is something girls like Francesca and Georgia get offered for just posting a Tarte product) and there was only spirit of competition when they were playing games to win a date, as well as control of the board. People who decided to throw wrenches such as Chase DeMoor from Too Hot To Handle, didn’t last long and ultimately never made a genuine connection.
With no prize money i.e. Love Island or real strategy i.e. The Circle, it sort of resulted in a bunch of people desperate to find someone they were attracted to so they could sleep with them for the night, as well as territorial jealousy over people they had only dated for a mere few days, resulting in the sad smell of insecurity and a lackluster excuse for drama.
Dates from the board room often ended in little to no spark. People played wife swap with their friends in last-ditch efforts to stay in the house. Drama-worthy moments such as Francesca momentarily leaving Damien for a woman and Mitchell, Chloe’s ex boyfriend of nearly a year being sent into the villa to stir up a storm resulted in little to no drama at all. We basically just watched a bunch of sunburnt people play sexual musical chairs until the end where they had to decide whether it was worth it for them to stay in a fake relationship, or to just take the L and go home. Which many people did.
In the end, we were left with 5 couples. Two of them had paired up the night before, one of them was so toxic you couldn’t physically bare to watch them, one of them was unbelievable quite frankly, and the last, got engaged with a ring that proved to us that the show in fact did not offer to pay for it. The couples were then asked if they thought they found their perfect match, to which two answered no and three answered yes (the soon to be betrothed serving as an easy layup for Mr. Lachey).
The couple that ended up winning the votes of every other contestant that had been on the show for even one second, earning the five-night stay in a hotel wherever they wanted in the world, was Georgia and Dom, not even the people who had just promised their lives to each other. Georgia and Dom now find themselves in an Instagram story battle, Dom claiming Georgia was faking it then ghosted him after the show, only to date Harry Jowsey, also of Netflix fame, Georgia denying all of this.
The other two couples who believed that they did in fact find their perfect match, including Mr and Mrs. Kariselle and Joey Sasso, ultimately also broke up. This left the track record being 0/5, overall a 0% score for this show. Fail.
Whenever I spend my time watching a season of a show like this, whether it’s Perfect Match or Love Is Blind and no one ends up together, it feels like a massive waste of my time. I watch these shows to watch a story unfold. To see people laugh and cry and scream at each other. To see people be completely desperate on television. I also end up feeling like the entire show was fake. That they were all feigning interest in order to cash their check from Mr. Netflix, get another season on another show and ultimately more followers.
I would like to say that I’ll never watch a Netflix dating show again, but that coming from me seems like a bold face lie. Of course I’ll watch another one. How else will this blog flourish? I just need to lose any ounce of true hope I had and begin simply hate watching, getting my fix of people so absurd that it allows me to forget any events of my previous day and completely escape.
The big win of this show? Trixie and Katya reacting for our viewing pleasure. That’s truly the silver lining.