I
ran across Blind Date
by accident, as upon an accident, channel surfing in a New Orleans
hotel room, and though I could have been out drinking Hurricanes or
eating beignets or losing all my money at the big new casino instead, I
watched it until the very end. As with any wreck on the highway, any
public display of human frailty and fallibility, it was hard to look
away; and many besides me seem to have had the same reaction -- it’s a
show you can‘t mention in a crowd, even of people you respect, without
someone telling you how addicted they are to it.
Its hot concept is to show what
The Dating Game only
promised and Love Connection
only described: the date itself. This gap was crying so loudly to be
filled that it also produced the kinder, gentler A Dating Story on the Learning
Channel -- a show so kind and gentle that one couple said a blessing
over their bowling-alley meal. (”We pray that we have a good time and
get to know each other, and thank You for this opportunity.“) But
unlike that program, where the pairings are suggested (as in life) by a
mutual friend, and unlike The Dating
Game or Love Connection,
in which one party got to choose a partner, the Blind Date couple -- I want to call
them contestants, and in fact they frequently are -- are matched by the
producers, who are naturally less interested in making simple happy
unions than in ensuring that something interesting happens. (”What are
your most annoying habits?“ is one of the questions applicants are
asked.) Participants have obviously been vetted for
unselfconsciousness, liveliness and a modicum of physical
attractiveness (I haven’t seen anyone really fat, or hairy, or old),
though extreme self-involvement seems not to be an impediment to making
the cut, and one finds oneself more often rooting for one party to get
on out of there than hoping that things work out -- it‘s dating as a
spectator sport. The dates, two per episode and therefore much
compressed, are given narrative english by host Roger Lodge, a spooky
Casey Kasem clone with a George Hamilton tan that makes his lips look
white, and interpreted for you via snarky Pop-Up Video-style balloons
that include comments from friends and exes and have been written with
evident disregard for the feelings of the subjects.
If you’re going to get anything
out of this show other than a heaping helping of schadenfreude, the
therapeutic effects of which I do not dispute, or the occasional
sensation of warming cockles when a date by some mishap goes off
splendidly, or a vicarious pheromonal thrill, you have to look through
the cynical narrative overlay to the human comedy below, and consider
how miraculous it is that anyone ever makes a love connection at all.
This is a big world, full of little worlds full of people who are like
you yet not like you at all, and, if nothing else, Blind Date affords a glimpse into
their alternate realities and varied mating habits. Without actually
having to get close to them.
In
a more innocent age, Chuck Barris created The Dating Game and, with
consummate logic, The Newlywed Game
after it; they ran for a while in adjacent time slots, and their
conjunction intimated an order, a certain natural progression in the
course of things -- first comes love, then comes marriage -- with which
most of the newer, sexier ”relationship shows“ are little concerned.
These are different times, of course, when sleeping together is just
what people do (they do it all over the TV, that‘s for damn sure) and
nothing necessarily leads to anything. In spite of the frequent
double-entendre, its Austin Powers
swinging bachelors and bachelorettes, The
Dating Game was always rather chaste -- boys and girls separated
by a wall, after all -- and its appeal had less to do with sex than
with watching ordinary people trying to be witty and charming under
pressure. The show’s largeness of spirit -- competing bachelors applaud
one another‘s answers, the losers get hugged, the winners blow kisses
-- has kept it coming back across three decades: Its most recent
edition, with affable Love Connection
skipper Chuck Woolery at the helm and the Tijuana Brass’ ”Spanish Flea“
restored to its place of thematic glory, runs weekday afternoons on
KCAL, where it is preceded by the equally resilient The Newlywed Game and followed by Change of Heart, a much stranger
half-hour, in which a couple not perfectly satisfied with their
relationship -- or else just masochistic -- agree to each go on a blind
date, in the light of which they will re-evaluate the hand they hold
and either stand pat or fold. It is an object lesson in tempting fate,
and there is much mutual humiliation involved, and a lot of effort on
the host‘s part to make it all look like both serious therapy and
outrageous ”fun.“
On
Crush, new from
the USA Network, secret admirers reveal their deep feelings to the
objects of their affection -- a staple gambit of the tabloid talk shows
that reached its notorious nadir (or its peak, depending on how you
look at these things) in March 1995, when, on a taping of Jenny Jones, guest Jonathan Schmitz
learned that Scott Amedure had a thing for him and three days later
shot Amedure dead. Not even a $25 million judgment against that series
could deter the brave producers of Crush
from taking up the banner, though I think it is safe to assume there’ll
be no same-sex surprises on this program. It borrows its basic shape
from To Tell the Truth,
confronting the loved one with a panel of three, each of whom tries to
convince himher that theirs is the love that‘s true. But guessing right
makes no difference, gamewise (though guessing wrong provides a frisson
of disappointment): The real crux of the matter is whether the guest
will choose to ”stay friends“ with his/her no-longer-secret admirer or,
by taking that person to a hotel in Hawaii, ”become lovers.“ The show
has the potential for real horror -- having to tell someone who loves
you you don’t love them back, not like that, is hard enough without the
TV cameras, and having to hear it no easier. Yet the show is more
touching than not -- half an hour of young people telling each other
how sweet and nice and smart and funny and easy to talk to they are --
and the participants, though many are tarted up for the camera, are on
the whole refreshingly regular.
After (or perhaps I should say
”beyond“) Crush comes Friends or Lovers, another new USA
series with roots in the tabloids, and it is poisonous and perverse.
”Do you have a friend who thinks they‘ve found the perfect partner, but
you know their lover is not so perfect after all?“ the producers ask on
their Web site. ”Will all three of you be in the L.A. area? You can be
on our show!“ It is not Jules and Jim,
my friends; more like Jenny and Jerry.
A guest -- it’s hard to know what to call them (victim might be more
appropriate) -- listens first while a trusted friend attacks the
character of the guest‘s significant other, then as the significant
other, kneeling upon a ”confession pillow,“ attempts to explain a
misunderstanding or begs forgiveness for sins real or perceived. Most
of them seem to have done what they’re accused of, or close enough, and
mostly this involves old-fashioned infidelity (”You remember the girl
that got me the job there -- we kind of slept together“), but there are
occasional twists, as when a criminal record is disclosed, or a
boyfriend‘s mysterious absences are revealed to have been for meetings
of Narcotics Anonymous. Like Crush,
Friends or Lovers asks
participants to make a potentially life-changing decision in no more
time than Monty Hall allowed to choose between door number one and the
box where Carol Merrill is standing, but unlike that show it is steeped
in misfortune and rancor, stupidity and sadness. And like Crush, it all comes down to who
gets to go along on the free trip, the friend or the lover, as here
again the host tries to put a good face on the carnage. Life sucks,
but, hey, You’re going to Acapulco!
© Robert Lloyd 2000
and 2011
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