Weird Allo Reality Shows 5

Transcript

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here with my spouse Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple and we are back for yet another round of weird allo reality shows. What is this, like the 5th episode we’ve done on this topic?

Royce: This will be the 6th if you count the episode on The Ultimatum: Queer Love, which followed a different naming convention.

Courtney: Oh yeah, I don’t know if that one counts or not, but you know, it’s a little bit all the same. Now, a couple of these shows I saw very recently, so they are fresh on the mind and I am ready to rant and rave about them. A couple of these I saw quite a long time ago, so I will have to reference the notes I took at the time I was watching them and see if I can piece together memories about them. So many of these shows just end up bleeding together for me, but— at least some of these are— older ones are a little bit more unique than the average show we talk about. But I have to talk first and foremost about Age of Attraction. Oh my goodness, this show. Horrible, horrible. I mean, we did the show about, like, moms and sons dating each other.

Royce: Right.

Courtney: And that was already pretty bad.

Royce: That, that one was trying to be bad though. They knew what they were doing.

Courtney: I feel like this one also knows what it’s doing, but it’s trying to pretend like it doesn’t. It’s very Love Is Blind-esque. Like, it’s got the same formula of Love Is Blind without the stakes, with a more taboo gimmick. But like, they’ve got these hosts, right? They’ve got two hosts that come in who do not need to be there. They are not entertaining or charismatic or authorities, they’re just two people who happen to be in an age gap relationship. Therefore, they’re qualified to be hosts of this TV show, so they’re gonna sit down all the contestants and tell them the premise of the show that they signed up to do, while everyone pretends to be shocked and surprised. But then they do the same thing Love is Blind does, they say, “Oh, this is a social experiment. It’s a social experiment to see if age really is just a—” a number. And Love Is Blind does that. They’re like, what about— what if we do a social experiment?

Courtney: And it, uh, drives me nuts. It’s not a social experiment, it is an exploitative television show. But to pick these hosts that are like, we are qualified to host this show because we have an age gap— I want to say it was like 18 years or something for them. That sounds right. I didn’t make a note of it, so that might not be exactly right, but that would be like if we were to host a reality show that’s like all aces dating and we’re like, we’re qualified to host this show because we too are asexual. But it would have to be a social experiment. Like, social experiment: can relationships exist without sex? It kind of— doesn’t the very nature of having hosts in what they are at least presenting to be a good, positive, healthy relationship Doesn’t that inherently undermine the quote social experiment aspect of all this? They’re like, look, we’ve proven it.

Royce: I was about to say that they haven’t proven it at scale, but the sample size, like, there weren’t very many people in this reality show. So I don’t think you can really prove much of anything.

Courtney: Actually, here, here’s my pitch for Netflix. I, I would host this show and I would watch this show. It’s not you and I and all aces. It’s me and QPR friend. And the social experiment is what if your best friend becomes like your dating life manager? Like your, your best friend has to set up your dating profiles for you and like vet all the people. That, that would be fascinating to me because I, I can just picture the, um, competing potentially. Like confessionals, where someone will be like, “Oh, this is the kind of person I’m looking for,” and then you cut to their best friend, and their best friend’s like, “They’re always trying to go for this kind of person, but it’s terrible for them, and here’s why.” I would watch that. It would be awful, I’m sure.

Courtney: But that’s a social experiment I could maybe get behind. Just like in all these weird allo shows that have like an, an underlying taboo gimmick, they always have like just The weirdest sound bites ever. Like, they’re— one of the young guys was saying, “My dating range is evil. I could date you or your mom. No one is safe.” But it, it is very similar to the mom and son dating show, but without the, like, incestuous undertones.

Royce: Yeah, they just took the relatives out. The thing is, when this show is proposed, the gimmick is that no one is supposed to know each other’s age. That’s supposed to be the reveal. Yeah, but they just do regular speed dating to start it. Like, they’re not— they’re not like— it’s not— they’re not behind walls. They can see each other. Everyone can see everyone else. So you kind of know approximately what everyone’s age is.

Courtney: Yeah, and I mean, there are some people who are worse than others at judging age. There are some people who look old or young for their age, but like, you in general tend to know if someone’s at least older or younger than you and if it’s a small gap or a big one.

Royce: And, and again, it was supposed to be, from what I remember them saying in the beginning, to see if age is irrelevant. And yet every couple we saw had a distinct age gap. Like, there were no people that just happened to meet who were of approximately the same age and hit it off.

Courtney: Yeah, there wasn’t a a single one, which is really interesting. That does beg the question, were there any people of a similar age who did hit it off and just didn’t actually— yeah, like, didn’t make it onto the show because that’s not the point? I don’t know. But I did notice, because yeah, we see everyone, they see everyone, they didn’t show us their ages for the first episode. And I thought that that was an infuriating choice because I’m sure they were trying to make the case that, like, showing us their ages would undermine their —allegedly very pure concept, but they’re making a reality show for entertainment, and things being messy is always gonna be in the best interest of viewership. So you know that people, like, talking, chatting on social media and whatnot, are gonna be like trying to guess everybody’s ages or age gaps.

Royce: Did the audience not fully get the ages until it was revealed at the end, or was it sometimes mentioned, maybe in a confessional?

Courtney: It was not at all mentioned until they revealed it to each other. And that’s what I thought was an infuriating choice. Because I’m— like, they were trying to, I guess, surprise the audience right along with the people as they were getting it. But like, in Love Is Blind, they aren’t seeing each other, but we’re seeing them, right? Like, if someone happens to say in a confessional, like, oh, I love tall guys, and then this entire time you’re seeing, you know, a short king, hitting it off with her, and then at least the audience gets to go like, “Oh, I wonder what’s gonna happen there!” But no, we, we don’t get to know those things.

Courtney: There was one woman who really early on was like, “I’m out. You are way too young for me. I’m out.” But for the most part, that didn’t happen. And don’t get me wrong, I kinda like the idea that there are some older people who are dealing with relationship concerns like being a divorcee or having kids and— elements like that that you don’t see in dating television is kind of why I liked Later Daters, which we talked about on a previous episode. But those things are much more complicated with forcing these extreme age gaps, so it doesn’t seem like it’s actually an earnest exploration of some of those topics.

Courtney: But even though it’s got this like Love is Blind format, it moves so fast. We see so little of the actual dating phase. And since this isn’t the same high stakes, like we’re leading up to a wedding at the end, they do these fake, like— whereas in Love is Blind you’d get engaged after the pod phase, these people just go into a promise room to commit to each other with these silly little promise rings as they reveal their ages to each other. And they aren’t getting engaged, they aren’t getting married, they’re just, I guess, deciding to continue to date? To stay on the show, yeah. To— I agree to stay on this reality television show with you, yes. And like, this was the moment. We learn their ages right along with them.

Courtney: And the very first age reveal, we find out that, uh, this older woman, younger guy, uh, she has a son who is older than him. I think she had three kids, and they were all very close in age, but her oldest son was like a couple years older than this guy that she is now, quote, committing to in the promise room. But aside from the fact that we don’t get to see much of the dating phase— I mean, it’s really hard to personally invest in these relationships. I find it hard in these TV shows, period, to invest emotionally in them. But I can at least recognize elements that the average viewer will connect to and either root for or root against. They show you so little of these budding relationships that it’s like they don’t even care about trying to get you to buy into them. They just want the shock value. Of the age gap.

Courtney: But the way they do the dating phase is actually kinda cool, ’cause it’s just a bunch of group activities. They’re like going cycling or canoeing, and— in these big groups, these big mixed groups, so people can just start talking to each other. And honestly, I kinda feel like there should be real-world singles activity events like that. Maybe there are in some places, but you don’t hear about them nearly as much as like, speed dating events or drink mixers for singles, but like, having a shared novel activity to go and that be the context you meet people— if it wasn’t in the context of a reality show, I think that’s actually not a bad way to try to meet people. So throughout this phase, the only rule is you can’t talk about your own ages. But some people still give away the game a little bit because apparently there’s no rule against talking about what age your children are. So the people who have children, who as far as I recall were only the older half of the cast— I don’t think there were any young people with like young kids.

Royce: Not that I remember, no.

Courtney: So there was, you know, one guy said, oh, my oldest daughter is 14, and the girl he’s seeing looks— barely a day over 17, if you ask me. When she heard that, she could not contain her shock. Like, her face was stunned. We later found out that she’s 22 and he’s 38. So that’s not even the most ridiculous age gap in this show, but— like, after she found out he has a 14-year-old, in the confessional, before we know how old she is, and I’m honestly honestly thinking she has to be 18. But then it occurred to me they probably had a minimum age of 21 for this show because they always try to have these people drinking in reality shows. So I was like, she has to be 18, and then I was like, uh, maybe she’s 21. But she does have a young face, and in the confessional she said like, I’m not very far away from 14. Like, that was her natural reaction.

Courtney: But they both went to the promise room together, and they both looked horrified as they revealed their ages to each other! But then we get to, like, watch them swallow it back in real time! Like, they look horrified! And then you see them like, “Okay, okay, yep, yep, you know, age is just a number! And I still wanna give this a try!” And— Honestly, I, I, I didn’t even believe it. Like, you get to see them go, “Oh, I made a terrible mistake,” and then try to convince themselves otherwise. So I do have a couple more notes on that couple from later on, but it is time to start introducing the most infuriating relationship edit man. Young woman, older man. They hit it off, go into the promise room, and in this promise room, she tells him, before they put on the rings, the promise rings, she tells him that she has made the choice for herself to stay celibate until marriage.

Courtney: So I’m on the edge of my seat, ’cause even though this is not, you know, necessarily a case of asexuality, I, I, I just see a young woman who says, “I’m not ready to have sex,” and an older man, much, much older man, And I just know this isn’t gonna end well. And I hate that I have— have to have that instinct. But I do. But his reaction— he didn’t even necessarily look as shocked and horrified and appalled as the last couple revealing their ages did. He said he respects it. And I’m saying, okay, I will reserve judgment, but I really hope you mean that. But I am just so— jaded when it comes to allosexuals being denied sex when they want it. I’m also very jaded about much older men who date much older women. And I’m honestly jaded about the kind of people who sign up for reality shows like this. So it was just very hard to not assume that he’s just saying what he thinks is gonna sound good on TV and make him look like a nice guy. So they reveal their ages. She’s 27, he’s 60. This is a 60-year-old looking at a 27-year-old woman saying like, yeah, I respect that you want to be celibate until marriage. Let’s put on promise rings and commit to each other.

Royce: Yeah, this was the biggest age gap in the show. I think was also the one with the most like overt dishonesty, or—

Courtney: Oh my gosh, the dishonesty, even more so than just the “I respect the celibacy.” Spoiler alert, he didn’t. We’ll get into that. But she was even saying like, “I wanna be celibate until marriage, blah blah blah.” Then she said, “Oh, you know, I don’t know if you wanna have kids, if you have kids, or—” And he goes, “Oh, do I want kids? Yeah, of course. But not until marriage.” Folks, we learn that this fucking man has grown children and he just did not say anything about them either before this or at that moment. She asked him— I, I put her quote, she said, “I don’t know if you have kids, if you want kids.” And he’s like, “Oh, do I want kids? Yeah, for sure, but not until marriage.” What the fuck? We didn’t even find out that episode. We found out it later when this guy’s just talking to all the other guys. All the guys who have kids are like, “Oh yeah,” especially the older ones dating young women. They were like, “How did she take it when she found out you have kids? How did she take it?” And they’re like talking to him and he’s like, “Oh yeah, I haven’t told her yet.” What is wrong with this man? So much like Love is Blind, they now move in with each other.

Royce: Was that around the midpoint of the entire series when the age reveal was?

Courtney: Uh, I don’t remember how many episodes. It might have been on the earlier side. I don’t think it was properly halfway.

Royce: Just comparing that to Love is Blind, Love is Blind has the I guess face reveal. You meet each other face to face somewhere mid-season.

Courtney: Well, that’s the weird thing about the format and editing. Like, they shoot the promise room as if it was a face reveal. They like show them getting all glamorous and ready and like putting on your makeup and fastening your tie and then taking a long dramatic walk to go to a fucking cabin in the woods. It’s very weird. So this man who has grown-ass kids and did not tell this young woman he’s now seeing, the one who said that he respects that she wants to stay celibate until marriage— this is, you know, this isn’t the most egregious example I’ve seen of this. I’ve talked about how, um, incredibly fucked up I think it is that a lot of these shows where they expect people to have sex with each other just like fully have cameras in their bedrooms and will show, like, not skin on skin, but you’ll see, like, people under the covers. Like, awful. Hate it. Stop doing that. Stop it. Just stop.

Courtney: They didn’t quite go so far as to put cameras in the bedroom, but they do have microphones in the bedroom. And instead of showing, like, blankets rustling, they just have, like, a camera shot of the slightly cracked open bedroom door while we’re hearing the sound from what they’re saying. So of course, this 27 and 60-year-old have sound bites running of them, like, talking in their bed at night. And, you know, I’m so viscerally angry at just the producers and production, because there, there’s a legitimate safety issue here. Like, this man later in a confessional— he pretends to be okay with the celibacy to her face right away, but we start seeing confessionals of him before they have an actual conversation about it, and he says that he doesn’t want to be celibate and thinks that it needs to be a conversation. He needs to ask her, why are you doing this? What’s the real reason behind this? ‘What do you hope to gain by doing this?’

Courtney: And he confesses to being put off when she said that she was celibate. And he was referring to it as like “the catch.” Like, ‘Oh, she’s great, but I, I thought there’d be a catch.’ And we see him in this confessional say, ‘Oh, you know, and she says she’s celibate, but she came over to my side of the bed to cuddle last night, so I said, oh, since you’re Miss Celibate, you stay on your side of the bed.’ But she didn’t stay on her side. She came over because she wanted to cuddle. And, and he’s like acting angry and flustered and confused in a private confessional in front of a camera because she apparently wanted to cuddle at night when they’re sharing a bed and living together. And then it shows the two of them like in a gym working out or something. And he goes to her and asks her, which I think is totally inappropriate, she didn’t seem upset by it.

Courtney: I don’t know what’s in her heart and mind, but she didn’t visibly show any upset feelings about this. But he asked her, he goes, “Oh, do you think anyone’s actually gonna believe you’re— you stayed celibate while sleeping in the same bed with me?” And she was like, “Yeah, why wouldn’t they?” And he goes, “Nah, look at you.” And I’m like, are you fucking kidding me? When she’s in like exercise clothes, like yeah, just because she’s beautiful, no one’s gonna believe that she stayed celibate. So, right off the bat, I feel like— if a man is saying to a woman’s face, “I respect your boundaries,” but then on his own, in front of a camera, and in front of producers, he’s saying, “I don’t actually respect her boundaries,” we’re done here.

Courtney: Like, you, you’ve gotta have a conversation with that woman, you’ve got to— tell these people, like, you’re not gonna continue with the show. Something should have happened, I think, uh, right when that became clear to anybody working on this show. But there’s yet another confessional of his the next day when he says, “Oh, and she said that in the promise room, I was like, oh shit, really? And I don’t wanna do that. And she has a right to feel the way she does, but I have the right to feel the way I do, and I don’t wanna wait.” But my guy, she told you her terms right off the bat. Did not string you along, nothing. And you agreed. You agreed. Now you’re getting mad at her that she’s not having sex with you after you lied to her face.

Courtney: And at some point as this continues on, he gets more and more— overtly, obviously frustrated. And she— so, she starts to catch on, and she even asks him one night, like, “What are you doing?” She asks if he’s just waiting for her to waver, and why he wasn’t telling her if he wasn’t okay with this. And he, like, tried to skirt the issue entirely and say, “That’s not it!” But then— immediately admitted that that’s exactly it. That is exactly what’s going on. So it seems pretty clear that he’s either waiting for her to just have sex with him or to break up with him because he’s too selfish to stay celibate with her but also too much of a coward to just break it off. And this would be, mind you, disgusting behavior at any age. But my god, like, their age gap is older than she is.

Courtney: And again, there are fucking producers and camera operators who are listening to this man lie to her, and they are still letting her get into a bed with that man at the end of the night. And that is just so reckless, so profoundly dangerous, ’cause even if this particular man doesn’t do anything wrong, This is a dangerous situation for this young woman. How dare they. If they cannot identify that this is a dangerous scenario and not have alarm bells ringing to make some kind of intervention, then they should not be running a show like this. They absolutely should not.

Courtney: And that be— was their first issue, but that doesn’t end up being their only issue. Uh, there was some kind of vague physical altercation he had with a stranger off camera. They don’t explain it in too much detail, but the important part, I think, is that she said that she was uncomfortable with that situation. And he got so upset at her for just saying that she felt uncomfortable. And I don’t know if there was yelling and screaming, I don’t know if there was throwing hands, I don’t know who escalated this situation. But anytime there’s conflict, like, a lot of people are going to feel uncomfortable if they’re around conflict, regardless of the type or severity of it.

Courtney: And so they’re talking about this altercation, he’s getting angrier and angrier with her. And it was at this point where she tried to ask him if he didn’t think that they were compatible. And he so infuriatingly just outright refused to answer that direct question that she tried to pose to him repeatedly. He just completely would not say what he was clearly thinking. And so the conversation then, of course, reverted back to celibacy. I mean, you’re fighting about one thing, why not fight about all the things at the same time? And this— I cannot emphasize this enough— this fucking man tries to say that she’s trying to control him and lie because, quote, “She’ll do other things and that’s not really celibacy.”

Courtney: Now, from what I can gather from these, like, bedroom door scenes and other conversations, her idea of celibacy is, like, penetrative sex. It seems like she is okay with other types of sexual contact. And this man is so furious at her that he has the audacity to say, “You are manipulating me. You are trying to dictate all these circumstances. I’m not the problem, it’s you. And I’m not a man that you can control that way!” And he gets up on his soapbox and he starts saying, “The power of life and death is in the tongue, so you need to be careful what you say!”

Courtney: And after all that, he still did not have the balls to be the guy to formally break it off. He gets mad at her for being uncomfortable when he gets aggressive. He got mad at her for not having sex with him. He gets mad at her for having— something vaguely sexual but not penetrative with him, and he calls her a manipulator and a liar, and he still made her be the one to formally break it off. And so in this show, since after all, I mean, unless you forgot, this is a social experiment to see if age is just a number, so even when the couples don’t work out and they break up, they have to ask them in separate confessionals about the social experiment. What did you learn in this social experiment? And this fucking guy goes to his confessional and says, yeah, some people will think it’s the age gap that broke us up, but— and, and he’ll be like, it’s not, it was other things.

Courtney: It’s like, it’s because you’re a manipulative asshole. It’s like, that, that’s why. You are the problem. This would be despicable behavior, even if you were the 27-year-old. So fuck that guy, fuck all the producers, fuck everyone on the crew who knew before this woman did that he did not respect her or her boundaries and was going to try to push them. And that alone I think, uh, is, you know, bad enough that this show should not ever have a season 2. I think they, they have proven they can’t— I’m, I’m taking away your reality TV show privileges.

Royce: They lost their showrunner privilege.

Courtney: They lost their showrunner privileges. I mean, I know there have been situations where like, dangerous situations have transpired on Love is Blind, too. I believe there are some contestants who have like, tried to sue the show for it. So after all that— that was the only couple I was— I mean, I guess you can say I was emotionally invested, but not because I wanted the relationship to work out, or not because I really wanted them to break up, but because I was was— like, my heart was going out to this woman. I just wanted her to be okay. And I knew before she did that this was not going to be a safe situation for her.

Courtney: So, they leave, but there are still several other couples that are still together. And apparently, this is all leading up to a commitment ceremony? Apparently they do some kind of like, I don’t know, I guess a fake wedding. I think other shows have done that. Actually, maybe the mom and son dating show also did that. I— again, all of these shows start bleeding together for me. But, um, there are other shows that have done like, not-legally-binding pseudo-wedding things.

Courtney: And like, in some ways, I guess that seems a little kinder to the cast than actually making them get legally married and filming it, because I still don’t know if anyone can properly consent in these like, highly produced, high-stress, non-real-life scenarios. But it also then means for the sake of entertainment and television, like, there are no real stakes, so that makes everything a little more boring and unnecessary. So they fail, like, at both sides. Like, you failed at making a good show, and you failed at being ethical humans. At least pick one, right? Hahaha. So, one thing that’s ever present in this show is this, like, maturity model. That is just, I think, utter bullshit, but it is laced throughout every single conversation in this show. And, um, I actually wrote down something you said, Royce, while we were watching this.

Royce: I don’t remember what it was.

Courtney: You said, “you’re young, but you’re one of the good ones.”

Royce: Oh yeah, that’s how they were, um, that’s how they were treating it basically. They were making backhanded comments about entire generations, but then saying, oh, you don’t count because I’m attracted to you.

Courtney: Yeah, well, I mean, there was a lot of like, “You’re really mature for your age,” kind of talk. Like, “She’s mature beyond her years” is something that you hear every episode in this show. And it’s not always the case, but I do want to be very clear that this is a tool used in grooming situations, and therefore I don’t know if it’s actually good to be trying to, quote, “remove the stigma” of age gaps while using phrases like this that are key in abusive scenarios. And honestly, like, I’d— I don’t want to get, like, so in the weeds of age gap discourse. I really don’t. So I guess I will just say that I’m not inherently repulsed by the very concept of an age gap relationship. I’ll go on record as saying one of my favorite movies ever is explicitly about an age gap relationship. So— I am not, like, 1000% turned off to age gaps in media ever. Harold and Maude, for those of you wondering, phenomenal movie. Absolutely adore it. 10 out of 10. That’s a big age gap. And I love them. I love them so much.

Courtney: And I’m also someone who, for my entire life— childhood, teenage years, young adulthood, my entire life growing up— I am always someone who has been identified by others as having grown up fast, or— been an old soul. But I do think if age gaps are going to be presented, it needs to be done with the utmost focus on safety. And you need to be aware of how harmful mentalities like these are. Because even if we set aside for a moment, for the sake of conversation, uh, the fact that these are words and phrases and concepts that groomers use, It’s also just, like, we’ve got to stop being so cruel to kids and/or young people. Like, being immature is seen as being inherently bad, being mature is seen as morally correct, and— because people so often moralize this model of maturity, we see very real societal injustices where kids and teens do not have human rights that they deserve.

Courtney: And I mean, I could rant for an entire episode in its own right about, you know, children and young people and societal concepts of maturity, but we don’t have time in this episode. Maybe that’ll come at a later date. And we can really get into the weeds. But we haven’t even finished the first show yet. So then they bring in, uh, the friends and family to meet everybody, which, you know, same kind of Love Is Blind-esque concept. I’m sure I’ve seen other shows do this also. But the fascinating thing about this show is that even the host just telling them that their families are coming leads to multiple immediate public fights. Between these couples. The stress of knowing they have to introduce this person to people in their real life just sets several of them off.

Courtney: And that very scene, they’re all sitting around together, the hosts tell them all, the hosts step away, and like three of them start just like going at it, like three of the couples. And it’s like, yeah, some end up storming out, some are— it’s it’s fascinating, and sort of, I think, gives up the game. Like, I don’t think many of these people were genuinely here believing or hoping that they would actually have a long-term relationship. Because also, not only is there this big age gap, but also, none of these people live in the same place. So everyone here would need to either do long distance or relocate. To continue to be together, whereas at least Love Is Blind goes to like an individual city and they’re like, we’re in this city this season, so everyone’s relatively close together.

Royce: Yeah, I forgot about that. And I guess that makes sense that a lot of these dating shows do try to remove the location aspect, although I think it was later daters that did have a couple break up because one of them wanted to be in the city and wanted— one wanted to be on the outskirts.

Courtney: There was— I think one guy was really picky. He’s like, I don’t want to drive that far.

Royce: Yeah, I think the host specifically asked, is not driving that far more important than the relationship?

Courtney: And he was like, yeah. The man knows what he wants. Uh, so yeah, going back to this, uh, 22-year-old woman who— I mean, look, I taught a lot of 17-year-olds back when I was still teaching dance lessons. She looks like she could be one of my 17-year-old students. That’s why I keep saying 17. But when she meets this guy’s friends, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. His friends placed bets ahead of time. Like, they pull him off to the side after they meet her, exchange pleasantries and whatever, they pull him off to the side and goes, “How old is she?” And when he says, “22,” one friend looks to the other and he says, “Pay me.” And he takes out his wallet and hands cash. And this guy’s like, “What? You guys took bets?”

Courtney: And yeah, this guy won the bet by saying she will be blonde and between the ages of 22 and 25. And then they pull the friend off into a confessional and he just says, “What can I say? The man’s consistent.” This is the man who has a 14-year-old daughter. And his friends know that young extremely young and blonde is his type, to the point where they took bets on it. And it’s so much of a pattern that they were just comfortable saying “pay me” right in front of him.

Royce: On camera.

Courtney: On camera! This is— this is why I need more best friend reality shows. I really do. Even if it’s not trying to, like, set people up on dates or whatever. Like, I just need more ‘I know you better than you do’ or ‘I know all the skeletons in your closet.’ This was a situation where the entire premise of the show was setting the family and friends part up to be against the relationship itself. Yes, but the— and this is, this is the thing too. These two guys who just exchanged money betting on how old she’d be and whether or not she’d be blonde. This friend looks over at him and says, “Let me guess, she’s very mature.” And he said, “at times.” And he said, “for her age.” And then the two of them cracked up laughing. So, these two friends of this guy have heard this before, where this guy’s like, “She’s very mature for her age. She’s very mature for her age.”

Courtney: And then they just start joking with him about how she can’t even rent a car to come drive and visit him, because they’re gonna live so far away from each other. Each other, and— I also couldn’t help but notice that they didn’t bring his 14-year-old daughter to meet her. Which is probably good. She probably shouldn’t have been on this show. But the thing is, like, the very concept of an age gap is not 100% of the time going to inherently be bad and harmful. But there is very much something to be said for what phase of your life are you in? And I do think people reach different stages of their lives at different times. I mean, we talk all the time about like, the relationship escalator, or we talk about chrononormativity, like at what time or year or age people think you should meet these like, alleged life milestones. Like at what point should you be married, at what point should you have a house, at what point should you have a career, all those kinds of things.

Courtney: And it’s very, very possible that two people with different ages are at the same sort of stage in life where they want the same things out of a relationship, where they want the same things out of life. And that’s when I think, sure, have at it. Harold and Maude were both in the same stage of their life in the sense that they were both very obsessed with death for different reasons. I’m not gonna make this an episode about Harold and Maude, although that’s another thing I could talk about for hours. Um, and the thing is, this is not a situation where this 22-year-old is in the same stage of her life as the man who has has a 14-year-old daughter. Those are different life stages. So then there’s this other couple, it’s a woman who’s dating the, the one I said who’s dating a guy who’s younger than her oldest son, and when they met her kids, she refused to tell them his age. Outright refused. Would not do it.

Courtney: But here was the interesting thing, she blamed society’s sexist double standard for it. She said, “If the ages were reversed, it would be fine. If he was an older man and I was a young woman, everyone would be okay with this.” I just don’t believe her. I just— I don’t believe her. ’Cause we’re talking about your kids who are your boyfriend’s age. Or older. I don’t think if you were their dad, it would be— better. I really don’t. And I don’t think you would think that either. But that’s what she’s saying to the camera and the audience. She also said that she’s very protective of her kids and community, and she thought that if she shared his age before people got to know him, that it could reflect really badly on her kids and her community. And that also just sounds like BS to me because she’s on a whole ass reality show right now. Like, you signed up for a reality TV show.

Courtney: And her kids in a confessional assumed he was like 35 or something, and they were like, “Yeah, he looks really young. I think he’s like, he’s probably 35 or something.” And, and they said like, “If he was younger than 30, then that would for sure be a real problem.” And he was. He was. He was 27. So, at the end of the day, I really think she was more afraid that her own kids would judge her, and the rest was all just excuses. And you know, honestly, there’s a third way out of it. I told them to either commit to actually being entertaining, or commit to being ethical human beings. There is a secret third option. Take these melodramatic shots for these low-stake things, like the Promise Room. And go even harder. Just make it full-blown camp. Make it the most absurd, ridiculous nonsense that you possibly can for these tiny little low-stakes things, but treat it like it is life or death, end of the world situations here, to just show everyone how ridiculous these social mating rituals are through comedy.

Courtney: So, I don’t think we have time to talk about Blue Therapy today, but my goodness, we need to talk about Blue Therapy. We really do. So, that’ll be a future episode upcoming. But this show I can talk about real quick, because it wasn’t really a dating show, but there was some weird aloe reality-ness about it. I did watch Building the Band. It’s a little bit like The Sing-Off, a little bit like The Next Great American Band, and— like, a little bit Love is Blind? And a little bit The Voice.

Courtney: Like, while we’re talking about Love is Blind ripoffs, they do the pod things from Love is Blind, which I think is goofy. Where they have everyone sitting in these own little individual pods just like listening to each other take turns singing. And based on hearing their little singing audition, they decide if they want to claim, like, “I want you to be in a band with me, yes or no?” And the evilest one— I, I never remember names anyway, but sometimes actively while I’m watching the show, I will forget people’s names, so that’s what my note says, the evilest one— was like, “I hope the other girls are hot, because we need to be sexy.”

Courtney: So they do like this blind dating thing, like they’re just listening to voices, and yet they have people here like, ah, I need sexy people in my band. And honestly, like, one of my favorite bands that ended up getting formed, the judges kept talking about how unconventional the group was, and there was like, there was a man in it who, like, a lot of people misgendered him by the voice. A lot of them thought he was a woman, uh, um, definitely has a lot of feminine energy about him. There was a very beautiful but tall, fatter woman, absolutely gorgeous. I think she might have been a plus-size model, actually. I think that might be ringing a bell. And just like, mixed group of men and women, different races, different shapes and sizes, and everyone’s like, “Oh, this band is so unconventional!” And it’s like, what? What does that mean? They sound so good, and it has to be based purely off of appearance. It has to be. So boo that.

Courtney: But also, immediately after they form all these bands— some are girl groups, some are boy bands, some have, you know, a mix of each— and so immediately, one of the girls from the girl groups and one of the boys from the boy bands —like, immediately started a fling. And stayed out late one night, and this guy ended up, uh, oversleeping for practice, and— it turned into this whole drama point where his bandmates are pulling him aside telling him to buckle down, and then he still stayed out like all night and slept over at the other girl’s place, and— it was also like, the thing I don’t get—

Courtney: These are two people who don’t live anywhere near each other, they are not even on a dating show, the goal of this show is to make a band, win this competition. They’re all talking about these lofty goals of becoming recording artists, and they wanna be touring bands. And it’s like, in two days, you’re starting a little relationship with someone else and sabotaging yourself and staying out late and not doing what you came here for? Like, oh my gosh! I will never understand that! Even if you’re really attracted to someone, how is, like— being on the precipice of achieving your life goal, like, not the more important thing here.

Royce: But that makes sense. But I’ve also heard about how many condoms they have to give out during the Olympics. Like, that’s, that’s a statistic that goes around. It’s a big thing.

Courtney: You know, I haven’t heard that statistic, but I might need to do some Googling about that later. So, this boy band too, like, mind you, it’s already almost getting derailed by a relationship with this girl from this other girl group. The judges ask this boy band what they want to become, or what they want to present to the world. And this is what I don’t understand. I understand loving to perform. I understand loving to create music. I even, like, theoretically understand the appeal of, like, living a touring lifestyle. Uh, but what they were saying was like, “We want people to have their first kiss at our concerts. We want to— like, we want to be the soundtrack of our generation’s love lives.”

Courtney: And I don’t know, I’m just way too ace for this. Like, oh, when, when two teenagers have their first kiss, high school sweethearts, we want our song to be playing in the background. Like, okay? I genuinely do not understand why or how that could be a goal for someone. I mean, even if that happened, I don’t see how it could impact them in any way. You already wrote the song, you already recorded the song, you are never gonna know this couple, you are never gonna know their story, if they stayed together, if they broke up. Wh— what is it to you? But then it was also really interesting because kind of like how these weird allo reality shows do, like these dating shows, like the age gap dating show, there are other ones that also do the low-stakes, not-actually-getting-married thing, where they ask people, like in the last episode, ‘are you gonna stay together after this show?’ And they almost always say yes, but it almost never happens. This happened with these bands too!

Courtney: It’s so weird how this pursuing music, pursuing your goals thing happened, but it seems so directly ripped off from these dating shows, because after the bands get eliminated, they ask them, ‘are you gonna stay together as a band?’ And everyone like says yeah for the camera, but— this girl group, the one who actually was dating the guy in the boy boy band, they were so toxic, and she was so mean to the other two girls, and they seemed to be having a terrible time. And they were like, “Yeah, we’re gonna stay together, of course.” But then I absolutely after the show saw those two other girls in interviews talking about how terrible it was and how they never actually want to work with her.

Courtney: So I don’t know, that, that’s a little side note to the age gap, uh, what is it, Age of Attraction episode, but I just found it interesting because I do actually have a soft spot for shows where people have a chance at making their dreams come true. I can suspend disbelief, like, to a point. I can be like, this will actually be a very good thing for them and it won’t ruin their lives and fame isn’t terrible. And they, they should just be able to sing their songs and be happy. Like I, I can suspend my disbelief a little bit for shows like this. So aside from like the more generic talent show type-y ones, uh, because those I don’t really like as much, like the America’s Got Talent kind of things, but like I am a sucker for this is my one true goal and I’m going for it.

Courtney: Like the, the singing shows, the dance shows, um, I even bawled watching the, um, like making an international K-pop group show. Like shows like that actually do a little bit of a something for me, but but even like the Glee project, that was a terrible, toxic, miserable show that should have never happened. It was awful. And I, I love it. I fucking love it. And it kinda, it kinda makes me wonder, like, is this what people who do get something from these, like, dating and marriage shows, like, is this what they’re feeling when I see shows like this? Because I love art and talent and dreams coming true. And I can understand that some people’s dreams are to get married or to find love. Logically, I understand that. Emotionally, I really struggle to get invested in it. I really do.

Courtney: So I do think that’s gonna be all for today because we are getting low on time, but Blue Therapy is definitely coming up in a future episode. And we also watched, uh— the Grant episode of Game Changer, because a couple of you specifically requested it. And hey, we watch Game Changer now. Which, that’s really funny, ’cause it’s based off of The Bachelor, which is a show I still haven’t seen. So maybe before our next episode, I’ll have to actually watch a season of The Bachelor so we can compare and contrast.

Courtney: But that is gonna do it for today. As always, I’m gonna leave you all off with our featured Marketplace vendor. Today we’re giving a big shout-out to Fantasy Fiction by Laura S.K. Knight, who is a non-binary demisexual, queerromantic fiction writer exploring faerie from medieval times to the 19th century. Uh, links as always are gonna be in the show notes on our website and the description box if you’re listening on YouTube. That’ll take you to, uh, Laura’s shop where you can find a story called Sword and Spell and one called Coming Home. As always, thank you all so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time. Bye-bye!