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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Forget the small talk, the easy gags, the relationships. Contestants on "ElimiDATE" -- the best dating show on TV -- just want to get it on.
Sep 12, 2002 | A "great pooper." That's what he said he was looking for in a woman. A great pooper.
Oh, and a nice rack too. Punched his fist while he said it, too, for emphasis, because that's the kind of guy he is. That's also the kind of guy "ElimiDATE," which airs in syndication, likes: buff, suffused with a confidence bordering on arrogance, not necessarily bright and on the hunt for a mate. Over the course of a half-hour, he'd be introduced to four women, shedding them off one by one. And, at the end, he'd eventually settle for that Perfect Match. No, wait: not a perfect match. Just somebody who was fun enough to hang with for an evening.
It took a few decades of lousy dating shows, but somebody's finally got it right.
Thanks to the recent spate of reality television, the dating game show is enjoying something of a renaissance. (What's more real and universal than falling in love?) There's no question that the genre was due for a tuneup: It's hard to imagine now, but people once enjoyed shows like "The Dating Game" and "Love Connection," where people just sat around and talked about dating. But even though we now get more visuals with our voyeuristic spying on romance, the latest shows still border on the comically, unwatchably awful. On the networks, we've gotten high-concept series like "Bachelorettes in Alaska," "Temptation Island" and "The Bachelor," where groups of undifferentiated folks struggle to Find the Right One for week upon angst-ridden week. Over on the UHF end, there's the syndication soup of "Rendez-View," "Blind Date," "Third Wheel" and "Shipmates," all of them sick with chatty hosts and bad jokes popping up on-screen. The producers know that two strangers aren't interesting enough left by themselves; subjecting every sip of chardonnay and comment about an ex-boyfriend to dreary, mocking analysis makes things even duller.
The root of the problem with all those shows is an ironic one: They emphasize all the big questions of True Love and Finding Mr. (or Miss) Right, and the One. Admirable a sentiment as that is, it makes for dull viewing. Love is thought about, talked about, felt, but it's not truly a visual thing. And TV dies without pictures.
On the face of it, the noisy, sex-soaked "ElimiDATE" doesn't look like much of a revolution in dating shows -- we've seen couples in bars and on dance floors before. Yet the pleasure of "ElimiDATE" -- and admittedly it's a guilty one -- is that it gleefully throws True Love and the One off the table. It offers no hosts, no chirpy ongoing analyses, no presumption of true love or even romance. It's "gamed," to be sure -- most episodes are alcohol-fueled, its producers are spending a fortune on Jacuzzi rentals, and its preferred dating candidates are image-obsessed gym clones. But there's wisdom in that, too. "ElimiDATE" smartly presumes that we don't care about the end result of the date -- we just want to see the process.
If that sounds a bit familiar too, you're right. You've probably already seen the show that "ElimiDATE" models itself after. Not "The Dating Game," not "Survivor." No: Without apology, "ElimiDATE" takes its cue from a pioneer in television history: "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom." True love's nice, sure. But, for our human specimens here in the jungle, a nice pooper will do.
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"I make people think," says Viji, a young physiologist from Vancouver who's competing for the attention of Ian. She's young, smart, confident, attractive -- in other words, pure dating-show gold, even back when Chuck Woolery was running the joint. But things are different in the dating world "ElimiDATE" conjures up. Ian works at "one of the hottest restaurants in the city" and what he really wants is a woman who is "energetic" and "likes great sex." So by the time Viji and two other women hit the exotic clothing store -- where she refuses to dress up like a virgin or a schoolgirl like the others -- she's gone. "Viji is frigid, snarky and annoying," as one of her competitors puts it.
That's hardly fair to Viji as a whole person, but the "whole person" doesn't mean much on "ElimiDATE." A typical episode starts with drinks, goes out dancing, then winds up making out in the hot tub. Maybe your idea of a get-to-know-you first date probably doesn't involve body shots at 3 in the afternoon. But your idea of a first date probably makes for lousy television, too. That's not to say the show doesn't offer a few insights into the human animal. Watch enough episodes and you'll notice that in the dating world the show contrives, people tend to fall into four types.
