From when the daters meet each other - we see their initial reactions - to when they start chatting at the bar, to the move to the dinner table, to the segue into dessert somewhere else, and finally, to the decision to either split a Lyft home or not, each little moment is full of the fraughtness and excitement of being on an actual date.Ī friend who watched the new season at the same time I did texted me that the main daters are a little less memorable this season, and I agree. It’s the show’s focus on the magic and awkwardness of such moments that makes it so compelling to watch. Perhaps most impressively, as Lex’s dates draw to a close, he friend-zones an aggressively oblivious dog-walker-by-day/songwriter-by-night who made him listen to his lyrics during dinner. His man-bunned football-turned-rugby player date goes with: “I’d say I’m very dominant in most situations,” while an Italian guy tries to dodge the question, saying, “I think on a first date we can skip that conversation,” to which Lex retorts, “Doesn’t that inform the second date?” Later, Lex talks to one date about what he’s termed “next-best-thingitis” in gay male dating, bonds with a fellow self-described “gaysian” over their drag personas, and subtly asks his dates whether they were tops or bottoms. In a short intro, friends and family describe why he’s a catch: “He’s a gay James Dean,” one friend says lovingly, and he certainly looks the part with a fitted white tee and jeans. The Lex episode is a perfect example of why the show is so good. One of the featured daters, Lex Liang, a gay, Asian American costume and set designer, remembered asking a producer: “What do I have to offer? I don’t look like that dude - I don’t race cars.” “That’s exactly why I’m asking you,” the producer replied. “We wanted to offer up a diversity of the characters - different backgrounds, different ethnicities, gay, straight, a whole range of different people,” she told Vulture last year. She specifically went out of her way not to cast aspiring influencers at clubs, seeking people at less obvious places like libraries, bridge clubs, and bookstores. The same casting and production choices inform the current season, which is set in New Orleans.Īs the blindingly white and straight Barbie and Ken brand of shows like The Bachelor undergo a long- overdue racial reckoning, Dating Around, a far superior show, is just one demonstration that a less white-centric brand of dating reality television is also just far more interesting.ĭating Around’s showrunner, Alycia Rossiter, actually knew all the usual tropes and production tricks from spending a decade working on The Bachelor franchise. The first season, set in New York, included daters ranging from their twenties up to their sixties, it featured queer people of color, and the white participants didn’t just date other white people. Perhaps most shockingly, the show isn’t centered around the kind of influencer-ready straight white daters of other franchises. Instead, the show is set up to make viewers feel like we’re just eavesdropping on a date.
(Though there was arguably more drama last season than in the current one.) There’s also no host. There’s no contrived drama, though drama organically emerges. There are no talking-head interviews spelling out motivations you just have to read faces and cues. The dates are seamlessly edited together in a way that almost feels like a short story. The show’s first season attracted praise from critics because of the way it actually brought romance back to the genre, while also staying true to the swipe-for-next-prospect feel of current dating.īoth seasons consist of six bingeable episodes, in each of which a protagonist goes on five dates. The reality show premiered on Netflix last year, and the second season just came out last weekend.
Shows like The Bachelor or Love Is Blind, for instance, remain obsessed with the idea of marriage and long-term commitment, caught up in TV tropes about forever love and The One that aren’t easy to depict in original or convincing ways.īut then there is the quietly subversive Dating Around. Instead, somehow, the genre has just leaned back into the conventional and retro.
One would think that these shifts would prompt reality dating shows to organically update themselves for the times. And daters often google each other and check out Instagrams before meeting up. Setting up a dating profile requires curating and selling yourself like a brand or a reality TV character. As social media and apps have taken over dating, the whole process has become more and more mediated.