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21.
“Are you in this for the right reasons?”
Fifteen years ago, that was a question that had zero cultural significance. Now you can’t watch a single dating show without hearing it come out of the mouth of someone who's had too much red wine.
With the advent of the 21st century came the advent of rom-competition reality television (we just coined that term, so don’t steal it). But it took years before the genre became the guilty pleasure we know and love today. After producers—especially VH1 producers—realized that their shows were considered low-brow, no matter how valid the quest for true love, they basically said, “Fuck it. Let’s get as guilty and as pleasurable as possible.”
And that’s when things got really good. Rom-competition reality shows have been full of desperate individuals throwing wine glasses, spitting, and pulling hair ever since.
Now with ABC rolling out their latest Bachelor spin-off, Bachelor in Paradise (which as far as we can tell is Bachelor Pad in a better location), tonight, it’s as good a time as any to look back on the last decade and a half of televised dating and put everything in its right place. Here is The Definitive Ranking of Rom-Competition Reality Shows.
Andrew Gruttadaro is the Complex Pop Culture news editor. If you want to come at him about ranking, he tweets here.
20.20. Next (MTV)
Premise: One lucky lady or man goes on five blind dates, with potential suitors who lay in wait on a tour bus until it’s their turn. The twist: The girl or guy has the right to yell, “Next!” and send a dud packing at any point in a date. But don’t weep—the losers get paid handsomely, $1 for every minute they lasted on a date.
Calling card: Aside from laughing over how blatantly scripted this show was, there was nothing better than watching a guy who didn’t look like an Abercrombie & Fitch model get off the bus, knowing that he was going to get Nexted, and then sure enough, watching it happen within the first 15 seconds of the date. Now that’s dramatic irony.
19.19. Real Chance of Love (VH1)
Premise: This is one of the final installments in VH1’s long line of Bachelor-inspired shows. A group of men or women would compete for one person’s affection, getting eliminated one by one until there was only one left standing. However, on Real Chance of Love there were two guys running the show: Brothers Real (Ahmad Givens) and Chance (Kamal Givens), who both appeared on VH1’s I Love New York.
Calling card: Despite there being two stars on the show, VH1 only cast enough women for a show with only one star. Which was nice, because it showed America what it looks like when two brothers have to have an in-depth conversation about who gets to hook up with who first.
18.18. I Wanna Marry Harry (FOX)
Premise: Taking a page out of Joe Millionaire’s playbook, FOX signed up a bunch of American girls to compete to be Prince Harry’s girlfriend. Except it wasn’t Prince Harry, it was just a British guy who vaguely looked like Prince Harry. This would’ve ranked this higher because the premise is amazing—for the first time in over 200 years, England got to feel superior to us again—but no one watched it. It got canceled after just four episodes.
Calling card: Anytime a girl from Long Island asked Fake Prince Harry something like, “When are we going to Buckingham Palace?”
17.17. Date My Mom (MTV)
Premise: A guy or girl went on three blind dates, but with a potential suitor’s mother. The guy or girl then had to choose someone based only on his or her awkward date with said (usually awkwardly overeager) mother.
Calling card: Because of the true blindness of the premise, amazing moments like this tended to happen.
16.16. Married By America (FOX)
Premise: Ten single people agreed to be paired up with total strangers. The five couples—which were chosen by votes from the American public—got engaged on the spot. Relationship experts then eliminated one couple per week until it was down to two, who then decided whether they wanted to get married or not. This is how big the impact of American Idol was in the early 2000s—FOX literally thought of anything and everything America could vote on, and then made a show out of it.
Calling card: Thirty seconds into the premiere episode, host Sean Valentine surprisingly exclaimed, “We’re actually going to do this thing!”
15.15. Bachelor Pad (ABC)
Premise: ABC packed a bunch of Bachelor and Bachelorette also-rans into the same plastic-looking mansion where the original two shows took place to compete for $250,000. Contestants had to broker alliances—specifically using sex and romance—to ensure that they wouldn’t get voted off the show. It was like The Challenge minus the athleticism and more emotional instability.
Calling Card: Bachelor Pad never provided too many OMG moments (which must be why ABC decided to migrate the show to a tropical location), but it did show how demented Bachelor producers are. In season two, Michael spent his entire time on the show trying to win back his former fiancée, Holly, even as she flirted with a guy named Blake (every a rom-competition show needs a heel named Blake). Then on the Bachelor Pad reunion show, producers did their best to make Michael cry by breaking the news that Holly and Blake had gotten engaged. What a low blow.
14.14. Beauty and the Geek (The CW)
Premise: Created by Ashton Kutcher (what?), Beauty and the Geek paired eight "hot" girls with eight "nerdy" caricatures. The opposite personalities had to come together and build relationships in order to complete a set of challenges. The show essentially set out to be a parable for not judging a book by its cover.
Calling card: In season three, when supernerd Nate Dern got UFC Ring Girl, Jennylee Berns, to fall for him and fawn over him like he was Johnny Depp. Big win for nerds everywhere. Nate Dern is now the News Editor at Funny Or Die, so really he’s just an all-around awesome guy.
13.13. Are You the One? (MTV)
Premise: See if you can keep up with this: 10 men and 10 women move into a house in Hawaii. They each have a “perfect match” in the house, who has been predetermined through interviews with friends, family, and exes, compatibility testing and match-making experts. For 10 weeks, the 20 people try to pair up so that they are all with their perfect matches. If they do, they get to split $1 million. It’s amazing this show is popular (the second season premieres in September) because it’s ridiculously complicated.
Calling card: Though this rom-competition is essentially a game of strategy; no MTV reality featured more physical fights over meaningless shit. Like one episode, where Shanly fought Jacy (yes, those are girls’ names) because someone moved her purse.
12.12. I Love New York (VH1)
Premise: Another VH1 Bachelor-themed show, this one starred New York, a.k.a. Tiffany Pollard.
Calling card: There’s a reason the aforementioned Chance got his own show. In the show’s first season finale, New York took him and her other finalist, Tango, to beautiful Playa Del Carmen in Mexico, where they had a lovely last supper. For some reason or another, Chance flipped out on Tango, knocking over glasses of cheap champagne and yelling, among other things, “GIVE ME YO ADDRESS, BITCH!” and “FUCK THESE BANANA TREES!”
11.11. A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila (MTV)
Premise: A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila was MTV taking a stab at a Bachelor-style show. But because Tequila is—have you not heard?— bisexual, the show’s contestants consisted of 16 men and 16 women. This was obviously a gimmick, but at the same time MTV deserves a little credit for being the only network to ever broadcast an LGBT dating show. Even seven years after Shot at Love aired, there still hasn’t been another one—that’s why this show almost cracks the top 10.
Calling card: A Shot at Love made Tila Tequila seem like a lesbian god—girls were willing to die for her. Like in the sixth episode of the first season, when it was down to just Brandi and Vanessa. Tila ended up giving Brandi a key (to her heart), but before Brandi could accept it Vanessa pounced on her and dragged her to the ground, setting off an all-out lesbian-on-lesbian brawl. Some of the contestants jumped in to break it up, others sat on the sidelines and watched in tears. Vanessa called Brandi the C-word a bunch of times as she was dragged off set, and Brandi left the show because she couldn’t “do this anymore.”
10.10. The Pickup Artist (VH1)
Premise: A man named Mystery, who still holds the distinction for having the goofiest effin’ wardrobe in television history (“He was peacocking!” douchier younger me just told myself), teaches dorks (many of whom were foreign for some reason) how to get girls.
Calling card: Probably the mere preposterousness that a middle-aged man had mastered the complexities of the female psyche to the point that he could trick them into sleeping with him. His advice was legendary: Show disinterest saying things like, “Nice nails, are they real?” Or, demonstrate high value by appearing emotionally unreactive to “targets.” Tom Haverford only exists because of The Pickup Artist.
9.9. Singled Out (MTV)
Premise: Consider this show the one that connected rom-competition TV from its descendants like The Newlywed Game to the more complex iterations we watch today. Hosted by Chris Hardwick and peak Jenny McCarthy (and later peak Carmen Electra), this episodic show let a girl or guy whiddle down 50 potential suitors until there was one remaining. This show was a cornerstone of MTV’s mid-'90s programming and it was also just plain good fun.
Calling card: This show featured top 10 hot '90s girls at the height of their powers (over then-adolescent teens). And then it also had Chris Hardwick, who has proven himself to be one of the most consistent TV show hosts of our time with Talking Dead and @Midnight.
8.8. The Challenge: Battle of the Exes (MTV)
Premise: The Challenge, with contestants who are poster-children for Crossfit and possibly on some Sammy Sosa-level steroids, tends to be more of a straight competition show (with random sloppy hookups, of course). But for one season it brought the romance by forcing exes to team together in a quest to win $150,000.
Calling card: As much as we want to praise The Challenge mainstay CT, who is definitely not a human being, he actually didn’t try to murder anyone this season, so he failed to deliver the season's biggest moment. That’s what love does. Instead we have to throw it to Vinny Foti, who got thrown off the show after ripping a girl’s top off during a wasted night out.
7.7. MILF Island (NBC, sort of)
Premise: Hosted by Rob Huebel, this show featured 25 “super-hot moms, 50 eighth grade boys, and no rules.” Just kidding, this was a fake show on an episode of 30 Rock. But some network should absolutely make this RIGHT NOW.
Calling card: When Heidi gets kicked off the show. “We no longer wanna hit that,” Huebel tells her, before she tosses her bikini top into a fire.
6.6. Rock of Love with Bret Michaels (VH1)
Premise: Here’s what happened when VH1 took their Bachelor formula and tried to whiten it up with Bret Michaels, who was more than 20 years removed from “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” when the series premiered.
Calling card: There are many. In the second episode, Bret made his rocker women compete in a phone sex competition. Then he stood idly by in episode eight when a girl got “Bret” TATTOOED ON HER NECK. Another contestant, Brandi M., left her mark (literally) on the show by getting super wasted at a Las Vegas dinner and then spew-vomiting at the table. Holy shit this show was good/bad.
5.5. For the Love of Ray J (VH1)
Premise: This is the last show in VH1's Bachelor-themed series. In 2009, they apparently asked themselves, “Who else can we give a show to?”
Calling card: The results were amazing. On this show, Kim Kardashian’s sex tape partner reintroduced America to the word “smash,” he nicknamed a girl “Cashmere” because he wanted to wear her as a scarf (not sexy, Ray J—very terrifying), and he held dates in strip clubs. Somehow, Ray J never found love on this show, and to this day he’s still singing songs about Kim.
4.4. The Bachelor/Bachelorette (ABC)
Premise: On The Bachelor, one man dates 25 women at once, eliminating them one by one until he just has one potential fiancée left. This show sneaks into the top five because of its impact and longevity. Since 2002, there have been 18 seasons of The Bachelor and 10 seasons of The Bachelorette.
Calling card: The Bachelor is at its best when the supposed man of every girl’s dreams is actually THE WORST. In the Twitter age, there’s nothing more rewarding than watching a universally hated guy and tearing him down to his very core—in public. It’s cathartic. This sort of hate is so violent it becomes a social movement. It happened in 2010 with Jake Pavelka and more recently in 2014 with Juan Pablo Galavis, the Bachelor who couldn’t speak English even though he was born and raised in Ithaca, New York.
3.3. Joe Millionaire (FOX)
Premise: The first show to actively deceive its contestants, Joe Millionaire promised a group of women that they were on a Bachelor-like show, except the Bachelor was a guy who had inherited millions of dollars. He wasn’t—he was a construction worker named Evan Marriott—but that didn’t get revealed until there was one remaining woman. One more twist: If the girl decides she wants to stay with the poor loser even after the reveal, they both get to share a cool million dollars.
Calling card: Obviously the reveal. First Joe (that will always be his name) came clean with a contestant he wasn't into, and she was like, “That’s not why I like you, though!” To which he responded, “I haven’t chosen you.” The girl he did pick, Zora, decided to stay with Joe even though he was very poor, and a butler (because every millionaire has a butler) gave them a million dollars. They obviously broke up soon after the show ended, though they both got to pocket like $250,000 after taxes. Worth it!
2.2. Temptation Island (FOX)
Premise: All rom-competition reality shows are hopeful deep down—they, at least on their face, believe that love exists and they work to promote it. All but one. Temptation Island, shockingly, is the only rom-competition show to actively try to break people up. Here's how: Four couples agreed to move to a nondescript tropical island, where they are immediately split up and forced to live with models of the opposite sex. While on the island, the couples get put in situations meant to constantly test their fidelity. Spoiler alert: Relationships are ruined.
Calling Card: Midway through the first season, Ytossie Patterson and Taheed Watson were kicked off the show when producers found out they had a kid together. They were fine with ruining relationships, but families? Nuh-uh, that's disgusting. Way to take the moral high ground, FOX.
1.1. Flavor of Love (VH1)
Premise: Not only the apex of VH1's Bachelor shows, but the apex of the genre itself. There's a reason that VH1 had a billion of these shows, and that's because Flava Flav, fresh off a comeback-making turn on The Surreal Life, started it all with three flawless seasons.
Calling card: In the season premiere of season two, someone pooped on the floor. And yet, that wasn't even the most memorable moment of the show. That came in the penultimate episode of season one when a girl nicknamed Pumkin launched the Spit Heard 'Round the World at New York (remember her?) and ran for dear life. Ahh, this is rom-competition television at its finest.