A friend recommended the all-bisexual season of the reality dating show Are You the One? and of course my partner and I had to watch it together. As with dating reality shows in general, this one was very engrossing (at least if you find human connection interesting, which I imagine most of us do) and had a lot of pertinent lessons to teach about how attractions and relationships function.
As is de rigueur for its genre, Are You the One? puts some contestants in a big-ass house and forces them through a series of physical challenges and emotional gauntlets over the course of several weeks, in order to earn a large sum of money. But the gimmick of this particular show is that all of the contestants have been pre-interviewed about their personalities, lifestyles, and romantic histories, and their friends and families have also been consulted, in order for offscreen matchmakers to pair up each contestant with their “perfect match” amongst the other contestants. The players’ job is to figure out who’s matched with who, and eventually guess all 8 couples correctly, by getting to know each other and making guesses about who’s a perfect match, which the show can confirm or deny in various convoluted ways.