Perfect Match.
Okay so of the dating reality shows I’ve seen, Perfect Match does not rank high on the wholesomeness scale. 12 Dates of Christmas (where people are trying to find someone to bring home for the holidays), that was a wholesome show. Love Island UK, where people cry when they hurt each other’s feelings and sit down so that they can talk it out, is also kind of wholesome. Love is Blind is very unhinged and perhaps an unlikely way to find love, but the supposed intention of it (to connect with someone, regardless of what they look like) is wholesome. Perfect Match is about hot people connecting with hot people until hotter people come along, at which point they hastily break up with their current partners and move onto the next. So far in this season (I’m on Episode 7 of Season 2), no one is doggedly faithful, no one is so in love that they have stopped engaging in the show’s antics, and everyone is in it, it seems, at least in part, for the fame.
One thing that makes Perfect Match perhaps less wholesome from the get-go is that everyone is already a reality show star. They’ve plucked them from other shows (mostly Too Hot to Handle, some from Love is Blind and The Ultimatum) and put them in this one. It’s interesting because you can see the effects Hollywood has had on them. For the most part, they are tediously hot and have trust issues. They want to ensure the audience that they are good people and then they—inevitably?—proceed to make not good decisions. If you are a woman, for most of the show you are in a bikini and someone has their hands on you. If you’re someone who likes to have agency over your body, it is probably a lot to endure.
Netflix, in this show, has sort of taken the good parts of other reality shows (the personalities, the games, pretty much the whole structure of Love Island) and made it their own, with Nick Lachey (dating show host galore) as the cherry on top.
Writing this, I can’t quite put my finger on the appeal, but I do know that last week I planted myself on the couch, saw the teaser on Netflix, and then proceeded to watch all of the available episodes. Knowing the rest of the episodes were coming out, on Friday, I sat back on my couch and watched more, and then my boyfriend came over, and he watched more with me. I was worried he would think it’s dumb (because it is dumb?) but he got into it—we stayed up late waiting to see what would happen next.
Maybe the appeal is watching someone else be wildly vulnerable, vulnerable in a way that you’ll never have to be (susceptible to rejection and betrayal, perpetually in a bikini, while millions of people watch from the comfort of their homes). It is a social experiment in a way, and yet, it is also relatable, as (sans having to wear a swimsuit, sans viewership of millions) you’ve probably in some way been there.
The appeal might also be watching these people—especially on this show, as they’re used to the cameras, have perfected their personas, are all good-looking and famous—try, still, to fit in with each other. It’s kind of like watching popular high school kids trying to prove they’re worthy of their popularity by really leaning into what makes them cool. On this show, when they break the mold, sometimes they’re teased (called a geek) and sometimes it brings others into relief (you like to read too?).
As someone who has maybe always been too nerdy to want to be perceived as “cool” in a popular kid kind of way, I find the tension between their presented ease and the dogged way they try to fit in both odd and endearing. Maybe, despite some of the characters’ unhingedness and the matches that are very obviously not perfect and the posturing and the scheming, this want to be like everybody else does make the show wholesome in a way. It might not be explicitly earnest, but its coolness, at times, comes off that way. Do you like me? the people on this show say without saying, and what about now?
As wildly unrelatable as the circumstances of reality TV can be, I think this want to be liked—if not by the cool kids, by the people who matter to you, the circles you want to be a part of—is something maybe all of us can relate to. Do you like me? And if I only wear bikinis without ever actually swimming, does that help?
Regardless of the draw and the likely toxicity of the whole situation, I’ll finish the show, wait it out, as isn’t lying on the couch, wondering if these strangers are gonna break up or stay together, as the hours tick by, exactly a summer thing to do?
Image: Netflix
