Television Show Premiere: Dating in the Dark on ABC Monday Nights at 10PM

I admit it; I watched one of those new dating reality shows on ABC Monday night at 10PM called "Dating in the Dark." The commercials for its premiere episode made it appear way too different and ridiculous to miss.

The basic premise of the show, Dating in the Dark, is getting to know someone of the opposite sex in the dark without ever seeing what they look like until the end of the hour long show. There are three women and three men of similar ages and one very dark room where they first meet. We, the audience, get to see everything that happens in the dark room through the use of infrared cameras.

There is a host to guide the men and women through the getting to know each other process and they didn't just spend all the time in the dark together as a group. The host had them do a couple of different exercises to help them get to know each other. One exercise the host had them do was for both the men and the women to take off their shirts and then he took the shirts to the opposite sex to "check out." This probably sounds more interesting than it actually was; there was no nudity on the show! It was definitely interesting to see the three men and women look at the shirts and sniff them so they could get to know the scent of the person it had just come off of. Based on the shirts, the men and women could use a computer to send a message to "meet" the person they chose in the dark room.

After the men and women had all met and formed impressions of each other, they were told who their "perfect match" was based on the fifty page questionnaire they'd filled out before coming on the show and on several relationship experts. Knowing their "perfect match" did seem to affect the relationship dynamics and that's how the couples paired up together. After the couples had met privately in the dark room and gotten to know each other a little better, the host had a sketch artist come in and based on the descriptions given, drew what each person thought their partner (i.e. "perfect match") would look like.

By the end of the show, the couples were getting along well and seemed to really make a connection, in the dark room. The last time the couples were in the dark room is when they got to see what the other person looked like and then they had to decide if they wanted to continue to see the person or walk away. The show handled this "first viewing" by having each couple stand together in the dark room without speaking. Then a spotlight would shine on one person at a time so the other person could see them without being able to see that person's face. Of course the audience could see the reactions of the people in the dark and it was a little hard to watch. A couple of the reactions by the person seeing their "perfect match" for the first time were not positive.

After seeing the other person for the first time, each person had the option of meeting their match out on the balcony and pursuing a dating relationship or of walking away from the person. After seeing each other for the first time, two of the couples did meet out on the balcony and decided to continue to see each other but one of the women did not want to pursue a relationship with the man she'd made a connection to in the dark room. They may have connected great in the dark but once she saw what he looked like, it was over for her.

She didn't like his looks and she cried and said how sorry she was that looks were so important to her but he just wasn't the one for her. It was so mean and shallow of her. It's not like the guy was creepy or anything, he was no Prince Charming but hey, she wasn't princess material herself either! He was an average guy and not unattractive. What made the whole thing even worse in my mind is that the woman herself was of average looks and she was not unattractive but she wasn't beauty queen material either. Physically, the two would have been good together. He doesn't know how lucky he is that she rejected him though. No one needs a shallow person like that in their life.

I thought it was interesting that no one gets paid or wins prizes for doing the show. I can't imagine that but that's what they said at the beginning of this premiere episode. Evidently, Dating in the Dark, is a show that is only about making a romantic connection (and probably grabbing some ratings too!).

I decided that I was not going to watch "Dating in the Dark" again because it was just too painful to see a super shallow person reject a regular guy on national television just because he wasn't handsome enough for her. It's almost a slap in the face for us regular folks who don't have looks, youth or thinness on our side!

But after seeing the preview for next week's episode of Dating in the Dark, I just might have to tune in and check it out. Next week, the host lets the men and women go through each others suitcases to get an idea of what kind of person they are. And one man says that the "thickness" of the woman he met in the dark is a deal breaker for him. So come on, how about a little guilty pleasure of a slightly different reality dating show, Dating in the Dark?

Dating in the Dark, ABC, at 10:00 PM on Monday Nights