The History of LGBTQ+ Reality TV Dating Shows From ‘NeXT’ to ‘The Ultimatum: Queer Love’

The Ultimatum: Queer Love is perhaps the highest-profile reality dating show focused on queer women and non-binary people of all time — and it’s also one of the only ones. Historically, reality dating shows have focused on heterosexuals, despite the fact that gathering a bunch of horny bisexuals in one party house and plying them with alcohol while demanding constant, private confessionals is TV gold, as proven by Are You The One? Season Eight. While Love is Blind has co-opted lesbian dating rituals to create its bizarre reality TV experiment, dating shows rarely feature actual lesbians, and are historically bastions of traditional heterosexual courtship.

But over the years, a few brave shows have ventured into the murky waters of reality television dating shows for queer, lesbian and bisexual women and/or trans people of all genders. Let’s talk about some of them!

Date My Mom

MTV // 2004 – 2006  // Unavailable to stream

The triumphant mating call of, “I’m here, I’m queer and I’m ready to Mom Date!!” can be heard echoing through the generations from this entry in MTV’s 2000s Dating Show Frenzy in which the Mom of a teenager meets their potential dates and decides who’s best for her child. Although usually focused on heterosexuals, Date My Mom had a five gay or lesbian episodes per season quota, thus offering its viewers something we rarely received on television back then: a parent so supportive of their daughter’s sexual orientation that they wanted to help her find a girlfriend. “To the moms who did it with their daughters, we let them know that this is awesome that you’re stepping up for your child,” a casting director told The Village Voice in an interview about the challenges of casting its LGBT episodes. “To this day, we still all appreciate those parents.”

NeXt

MTV // 2005-2008 // You can stream some of the gay episodes here

Many MTV shows of the 2000s that are impossible to track down online would feature a few lesbian contestants across their runs, including Parental Control, Dismissed, Exposed and Room Raiders, but NeXt has maintained the most prevalent spot in the public imagination. NeXt wasn’t a queer dating show specifically, but it was immediately inclusive of gay and lesbian daters, including 13 lesbian segments across its six-season run. Contestants went on five dates and were permitted to declare “Next!” to start over with someone new as soon as their present date lost their luster. The daters earned cash for every minute of dating they survived, and whomsever made it to the end could choose a second date or their accumulated lump of cash. Like many MTV dating shows of the era, NeXT was mostly cast with actors and often scripted. The series remains iconic for its stilted intros in which contestants delivered attempts at sassy pick-up lines and three horrifying bullet-pointed facts about themselves. An added delight of the queer episodes was the thirsty twentysomethings on the bus being able to flirt with each other while waiting for their big moment.

A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila

MTV // 2007 + 2008 // Unavailable

The depiction of bisexuality in this absolute trash reality show haunts us to this day, beginning with the absolute horror of the premise, in which 16 lesbians and 16 men aren’t told ’til the end of the first episode that Tila is bisexual and will be choosing from the lot of them. Before dating Courtenay Semel or marrying Casey Johnson or becoming a Neo-Nazi who claimed to have only been “gay for pay,” Tila Tequila was a MySpace queen often spotted in Maxim and Playboy, and when this show debuted in 2007, we were all compelled by forces larger than ourselves to tune in. Personally, I shut it off after ten minutes because I was too offended to go on… but then I happened to catch the rest of the episode at the gym and…I got sucked in. Everybody got drunk and sloppy. Tila and many of her female suitors endorsed an unchecked butchphobia popular in mainstream and queer media at the time, which made it incredibly satisfying that she ended up with hot-as-fuck butch firefighter Dani Campbell as her final girl. In the end, though, she chose the male suitor, although they obviously didn’t last, and Tila returned for a second season.

A Double Shot at Love with the Ikki Twins

MTV // 2009 // Unavailable

Tila Tequila was the host of this spinoff that again found 12 heterosexual men and 12 lesbians competing for a shot at love, this time with bisexual twins Rikki (Erica Mongeon) and Vikki (Victoria Mongeon), models who’d appeared in Playboy and a Hooters calendar, among other similar gigs. After this season, MTV canned the concept in favor of having a bunch of girls compete for a date with the Jersey Shore boys.

Naked Attraction

Channel 4 (UK) // 2016 – present // watch on Channel 4

From the very first episode of Naked Attraction, this British show was inclusive of bisexual, pansexual, trans and/or queer contestants, who narrow down their group of potential dates to a handful of winners by seeing portions of their naked body, from bottom to top.

The Bi Life

E! (UK) // 2018 // Watch on Hayu

Courtney Act hosted “the UK’s first ever bisexual dating show” that featured bisexual people living together in a Spanish villa, exploring the dating scene of Barcelona and supporting each other through it all.

Ex on the Beach

MTV // 2018 – 2023 // Stream on Paramount+

A group of single social media and reality TV stars gather in a luxurious Malibu villa for a dating show with a twist they somehow do not expect, even in latter seasons: their exes are gonna creep out of the ocean. Everyone wears designer swimwear, gets drunk, participates in challenges, digs into each other’s secrets, hooks up and votes each other off the show. Queer women started showing up in Season Three with bisexual reality TV / pop music entrepreneur Aubrey O’Day. Season Four — which eschews a tropical locale for winter in New Zealand — features noted lesbian Staten Island firefighter and Challenge contestant Nicole and a parade of her exes in a environment already queered by a drag queen, a bicurious former Nickelodeon actress, a trans beauty influencer and a bisexual Real World guy.

Game of Clones

MTV // 2019 // Stream on MTV

In Clone Wars, reality television stars are given the rare and fascinating opportunity to date clones of their celebrity crushes, and amongst them are some lesbians. Nicole of The Challenge and Ex on the Beach is presented with seven Ciara clones and will date them all to determine which clone will win her commitment-phobic heart forever.

Are You The One? Season 8

MTV // 2019 // Stream on Hulu, Paramount+ or MTV

The absolute apex of queer reality television, Are You The One? mashed up 16 singles in an alcohol-infused house and through games and socials, challenged them to determine whomst amongst the other singles had been determined by a mysterious overlord to be their soulmate. Guessing correctly as a team wins some kind of money. But in Season 8 of this successful MTV program they decided to improve the show’s quality tenfold by casting an entirely bisexual group of singles. Every man, woman and non-binary person in the house could potentially match with anyone else in the house. It was a beautiful moment in television history that I for one will never forget.

Singled Out 3.0

Roku // 2020 – 2021 // Stream on The Roku Channel

The original Singled Out was an absolute mainstay of every ’90s sleepover and an irresistible late-night double-billing on MTV with Loveline. The Singled Out gameshow put Playboy model Jenny McCarthy (now a notorious anti-vaxxer) and Chris Hardwick (of The Nerdist) on the map as hosts guiding a lucky girl or boy through weeding out 50 potential dates without seeing them, the pool decreasing as the picker cycled through their preferences amongst presented funny categories. The show was rebooted as a YouTube series in 2018 with an “urban contemporary hip-hop theme” that involved a whole thing with Catfishes. Then, finally, a third reboot arrived in 2020, produced by MTV for the Roku Channel. Hosted by KeKe Palmer and Joel Kim Booster and presented in mini-episodes by the Roku Channel, this new iteration featured bisexual and lesbian contestants in its two seasons of minisodes — even once featuring a lesbian couple looking for a third to join their relationship!

Dating Around

Netflix // 2019 – 2020 // Stream on Netflix

The producers of this Netflix show wanted a queer-inclusive cast of folks who wouldn’t ordinarily be on reality TV — people of all ages who could portray a realistic look at what dating is like in the age of apps and all that. “It is a little window into many people’s lives, of many different backgrounds and orientations, as they go on many first dates,” wrote Vulture in “Netflix’s Dating Around is a Secretly Great Reality Show.” Episode 6 featured Mila, who met five women for drinks, dinner and dessert.

12 Dates of Christmas

HBO Max // 2020 – 2021 // Unavailable

Tragically wiped from HBO Max’s platform, 12 Dates of Christmas invited contestants to a romantic holiday-prepped chalet in the snowy mountains of somewhere to face a rotating cast of suitors with whom leads enjoyed dates like sledding, building gingerbread houses, riding horses through the snow and cuddling in bedazzled glamping tents. The winner gets to accompany the lead on a trip home to meet the family for Christmas, except it’s also definitely not Christmas, it’s March, and everybody is just pretending that it’s Christmas. Season Two featured three leads: a gay man, a lesbian (the stunningly beautiful Amanda Grace Jenkins) and a straight man.

Love Trip: Paris

Freeform // 2023 // Stream on Freeform

Caroline, Rose, Lacy and Josielyn

On a surface-level Freeform’s Love Trip: Paris seems like just another heterosexual dating show: four twentysomethings who’ve been unlucky in love move to Paris where love is somehow truer and they’re given the opportunity to meet and date a rotating roster of local men… and women, because three of the four contestants are queer. We’ve got: 29-year-old Lacy; a chatty, sexually fluid “mental health podcaster” who loves crystals, open-hearted 26-year-old Mexican-American bisexual trans woman model Josielyn and finally Caroline, a bubbly 26-year-old genderqueer personal trainer from New York who proudly asserts “my best friend is my cat.” This show has been highly overlooked and I highly recommend it!

The Ultimatum: Queer Love

Netflix // 2023 // Stream on Netflix

Courtesy of Netflix © 2023

The Ultimatum: Queer Love is notable for many things, including introducing the world to Mal, who is a king and deserves the world. Six couples who are facing an ultimatum — one person is ready to marry and the other isn’t — gather together to try out dating each other, rather than the person they came with. After a three week “trial marriage” they’re able to trial marriage with their original partner and then at this point they are obviously 100% ready to decide on the next steps of their relationship. I love television!

Love Allways

Paramount+ // 2023 // Stream on Paramount+

Truly breaking the mold with a cast of Gen Zers, this program sees two ‘dating coaches’ employed to help singles of all genders in their pursuit of Lexi, the show’s bachelorette. The dating coaches are vaguely competing against each other to see which coach’s “team” wins Lexi over? It’s sort of like watching a bunch of TikTok drafts from a 21-year-old, or like a loosely organized pool party. But it’s fascinating to see what a dating show looks like when most of the contestants are too young to drink!

I Remain A “Catfish” Queer: On Love, The Midwest, and What We Think We Deserve

The summer before last, I was stuck in my Wisconsin hometown. I’d just graduated with an MFA in creative writing and I couldn’t figure out my next step. I spent my days carrying an oscillating fan around my parent’s house—from the dining room where I pecked at job applications, to the kitchen to make smoothies, and then to my room, where I lay scrolling listlessly through Instagram. I frequently went to the gym in the middle of the day on a month-to-month membership. The elliptical running machines faced a wall of windows. Outside I could see a padlocked dumpster, Karate America, and a paint store. Beyond this small pocket of development lay cornfields and a road named after my great aunt’s husband’s family. It was too much corn, too much Wisconsin. I turned instead to the gym TV. To my surprise, I found a show that reflected my queer spending-the-summer-in-my-hometown sadsack feelings — Catfish: The TV Show.

Catfish is an MTV original series about online relationships. Since its premiere in 2012, Catfish has become a full-fledged reality television phenomenon and inspired spinoffs like Catfish: Trolls and Ghosted: Love Gone Missing. Even if you’ve never watched the show, you’re probably familiar with the term “catfish” to mean a person who creates fake social media profiles and talks to people online under the guise of being someone else. A typical episode begins with the show’s hosts, Nev Schulman and Max Joseph, introducing that week’s “hopeful.” The hopeful is the show’s word for someone who’s in an online relationship with a catfish. When the hopeful tries to connect with their online love in real life – sometimes going as far as buying a plane ticket or relocating to a strange city – the catfish is nowhere to be found. The catfish supplies excuse after excuse: their car got stolen, their mom is dying of cancer, they got kidnapped, they moved to Switzerland to pursue a modeling career, they stayed in California because they had a prophetic dream that they would die in New York. (These are all real examples from the show.) The hopeful realizes that something is fishy and calls Max and Nev for help tracking down their catfish and uncovering the truth about their online relationship. Is the catfish who they say they are and if not, who have they been talking to this entire time? Did the catfish ever really love them? Can their love survive this deceit? It’s a weird ride.

Catfish is populated by fat queers, rural queers, poor queers, disabled queers, and queer people of color. There are queers who live in mobile homes and work the night shift. There are queers who have been disowned by their families and queers who are supporting their families on minimum wage jobs. In the episode entitled “Blaire & Markie,” we meet a young lesbian who lives in a motel with her best friend and her best friend’s toddler nephew, who they’ve committed to raising together. I don’t see many queer chosen families on TV, let alone a multiracial queer chosen family formed by homeless teen parents. The episode “Aaliyah and Alicia” also follows a homeless teen, Aaliyah. When Aaliyah and her mom are evicted from their home in Oakland, Aaliyah finds comfort and stability in an online relationship with Alicia. Alicia is an obvious catfish – she demands money from Aaliyah and only provides a handful of photos. She lives nearby, in Oakland, but tells Aaliyah that she’s too busy to meet in real life. Aaliyah is too exhausted balancing school and homelessness to question Alicia’s motives. The hopefuls on Catfish are frequently contending with unimaginable stress: the loss of a parent, bullying at school, or homelessness. When each day is a struggle for survival, you don’t have the mental capacity to think critically. It’s enough that another person cares about you, or at least pretends to.

The relationships featured on Catfish are far from casual. There are proclamations of love and marriage proposals. Hopefuls describe their catfish with words like “my soulmate” and “the one.” Many of these relationships have been going on for over a year and in a few cases, over a decade. In the episode “Kiaria and Cortney,” a woman sends her girlfriend $1,000 to have a baby via a surrogate mother (a quick Google search quotes the cost of surrogacy as $90,000 to $130,000). This episode is one of Catfish’s brazen and unimaginable deceptions – Kiaria and Cortney have never met in real life, despite both living in Virginia Beach and dating exclusively for two years.

My favorite episode of queer Catfish, hands down, is “Whitney and Bre.” Whitney and Bre are black queer women who have been in love for over four years without ever meeting face-to-face. Whitney lives in New York and works at Wendy’s six days a week to support her mom and four brothers. Bre lives in Los Angeles and is unemployed. In a truly genius plot, Whitney pretends to be a hopeful so that MTV will pay for them to finally meet. “I just get so freaked out when people can just sit across from you and lie like that,” says host Max, after uncovering hundreds of messages and video calls between Whitney and Bre. After much deliberation, the hosts decide to be chill because Catfish is a show about love and sometimes love makes people lie on reality TV. In the episode’s epilogue, we see Whitney and Bre strolling through a Los Angeles park. Their joy at finally being able to kiss and hold each other is palpable. I love Whitney and Bre. I hope they always love each other. I hope they never stop scamming corporations.

Despite all my praise, Catfish is far from perfect. There is a lot to critique. The hosts often use dismissive language to describe sex workers and strippers. It must also be acknowledged that Nev, the host and executive producer, has a history of assault accusations (including one against a lesbian) that can be easily Googled. But I do think the show, generally, walks an impressive line of alchemizing relationship drama into entertainment without mocking or further marginalizing those involved. The hosts give everyone a chance to explain their actions, even the catfish. Oftentimes, catfishing is an act of self-preservation. The catfish feels guilty about lying, but does not believe themselves deserving of love as their authentic selves. In “Dani and Kya,” for instance, social media is a safe and accessible means of gender expression for the catfish. The hosts dispense some solid relationship advice — namely, don’t make excuses for your partner’s bad behavior, every relationship is an opportunity for growth, and healthy relationships aren’t built on deceit. There’s an emphasis on shared responsibility — Max and Nev are just as interested in the catfish’s motives as they are in why the hopeful falls for what is usually a blatant, painfully obvious lie.

Every episode of Catfish promises intricate lies and deceit, but the actual experience of watching an episode from start to finish is kind of boring. Reveals are strategically placed after increasingly frequent commercial breaks. Every ounce of conflict and intrigue is discussed and stretched too thin, like a friend who gets a cryptic text from their crush and can talk about nothing else. When I was researching this piece, I fell asleep in front of my computer and when I woke up, the episode entitled “Vince & Alyssa” was playing. Max and Nev are helping Vince, an earnest young man who loves his grandma and exclusively dresses in basketball shorts and t-shirts. The three men drive to Jasper, Indiana – a farming community with a population of 15,000 – to find Alyssa, the shadowy internet woman who ended Vince’s relationship with his irl girlfriend. I wonder if this is the first time anyone has undertaken a road trip between Cincinnati and Jasper. At the very least, this is the first time anyone has filmed or otherwise documented a road trip between Cincinnati and Jasper. As someone who spends a lot of time in farflung places, this feels important to me.

All this to say that Catfish has been serving diverse, bittersweet queer representation for almost a decade and it seems like nobody notices. The most recent season of Are You the One? received endless praise from the queer internet. If you don’t know, AYtO is another MTV reality show. The premise is that a bunch of people are placed in the same house and must pair off into “perfect matches” as determined by scientific algorithms and relationship experts. Season 8, which aired this summer, made waves because every cast member identified as pansexual, bisexual, and/or sexually fluid. Therefore any two cast members could potentially be each other’s perfect match. Whereas Catfish depicts bodies as complicated and painful questions to be answered – what does it mean to love someone and build relationship in the absence of their body? What body would you chose if you could? What happens when people feel that their body renders them underserving of love? – the cast members on AYtO are uniformly thin, able-bodied, and conventionally attractive. Their bodies are sites of joy and pleasure, always on display in swimwear and lingerie. One is not more radical or truthful than the other, but I just relate a lot more to anxiety and weirdness when it comes to bodies.

The cast members on AYtO are removed from their everyday lives and placed in a beach house that looks like it was decorated by a cool middle schooler with full rein of a Pottery Barn Teen catalog. Unlike Catfish, nobody on AYtO is a parent or a caretaker. Nobody is living in poverty or working a minimum wage job. There is zero tolerance policy for shame. Even Max, the only cast member openly struggling with shame and internalized homophobia, is given an easily digestible narrative of self-acceptance. We watch as he receives mentorship from the other cast members and finds a loving, supportive queer community. The beach house has an entire room dedicated to queer sex — it’s called the Boom Boom Room and it’s located right off the living room. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. There are orgies and drag shows and group therapy. On AYtO, being queer means having more options for love and intimacy.

I have never catfished anyone. I have never been catfished. As a white cis woman with a lot of structurally affirmed power, I am unlikely to get a visit from Max and Nev. Still, Catfish resonates with my queer experience in a way that AYtO never will. The opening paragraph of this piece, I realize, makes it sound like being in Wisconsin was a temporary space for me. In actuality, most of my adult life has unfolded in snowy, midwestern cities with more steers than queers. As a result, most of my romantic relationships have been LDRs with people I met online. I make deep emotional deposits in these relationships. Sometimes after a few weeks of texting, I’ll suggest meeting irl and the person will become evasive and shifty and I’ll realize that I am just a placeholder to them, a nice person to text on a long bus ride or a lonely night. But about once a year, whether I intend to or not, I board a plane to meet someone for a weekend. Sometimes there is even a follow-up weekend, but never a third.

The logical side of me knows that it’s not my fault. If conventional wisdom says that the perfect first date is something easy like coffee or drinks, then meeting someone for the first time and spending an entire weekend together is a fool’s errand. Expectations and nerves run high — it’s stressful to spend unmitigated, continuous time with someone new. Money is emotional and plane tickets are expensive. It can be difficult to navigate the financial implications in a fledgling LDR. But the emotional side of me is left feeling gutted and insecure. I worry that my mannerisms and personality are off-putting in real life. Without a screen, I am boring and ugly and overall a huge disappointment. I describe myself as “fatter irl” jokingly but it’s true, I am fatter irl. My online relationships make me feel like Kimmy Gibbler — an unwanted visitor, a girl who climbs through your bedroom window for a few moments of comic relief.

This summer, I lived in a big city with lots of queers and no shortage of places to meet and hook up. Once a week, my friends and I gathered to watch AYtO. We lingered afterwards to laugh about the show’s most ridiculous moments. Did Nour really call Paige a “giraffe ass bitch”? Why does it fall on Basit to educate Jonathan about they/them pronouns? How old are these people? Eventually, the conversation would turn to me and my love life. My friends would ask if I was on Tinder, if I was going to go on any dates while I was in the city. And in truth, I really wanted to take some fresh photos and put myself out there. Really! But I just kept hemming and hawing and not downloading Tinder. At my core, I realized, I believe dating should be difficult and wildly inconvenient because some part of me still views my queerness as an obstacle. I don’t know how to go on a normal first date – one where we don’t exchange one million texts beforehand, one that doesn’t begin with me getting picked up from the airport. Maybe someday I’ll embrace the Boom Boom Room and oceanside dance parties but for now, I remain a Catfish queer.

“Are You The One?” Finale Sees Queer Community Triumphing Over Odds, Going Skinny-Dipping, Winning Money

The finale watch party, as it had been announced on the thirst trapping Instagram feeds of Are You The One?‘s Los Angeles-based cast, would begin at 7:30, but by 7:30, the narrow two-story Beaches WeHo bar, awash in pink neon and staffed by muscled gay men in tank tops probably serving more women that night than they had in weeks, was already at capacity, with a line snaking down Santa Monica. Across the country at a simultaneous finale watch party at The Deep End in Brooklyn, hosted by Basit’s alter ego Dionne Slay as well as Kari, Paige, Remy, Nour and Justin, fans lined up around the block spotted Nour trying to drive the wrong way down a one-way street.

Kai and Max were the first cast members to arrive at Beaches. Kai, wearing black deconstructed pants, a gold chain, and leather suspenders, took copious selfies with beaming queers who, judging by their general enthusiasm around Kai’s existence, have yet to be demonized by a Kai of their very own. Although onscreen, Max has consistently looked one Boom-Boom away from lighting a house on fire, in person he was confident and honestly quite handsome, swishing through the bar in a flowy cape, skinny jeans and black sequined slippers. Up by the DJ booth, entirely perfect in a tank top and ripped jeans, certified hottie Amber danced with a gaggle of similarly attractive girls. Kai and Jenna (whose character arc was one of AYTO‘s most emotionally satisfying), spent the evening surrounded by friends who all looked a little bit like Jenna or a little bit like Kai. Danny showed up just in time, wearing a full suit and toting a full messenger bag. By which I mean: Danny definitely came straight from work. Danny OBVIOUSLY came straight from work.

Like most fans of Are You The One?‘s eighth season, I’d never seen or heard of the show until its eighth season — and like many fans of Are You The One?‘s eighth season, I don’t watch reality TV at all except for this one season of this one show, right now. A few weeks before it premiered, MTV e-mailed me a screener, which I almost ignored, assuming it’d be another exploitative Tila Tequila-ish situation. A few minutes in — including every minute of  Basit explaining their gender identity — I was like, wait a second. This is… good? Our team agreed. Are You The One? never felt like the next step after A Shot at Love. It felt lightyears beyond it.

“A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila,” 2007

The scene at Beaches wasn’t, I imagine, unlike the scene surrounding the cast of The Real L Word during its brief heyday (Kai = Whitney, think about it). But whereas the real-life lesbians of the ’09-’11 Showtime series let us into their messy and often tedious actual lives, replete with cocky cliques and high drama screaming matches on public streets, AYTO captured characters usually brimming with earnestness, eager to find love, discover themselves, build community and make new friends. Nobody attending this party was trying to be cool. We had all gone out on a Monday night, for the love of G-d, to be here, queer and aggressively uncool, like Danny.

Never before on television, reality or scripted, have we seen bisexual community like this. Never before on television have we seen bisexual community, period. Thus, Season Eight has garnered highbrow press its seven heterosexual seasons never quite managed, praised by The New York Times for its “frank, nonjudgmental portrayal of queer relationships,” by Variety for its “unexpected step forward for queer representation on TV” and by Rolling Stone as “a show that transcends not just the series but the entire genre, portraying queer mores and dating culture with more compassion, maturity, honesty and complexity than anywhere else on TV.”

The cast of “Are You The One”

As the finale approached, many of my friends weren’t entirely sure what we’d have left to live for afterwards, or why all shows weren’t entirely populated by, in MTV terms, “the sexually fluid community.” The fans who turned up last night — a throng of gender-diverse queers crowding out the homogenous, muscled white cis gay men usually occupying these specific streets — seemed similarly frenzied. We’d snagged seats in the slim outdoor portion of the bar, where a flat-screen TV was angled just far enough to be visible to both us and to the crowd who hadn’t gotten in, but weren’t about to give up and go home. I’ve really only been aware of this kind of thing happening — people so eager to watch a thing that they’ll stand OUTSIDE a bar ON THE STREET to watch it on the TVs playing inside the bar — for sportsball games and presidential elections. More than one attendee called it the Gay Super Bowl. (I was one of them.)

We all had our picks going into the finale — I would’ve bet money on Remy/Kylie, Justin/Amber and Kari/Max but, well, I’m glad I didn’t. “I say SEASON EIGHT and you say WE AIN’T STRAIGHT!” Amber yelled from the second floor. We did as we were told.

The episode opened post-beam-ceremony where, surrounded by unlabeled plastic bottles of probably poison, the show began with everybody stressing out post-beam-ceremony. Danny, pontificating with salad tongs, announced that six beams was the worst case scenario, which we already knew because of the math blog.

It was now up to Justin, Amber, Kylie, Max and Kari to figure out who was their alleged perfect match, through a lot of processing, some high-level canoodling, and curling up together on a couch talking about their favorite colors. “My favorite color is red, because it symbolizes love,” said Amber on the teevee. We all screamed. Jonathan drank rum out straight out of the bottle. At the “Speaking my Language” challenge, probably the stupidest game we’ve played thus far, everybody smashed pies into each other’s faces, which made exactly as much sense as everything else. I began considering that maybe Max got a sunburn at some point and wondering what Kylie was up to in Salt Lake City.

Thus Max and Kari, Kylie and Amber and Basit and Jonathan went on a date that involved driving Jeeps through actual human civilization. Basit, wearing cut-out leopard-print pants, twerked in Jonathan’s face while Jonathan slapped their ass, and we screamed. Amber thanked Kylie for making out with Nour, thus slaughtering Amber’s feelings for her, and we screamed. Later that night or week, Amber and Justin slid under the duvet in the Boom-Boom Room, and we screamed. Kylie and Amber were declared NOT A MATCH by The Truth Booth, which I’m vaguely concerned could be exposing its inhabitants to excessive radioactivity. During commercial breaks, we estimated how much 1/16th of $750,000 would be after taxes while Amber, Danny and Max took turns on the mike.

Amber on teevee suggested, “Let’s go skinny dipping, it’s our last night,” eventually adding, “I don’t want no regrets, just love, as Katy Perry said,” and we screamed. Basit and Jonathan, already elder queers in their robes and sleep masks, looked on with trepidation. “This doesn’t look sanitary at all,” Basit observed, and we screamed louder.

The episode’s final moments were as tense and thrilling as the Super Bowl, I’m pretty sure. Amber picked Remy at the beam ceremony, a match we felt very nervous about — Amber has trust issues, Remy is sexually freewheeling, wouldn’t it have made more sense to pair Amber with Justin and Kylie with Remy?

The final beam ceremony started a mere 33 minutes into the episode. Basit got the night’s most enthusiastic reaction thus far when they looked straight at the camera, hands clasped together, and intoned, “We have to get this right. Not only for love, not only for money but for the queer community.”

The show didn’t end with broken hearts and messy crying or whatever it is that happens at the end of The Bachelor. It ended with redemption, even for its most frustrating personalities: Max cried about accepting his own sexuality and meeting somebody he loved. Kai’s affection for Danny somehow neutralized the chaotic energy that’d been his calling card thus far. Nour had replaced “yelling at Jasmine” with “making out with Jasmine.”  Jonathan, the alleged bank manager who I will never forgive for how dismissive he initially was of Basit and who definitely owes everybody 1/16th of $250k, arrived hand-in-hand with Basit, wearing Dionne Slay’s space-age shoulderpads, and told Terrence J that the first time he saw Basit he knew he was gonna “learn some stuff.”

After a homophobic number of gratuitous commercial breaks, all eight beams lit up the sky, igniting the light and letting it shine, as Katy Perry said. When I wrote “we screamed” before I meant it, but when I say “we screamed” now I mean something more than that. It was wild but ironic queer screaming at a Women’s-World-Cup-level pitch. A couple on the street started making out for the Kiss Cam in our minds. Everybody had their phones out. At Beaches, Kai took the mike and yelled: “Queer people are also allowed to be messy on reality TV just like fucking straight people too!”

On the show, Jasmine sat next to Nour and said: “As the queer community, the odds are always stacked against us. And we have overcome the odds, we represent for the queer people in the world, we’re here baby!”

“Don’t be afraid ’cause you’re not alone!” Nour yelled. “You’re fucking loved!”

Kari, sitting with Max, who she reportedly talked to no more than three times after the show ended: “We have showed the world that despite the odds, the queer community rises up ONCE AGAIN!”

In the end, it went like this: Aasha and Brandon, Danny and Kai, Amber and Remy, Basit and Jonathan, Kari and Max, Jenna and Paige, Jasmine and Nour, Justin and Kylie. It seems most of these couples didn’t last post-show, but at least one emerged from it: after the airing, fan favorites Paige and Remy both posted on instagram that they’d been dating ever since and had already moved in together. I FOUND THE LOVE OF MY LIFE ON REALITY TV!!! Paige wrote in her caption. I went for a girlfriend but I left w a boyfriend mind yall’s business. 

No regrets, just love.

Are You The One?’s Paige Cole on Coming Out, Finding Love and Breaking Bisexual Reality TV Barriers

feature image via Instagram

Last night, sixteen bisexual human beings made television history by partaking in a sexually fluid television show that wasn’t hot garbage (see: A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila) and instead was actually… kind of beautiful. The cast of season eight of MTV’s Are You The One? were consistently thoughtful and vocal about the responsibility they felt to represent their community, and they broke a considerable number of television boundaries.

I can’t remember ever seeing a transmasculine person talking about top surgery or giving themselves a T shot on reality TV before, or hearing discussions about pronouns handled respectfully and even casually. Beyond the more political aspects of the show, the cast were tremendously likable and brought a level of kindhearted drama previously unseen by the less-inspired, heavily heterosexual reality fodder currently littering the airwaves. Now that Are You The One? has happened, I can hereby declare that it is actually illegal to make reality shows about heterosexuality.

Texas native, fan favorite and 22-year-old self-described baby gay Paige Cole was kind enough to walk us through the inner workings of this groundbreaking masterpiece of modern media.

via Instagram

Stef: How on earth did you even get onto this show?

Paige: I was just serving tables, kinda trying to find my way, and one of my friends invited me to this party. I went, got a little drunk and met somebody who had been on the season before. He was just like, “Oh my gosh, you should apply for this next season, it’s going to be so cool! It’s sexually fluid!” I was really drunk and was like, “This is a cool way to come out, let’s do it.” So I drunkenly applied.

Stef: Amazing. You talked on the show a little bit about how you weren’t really publicly out — what was it like essentially coming out on TV?

Paige: It was really liberating. It was something obviously I was anticipating with the whole casting project to be able to do. To finally be able to come out to everybody and actually say out loud, “I’m bisexual” — it was one of the most liberating, happiest feelings ever.

Stef: Your family didn’t know?

Paige: My family didn’t know — I told them when I got back from filming, but only two of my really close best friends knew.

Stef: Were people in your life surprised?

Paige: Yeah, it was a mixture of surprise and support. Honestly I’m always pretty spontaneous, keeping everybody on their toes, so everybody in my family was super super supportive about it all. I guess they weren’t really surprised. I have a septum piercing and I cut my hair off, so I guess it was kind of inevitable.

Stef: Sure, of course. The next logical step. Had you ever been in a majority queer space before? What was that like for you?

Paige: I had not! I mean, I’m always around — a lot of my friends were queer in New York beforehand, but I’d never been in a space like that where everybody was queer. I was so mad I’d been depriving myself of this environment — it was the most empowering, inspiring, dramatic. I mean, the gays are dramatic. I loved it. I just loved it. It was just a lot of everybody being themselves.

In the very beginning, I had the biggest crush on Jasmine, even after we had our date and were like, “Oh, I don’t know.” She was always the most fun, and she was my best friend but I was always like, “Wow, she’s so gorgeous.” After that, I was really into Amber! I was so shy and awkward. People expect me to make the first move and I didn’t know what to do because it was all so new to me. Not new to me but I just didn’t know what to do. In New York, people kinda fall into your lap [ed. note: NOT RELATABLE]. I didn’t know what to do! It was really funny.

Stef: Was it different for you being so newly out of the closet?

Paige: It was really different! Different in a good way, because everybody around me knew about my sexuality and I wasn’t hiding it anymore. It was cool to wake up every day and have everybody’s support, like, oh my gosh! This is cool! It’s nothing to be weird about. I remember I had a conversation with Kari where she told me she didn’t really have a coming out story because she didn’t think it was something to come out about; she was just like, “This is who I am.” It was so cool to be around people who were so comfortable with who they are and what they like.

Stef: Even in queer spaces, I think being with people who are specifically bisexual or sexually fluid — it’s not always something that everyone understands.

Paige: This is true!

Stef: So the show has obviously blown up and I’m not sure there has ever actually been a GOOD bisexual reality show. There’s been uh — did you watch Tila Tequila when it was on?

Paige: No, but I’ve heard. I heard she said she was bi so she could do the show?

Stef: I mean, now she’s a Nazi?

Paige: That’s so bizarre.

Stef: This is… maybe the first positive representation for an entire reality series. I know a ton of straight people who are obsessed with this season!

Paige: I know! I love that it’s getting the exposure it deserves and actually touching a lot of lives!

Stef: What’s the reception been like for you?

Paige: I’ve had nothing but positive feedback, but especially — I grew up in Texas, and it’s… not really the kind of environment that cultivates.. this type of lifestyle? I’ve gotten a lot of really positive responses from people like, “Oh my gosh! I’m queer too, this is so awesome!” Especially with regards to growing up Christian and being a voice for that; it’s really cool to have a lot of people inspired by the fact that I can live my bisexual life and also have my faith. I mean you get like one or two haters every once in a while, but… they’re homophobic sooo (laughs).

Stef: I have to ask — did Dr Frankie ever actually give any advice? What did she do the other 23 hours and 59 minutes of every day?

Paige: OK so we actually… didn’t really get to spend too much time with her. It was kind of like every other day, and we would be in this other holding room away from her while they put the set together. When it was finally time for the segment, we would just sit and talk for maybe ten minutes tops. They wouldn’t really let her stay and engage with us. There was a lot more advice that she gave us that they didn’t show, and she created a lot of really great conversations that carry on in other scenes that we see, but I’d say we got 10-20 minutes. While they’d reset, she’d kinda ask how we were doing, but we didn’t really get to interact with her or Terence really. We interacted enough, but not enough where it felt like a lot.

Stef: I feel like the way it airs, it seems like she just sort of walks in with a blanket statement like, “Jealousy is hard!” and that’s… it?

Paige: I KNOW! They’re doing her so dirty. She was this peaceful lady who’d walk in and make all of us so happy. For the most part, whenever she was there we weren’t fighting — I mean towards the end, we were kind of all like, “Get me out of this house,” but.. we all really enjoyed Dr Frankie. I can speak for myself, there’s so much that didn’t air! She’s actually really good at what she does!

Stef: It’s great that they have this queer person there to give everyone advice but she seems very underutilized.

Paige: I think we just needed more episodes, and longer episodes! They should have known the queers would be more dramatic.

Stef: I’d never watched the show before but it’s also so much more complicated this season.

Paige: It’s interesting how they didn’t really time things accordingly.

Stef: I’m not sure what it was like in the house but from what I’ve seen it looks like it took a long time before people started playing it like a game and using strategy? Is that accurate?

Paige: No! It was wild. Literally after the first match-up ceremony, we all sat down like, “OK, what do we think now?” I would say it was very equally split between strategy and heart. They obviously had to find a balance for both. I can say on my end, in the beginning I was all strategy. That’s all I had! I hadn’t made connections yet. After every single match-up ceremony we would all get into the kitchen and we’d do some math. Obviously it was hard at first because we didn’t have much to go off, but we were always very game-oriented.

Stef: By the time this runs, the finale will have already aired. I don’t actually know how it works, like if you don’t find your perfect match if they actually tell you who it was? I get the vibe that they were sort of trying to teach you all something based off of who they matched you with. Do you agree with how that worked out?

Paige: You know what? Yeah. I would say the majority of the matches were kind of like, oh wow! Like with Jenna, obviously we all know she’s my perfect match by now. She’s the big gay to my baby gay. She can teach me to be more open and comfortable with my sexuality, and I can teach her how to be more positive and like, “Everything’s gonna be fine!” I mean, there were some couples where it was like, “Alright, you guys are going to light each other on fire” and there were some couples who maybe didn’t really consider each other until the end. For the most part though, it pretty much made sense. It was interesting how in depth they went.

Stef: But do you agree with the way they matched people up?

Paige: It’s tough to say because obviously the matchmakers can’t predict romantic connections. That being said, obviously I feel like where your heart leads you supersedes what a paper will tell you. I can say that the Kylie-Amber connection was very real and I can say Remy and I have a very real connection. It’s interesting to see… obviously in the house, you gotta do what you gotta do for the game, but outside the house it’s like, “So what? The paper says that? I’m sayin’ this.”

Stef: Since the show’s been on, you can even see on social media that some of you hang out more than others… It seems like it might be totally different doing this on a show where everyone’s heterosexual and there are only so many possible combinations, but in this case it’s so much more complicated and I wonder if they took all of that into account.

Paige: Yeah. I don’t know if they could honestly. It’s one of those things where everybody has at least one redeeming quality, you know? Everybody has at least one thing that drew the casting producers to put them on the show so everyone has something captivating about themselves. That was the quality I remember being very overwhelmed by when I first walked in, like, oh my god! It could really be anybody here! I don’t think… there was just no way they could have planned for what the gays were bringing.

Like, for example, they gave us a little workout box in the backyard, like… you really think the gays don’t work out? All the other seasons got gyms and we didn’t? We did get a vanity room though, I’ll tell you that.

Stef: OK so like, obviously they didn’t tell you before you got there, “We’re having an under the sea party, go buy blue glitter everything,” right?

Paige: Oh no no, they styled us individually for that.

Stef: Like, some PA got sent to the Honolulu Party City or something right?

Paige: I can’t even imagine all they went through to style that. It was amazing. All I wanted was to look like a slut, and I mean, I nailed it. When they shot it, they took us out of the house and it was cute — we had a little beach day, then they took us to get our nails done and then they took us to a hotel to get ready with our outfits because they were still decorating the house. It was so much fun to have an outfit reveal! We all had actual stylists putting our outfits together — “Here’s what I’m picturing for you.” They really went all in for the party.

Stef: Was there anything on the show that you feel wasn’t represented properly or portrayed fairly? Or that people didn’t see

Paige: One thing I wish they’d embellished upon more was my story with Remy. There’s a LOT that they didn’t show. There were a lot of incidents of you know, me running up and telling a joke and him finishing it; it was this really funny friendship in the beginning. When things got more intense… it didn’t stop after the no-match, which I thought was funny. I mean, I was connecting with Jenna, but Jenna also knew I was connecting with Remy at that time. We matched because of strategy; it wasn’t like, this instant connection.

Stef: Like, “Surprise! We’re in love now.”

Paige: Yeah. She was very supportive of what was happening with Remy and me, which made it really interesting. We were very aware that we were being selfish and it might not look too great, but… I mean, you can see me and Remy in the Boom Boom Room in one of the previews, and that didn’t air. I guess that was one funny thing I thought would be bigger, and it really wasn’t — me interacting with Jenna while still connecting with Remy.

Stef: I reached out to my colleagues when I found out I was going to do this interview and some of them gave me some questions of their own… It’s time to ask if you have ever watched The L Word.

Paige: OH MY GOSH, no! But I’m so excited – I’ve never actually seen it – but I’m SO excited to see the new version of it. My heart did a pitter-patter when I watched the trailer.

Stef: I feel like you should watch the original first.

Paige: Oh, 100%. I will, 100%.

Stef: But it’s not like, GOOD.

Paige: I’m the worst when it comes to TV and movies. I grew up with my parents just watching superhero movies and that was the extent of TV-watching. I just watched sports my entire life. Then I moved to New York and I don’t have cable; I’m broke… Or I do have Netflix, it’s not really an excuse; I just don’t watch it. There are a LOT of movies and TV shows that Jenna is making me watch and that’s on there. I’m so excited.

Stef: I have to warn you though, it’s NOT GOOD, but it’s sort of like required reading.

Paige: That’s fine. That’s kind of what Jenna said, like, it’s kinda shitty but it’s great at the same time.

Stef: My first girlfriend made me watch Queer as Folk and I was like, “This is a bad show.” She was like, “No, we all know – wait til you see The L Word. This is all there is.”

Paige: I know, I’m so excited for the new L Word. It looks so good!

Stef: I don’t know if it’s going to be more relatable but like, I saw more places I recognized [in the trailer], it seemed like… closer to my experience?

Paige: I think it’s just gonna like, normalize it a little bit, you know? I’m so excited! I’m SO excited!

Stef: Another person at Autostraddle would like to know your favorite book of all time.

Paige: (gasps in excitement) Oh, that is a good QUESTION! My favorite book of all time is Love Does by Bob Goff. It’s full of really fun, interesting stories about showing your love to people and not just saying it. It sounds so corny but.. I also feel like the book I have to honorarily mention.. Honestly? Twilight. I remember I read the first book all in one day. I truly didn’t know if I wanted Bella, Edward or… all of the wolves.

Stef: ALL of the wolves?

Paige: (laughing)

Stef: How do you feel about Kristen Stewart being the gayest motherfucker of them all?

Paige: Oh my god. I… She’s just such a good actor. Her character was so boring and the fact that everybody labels her as a boring actor disgusts me because she played the character perfectly.

Stef: Yeah, that was the character. There wasn’t much more to her.

Paige: Yeah, and it’s iconic, and she needs to be treated as such.

Are You The One? aired on Monday nights at 11 PM on MTV, until last night when it stopped, and now it runs every night in our hearts forever. Increased bisexual representation means that heterosexual television is canceled. Basit is in charge now. Goodbye.

MTV’s “Are You the One?” Proves Nobody Knows How to Date

I must start this hard-hitting analysis of the best show on television, MTV’s Are You the One?, with a confession: I am a Capricorn.

But with that out of the way… nobody knows how to date! And, no offense, Dr. Frankie does not seem equipped to handle this.

Despite the Black Mirror special effects, the curated matches, and the hope of a million dollars, the AYTO house is more or less like the real world. People talk and drink and dance and flirt. And when they feel a connection they explore that connection and hope for the best.

Also like the real world? Communication is strained at best.

So far we’ve witnessed the Nour/Amber/Justin drama, the Kai/Jenna/Remy drama, the Nour/Amber/Kylie/Kari drama, and last week Justin/Aasha/Max were doing some of the exact same shit.

The show frames Justin exploring things with Aasha as a sign that he’s self-sabotaging with Max. But why?? He and Max just met! Why can’t he be emotionally connected to Max and still see if he also has a connection with Aasha? Max gets so upset, he even calls Justin a piece of trash during the emoji challenge! When did they ever make a commitment to each other to justify this call out? But also why didn’t Justin just tell Max that he wanted to explore other options instead of blaming it on the game? Acknowledge and communicate your desires!

The reason why Nour kissing Kylie was so wrong wasn’t because it would be wrong to kiss Kylie (truly who would not want to kiss Kylie). It was wrong because she and Amber communicated to each other that they would be the reality TV version of monogamous. Nour asked Amber to not kiss anyone on her dates and Amber didn’t! And then Nour turned around and changed the rules for herself.

But no one else in the house established those kinds of boundaries. So why is Kari mad about the kiss and the fivesome? Jealous, sure. People can’t control their feelings. But they can control which of those feelings they interpret as a moral failure on their crush’s part and which they process privately or with a close friend. And by close friend I, of course, mean another stranger in the house who might be their soulmate.

Everyone on AYTO seems to have two settings. Either they’re madly in love with someone and want to immediately be exclusive or they claim to be madly in love with someone and then recklessly fuck around.

The only person in the house who knows how to date is Gemini moon heartthrob Remy. He makes no promises, is upfront about who he is, and he’s actively trying to get to know everyone in the house. Then again, we’re heading into episode six tonight and there are no signs of him forming any real connections.

Maybe part of putting yourself out there is accepting a certain amount of confusion and selfishness. Maybe it’s unreasonable to expect everything to be communicated when people are basically strangers.

Maybe it’s actually my Capricorn ass that doesn’t know how to date.

Here Is Your “Are You The One?” Bisexual Dating Show Drinking Game

As we head into yet another gripping episode of everybody’s favorite dating show “Are You The One?” tonight, it’s important that we prepare ourselves in one of two ways: drinking a lot of alcohol (if that’s what you’re into) or hydrating a lot (a good idea for everybody, but also probably more appealing than alcohol for people who don’t drink!) Are you ready to find your one true love? Will it be a small serving of liquor or a big swig of water? I hope mine is Jasmine.

One Drink

Bisexuality metaphor
Three people involved in any sort of simultaneous sexual activity, incl. sex or a three-way kiss
Mention of emotional baggage
Anyone says the word “fluid”
Cast member does an interview without a shirt on
Kai’s button-up shirt is buttoned up
Danny does math
Grinding close-up
Any mention of witchcraft or astrology
Anyone is slapped on the ass
Kissing in the interview room
Nour and Amber declare themselves a match
Someone toasts to themselves in the interview room
A conversation about someone’s tattoos
Anyone says the word “boom boom room”
Jenna or Kai refer to themselves in third person
Jonathan wears colored sunglasses
Jonathan mentions his insecurity or low self-esteem
Glitter shirt
Crying
Anyone mentions that this is the first time in Are You the One history that anybody could be matched with anybody else
Anyone refers to Kansas, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan or Missouri
Paige wears a sports bra as a shirt
Any contestants wear a snapback

Heading towards a drink!

Two Drinks

Spying on somebody else having sex
Date activity involves live animals
Anybody compares anybody else to a live animal
Anyone identifies themselves as a top or a bottom
Remy goes to the Boom Boom Room
Dione Slay shows up

Just slide off your chair onto the ground and plant your face into the carpet, then slowly raise your body in cobra pose and take a shot

Someone says “my heart is in my butthole”
A match is confirmed as a match in the Truth Booth

Give us your ideas for proper drinking occasions in the comments!

Episode 4, Season 8 of MTV’s Bisexual Trainwreck Are You The One?: A Love Story in Screenshots

This week on my absolute favorite program, MTV’s A-Camp Are You The One?, tensions ran high as the two premiere couples of the house (Jenna and Kai/Amber and Nour) disintegrated into an explosion of spectacular gay fireworks. There was no shortage of passion, jealousy or truly terrible choices as the team swam with manta rays, threw their own gender-creative queer prom and based million-dollar decisions on thirty-second drunken conversations with fellow aspiring Instagram influencers.

Jonathan is giving me Jar Jar Binks with this look.

🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴

Kylie baby, you can have whatever you want. None for Nour, bye.

An earlier contender for Most Desired in the House, Nour seemed determined to sour everyone’s opinions of her all at once, first by obnoxiously staking her claim to Amber, picking on Paige for being tall (?!) and then by sneakily making out with Kylie. She revealed a side of her personality this week that I would have been fine remaining unaware of.

Paige, however, remains perfect. Please come to A-Camp next year, my towering angel of light.

Then there was this:

Chaotic Gemini and serious dark horse Remy lurked on the sidelines of the Jenna/Kai breakup, happy to stir up trouble wherever he could, but in the end he proved that he is the only person with any damn sense in this whole house.

Will Kai and Jenna ever stop licking each other for long enough to meet their true perfect matches?  Will Jonathan wander out into the ocean, never to be seen again? Will this house disintegrate into five sexy threesomes and… Danny? I can’t believe we have to wait a whole week for answers!!!

We Watched MTV’s “Sexually Fluid” Dating Show “Are You The One”? and Unfortunately We… Love It?

There’s a lot to be said about what’s happening on TV for bisexual representation in general, and the unique throughline bisexuality has had in reality TV in particular, from Tila Tequila’s Shot At Love to the Bachelor contestants who found love with each other to the current season of MTV’s dating show Are You The One?, which features exclusively bi+/sexually fluid contestants of varying genders. Or, in lieu of saying those things outright, we could consider the image of Kari, a 23-year-old bisexual, laid out on the ground after biting it trying to overcome a literal hurdle labeled “fear of being vulnerable,” and arrive at similar places.

In the wave of social media buzz surrounding this season’s casting, you could be forgiven for thinking that Are You The One? is an entirely new franchise. In fact, our ragtag band of bisexuals is only the latest season of a show with truly one of the most bananas premises of all time: matches between contestants are actually predetermined ahead of time in an opaque matchmaking process somehow tied to experts and science, and a cash prize of $1 million is available for all the cast to share only if they all end up with their predetermined matches by the end of the season. At the end of each episode, a sort of lightshow semaphore system (for real) is used to indicate how many correct pairs have been made so far, although not which pairs they are. Which makes sense, because if anyone is poised to be good at logic puzzles of interpersonal relations it’s a bunch of 22-year-old bisexuals with relationship baggage and intimacy issues. Cast members can find out if they’re matched correctly by choosing to enter a Resident-Evil-style laser cybertunnel and have a computer announce to them — and everyone else in the house! Who’s gathered outside, in front of a screen, watching! — if they’re a perfect match or not. A heartwarming story to tell your grandchildren gathered around in the MTV Experience Underground Bunker in 2055!

The show’s casting is maybe not quite as groundbreaking as it likes to imagine it is – as Drew observed when we watched it together, outside the two trans cast members — Kai, who identifies as a transmasculine nonbinary person, and Basit, who identifies as genderfluid — the 14 cis cast members could be drawn from virtually any other MTV casting, and the overall level of knowledge around trans issues seems… not high. At the same time, the bisexuality of the cast members is foregrounded and discussed in frank and refreshing ways, not sidelined or exoticized; cast members talk about their coming outs, their past experiences of attraction, and their internalized biphobia when discussing their relationships and attraction to each other. The wide range of visible tattoos and their varying degrees of advisability also spoke to the bisexual experience in moving and authentic ways.

There’s a take somewhere about the underpinning entertainment logic of having 16 very young bi+ people largely occupying the “model/actress/DJ” cultural space, not a group broadly associated by the general public with successful lasting relationships, featured in a show about trying to find The One as determined by relational science and an omnipresent couples therapist with an asymmetrical haircut. The cast doesn’t seem particularly interested in that take, though, and we should empower ourselves to go ahead and follow their lead and enjoy the show on its own terms, which are both very dumb and genuinely sweet and earnest. Certainly there’s Remy, the chaotic sexually voracious Gemini that our own Drew describes as having “Shakespeare villain energy;” an extremely doomed connection between heart-eyed Jenna and little lost boi Kai, and an alarmingly intense trajectory between Amber and Nour, who are already ready to start training a falcon if the show doesn’t match them together. But as eye-rolling as the predictable queer plot conflicts might be, none of them are outside the run of the mill for reality television — any given episode of the Bachelor is more offensive in its depiction of heterosexuality than the queer representation here.

Top L to R: Brandon, Aasha, Kari, Danny, Amber, Max, Paige, Basit, Jasmine, Jonathan, Kai
Bottom L to R: Remy, Kylie, Nour, Jenna, Justin
Credit: MTV

Maybe the most surprising thing about Are You The One?‘s eighth season is that it’s… really enjoyable to watch? Maybe too many seasons of Bachelor in Paradise and VPR have given me the false impression that watching reality television always leaves the viewer staring into the middle distance trying to recoup their sense of spiritual wellbeing for hours afterward, but I’m looking forward to watching the next episode! Stay tuned to find out whether Amber and Nour adopt a pet together, and the exciting potential future of Justin the tattooed vet and Max, who Stef lovingly describes as a “sex idiot.”

As a bonus, please enjoy knowing the zodiac signs of each cast member, thanks to painstaking research by Drew and Stef.

Amber: Sagittarius
Aasha: Leo
Jenna: Aries
Danny: Sagittarius
Justin: Sagittarius
Basit: Taurus
Jonathan: Pisces
Kai: Virgo
Kylie: Gemini
Kari: Sagittarius
Max: Leo
Nour: Aries
Paige: Leo
Remy: Taurus
Jasmine: Scorpio
Brandon: Pisces