Ready For Love is a catastrophe of a television show, a desperate attempt to cheaply create drama out of the sad, pathetic lives of women who seem to believe that they can find true love on a television show. It arises fully formed out of the idea that the problem with single women is that they are flawed—so the show is constructed of people who tell the women exactly what is wrong with them, over and over again, as they struggle to impress a monomaniacal narcissist who is only interested in advancing his tepid musical career. And in their attempt to do something “new” or “different” or “better” than all of those other dating shows out there, NBC (and producer Eva Longoria) in their infinite wisdom have introduced even more bizarre twists and turns to torture the women—three matchmaker-judges, who seem to largely function as pimps, two celebrity hosts, and a live audience, because nothing with a live audience has ever led us astray.
What’s most shocking about Ready For Love, at the end of the day, is how undramatic it is. A dating show with a few semi-famous guys in front of a live audience seems to promise a certain amount of fun. Ready For Love has none of it. Tim Lopez, guitarist for the one-hit wonder band Plain White Ts (who made that song called “Hey There, Delilah” that you may have heard approximately 1,000 times), is one of the three men who are nominally “ready for love.” (The première is just about Tim; the rest of the season tackles the slow elimination of the women and the other two men.) Unfortunately, Tim appears to have agreed to this television show in an attempt to kickstart his flagging music career, and in several scenes, he can’t even muster up the energy to pretend to care about the contest occurring around him. A single conversation is mined for abrupt sound effects and cutaways for at least half an hour in the back half of tonight’s première. So little happens, the editing team and the hosts have to frantically work to either creatively cut or prod the women into saying things they probably don’t actually mean. At one point, Giuliana Rancic asks contestant Leah if she’s had sex with Tim Lopez, right there on the stage in front of everybody. Leah, to her credit, prefers not to answer. The audience boos. It’s riveting stuff.
If it were only boring, superficial, and bland, Ready For Love might merit a “D.” There is something gripping about its sheer banality; the women are goaded to perform rote expressions of affection and care for the male of the species, who uses every available opportunity to talk up his band (which, for God’s sake, is only famous because of one song!) or play guitar or sing, staring out into the distance otherwise, as if the prospect of being a lonely “rock” “star” on a dating show with nine women fawning over him is just too hard for his sensitive, creative soul. This show has “hate-watch” written all over it.
But it’s more than that. Ready For Love is pure evil. It’s a horrible display of women being (figuratively) slaughtered upon the altar of glossy, fake platitudes about romance and love. The way the contestants are treated on this show is despicable, hovering somewhere between demeaning and inhumane. After all, this is an arena where, purportedly, several different talented women who are all looking for their soulmate are transported to a live studio audience, complete with strange, coffin-like cells that ascend and descend in sync with the whims of their masters. They are presented with the personalities of their hunky male protagonists, and decide, on the basis of photos, interviews, and perhaps compensation, to uproot their lives for a feeling they are experiencing which they have ascertained is something akin to “true love.” What kind of horrific torture chamber is this?