Reality TV

10 MTV Dating Shows Millennials Can’t Forget

If you were a teenager with access to cable TV in the 2000s, chances are you watched other young adults embarrassing themselves on MTV dating shows.

Even when the channel still had music programming, back during the Total Request Live and Making the Video era, reality TV was encroaching, and dating shows like Room Raiders and Next were particularly popular.

Here are details on those shows and other MTV dating shows millennials can’t forget — even if they wanted to.

Date My Mom

Parent-child boundaries go out the window in this MTV series, in which young folks date the mothers of three romantic prospects. In this episode, we see a guy named Jeremy meet Dianna, whose son is the much more age-appropriate Josh. “Jeremy’s cute! Josh would bone him,” Dianna tells the camera with a laugh as we melt into our sofas.

Dismissed

If you’ve ever cringed your way through one of the group dates on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, you already have a sense of this dating show. One individual goes on a date with two people at the same time and chooses one to dismiss at the end of the day. We get confessionals along the way… and, of course, the romantic rivals throw shade, too.

Exposed

If you’ve ever wanted a dating show version of Fox’s The Moment of Truth, this one’s for you. Again, we have one person dating two prospects at once, but this time, a friend in a nearby RV is monitoring the output of lie-detection software. In this clip, for instance, Blake gets caught in an apparent fib when he claims (rather unconvincingly) that civil rights are important to him.

Is She Really Going Out With Him?

If some future anthropologist hopes to study the bleak state of the heterosexual dating world in the 21st century, they could simply watch this series, in which young women give second, third, and fourth chances to their obnoxious, undeserving boyfriends. “The name for my style would have to be summed up in one word, and that would be fresh,” says one guy in this trailer.

My Own

Even 2000s-era Beyoncé probably wouldn’t deign to go on a date with a fan for MTV, so the network got the next best thing: A reality show in which a person obsessed with a certain celebrity audition would-be partners who sing, dance, and act like that celeb for a chance at a date. (Are we really supposed to believe that this guy has a shrine to Queen Bey in his bedroom, though?)

Next

Imagine being swiped left in person, and you have Next, where the star of each episode swaps out one date for another just by saying, “Next!” And MTV leaves it to each contestant to introduce themselves. “I’m a pre-med student, so I really know my way around a naked body,” says one guy, presumably before getting kicked out of his pre-med program.

Parental Control

And we’re back to meddling parents! In each episode of this show, the parents of a 20-something interview potential dates for their child, all to replace the partner of whom they don’t approve. Then, after selecting eligible bachelors or bachelorettes, the parents sit down to watch the ensuing dates unfold… along with the partner they’re hoping to place. And you can tell it’s not scripted in the slightest.

Room Raiders

Yes, it’s probably efficient to screen potential partners by the contents of their bedrooms. But it also gets gross real quick. (Why would the woman in this clip sniff the retainer she finds?!) Turnabout is fair play, though, and those whose rooms are raided raid the raider’s room at the end of each episode. (That’s how these guys find and manhandle the woman’s adhesive bra inserts.)

Score

What, you’d rather not watch aspiring musicians perform original songs dedicated to the person they’re trying to woo in front of a live audience? Luckily for the blind dates who are subjected to the sappy songwriters, the serenaders have Ryan Cabrera on their side: The “On the Way Down” singer helps them hone their lyrics and performance.

Taildaters

Everyone gets their friends’ advice for their dating life, but usually not in real-time. But here, we have people going on dates as their friends watch the events unfold from a “stakeout bus.” And in a particularly early-aughts detail, the friends offer tips to the daters via pagers. Pagers!

Do you remember these MTV dating shows? Let us know in the comments below.