Should You Send A Valentine To #BlackLove?

What Is This Thing?

In New York City, five African-American women who've enrolled in a "dating workshop" let cameras follow them on their dates and with their romantic exercises and adventures.

When Is It On?

Tuesdays at 10PMish? If you watch Married At First Sight -- and you probably aren't watching this if you don't -- you know that MAFS rarely stays within its allotted hour; #BlackLove comes on whenever that thing ends.

Why Was It Made Now?

Between Married At First Sight; its spinoff, Married At First Sight: The First Year; and Arranged, fyi is turning into the "freak relationships" network. This one transplants MAFS S1 alumna Monet Bell to a new format, likely in the hopes that she'll be able to parlay that into a normal relationship with a normal person that proceeds in a normal fashion.

What's Its Pedigree?

Pretty much what you'd assume. In addition to Monet, Chris Coelen, an EP on MAFS, is also an EP here.

...And?

One of the reasons that I never really got into the Real Housewives shows is that the bitches in their casts (a) weren't really friends before their shows began and (b) certainly have no reason to continue being friends given the ways they brutally attack each other except that the shows they're all on require them to keep interacting, and there's a whiff of that about this: the five ladies here -- in addition to Monet, there's Laree, Tennesha, Cynthia, and Jae -- are never described as having been friends before they all ended up in this "dating workshop" together, but they do hang out on the same side of a table in various social settings through the series premiere in a way that makes me feel like we were supposed to think that they were. And anyway, the whole "dating workshop" conceit is fakey enough: is this a workshop that would exist were it not for fyi's cameras? Can reality show non-participants take this course with Psychotherapist Jack Daniels (...poor man) and "Certified Dating Expert" (?) Damona Hoffman? Given that what we see of the workshop's classes definitely take place on a soundstage, I'm guessing no.

But this is my own issue: I should definitely know by now that even shows that style themselves pure documentaries absolutely aren't, and pretty much the only thing that distinguishes the junky shows like this one from the fancy ones like Project Greenlight is the effort taken to hide the seams. If the show wants to pretend Tennesha is moving apartments, one chair at a time, in a dress, really, what do I care? Far more egregious is when it tries to make me believe that a guy showed up at a coffee shop for a daytime blind date with Monet, and busted out a bottle of rum and some shot glasses to help them loosen up. I'm sure there are men that clueless when it comes to first meetings with ladies they want to date; I really doubt there are any who don't know better than to do that kind of shit when cameras are on them.

...But?

Most of this episode was a big [shrug] for me; other than a fleeting mention up top about dating white guys who get fetishistic about what their skin will look like next to that of black women they might date, nothing about the show really seemed to suggest that it couldn't have just been called #Love. But about three-quarters of the way through, Damona comes over for a house call at Jae's to talk about whether she's limiting herself by not dating men her own age; she tends to prefer men who are wealthy and significantly older than she -- or, as Jae puts it, "established." Jae explains to Damona that she's had bad experiences with men her age in the past, because they're not as far along in their careers, or in terms of building the kind of life they will eventually want, as she would prefer them to be. Damona turns this into a question about Jae's background. Jae sees through this, and asks Damona whether white women who consider themselves upwardly mobile would get asked whether their material needs are indicative of deprivation in their childhoods. HMMMMM, INTERESTING QUESTION! I obviously don't know the answer, but I'm impressed that the question was asked! Damona claims she works with women of all races and that she would ask a Caucasian woman that very thing and the moment's smoothed over, but from the supertease for the season, it looks like this is an issue that comes up again, and I'm fascinated that the show will even allow it to be raised.

Jae's also not sure she wants this dating workshop to teach her how to get on the marriage track in her next relationship at all; she might want an open relationship. Who is this woman who dares challenge the premise on which all dating shows are based by calling into question the idea of monogamy? I HAVE TO KNOW. (If I'm being honest, I'm pretty sure Jae wants an open relationship in the sense that she'd like one guy around to pay for things and then another one to have sex with -- but still: who cares, and good for her.)

I also have to give credit to (poor) Jack Daniels. On her season of Married At First Sight, we heard a lot about Monet's having asked the "experts" to match her with a man who was very traditional, only to bristle when Vaughn, her temp husband, wanted her to cook him dinner and spend time fucking him rather than having brunch with her friends. She also says at the top of this episode that she wants someone who's figured his life out "No Build-a-Bears" -- which turns out just to mean she wants someone who takes her feelings into account and plans for a future with her in it. This is something so rare she has to spell it out? It's something so hard to find that she regards basic human consideration to be a skill she would have had to teach past partners? If so, that is rough stuff, and maybe the ones enrolled in a "dating workshop" should be MEN? Anyway: Daniels sits down with Monet and tells her in no uncertain terms not only that she doesn't actually want a "traditional" man; what she wants is a gentleman (or, as I might put it, a conscious human with basic empathy and life skills). If he accomplishes nothing else at all, getting Monet to drop "traditional" from her vocabulary is a significant service Daniels has done her.

...So?

Like I said, this was almost a pass until it got really interesting. I'm not too fancy to check out a few more.