Coupled Is The Bachelor on Ice, Which Unfortunately Means It's Super Boring

As the original and most successful dating show, it’s impossible to launch a new iteration of the matchmaker format without garnering comparisons to The Bachelor franchise. Of course, many others have left their mark on our culture throughout the years (Temptation Island, Rock of Love, Dating Naked), but the producers of The Bachelor have been able to keep theirs going the longest because they’re really good at what they do. They know that you need characters you’re invested in, which is why they pick leads who have appeared on seasons past. They know they need to control the environment in which their cast exists, and push people emotionally to heighten the drama. They know they need to edit their hours of footage to make it look a lot more interesting than it actually is.

The Bachelor and Bachelorette are deeply structured shows, ones that have shifted only slightly over their many seasons. You’d think because of that, updates on that structure—like the ones attempted by FOX’s Coupled, which premiered on Tuesday night—would feel fresh. Instead, Coupled ends up feeling even more hackneyed, working with a patchwork of techniques from different shows that have come before it, its audience unaccustomed to them the way they are with The Bachelor’s tropes. Coupled (executive produced by Survivor and Shark Tank’s Mark Burnett) has been marketed as show for the modern women, one that puts the power in their hands as to whom they want to date. Twelve women enjoy the “Caribbean Islands,” as men are individually helicoptered in (to much excitement, alá Bachelor in Paradise) for them to meet. They each have a brief meeting with the man in question, and then, out of his eyesight, choose whether to walk left (a rejection) or right, to meet him at a tiki bar where they can continue to chat with him. (Get it, it’s like Tinder.) Here’s a brief exchange two individuals had during one of these meetings: