Ready for Love? No, I'm Ready for The Amazing Date!

Ready for Love?

No, I'm Ready for 

'The Amazing Date'

• I admit I'm watching Ready For Love, and it's the bachelor on steroids. 
• This show unlike the bachelor has three men looking for love. 
• To help them on this journey three match makers have chosen the girls. 
• These match makers coach both the men and women. 
• This actually is a good change, but the show is still fraught with problems.
•  Some smart executive out there is saying “but look at the number of people tuning in, including you.” 
•  Good point, but..
• Ready for Love is a guilty pleasure. 
• Women don't brag about watching it 
• Men avoid it. 
• What if you could have a show that pulled in both sexes? 
• Here is my proposal  'The Amazing Date!'

The Amazing Date

The Main Step is to Burst The Bubble built into these shows.

Dating:

Problem:In a real relationship men and women have to decide what to do with a budget provided by quarters found in sofa cushions. But what we see on screen is limos to private dinning rooms, expensive spas, and fairy tale coach rides. And I'm thankful to see these fantasy dates come to life, but it also makes it so very few of these relationship last past the Finale of the show.

Proposed Solution: Make them earn those fancy dates. 

• Give them a challenging date, and if they survive they get go on the fairy tale date. 
• Match four bachelors up with four different women. 
• Who ever does the best gets to go on the fairy tale date. 
• Challenges with time and budget limits:
• A date where they have a budget of ten dollars and are dropped off at the corner of Hollywood and Highland with the objective of having a dinner and watching a show. 
• Or a date where they babysit her five year old niece together and must accomplish a to-do-list given by the mom. 
• A date where they are given a small grocery budget and must have his parents over for dinner.
• A date where they have to accomplish a spy mission together, or city wide scavenger hunt.
• Or even a date where they travel to Paris for a weekend, coach, and stay in a lousy hotel, with the objective of not missing their train at five in the morning. 
• Combine competitive game show with the love format. 
• This leaves room for real drama, stress, and high stakes 
• but with less well edited and forced drunken moments. 
• Amazing Race is like this, but doesn't have the time to focus in on the relationship aspect as much as we would want. Lets make a show that gives us that time.

No Risk of Rejection:

Problem:The guys are set up with women who want to date them. The guy does not have to be nervous about “I hope she feels the same way” because she does. Or at least she wants to desperately stay on the show another round, so she's not going to refuse you til the very end. All immediate fear of rejection gone, and our happy bachelor gets to kiss several women. As any woman can tell you a man who has been playing the field during your dating process is normally considered a jerk, not a winner. So suddenly because all of America is watching this is considered gentlemanly behavior?

Proposed Solution: Give the women options.

• I'm sure Ready For Love will go here eventually, but since I'm writing this after episode two so I can't say for sure. 
• Have four possible men, and the pool of twenty plus women could end up with any of the four. 
• This way the man can be called on the carpet for kissing Cindy in the hot tub. 
• If he really wanted Susan he should've held his tongue...in his own mouth. 
• She's more likely to fall for Bob now.

Power

Problem: Right now the women in the pool of people being sent home have no power or influence over the show as a whole. 

Solution:  One man out of the four goes home, and the women's votes decide it.

• Each woman on the show gets a token each week. 
• There are four jars, one to represent each man in the contest.
• The token gets to go in one of four jars before the elimination. 
• But if a woman is eliminated she  has the option to move her token to a different jar.
• The women get to watch edits of the challenge dates and get clear glimpses of how the men are handling themselves . 
• Whatever guy has the least amount of tokens before the finale, goes home without a chance at love.
• This raises stakes, and spreads power to the powerless.

Lack of Guidance

Problem: We've seen the Bachelor and we love Chris Harrison. But he's not able to truly help out our Bachelor and Bachelorettes with their heavy decision making and relationship woes. Ready For Love makes a good step in the right direction by inviting three successful matchmakers to the mix. But even then I feel the learning curve for the people back home is small. And we love to learn; look at the History Channel, Martha Stuarts career, Science Channel, 20/20, and hundreds of other successful shows and networks.

Solution: Relationship Therapists

• Bring four relationship therapists who can meet with the couple after a dating challenge and walk them through possible problems they saw. 
•  Also, a segment could be matching up the guys to a few of the girls and leading them through relationship therapy exercises, 
• that if done well means a fantasy date for the guy and an extra voting token for the girl. 
• The guy then has his choice on any girl he wants to take on the date. 
• These therapy sessions would be both be fascinating to watch but also educational.

As much as I want to see some reality mixed in with the fantasy I doubt it will be anytime soon. But producers if you are interested send me an e-mail ;)