Single? Rom-Coms and Reality Dating Shows Think You’re a Failure

collage by Mikayla Alpert

Romantic comedies are the comfort food of cinema. They’re like if tomato soup and chicken pot pie had a baby that grew up and went to film school. And eating a bowl of mac and cheese while curled up watching Pretty Woman? Obviously that’s heaven on Earth. 

I watched at least one of the genre’s greatest hits every Friday night for months, basking in the warm glow of Sally ordering apple pie à la mode or Lara Jean penning letters to former lovers. After suffering through two pandemic heartbreaks (BRB, crying you a river), happy endings started to make me nauseous. I guess that’s what happens when you eat too much mac and cheese.

So I turned to reality dating shows, desperate to watch other gorgeous idiots make fools of themselves in the name of love (or at least in the name of horniness). Even the worst of these shows evoked the same feelings in me as the best rom-com. Frequent, unironic use of the word “journey,” the world’s least practical bathing suits, activities that distract from contestants’ abhorrent personalities: high art, baby! 

Part of me was energized by cast members’ unwavering faith in love. Their willingness to do absurd things like watch their crush kiss other people and cover themselves in butter (on camera, no less) for a shot at true connection was awe-inspiring. Ultimately, these are people who yield to the whims of producers whose job it is to ask, “how do we break them?” and for that reason we should fear and respect them.

It was easy to see why these shows have been met with growing calls for change. After Matt James' historic season of The Bachelor was rocked by a racism controversy, it’s still uncertain what the show will do to address the longstanding issues and what the franchise will look like moving forward. In the case of Love Island, according to Metro UK, the next season will bring “a long overdue shake-up” in response to criticism of the show’s disregard of Black contestants and lack of body diversity.

I had more trivial qualms, too. I wondered aloud how contestants could claim to love people they barely knew or why divulging trauma equals intimacy for so many of them. And as someone freshly and doubly heartbroken, I was especially attuned to how each show equates singleness with failure. It was like standing alone in the gym at the middle school dance all over again.

These shows are organized around binaries: success or failure, in a relationship or single, winner or loser. On Love Island, participants left uncoupled are eliminated. Those who don’t receive a rose on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette are sent home. The cash prize drops when Are You the One? contestants fail to identify a pairing. In each case, incompatibility equals disappointment. Every person has to have their match, leftovers be damned.

Maybe it’s my Scorpio rising that’s willing to romanticize separation, or maybe it’s that I know singlehood can be just as satisfying and fulfilling as coupledom, but few reality dating shows — or romantic comedies — frame being single in a positive light. While that doesn’t mean every contestant has to go home with a trophy (AKA hot soulmate) in tow, it does mean they shouldn’t be treated like a used condom on their way out.

Similarly, much has been said about the romantic comedy’s death and resurrection, sparking discussions about how the genre never actually died, meaning it couldn’t technically come back to life. Whether the rom-com remains culturally relevant is one of the universe’s biggest, most unanswerable questions, right up there with “What happens when we die?” and “Can I wear blue with denim?” I have previously resisted participation in this discourse in favor of solitude and Notting Hill rewatches. After all, what is romantic comedy discourse if not Film Bros persevering? 

But really, the same ideas that dominate reality dating shows are also present in my beloved genre. Being single never results in a happy ending, even though there’s no chance that in the real world most rom-com couples would survive. For example, I doubt Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey lasted more than a full two weeks after the closing scene in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. And there’s no chance Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds didn’t get an annulment in The Proposal cinematic universe. I would pay full price for a movie ticket (as opposed to pretending I’m still a student for the discount) to see a romantic comedy where someone ends up content all on their own (in the meantime, I’m queuing up Erin Brokovich). 

All of this is to say: sometimes two gorgeous idiots aren’t meant to be together and that’s okay. Also, release the Snyder Cut of Pretty Woman.