Dating in the Dark, July 21: Pit Stains, Boobs, and Pheromones – Oh My!

Our opening voiceover for the new Dating in the Dark series explains the concept of the show. In case you haven’t gotten up to speed, I’d highly recommend checking out my previous preview article. Now, let’s get on with things.

Our six singles tonight are:

Stephen: an SAT tutor who is smart enough to be in Mensa. He needs a girl who can embrace his weirdness. (Don’t we all!) He looks a little like Jimmy Kimmel.

Seth: an audio-visual designer. He’s open to not just picking out the hottest girl he sees. (He’s a real humanitarian.)

Allister: an English DJ who might have a career as a Jude Law impersonator.

Christina: a marketing manager who usually ends up with good-looking guys who are emotionally unavailable. She’s a pretty cute brunette.

Melanie: an assistant to a color and design consultant. She says she never learned “girly things” like flirting. She has curly blonde hair and glasses.

Leni: an Australian nanny. She thinks men like her sense of humor and her boobs. I don’t know if it’s in that order though.

Rossi comes out and announces to each side of the house that they are going to have a group date in the dark room.

Five minutes into the show and we’re already in the dark! Nice!

The singles introduce themselves in the dark. Leni says in an interview that it was great that the guys weren’t “looking at your boobs, they had to listen to you.”

Stephen and Leni seem to bond over grammar, yet he says in interview that Leni has varied interests and has bonded with each guy. This concerns him.

After the group date, the men and women return to daylight on their side of the house. It doesn’t take long for the women to start discussing who each of them like. We don’t learn any preferences, but Stephen’s grammar seems popular.

Rossi now tells the men to take off their shirts. He’ll take the shirts over to the women as a learning tool. What’s their style? How do they smell? The women also take their shirts off for the men to inspect also. This isn’t as titillating as it sounds, but might make for some fun comments from the participants.

The women inspect Stephen’s shirt and note that a dry cleaning tag is still on it and that it is “huge.” Stephen smells Leni’s blue spaghetti strap tank top and declares her to be blonde. (She’s a redhead.)

Christina discovers that Seth’s shirt has pit stains. Poor Seth.

After the smell-fest, the participants can log on to a computer to send an invite to the other side of the house for a one-on-one date. Stephen invites Christina, noting that he likes the way she smells.

Date 1: Leni invites Seth.

Leni is sitting on a bean bag chair in the dark room and wearing a tank top again. She might not be treating Seth to a view of her boobs, but she is treating the viewer at home. Seth brings beer. Classy. Now we have a face-rubbing, leg-fondling touch-fest and Seth leaves. Leni says she’s going to sample each guy before making a decision.

Date 2: Christina and Stephen

Christina and Stephen picked each other. I guess that’s better than being on a date by default. They talk about how they really liked each other’s shirts. Stephen says for what seems to be the tenth time in the episode that he really likes pheromones. Christina gives him permission to smell her and Stephen raves that she smells “phenomenal.” This date seems to have more chemistry than the previous one. It must be all the pheromones.

At this point, I assumed that there would only be three dates with people set up by default for TV purposes. However, I was wrong. Stephen has another date with Melanie, who had picked him. Also, despite the women thinking that Allister had a great body due to the t-shirt he had, none of the women chose him. However, he chose Leni.

Date 3: Leni and Allister

Beforehand, Stephen describes Allister as incredibly charming and says it’s funny that “he’s money and they don’t even know it.” Leni and Allister laugh about Allister not getting chosen.

Afterwards, Rossi shows up and lets the men/women know how their 50-page pre-show questionnaire resulted in matching them with a potential person on the other side of the house.

According the questionnaires, Seth and Christina are most compatible. I guess there was no questions about pit stains. Allister and Melanie are also paired up by the questionnaires. And thirdly, Stephen and Leni are paired up. Leni exults with a “Yay for me!” Stephen is indeed popular. Now that they know their “compatibility matches,” we’re off to the darkroom!

Seth and Christina are up first. Seth says he has brought a golf putter and four balls. (You can make your own joke!) Seth gives Christina a putting lesson in the dark. His rules are that if she hits the glasses he kisses her, but if she misses she kisses him. I sure hope she’s over the pit stains! She misses, then he misses, then they start making out. In the dark!

After the date, Christina admits chemistry and that she kissed Seth. The women have fun with that last admission.

Allister and Melanie don’t play golf. Allister opens up about his childhood and his poor background growing up. Really substantive stuff. Wow, the best-looking dude has the most meaningful conversation. Maybe Stephen is right about this guy being “money.”

Leni and Stephen are now on their date. Stephen has no idea about the blatant cleavage he’s being confronted with. I complain to my wife that Leni keeps mentioning her boobs and guys staring at her boobs, but that only results in you looking at her boobs. My wife’s response to me was essentially, “Duh.” For the record, Leni has a nice rack.

Stephen rambles about passion and ends up talking about good sex. Leni plays the tease and later tells us that she’s driving Stephen crazy on purpose and that her plan is to make him wait so that he’ll really want to kiss her. Stephen senses the pheromones and tells the guys he’s got dibs on Leni. I can’t imagine what he’d say if he saw her boobs.

Now we’ve got another round of dating, but this is “free dating.” We’re promised that it won’t go well. It’s about time something contentious happens! Well, we get some short clips of awkward comments between Allister and Christina, Stephen and Christina, and Allister and Melanie. Not much to chew on there, but Rossi informs us that after this round, the singles gravitate back towards the person chosen by the questionnaires.