MTV's Dating Shows (Next, Room Raiders, Date My Mom)
Three singles watch a stranger paw through their bedrooms from a van. A guy dates three moms and picks a girlfriend sight unseen. Five daters wait on a bus to be dismissed with one word, at a dollar a minute. MTV's mid-2000s dating block, Room Raiders (2003), Date My Mom (2004), and Next (2005), was half-hour reality television at its most shameless.
Room Raiders premiered on October 13, 2003, after a first episode filmed at Tulane University and branded Dorm Raiders, with Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey on hand to promote it. The format needed no host: one single, who never sees the contestants, is handed a spy kit and sent through three bedrooms while the three contestants, whisked off to a van, watch the live feed and wince. Personal photos were covered with smiley stickers, the three then raided the raider's room, and a date was chosen. It ran eight seasons, including Miami, Hotlanta, Texas, and Arizona editions, until May 2009.
Date My Mom, which premiered November 15, 2004, took the gimmick a step further. A dater aged 18 to 24 went on three dates, one with each of three mothers, who pitched their own sons or daughters while the dater never saw them. The dates ranged from lunch to cheerleading lessons to getting tattoos. In the beachfront finale the dater explained each decision while the kids were revealed one by one. The show ended in 2006, having drawn at least one published allegation that it was scripted.
Next, which premiered in the spring of 2005, was the purest version of all. One contestant went on blind dates with up to five people, who waited their turn in an RV called the Next Bus; a date ended the instant the contestant said "next." Daters earned a dollar for every minute they lasted, and anyone who survived to the end could ask for a second date, leaving the contestant to choose between another date and the money. A Daily Bruin columnist who went on it in 2005 spent about eight hours on the bus couch and was nexted in under a minute. The show ran 288 episodes over six seasons, to December 21, 2008, and mathematicians would recognize the setup as the secretary problem.
All three arrived a decade after Singled Out, MTV's 1990s dating game, and all three live on in compilation clips and retrospectives with titles like "the meanest dating show," which was more or less the point.
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