I have a new favorite TV show. Sure, I still love shows like 24, Lost, or Scrubs, but recently I found a show while flipping channels that is ten times more addictive than any of those shows. It's called Parental Control, and it's shown regularly on MTV. I highly recommend checking it out.

Parental Control is one of what seems to be thousands of dating shows that MTV shows these days. Sadly, I don't enjoy the current trend of all these dating shows, but I do understand why MTV decided to focus on them, rather than on traditional game shows like Remote Control. The success of Singled Out in the 90s taught MTV something: often, introducing attractive horny young people to each other is a prize that is both much cheaper than traditional prizes and equally desirable. In other words, MTV could have a game show that awarded a young man $1,000,000, but that would cost them $1,000,000, and the winner would only be interested in the money because it would get him laid. So, MTV decided to cut out the middle man and focused instead on shows that introduce contestants to skanks or man-whores, depending on the contestant's gender. Additionally, MTV realized that the audience was only watching the shows to see attractive people in embarassing and degrading situations, and dating shows deliver these in spades.

Quick side note on that: I don't understand why MTV hasn't hired any attractive women to be the hosts of these dating shows. Sure, they might have to tinker with the format a little to accomodate having a host, but the impact an attractive host has on viewewship cannot be understated. I genuinely enjoyed watching Singled Out, but I started watching it solely for Jenny McCarthy, and then later for Carmen Electra. In a more extreme case, I absolutely loathed the show Dog Eat Dog on NBC, but I always watched that as well, which was a testament to Brooke Burns. MTV comes into contact with enough young attractive women that are willing to use their bodies to attain fame that I do not think it would be difficult for them to find attractive hosts for these shows. Hell, if they need a casting director, they know how to contact me.

Side note on the side note (hey, you knew I was going to ramble, it's right there in the title): if you want to see a good bar discussion, ask a group of drunk guys which Singled Out host they prefer, Jenny McCarthy or Carmen Electra. I have more or less been constantly debating this for the last decade or so, and I have yet to come up with a definitive answer.

Anyway, back to Parental Control. The show starts off by introducing us to a young person who is in a relationship. The parents of this young person (sometimes it's a guy, sometimes it's a girl) do not approve of his/her significant other, so they convinced their son/daughter to come onto the show. As for why they do not approve of the significant other, there are many different reasons. If their child is a guy, oftentimes his girlfriend is too high maintenance, or sometimes just a straight-up bitch. If their child is a girl, her boyfriend could be disrespectful to her, or he could be too forward in his sexual desires, or he could have no life ambitions, or (in the most entertaining case) he could have previously cheated on her. Anyway, because the parents disapprove of their child's significant other, the mother and father each pick a date for their child from a pool of candidates. Then the child goes on a date with each of the parents' picks, with the parents watching from their home with their child's significant other. This is generally the most entertaining part, as the significant other is (quite understandably, in my opinion) pissed off about the whole experience, and the parents, understanding this, constantly needle him or her about it. After having gone on the two dates, the child then returns home and must pick between the two dates and his/her significant other. The show leads us to believe that the child lives happily ever after with whoever he or she chooses, but more than likely the couple has some drunken sex and then never talk to each other again.

Now, this show is only a half an hour long, but I find myself constantly wanting it to be longer. They simply do not give enough time to such an interesting idea. For example, they don't have any footage of the parents telling their child they want them to go on the show. If you were a parent, how would you sell this? I gave my parents crap when they asked me to take out the garbage; I can only imagine how I would have reacted if they would have told me they were taking me on an MTV show in order to break up a relationship that by some act of God I had managed to be in. Similarly, they don't show the son or daughter telling the significant other about the show. What would that sound like? "Hey baby, remember when I said our love could overcome anything? Well, now we're gonna find out. My parents have volunteered me for a MTV show where I will be going on dates with two girls they pick out for me. Oh, and by the way, you'll be forced to watch these dates from my living room with my parents. That's not going to be a problem, is it?" This seems to be an incredibly compelling part of the show, and yet MTV gives us none of these answers.

I also wish they would give expanded coverage to the process by which the parents pick the two dates. MTV has a pool of candidates, and the parents interview these candidates trying to find a good fit. I've found that these segments are often most interesting when the child is a guy, because the father always seems to ask inappropriate questions of the girls, with the mother getting increasingly annoyed with the father, especially if the parents are divorced. The girls then either act flattered or creeped out by the fact that a middle aged man appears to be hitting on them. As I said, MTV doesn't devote too much time to this interviewing process: the whole thing only lasts 3 or 4 minutes. Really, though, I think they have enough material for an entire trainwreck of a show here; give me a half an hour of a divorced couple attempting to pick women for their son to go on a date with, and I won't leave the couch for that half an hour.


Finally, there is one last segment that I think they could expand. After the child has returned from the dates but before he makes the final decision, he talks to his parents about the dates, while the two dates and the significant other sit on the same couch, awaiting the decision. MTV only briefly shows this scene and doesn't show what each of the dates says to the significant other. I think this set-up is a great opportunity for some awkwardness, and in the case of the child being a guy, a really great catfight. I'm demanding MTV increases the time the three of them sit on the couch, mics all of them so we can hear what they're saying to each other, and just to add some gasoline to the fire, provides all of them with a ready supply of alcohol. The result could be reality TV magic, trust me.