I Hate Dating Shows, So I Joined One to Ruin It!

It should have been the perfect capper to a vacation.

Jules had spent the past week slumming it on a pullout couch in a Los Angeles hotel room. Despite being the worst off in his friend group, he’d managed to scrounge up enough scratch to cover the plane ticket and his share of the room. The rest of his money got spent on tickets to the local theme parks, food, and drink.

Thankfully, everyone had decided not to make him spend more of his money and spend their last night at a sports bar. Which was fine – Jules enjoyed his fruity cocktails. On any other night, he could content himself with watching one of the sports games on the many TVs.

What was harshing his vibe was what was being shown on every television screen wasn’t anything he’d watch. Not even the weird games he’d never seen before that he might’ve seen on the Ocho.

It was a dating show.

Jules Maddow put up with a lot of garbage in his life. Noisy neighbors he could hear through his too-thin apartment walls. Coworkers whose noses were stained brown from all the cheering they’d done for their boss. Student loans that ate every spare dollar he made. Bad breakups. But there were certain things that he wasn’t willing to tolerate.

Dating shows were at the top of his list.

No one else in the bar seemed to share that opinion. They stared at the screens, enraptured at the relationship drama on full display. They were steering clear of Jules, too. Not because he was ugly. Far from it – Jules was a decent 6 or 7 out of 10. Trim build, good face, short brown hair that cleaned up well.

Jules’ eyes bulged out of his head when a familiar hand slapped him on the back.

“Relax, big guy!” Sean had been his friend since before they could read. He was everything Jules wasn’t – successful, rich, and extremely gay.

It helped explain why the bar was showing the finale for a dating show on every screen. In hindsight, maybe that was why the clientele was giving Jules a wide berth.

“Where’s your other half?” asked Jules.

“Oh, Derek’s getting me another round,” Sean sighed. “I know this isn’t your cup of Long Island Iced Tea, but I wanted to thank you for coming with us anyway. We’ve been looking forward to seeing whether Courtney gets engaged to Sam or Shane all week!”

Those shows were unreal. Every reality show had these exaggerated personas. But watching a dating show was like stepping into a world where the impossible just happened. Grand romantic gestures that belonged in movies, petty heightened arguments, and of course – wine getting thrown in people’s faces.

Speaking of, where was his next drink? The bartender was nowhere to be found; Sean had flocked over to Derek to get his. He got up from his seat, turned…

“What the?!”

And immediately ran head first into someone’s soft chest. Someone quite a bit taller than him whose drink just went all over his head. He felt himself be immediately pushed back.

Jules tried to look whoever he’d run into at his eye level, only to be confronted by a pair of breasts in a sleeveless red top. Said breasts belonged to a black-haired woman who was easily a foot taller than him, scowling down at him with emerald green eyes.

“What do you think you’re doing down there, pervert?”

Nope, nope, thousand years of nope. Jules was not doing this. “Trying to get a drink. Watch where you’re going up there!”

It slowly dawned on Jules that picking a fight was a bad idea with this woman. Not only was she a head taller than him, but her arms were thicker than his. He guessed she must have been an athlete or personal trainer.

That would have been something he’d followed through on had he not already drank four glasses of coconut rum and soda. Instead, he doubled-down. “You ran into me!”

Now the woman was really getting mad. “You moron! You just wanted a easy way to cop a feel!”

“Oh, sure. Like anyone would want to cop a feel of those!” Jules shot back. To be fair they were quite lovely (and large) breasts. But this was the grave he’d dug. And from how hard the punch she delivered to his gut was, it was the one he’d be laid to rest in.

He was sent flying back, out the door and onto the sidewalk outside. It was pouring rain down, instantly drenching him to the bone.

Slowly he got back to his feet. “Yeah,” Jules shouted. “You better walk away, you lumbering redwood!” He didn’t know why he was yelling at the bar door.

Real great way to end a vacation, he told himself. Getting thrown out of a bar and acting like a jackass. His fingers were already tapping away on his phone to get a ride out of here. Maybe he could get one last drink at the hotel bar.

----

In the bar, Kristina Harlowe slowly swirled around a glass of red wine.

She stood out amongst the other bargoers. You didn’t have to try when you were seven feet tall.

Everyone around her was losing their minds as a blonde man on the television was down on one knee, spilling his heart out to a woman in a svelte black dress. She wasn’t keeping track of their names. Her focus was on trying to enjoy what little free time she had left.

This kind of thing was not in her wheelhouse. Anyone who took a passing glance at her would’ve guessed that. But Bruce insisted that she watch for ‘research purposes’.

The things she did to make it in this town.

“Hey.” An older man in a blue and white Hawaiian shirt had slid over to Kristina’s side. His graying slicked back hair reflected ever so slightly under the bar’s lighting. With his glasses slid down his nose, he looked up at her. “What happened there?”

“A pervert, that’s what,” Kristina growled. “We fought.”

The man’s lips pursed and his head bobbed up and down. “Uh-huh.” He kept glancing back towards that door.

Kristina rolled her eyes. “Bruce, no! You can’t be serious.”

“Not your call to make,” grinned Bruce. The two saw a pair of men wander over to where Jules had been sitting, wondering why the seat was empty. “I’m the one who gets to worry about the details.”

Bruce left Kristina quickly enough that all she could do was take another sip of her merlot. This had better be worth it.

The two men were about the same height as Bruce. After some brief introductions, he learned that the black-haired man on the left was Sean, and the one with a crop cut holding two cocktail glasses was Derek.

“Have you seen our friend?” asked Sean. “A bit shorter than me, brown hair, really unhappy to have been here?”

Bruce’s face lit up. “Oh him! I uh, I saw he got into an argument and got tossed out.”

Derek sighed. “He’s not the kind of guy to get in a fight. Did he really want out of here that bad?”

Sean put his arm around Derek. “Nah, I think he’s right. I heard someone shout during the commercials and the door slam at one point.”

Perfect. Bruce gave the two gentlemen a practiced, warm smile. “Do you know how I can get in contact with him?”

Jules wasn’t sure if his sore stomach the next morning was from the last two drinks he’d had at the hotel bar or the crazed woman who’d punched him in the gut. He wanted to throw up but he couldn’t get himself to do it.

Which meant he packed his bag the next morning in a low-level of sore misery and grunting. Who the hell did that weather vane think she was? Acting like everything was his fault, even though she was the one who didn’t see where she was going.

He checked his phone. Checkout was in an hour and then they’d need to make their way to the airport. At least the plane was on time – last time he’d flown, he was stranded in Atlanta for ten hours.

The hotel room’s phone started to ring. The concierge’s voice greeted Jules as he picked up. “Good afternoon, Mr. Sanders. The gentleman you informed us about last night is here and is on his way to your room.”

Jules blinked. What the hell had Sean and Derek gotten themselves into after he left?

He found out a few minutes later. Standing in the hall was a man in his mid-fifties, shades resting on above his black and grey eyebrows. His red and white Hawaiian shirt fit loosely on his body as he leaned in towards the door.

By the man’s side was an assistant half his age in a blue pantsuit and a cropped haircut dyed pink. She was busy tapping away at a tablet with a pen, occasionally dragging it across the screen. Her eyes never wavered from whatever she was doing.

The man’s eyes lit up the moment he saw Jules answer the door. “Hello, there! My name is Bruce. You must be Jules. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Jules’s eyes darted to the master bedroom where his friends had slept. “I don’t know what Sean and Derek told you, but I am very straight and not interested.”

Bruce laughed. “Oh, no. Jules, I saw what happened to you last night at the bar.” He handed Jules his business card. “I was hoping we’d get a chance to talk.”

The card was black with a glossy finish. Embossed on the card was his contact information, along with:

Bruce Jacobs (he/him) Executive Producer, EZ Times Productions

A slick card if Jules was being honest. “What’s a producer want with me?”

“I’m going to be upfront about this,” said Bruce. “We want you on our dating show.”

Jules tuned out everything he said after that. He didn’t give his friends crashing into the room squealing with excitement much thought, either. They wanted him on a dating show? Him?!

He held up a hand, finger extended. “Full disclosure. I hate dating shows. Why would you want me on?”

Bruce’s smile faded. “For starters, we had a contestant pull out earlier this week. Which wouldn’t be so bad if we had any alternates left. But what I saw last night? You’d be good TV for an episode or two, I bet.”

Last night? Did Bruce mean his fight with that woman at the bar? That went so poorly that his stomach was still finding new languages to curse at him in.

“I’m flattered,” said Jules, “but I’m supposed to fly home in a few hours.”

Undeterred, Bruce nodded. “I understand. That means you have a few hours to think it over. Elena!” He clapped his hands. “Give them the Standard Contestant Contract.”

The woman in the pantsuit rolled her eyes and reached into her suit. A thick ream of paper was slammed down onto the hotel room’s dining table with a loud thud. Everyone stared at the contract that clearly needed multiple attempts to staple it together.

A loud creak broke their silence before the table collapsed under the contract’s weight.

“…Elena. Remind me to pay the hotel for new furniture.”

----

Jules’ hand hadn’t left his face for the last ten minutes.

Sean and Derek had spent that time not packing their bags – and claiming they already had. Instead, they were pouring over that thick contract, occasionally giggling and pointing at parts while they said things like, “I was wondering why they did this,” and “Oh, that explains so much”.

After they reached minute eleven, Jules’ hand finally slipped and slapped his knee. “What are you doing? I’m not going on the show.”

Sean didn’t look up from the contract. “Why not? You’d get to be on TV!”

“I hate dating shows!” Jules reminded Sean. “You couldn’t pay me enough to go on one.”

Derek’s finger landed on a densely written part of the page. “Fifty thousand dollars.”

That was an oddly specific amount of money. Money that he knew neither of his friends had. He turned to look at Derek, jaw slightly agape.

“Some reality shows pay an appearance fee for going on their show,” said Derek. “And some of those will pay you more depending on how far you go. That’s how they’ve structured this one. If you make it to the final four, they will pay you fifty thousand dollars.”

Fifty… thousand… He dreamed about what he’d do with that kind of money when he was in college. See the world, get a fancy car. Now?

“After taxes, that would be enough to pay off my student loans!” Now, he had far too modest of a dream. But freeing himself from those payments would give him a new lease on life. But… going on a dating show… “I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb.”

Derek waved him off. “Please. Most people these days don’t go onto dating shows to find love. They do it for exposure, or for the fame, or the experience. Think about it like a crazy vacation.”

That was one way he could stomach this whole thing. An insane vacation where he pretended to be on the hunt for true love, all while on the prowl for money.

Jules found a sick satisfaction in the idea. Being on a dating show and completely tearing it to pieces. There was a catch, though. If he wanted that fifty thousand dollars, he couldn’t just set fire to the place and be done with it. He’d have to survive getting eliminated. Which meant he’d need to do something he’d never expected.

Jules turned to his friends, defeated. “When do we need to be at the airport?”

“Three hours,” Sean said, looking at his phone.

“…Then you two have three hours to teach me the ways of reality dating.”

The excitement on their faces made him immediately regret this decision.

Kristina Harlowe sat in the makeup chair, a look of resignation etched on her face.

It wasn’t that she hated makeup. There were days where she just wanted to look pretty, damn it. This was something she’d have to get used to if things went her way. Her lack of enthusiasm focused on what she was getting dressed up for.

The makeup artist was gently applying his trade to Kristina’s face. He was pleasant enough. She wouldn’t take this out on him; he was only doing his job. Quite well, if she was honest.

“What do we think?” the artist smiled. “The hair, the makeup, better than before?”

Kristina looked in the mirror. It was a deceptively simple job that he’d done to her. A subtle blush here, some eyelash curl there, all to accentuate her feminine charm. In her hair was a lovely pink flower on a hair pin, resting above her right eye.

“Much better. Now I don’t look like a skank.” Kristina nodded. “Can you make sure all my makeup is like this?”

The artist gave her a thumbs up. “You got it! We’re going to keep you looking good for those cameras!” With that, Kristina rose from her chair and started walking.

The place she’d been in for the past several hours was still foreign to her. Every room was just a bit too big, the decorations always crossing the line from classy to gaudy. Anywhere she looked, it rubbed her the wrong way. She didn’t belong here.

That was a line she’d heard so many times.

“Kristina?” A familiar voice called. Speed-walking towards her from the right was a blonde woman with her hair tied into a bun in the back, wearing a white top and black overalls. Much like that pink-haired woman Kristina saw answer Bruce’s every request, she was carrying her own tablet. She got within six feet of Kristina before tripping over herself, going face first into the ground. “I’m sorry I’m late, finding parking is surprisingly hard.”

“I get it, Diane.” They’d given her a personal assistant to help her out in all of this. This girl had been an oasis of sanity in this growing maelstrom of madness. “What’s our schedule looking like?”

Diane’s finger flicked across her tablet’s screen. “You have a dress fitting in an hour, then we have to do a dry run of the bachelor introduction ceremony. There’s a production meeting after that, a quick bite to eat, and then we start filming.”

Kristina rolled her eyes. She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to do this reality show. But this was the price she had to pay to get what she really wanted.

“Are they at least going to serve good food?”

Diane winced. “They’re ordering pizza, but you’re limited to salad because they expect you to have dinner with everyone on the first night.”

The echo of Kristina’s rumbling stomach could be heard from down the hall. God, she could crush a pizza right now.

----

Across town, Jules was standing in a formalwear clothing store. The store itself had been closed to the public all day, with contestants for the show reportedly cycling in for hours to get fit for the opening.

Tailors were furiously measuring his limbs and marking pants with chalk, forcing him to change in and out of several items while production staff kept giving their thoughts on what color and style of suit he should wear.

During one such argument, Jules was wearing nothing but an undershirt and grey boxers. It was deeply aggravating and the chill from the air conditioning was only making it worse. He had to stand there in front of three mirrors, waiting for everyone to stop arguing with themselves.

“You too, huh?”

Jules peeked out from his mirror prison to find the source of this new voice. Standing not far from him was another man, not even wearing an undershirt. The only thing protecting his man’s modesty were some generously fitted boxers with red hearts on them.

The man looked to be about the same age as Jules, but with slicked back blonde hair. “Shoots devolve into this sometimes. It’s why I wasn’t here earlier,” he huffed. “I swear, sometimes they can be so annoying.”

Jules shrugged. Of course he was a model. With his subtle muscular build? He’d have been shocked if this show didn’t have at least one male model as a contestant.

“My agent said this would help round out my portfolio. I guess it’ll get my foot in the door to Hollywood,” he mused. “A job’s a job, I guess. That payday’s bigger than any I’ve gotten before. They’ve got to be desperate to give these kinds of payouts.”

That got a laugh out of Jules.

“What about you? What’re you here for?”

No point in lying, Jules told himself. “The money.”

The blonde-haired man laughed. “Of course. Just remember, there can be only one winner. And it’s going to be me. Stay out of my way – understood?”

Jules didn’t bother fighting him. Best not to make enemies before he even got to the set. Not that he held the model’s attention much longer. The tailors came back out with a light blue suit and white shirt, and the man was quickly contented to get dressed and get moving.

That left Jules alone in his underwear, shivering.

A gust of wind from outside as someone pushed the doors in didn’t help at all. He was nearly a Jules-flavored popsicle. Flavor? Mid.

The man who came into the store had blue hair styled to stand straight up and with a wave, the sides completely buzzed. His teeth were impossibly perfect, his eyes impossibly blue, and his voice impossibly grating.

“I thought we got everyone ready for their introductions,” he frowned. “So what’s taking so long? I thought we got everyone’s measurements weeks ago!”

The production staff stopped arguing with each other and immediately shut up. After a bit of scuffling, an intern was pushed forward. “Uh, sorry,” he squeaked. “We had a last minute alternate.”

“Oooooh!” The man got way further into Jules’ personal space than he cared for. “This is our mystery man! I was wondering if I’d get to see you before things kicked off!” He snapped his fingers. “At least get this man some pants and a shirt on! We can’t film him in his underwear, we’re not going to be on cable!”

Jules recognized all of those impossible features put into a single package. It was the late night host whose clips kept forcing themselves into his playlists. Even though he kept blocking them.

Petey Pete.

Jules was in hell and he hadn’t even gotten to the dating show part yet.

Being interviewed by Petey Pete was an exercise in trying to find a level of patience you didn’t know you had. Petey Pete thought he was God’s gift to entertainment and that gave him the right to put his thumb on the scale when it came time to interview.

But as Petey blasted through the basic questions – ones Petey swore they’d done for everyone else weeks ago to prep for publicity – Jules started remembering what his friends Sean and Derek told him.

The key to early survival is to get the producers to like you.

Dating shows usually had impossibly big casts. With limited screen time, that led some contestants to fade into the background. He would need to buy himself enough time to make an impact – and a friendly production staff could make all the difference.

“Alright, now that we’ve got the pablum out of the way…” Petey flipped through a notepad he’d been scribbling on with a pen. “I understand you’re here for the money?”

Jules blinked hard. He was. But he hadn’t said a word of that to Petey. “How…”

Petey chuckled. “It’s a numbers thing, dear. Show doesn’t work if we don’t keep the numbers right and you’re the last-minute replacement.”

That left Jules completely lost. A numbers thing? He was ready to ask just how many people they knew were in it for the money, but Petey kept things moving.

“Now if you don’t mind?” Petey snapped his fingers. The lighting in the store suddenly shifted, and cameramen appeared out of thin air to flank Petey on each side. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and look at me when you answer. And remember, some of this might be on the show – so act natural!”

His first chance to make a first impression. Time to make it count.

In the blink of an eye, Petey Pete put on that practiced grin that plenty of people… tolerated. “Are you afraid other contestants will find out you’re here for the money?”

Hard first question. But if he was in it for the money, he knew what role he needed to play.

“No, they’re on a dating show to find love. Only fools do that.” Jules rolled his eyes. “There’s only one person I'm worried about fooling, and she’s the star of the show.”

“She’s a pretty smart cookie, though. How will you trick her?”

That was a stumper. Jules was hopeless at any game of social deception. Good at sniffing out the lie, terrible at selling it. But there was one thing he could try.

“Let honest emotion do dishonest work.” If he was going to be on this show for the money, he was going to let how he felt about the whole thing show. “I’m gonna hide by being the biggest idiot in a room full of them.”

----

It wasn’t long before Jules was finally dressed. The production team ultimately went with a dark blue suit with a tie whose stripes alternated shades of blue.

He wasn’t sure how he ended up in the same suit that was hanging up in his closet back home. Or why it took everyone that long to decide on it.

Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter anymore. He was now in a convoy of limousines, sitting in the back with a shocking amount of alcohol. Probably to encourage the contestants to loosen up (and act up) once they arrived.

Jules was helping himself but in moderation. The game had already begun in his eyes. He saw the cameras placed carefully to catch what they were up to. And on top of that, he wasn’t alone. There were two other contestants in the car with him.

“I’ve never even heard of some of these wines.” A man whose hair had turned white earlier than expected held up a bottle. He brought it close to his thinly-rimmed glasses and turned the label so everyone else could see. “I recognize the word ‘champagne’, and then everything else is in French.”

That was Craig. He was apparently a doctor.

“You all want some?” He poured some champagne into a glass and offered it to the other two people in the limousine.

Jules accepted Craig’s invitation. No need to start things off on the wrong foot.

The other person with them smiled. “Of course~”

A soft hand reached out to take the next offered glass from Craig. Ryan might’ve been the single most attractive man Jules had ever seen. In defiance of God and all standards of male beauty, Ryan’s delicate features and pixie cut made him stand out.

“Thank you.” Ryan winked with his piercing brown eyes.

Frankly, if Ryan wasn’t on this show? Jules wouldn’t have guessed Ryan was a guy. Or straight.

Jules didn’t try his drink yet. “What brings you two to this party?”

Craig’s laugh wavered. The poor guy’s nerves were clearly on point. “I um, I haven’t had much luck with my love life. I don’t usually make a good first impression. So maybe I was hoping people might see the real me if I tried this.”

Jules stared at Craig, dumbfounded. This man was not real. He couldn’t be. No one came onto dating shows to actually find true love. Craig was either the single greatest conman to ever live or he was the most naïve.

Ryan swirled his drink around in his hand. “I make women fall in love with me all the time without trying. This will be a cakewalk.”

Now there was the swagger Jules was expecting. Iron would need to sharpen iron. This was something Jules could work with.

“I’m here to win.”

That got Ryan’s attention. “Her heart or the money?”

The… money? People kept bringing that up. Jules charged ahead. “Why not both?” He smiled before finally raising his glass in a toast. “To true love.”

Craig and Ryan toasted to that, the three all taking a sip from their drinks.

That should give them enough footage to work with. Jules drank a bit more of his overpriced champagne and melted into his seat.

----

The limousine caravan crested over a hill and it was then that everyone saw where they were going.

Passing an opened gate, Jules could see there was a mansion in a sea of perfect green grass. It was two, no, three stories tall. He could make out a red carpet rolled out from the front door to the horseshoe driveway, with an entire camera crew and makeshift crowd cheering as the sun began to set.

“Wow,” said Craig. “It’s like something out of a movie.”

Jules always joked that dating shows existed in their own reality. The laws of thermodynamics? The theory of gravity? The five-second rule? None of these things existed if they defied the rules of the genre.

But seeing the mansion grow closer, he couldn’t help but feel that his joke might have been too on the nose. Places like this didn’t exist in his world. The colors were too vivid, everything felt too perfect.

It was deeply unsettling to Jules. This artifice, this lie that had been built for everyone to see.

Jules put on a smile as the doors to his limousine were opened and he stepped onto the red carpet with Craig and Ryan. He pushed through the flashes of the camera and the cheers from the crowd of what he assumed were paid extras.

Craig and Ryan couldn’t be for real. None of this was. Only a fool would go on this show to find love. With Sean and Derek’s last-minute lessons, he would destroy this show and get paid to do it.