The latest social experiment from NBC is called "Age of Love". The central premise of the show is to line up a group of women in their 40's (dubbed "the cougars") and turn a 30 year old guy loose amongst them. We're looking for the answer to the question "When it comes to love, does age really matter?" Of course, these are no ordinary 40 year olds. NBC has scoured the country to find seven women who have been engineered to appear at least 10 years younger than you'd think they are. The centerpiece is a 48 year old who looks like she was hermetically sealed in a bag of oxygen when she was 26. Unbelievable. So the question we're really after is "When it comes to love, does a woman's age really matter if she's hot?"
To sweeten the pot, the bachelor they've chosen is billed as a 30 year old "tennis star"...whom you've never heard of (Mark Phili-something or other). Of course, the girls took his "stardom" at face value, because really...who knows anything about tennis? I couldn't name you a single male tennis player except for maybe Ivan Lendl (and you can't make a dating show with him because even in his prime he looked like the zombie of a dead German WWII officer). Being the curious type, I Googled the guy and found out he's all washed up. Played his best tennis 7 years ago, reaching the finals of two majors, but losing them both to far less attractive opponents. Now he's regularly getting bounced in the first two rounds. He's dated some hot girls though, and (in a horrible fit of age-irony) was recently engaged to an 18 year old who's better looking than everyone on the show. She broke it off last summer though...I guess she finally got around to Googling him too.
Mark Phili-whatsit and the ex-fiance
Freshen up your coffee, pumpkin? Another interesting background tidbit from the cougars is the aforementioned well-preserved 48 year old. Her profession is listed as the 17 year "Executive Assistant to the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers". Hmmm...could she have been holding herself together over the years with some Magic Johnson hush-money?
The cougars get one round of dates with Mark before the next twist arrives. At what everyone thought was an elimination round by the pool, a curtain drops and a pack of freshly-picked girls in their 20's are revealed (dubbed "the kittens")! They send each bikini-clad girl out in what I first thought was cup size order, but it turns out they were coming out oldest to youngest. One thing you can observe only in this type of parade is that breast augementation technology has been in serious decline over the years. The boob jobs got so ridiculous that by the time they got to the 23 year old, the left one was literally bouncing sideways and the right one didn't even move at all! Do they just start throwing in whatever they've got laying around the operating room? Like a softball in one side and a Mr. Potato Head in the other? Who knows, but the younger they got, the bigger Mark's smile became and the more the cougars were fretting on the sidelines.
Back in their separate rooms (where the producers have left a set of hula hoops in the still-bikini-clad kittens' suite while the cougars are working a stack of crossword puzzles and needlepoint), the cougars and kittens are each doing some serious meowing about the others. The greatest moment is when the 46 year old VP joins into the bashing by blurting out "Maybe Mark can't handle confident career women who make over $250,000 a year". You could have carved up the stunned silence in that room and served it with cranberry sauce. Meanwhile, the kittens are making menopause jokes and other uncreative nonsense. Thoroughly uninteresting except for two girls. 25 year old Amanda, who looks like an elf archer from Warcraft III. A complete hottie with pointy ears and eyebrows...she's got a pretty smile for Mark, but a full quiver of "drop dead, bitch!" looks to shoot at all of the other girls.
For Rivendell!
The other fave is 24 year old Mary...a weepy insecure girl with frizzy hair as wild and tangled as her emotional state. In line with the show's "all else being equal" premise, the kittens have basically the same occupations as the cougars (executive assistant, lighting consultant, student, photographer). Oh well, I guess it's good to know that America's executives aren't wandering around unassisted!
As the show progresses, Mark sends off one girl from each age group weekly. The girls jockey for one-on-one time, not realizing the pattern of elimination-after-individual-date that Mark is clearly laying down. With the cougars, he picks off the obvious messy relationship histories as they come into the light. Kids, too many exes, etc. With the kittens, he kisses them and then boots them if they're not into it (what he terms "holding back" or "not being open"). The dates are as painful as they are clever. In one instance, they placed the elf and the Raiderette on opposite ends of a restaurant and made Mark run back and forth between the two for dinner. He had an hour to split with each girl as he saw fit, but When that time was up the girl he was sitting with would get "bonus dessert time with Mark". Bonus dessert time? Wonder if that'll work on a night out with a spouse? "Honey, this conversation had better get a lot more interesting or I won't be sharing any bonus dessert time with you..." Hmmm...might end up picking bread pudding out of my nose for a week, but it could be worth it ;)
Sadly, at the eliminations, the cougars all address the fact that "time is running out" for them. Time's running out? For what exactly? Maybe their days of banging 20 year old waiters from the Outback are over (or then again, maybe not?). But there was a woman in the news recently who just had a baby at 63, so it would seem that they could finish up a few more needlepoint projects and still have plenty of time to nab a husband and drop in a couple of kids.
Regardless, I'm guessing that in the end the age really will matter. Why? Because Mark knows that in 20 years, the kittens will be the cougars, and the cougars will be...even more cougary. It's a crappy system, but at least it's televised for all to understand.
