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‘Are You the One?’ Season 5 premiere: More money, more problems. New rules, new dram…
“Are You the One?” is a youngin’s game. If anyone over the age of 35 were to be involved with this reality dating show, it would play to be a quite cut and dry 10 weeks. For the heart of this series is a methodical algorithm. All it takes is basic math to figure out each person’s perfect match, and yet this glaring rub does not ruin the show. This obvious answer key fact somehow doesn’t cloud the entertainment of the series.
Now entering its fifth season, the love goggles which fog up all coherent thoughts of the contestants’ remain permanently attached to their young twenty-somethings’ heads. That notion of seeing people throw all common sense out the window to follow their heart is something viewers, whether their brilliantly smart or barely out of middles school, can fully understand.
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Host Ryan Devlin encourages the contestants to lead with their heart, not their mind. The premiere episode, “Find Love, Win Money,” doubles down on this advice, and the stakes in Season 5 for everyone to find their perfect match are higher than ever. First of all, there are now 11 girls and 11 boys. Not only must the cast correctly match 11 couples throughout the 10 week season instead of the usual 10, if they have a blackout during the matching ceremony, they don’t just lose $100,000 from the grand prize money, half of whatever money is in the bank at the time is docked.
As the 22 singles pile into their lavish digs in the Dominican Republic, and prepare to send their first couple in the Truth Booth, Devlin surprises them with yet another new twist: Before deciding on whether or not they would like the results of the Truth Booth, for which the first couple sent in is Hayden, the guy with the tattoo of corn on the cob on his arm, and Gianna, the girl who thinks a dude with a large vegetable tattoo is a dope and safe choice, enticing the voters of receiving a bonus $150,000 to to the total winnings. The catch? They don’t get to see the results of the Truth Booth. And the two people already chosen can not be sent in again.
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The rowdy cast yells on top each other talks it out. Isn’t it way too soon to even think they could have found a perfect match in the house? It’s only been a week. Take the the money. Or should they be thinking of the long game? The Truth Booth is key asset in helping figure out the matches, it would be more helpful to get any kind of confirmation information now, and not get sidetracked by greed.
With Hayden and Gianna totally unaware, the cast ultimately decides to forgo the money tease and get some concrete answers. Even though Gianna made out with Mike the night before, a bro who got lost on his way to the set of “Jersey Shore,” everyone is still shocked to discover she is not a match for Hayden. In the end, perhaps through a bit of blind luck, the boys and girls eke out two perfect pairings during the matching ceremony.
No money is docked from the prize bank — but they’re left still clueless as to which of the pairings are right. And honestly, so are we. It’s still too early in the game to go buzzkill and use math to figure it out. We just know it’s two of the following couples:
- Kam & Edward
- Taylor & Tyler
- Kari & Mike (“The Situation”s’ doppelgänger)
- Casandra & Jaylan
- Carolina & Joey (A garbage man who proudly announces that he’s broke spent his last few dollars on a dope watch.)
- Tyranny & Osvaldo
- Gianna & Ozzy (Not a typo. There is both an Ozzy and an Osvaldo.)
- Hannah & Michael (Also not a mistake. There is a Mike and Michael.)
- Alicia & Andre
- Kathryn (the girl who already slept with Mike in the Boom Boom Room to make another guy jealous, and guess what it worked) & Derrick
- Shannon & Hayden
“Are You the One?” airs Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT on MTV.