Stream It Or Skip It?

Are You My First?, hosted and narrated by former Bachelor/Bachelorette stars Colton Underwood and Kaitlyn Bristowe, is a pretty typical dating show, with a twist: All of the participants are virgins. At least they say that they’re virgins. As the press kit for the series says, it’s the “largest, hottest group of virgins ever assembled;” you would never guess that most of the 21 contestants have never had sex before.

Opening Shot: Scenes from the first season of Are You My First?, with some of the contestants talking about sex layered over the visuals.

The Gist: The first episode has the usual introductions as everyone walks along the beach near the resort where the show takes place. Of course, everyone is looking their best. In interviews, a few of the contestants, most in their mid-20s to low-30s, explain their virginity. For one or two, it’s a conservative upbringing. For one, it’s power dynamics. For another, it’s physical issues (more on that in a bit).

It seems that some of the participants just want to get laid, while others want to find a lifelong romantic partner. As everyone gets to know each other, the hosts instruct the participants to have their “crushes” ready for a “white party” that evening. Why is everyone wearing white? Because they’ll each signify their crushes by painting them with a “signature” color. At a certain point there will be people going home if they don’t have any matches; those eliminations are unironically called “Virgin Sacrifices”. And, as is the tradition in shows like these, new virgins will enter the resort to shake up already-established pairings.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The format of Are You My First? is in classic Bachelor In Paradise/Love Island format. Naturally, there’s also more than a little of this summer’s TLC reality TV hit Virgins in here, too.

Our Take: As we watched the first episode of Are You My First? we got the nagging feeling that we were being played. Why? Because at a certain point, it hit us that all someone needed to do to get on the show is to say they’re a virgin. Sure, the producers do some vetting, but how can they really confirm that a person is a virgin or not? They pretty much have to take the participants on faith. Once we realized this, what was a pretty ridiculous dating show became damn near unwatchable.

It’s one thing that we have Underwood and Bristowe filling in dead spots with comedic narration that neither are capable of delivering. It’s another thing where the puns and imagery revolving around virginity get old — one of the games in an episode literally involves popping cherries! But we don’t believe for one second that all of these contestants are really virgins, which makes some of the things we saw in the first episode hit a little different.

Take Racahel, who is one of the more unlikely virgins in the group, given her history. She repeatedly tells anyone who will listen that she has a condition where her vaginal muscles painfully tense up if something tries to penetrate. We get that she wants to be honest with her potential hookups, but she’s a bit too open, to the point where it’s almost performative, like she’s saying, “I’m a virgin, honest!” It’s refreshing that she finds comfort with Michael, a comedian who is the most outwardly awkward and nerdy of the participants, but boy that raised a red flag with us.

What we’re not sure about is whether having “ringers” in the cast is purposeful or not. Given that in the first season highlights at the end of the episode we see a contestant readily admit that they’re not a virgin, it doesn’t seem like lying about your v-card is all that big of a deal. Of course, that gets our cynical brains going.

Another thing that gets our reality-isn’t-real mode going is the fact that we don’t hear a ton about exactly why all of these people are virgins. Could the producers be holding that info for future episodes? Sure. But we would have wanted to hear more, even if it wasn’t from every participant. That sets our Spidey senses tingling, as well.

Sex and Skin: Well, it’s a dating show full of virgins, so even if the sex isn’t shown on screen, it’s always going to be in the air.

Parting Shot: A tall, good-looking guy walks onto the resort as the first new participant since the show started, and the male participants are already concerned he’s going to horn in on their territory.

Sleeper Star: We’re rooting for Michael and Racahel. We think Katya’s reason for being a virgin — “I don’t lose, period.” — is bull. We like Godwin because he’s from New Jersey.

Most Pilot-y Line: Really, the “funny” narration from Underwood and Bristowe is completely unnecessary and feels like it was added during post-production because the producers found that the show was too boring.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Are You My First? is a pretty basic dating competition that just happens to have virgins trying to hook up with each other. And it leaves us completely skeptical that all of the contestants are who they say they are.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.