• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, August 3, 2016

While watching the premiere episode of “Love at First Kiss” in advance of its premiere Wednesday night on TLC, I was reminded of a story a co-worker once told me about the time she tried out for a reality TV show.

She was a young woman, and she had tried out for one of the dating reality shows that were cropping up all over the place in the early ’00s. She didn’t make the “team,” as it were, but she was fine with that. If memory serves, she told me afterwards that the show’s producers indicated that she didn’t earn inclusion in the group of young women who were chosen to participate in the show because she was too intelligent.

A lack of intelligence may or may not still be a criterion today for making the cut for a reality dating show. This is 2016, after all, and reality dating shows have come a long way, baby. Among other things, they’re dating naked on VH1. So what’s left to reveal?

Compared to “Dating Naked” on VH1, “Love At First Kiss” is a chaste concept. A single man meets a single woman (no same-sex couples in Episode 1) in a bare TV studio and the two commence kissing. This lasts less than half a minute and then they part company.

Then, facing a camera, they each assess the kiss. “Will there be instant chemistry?” teases some words on-screen at the outset of the show. “Or will it be a complete disaster?” asks another tease. These are the pressing questions posed in “Love At First Kiss.” 

But first, there’s another question designed to get the viewing audience a-wondering: “Would you make out with a total stranger?” This is not exactly a question that arises in the lives of most of us. What would be the most common answer to this, anyhow? Would it be: “Sure, if I was drunk enough, why not?” Or maybe, “Ew! You’ve got to be kidding me!”

No one says no in “Love At First Kiss.” And so, kissing is what they do upon first meeting. It’s a strange thing that I have observed about myself: I can watch all manner of violence on TV -- all-out bloody massacres on “Fargo” or “Game of Thrones,” for example. But watching two people kiss? I find myself turning away from this.

This introductory kissing experience is supposed to lead to further orchestrated “steps” in these nascent relationships. After the kiss comes a two-minute speed date. Then if the two are hitting it off, they go on a “regular” date, but with TV cameras.

In the premiere episode, a man named Josh claims he’s never kissed a “girl” before (he uses the word “girl” to mean “woman,” always a pet peeve with me). And he’s 27. So he’s paired with Annalisa, 25, who brags that she’s been perfecting her kissing technique since she was a young teen They're the couple in the photo, above.

Another female participant -- Joanna, 31 -- says she never kisses a man until at least the third date. On this show, however, she kisses Christian, 27, before the first date. “I went for a little tongue and that’s when she pulled away,” reports Christian afterwards. Nevertheless, the two seemed to hit it off.

In another coupling in the premiere, Zach, 25, has a mustache, which concerns 20 year-old Jaeda, who worries how the mustache will affect their kiss. Good news! It affects the quality of their kissing not at all!

Another young man, 21 year-old Kyle, pronounces his own kissing technique “flawless” after locking lips (and biting them) with 19 year-old Sarati, a Texan. Afterwards, she says she didn’t mind the biting.

And so it went: Kiss, assess, date, or not date. Clearly, it’s summer in TV Land, and love and kisses are in the air.

“Love At First Kiss” premieres Wednesday (Aug. 3) at 10 p.m. Eastern on TLC.