Adam Ruins Everything (Season 2, Episode 4: Adam Ruins Dating): everything else except the institution of dating put under the spotlight

Tim Wilkime, “Adam Ruins Everything (Season 2, Episode 4: Adam Ruins Dating)” (2017)

If ever there were profitable scams preying on people’s insecurities in finding lasting and fulfilling relationships, the ones on offer in this episode of “Adam Ruins Everything” qualify as three of the more outrageous. Our hero Adam Conover turns up to a date with Sarah (Emily Althaus) who’s under the impression that he must be the perfect date for her – even if he strikes her as super-geeky – because the dating website she consulted and which matched her up with Adam used apparently scientific methods and algorithms to do so. As it turns out, dating websites like eHarmony and others are no better than allowing chance to determine whether two strangers matched together will stay together, for the reason that among other things the criteria used (personality characteristics or shared likes and dislikes) are poor, even irrelevant guides to a couple’s compatibility.

Having disabused Sarah of her misconceptions about dating websites, Adam proceeds to demolish the myth of the alpha male – based in part on research done by L David Mech on the social lives of wolves in the 1970s which the scientist later found he could not replicate two decades later and which (to his credit) he disavowed and tried to warn other researchers not to repeat – and the credibility of the Myer-Briggs psychological questionnaire, the related Keirsey Temperament Sorter and other personality tests based on fixed personality stereotypes. Wolves are now known to form family groups consisting of a male-female adult pair accompanied by two sets of offspring, one set older than the younger; the older offspring usually help teach the younger cubs to hunt. Only in very exceptional circumstances (if the animals’ environment has restrictions that don’t permit wolves to roam freely, or the prey species are experiencing a population boom) would wolves form large packs in which the animals observe  strict social hierarchy and bully others. The Myer-Briggs Type Indicator lacks scientific rigour and depends largely on self-reporting questionnaires; in the way it assigns up to 16 personality types to people, it resembles astrology.

The episode is very entertaining with just enough slapstick to hold young viewers’ attention. It can be buffoonish in parts but the breathless pace sweeps scenes out of sight before they become too silly. As in most episodes, Adam’s companion becomes despondent and Adam has to try to cheer her up without becoming too upset himself.

What the episode has no time for, given that it’s only about 25 minutes and has to deal with three more or less unrelated popular myths, is the issue of dating itself and the cultural assumptions and expectations that accompany it. How did dating arise in Western society as an institution and why does Western society regard the notion of two strangers meeting and being swept off their feet emotionally by one another as the best way for love and families to develop? What is implied about the nature of Western society that the institution of dating attracts dodgy schemes and practitioners like dating websites or match-makers of one sort or another to exploit people’s uncertainties and credulity for profit?