Letter #59: Transit Love 2

Good morning, Erin.

In fairness, I only watched this because a podcast I really enjoy is watching it. So…this isn’t my fault.

Of course, also in fairness, I only started listening to this podcast because you made me watch Single’s Inferno 2, so…

I mean, I’m not pointing fingers. I’m just saying. None of this is my fault. 

Cough.

Now, I know I strongly recommended Transit Love 2, but I also know it’s, like, a 50-hour investment via, um, less convenient means of broadcast, and episodes start crossing into the two-and-a-half-hour range pretty early on (and, in a couple of cases, easily surpass the three-hour mark). It’s more than just “a commitment” to watch it, and I know you’ve got other things to get to. 

So, I’m going to do something a little (but not much) different, today, and I’m going to both sort of spoiler-y and also not-at-all spoiler-y for this letter. You can read it and still watch the show, or you can read it and not really have to watch the show (though I’m obviously going to skip all the juiciest parts).

I know, I know. I’m the best. 

Let’s talk about Transit Love 2:

1. One of the best things about the show is that they don’t tell you who the ex-couples are, when the show starts, so you get to play detective at home as you watch everyone interact. And it is A LOT of fun to try to suss out clues. 

1A. Of course, in the end, I only guessed one ex-couple correctly. Mostly because I was sooooo sure I had the others pegged, and these were the leftovers. 

2. In fairness to me, though, this show is very, very, very good at doing those reality show editing tricks to keep you off-balance. (And, in some cases, the show has to really, really try, because one of the cast members couldn’t help but sort of give it away. Repeatedly.) So…I will describe it as me being duped—but in a really fun way. 

3. It will not surprise you at all who I picked as #BestGirl. Maybe you won’t know it right away, but there will come a moment when you say, “Oh, it’s her. It’s totally her.”

4. …though I bet you’d be surprised to find out who my runner-up choices were. (Or maybe not. You’re pretty savvy, from my experience. Or maybe I’m just very obvious.)

5. I mentioned this in my Welcome to Waikiki 2 letter, but Good Boy’s Sister 

[considers looking up actress’s name]

[does not look up actress’s name]

is one of the hosts of this show, and my notes are replete with cooing over how pretty I think she looks, here. I will spare you the blushing fanboy details, but I do want to mention that she wore a suit and tie, in one episode…and you know how I like a gal in a suit and tie. 

5A. Also, she totally rocked this beret in episo—y’know what it doesn’t matter. 

6. …speaking of Good Boy’s Sister, though: she’s an introvert. Which just makes me like her more. 

7. But I only mentioned that because the cast on this show is SUUUUUUPER into detailing their Meyers-Briggs personality types. Like, a lot of the cast will refer back to someone’s “type” as an explanation for someone’s reaction or opinion or, in some cases, as an assumption about how someone will feel about something he or she doesn’t yet know about. Which I found…odd. Well, odd in that I wouldn’t think to use that as my go-to for interactions in the same way I wouldn’t use astrological signs as my go-to explanation for my interactions with people. So, I was surprised by how much value it seemed to carry with so many of the people there. 

7A. INTP, by the way. For me. Except when I took it previously and was an INTJ. Or the time before that when I was an ISTJ. 

7B. Point is—I’m an introvert and value thinking over feeling. So…adjust accordingly. I guess. 

7C. Also: still a Pisces. In case you forgot. 

8. Once again, no one exchanges names, as people gather one by one. I don’t understand why, but this seems to be a pattern with these dating shows. Though, at the very least, they do all say hello to each other. (And, amongst the girls, compliment how pretty they are.)

9. The show provides about 900 pairs of house slippers for the cast. Seriously, there’s a rack with five pairs every 15 feet, it feels like. 

10. The only thing there are more of than slippers (…aside from shots of one of the girls crying) are potted plants. Which you don’t realize, at first. Like, one of the expressed rules of the show is that you have to water the plants, which seems both funny and like not that big a deal, at a glance—until you actually start looking around. 

10A. One guy takes—and I don’t think I’m exaggerating—the better part of four hours to do all of them on his own. 

10B. …it kinda becomes his thing, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t kinda love it. 

11. Unsurprisingly, there’re a few conversations about “ideal types,” and one of my favorite girls on the show totally nails it, when she weighs in: ideal type and what you find yourself drawn to rarely match up. (I mean, unless you’re fastidious and self-reflective enough to recognize the traits you most seem to respond to are the ones you genuinely seem to find “ideal.”)

12. There isn’t a fight pit, in this, but there may as well have been. Briefly. But…still.

13. On one of the dates, there’s a poster of Mr. Goblin behind them. I mean, I assume the actor is featured in, like, a watch advertisement or something. But I totally knew it was him. 

14. Daryl, circa Episode 5, 10:45 PM: “Man, I can’t put this show down! Maybe I can squeeze in one more befo—TWO HOURS?! I have to get ready for bed; I have work tomorr—y’know what, f*** it, I have super-caffeinated tea at my desk let’s gooooooooooo!”

15. Daryl, circa Episode 6, 12:15 AM: “…wait, I’m supposed to be writing my letter for The Glory.”

16. I’ve mentioned her already, but there’s a girl on this show who almost literally does nothing but cry the entire time she is there. To the point where she actually literally says she’s become a meme: every time she walks into a room, one of the other participants moves the box of tissues closer to her.

17. Boy-howdy, some of the hosts on this show get really invested in what’s going on. Like, imagine the reaction to Seul-ki picking Jong-woo—but for everything. I dunno if they’re putting on a show or just deeply emotional, but…I mean, I didn’t have to hide under blankets and pillows, like, ever, with this show, so I dunno what there was to get so emotional about all the time. 

18. To wit: this is actually a pretty chill time, for one of these dating shows. Maybe people who want higher-octane or snappier or tighter “stories” with their dating programs will find it slow, but I quite enjoyed the pacing. I liked how much time could be spent getting to know the cast (both in interviews and via their interactions with each other) and, as such, how the “dramatic” parts came not from forced or edited melodrama but from knowing how the people in the cast tended to react to things—and how this tended to give us more context for what we were watching unfold, which makes the typical heroes-and-villains classifications feel a lot more legitimate. 

18A. Plus, everyone on the show was pretty nice. 

18B. Which is not to say I didn’t hate a couple of them. Loudly. 

18C. And which is not to say the show didn’t do its level best to force things to get dramatic or play up some heroes-and-villains stuff. But this all happens in the last, like, three or four days of the 21-day show. Which is also when we get a consistent flow of three-hour(-ish) episode and aaaaaaaaaall the repetitive conversations that come along with that. 

18D. That said, we also get some of the most romantic stuff here, so…swings and roundabouts. 

19. One of the boys doesn’t have the best luck impressing the ladies—but I think most of the boys would be open to dating him, if they let themselves be really honest. (Legitimately: this dude gets more play than anyone else on the show, if you count how often the boys show him affection.)

20. I don’t understand how no one on this show dropped from exhaustion. They don’t typically get to bed until, like, 5 AM. And some of them get up and go to work a few hours later. It’s nuts. 

21. The show—literally the production—totally tricks one of the guys into thinking one of the girls was anonymously coming onto him when she absolutely was not. And his reaction to this (before he finds out it’s not true) is hilarious. He totally changes how he speaks to her, he does the “how you doin’?” lean—it’s great. 

21A. It is also hilarious to see his reaction to finding out she wasn’t the one coming onto him. 

22. If I thought this group was bad at telling each other their names, it was nothing when compared to how poorly everyone treats closed bedroom doors: knock-knock-enter is some “I think my kid might be looking at naughty videos on the internet” nonsense, guys. You knock, you wait to hear if you can go in, and then you enter. I mean, yes, there’s only one instance where someone walks in on a dude changing his shirt (and it’s his ex- who happens to walk in on him), but that doesn’t negate what bad form this is!

23. For the record: the crying girl makes a sad pout with her lips every time she’s about to cry, and she makes these little innocent whimpering sounds, and they’re both, like, straight out of a Disney movie. I would go from rolling my eyes to desperate to comfort her every single time. I don’t think it was a put-on or anything, but…dammit, talk about emotionally manipulated. How do you defend against that?!

24. One of the girls believes she is the world’s greatest detective, and I think there’s literally only one thing—out of all the things you could guess at, ex-related or otherwise—she ever gets right. But, gosh darn it, she is positive she’s on top of things, when she declares her deductions. 

24A. Of course, then her less outspoken roommate often gently counters her deductions with her own and is usually 100% correct. And hilarious.

24B. Speaking of: there is one very big moment that comes down to this girl’s deduction skills, and it is perhaps my favorite moment in the series for just how spectacularly wrong she is. (And the fallout from it is maybe even funnier.)

25. I’m not going to claim anyone on this show is a drunkard…but I’m also not going to argue with someone who would. 

26. My “these two should totally match up!” skills turned out to be as good as my “these two totally used to date!” skills. Just…for the record.

27. Wait—I just remembered! So, the dude I said was (sort of) more successful with the guys than the girls? One of the guys did ask him out! Well, technically, he asked him if he wanted to go do…something, I forget what. So, it wasn’t, like, an official show-date, and we certainly don’t see any of it—BUT…his ex-girlfriend does say “date” when describing their outing. So, I say it counts. 

28. I don’t know what this is about…but, on this show, being a competent driver is apparently a sexy quality to have. 

29. Is that a Subway sponsored dinner scene I see? Why yes. Yes, it is. #SuckItSinglesInferno

30. When things start to get all dramatic, the show starts to add in more and more musical cues to really intensify the narrative they’re trying to shape. And it’s hilarious. Like, at one point, one of the girls notices something about her ex- and the new girl he’s been hanging around with, and it plays this horror movie soundtrack underneath the scene. And it’s brilliant. 

31. One of my favorite moments on this show comes in Episode 14 when it lets us know that, after about 10 or 11 days of being together in the house, the endless late-night conversations just turn into everyone sitting silently in front of the TV. 

31A. Of course, up until that moment, I didn’t even know there was a TV in that house. 

31B. The very best part about this is that they’re watching Pulp Fiction—and, because they’re watching the subtitled version, we can hear the original English…which, if you’ve ever seen it, you know is full of swear words and casual usage of racial epithets. But the show doesn’t bleep any of this out, because it’s all in a foreign language, so…who even knows what they’re saying, right? Hilarious.

31C. There’s also this cute moment where one of the girls explains to one of the boys that the story is told out of sequence, and you can actually see the realization wash over his face. 

32. I thought one of the songs they used was a fun Alec Benjamin track, but it was not. Which was disappointing. The song’s still really, really fun, though, so it’s still a win. But I really thought I knew who was singing. And I did not. 

33. I wonder how well you’d peg who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are on this show, given how good your instincts were about the Single’s Inferno 2 participants. 

34. One of my favorite things about the hosts is something I think is a negative about them: they will frequently make observations about the cast that seem like they’ve gleaned some hidden truth by reading between the lines, but they’re almost always just repeating something the cast members have openly stated in their interview segments. 

35. I hate Truth or Dare…but I 100% forgive this show for its Truth or Dare session because one of my favorite girls had a literal list of questions prepared in advance, should the game ever come up. It was worth it just to see her pull out her phone and start reading. 

35A. …followed by the one person in the group who doesn’t like the idea of playing this game eventually getting so frustrated with how tense it’s getting that he just asks a barrage of incredibly straightforward questions in an attempt to get everyone to the point where they don’t want to play anymore. And I love him for it. 

36. Later in the show, people visit a restaurant called Adult Bambino—bambino being Italian for “baby.” So…”adult baby.” 

37. Which, whatever, because my two favorite participants eventually go to a coffee shop named after a reference to Iron Man, and every other dining moment in the show can jump in a lake. 

38. There is an argument between an ex-couple where the girl is just running circles around the boy, he’s so thick and inarticulate—but he’s actually so inarticulate that he actually forces her to make his argument for him…and she does such a good job that she actually totally undercuts her original argument and makes herself the bad guy. 

39. My favorite “you and I are gonna have a chat” interaction between a girl and her ex-’s new romantic interest goes like this:

“Excuse me for a moment. I’m going to get up and use the bathroom.”

“Oh, you can use the bathroom in my room.”

“But there’s a bathroom here.”

“Mine’s closer.”

“...than right here?”

It’s the least slick thing ever, and I love it. 

40. Allow me to set your mind at ease and reassure you that I am still the world’s greatest detective by letting you know that I cracked the code: “this is fun” is Transit Love 2 code for “this is not fun at all but maaaaaybe I can will it into being fun if I say it out loud.”

41. The final episode was over two-and-a-half hours long, and I could not imagine how they were going to fill the time…until they unveiled the method by which they were going to do the “final choice” portion of the show, which is maybe the most convoluted method they could have come up with, regardless of how much I understand why they did it that way. It literally takes about 12 hours to complete the whole process—and, because of this, not infrequently involves the production staff literally having the contestants get calls asking them to hurry the f*** up. It’s bonkers. And totally brilliant, in terms of its dramatic effect. Very satisfying to watch. 

And that’s all I think I have about that. Well, that I think is worth mentioning without you having seen the show, of course. 

Such a good time. I really, really recommend it. (And the podcast I’m listening to about it. They’ve gotten through four episodes, and it is HILARIOUS listening to how sure of their detective work they are when I know exactly how wrong all of their deductions will turn out to be.) And, yeah, I’m totally going ot give the third season a chance, when it comes out. Because why not?

And, just for the record, I can’t imagine a single one of my ex-girlfriends—of any stripe—considering me for this kind of show, likely for the same reason I can’t imagine I’d agree to go with any of them.

…um, anyway.

—Daryl