Take Me Out is a dating show where a man comes down an elevator, backed by whatever bad music that he picks, and attempts to impress thirty women until one dates him. It seems like harmless fun, but Take Me Out is the only show on television that is co-produced by Hate. If you asked Satan to watch Take Me Out, he’d tell you that he wasn’t really into autobiographies. Take Me Out insults everyone involved in it; cast, crew and anyone who watches.
Also, it’s free on Hulu, so I can’t understand why you wouldn’t be watching it.
It’s hosted by George Lopez, who has a sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for robots masquerading as George Lopez. The announcer credits him as “the master of matchmaking” or “the conductor of the love train” at the beginning of each episode, and I remain uncertain as to if those two titles are even remotely true. However, I’m not doubting the announcer’s claims completely. Right now, George Lopez could be welcoming the fourth Asian twin into his hotel room, while the first three lay exhausted, but still insatiably hungry for more George.
But, despite the fact that he hosts a dating show, those two titles don’t really fit him. More fitting ones would be “One time he did a joke about swimming in a garbage can, ladies and gentlemen, Geooooooorge Lopez!” or “Did you watch his talk show? No. Geooooorge Lopez!”
Here’s the biggest question: where are they keeping the real George Lopez?
Whenever George Lopez introduces the next contestant on the “love lift” elevator, he’ll say things like “Let the steak….meet the gravy!” or “Let the macaroni….meet the cheese!” or “Let the filet…meet the mignon!” Every single one sounds fun and corny and oozes with an elementary school understanding of sex. It’s like the writers borrowed all their material from the self-help guide 1001 Ways To Say ‘Semen’ Without Actually Saying “Semen” He might as well scream “Let the sperm receivers….meet the sperm!”
I mentioned earlier that the men get to pick their own bad music to come down the “love lift” elevator to, and it’s the most interesting part of the show. It’s always either a classic rock song or modern hip hop/R&B. I say it’s the most interesting part because it creates a game show in itself, where you hear the music and attempt to figure out whether the next contestant is a black guy or a white guy based on the cliché song they picked.
The contestants will introduce themselves and the ladies will turn off their lights or keep their lights on, based on if they like him or not. Then, a video package will play, showing the man’s hobbies or career, and then the ladies will have another chance to switch their lights. After this, either a third video package will play or the man will show off a “talent” (usually some variation of the push-up) and the ladies will again have the option of light changing. Then, if there are more than two ladies left, the man will choose two, and ask them a question. Whoever gives the best answer is the one that he goes on a date with.
Usually, the contestants are good looking guys, and 75% of them are models. This will lead to hilarious video packages, where the men play shirtless football and pose homo-erotically next to trees. Sometimes they get their friends to vouch for them, and their friends will spill whatever meaningless information that they have about the guy. “I’ve known Greg all my life. He’s a great dude and loves his family and my wife doesn’t suspect a thing.” I may have made that last part up, but it doesn’t stop most of the video packages from looking like they’d stop abruptly and switch the footage to that of a parade float shaped like a giant penis, with the contestant wearing a diaper and a police officer’s hat.
Look at this little guy. You could fit him in your assless chaps’ pocket.
The contestants are all varying degrees of the lamest people possible. They lack senses of humor and have the comic wit of a George Lopez robot, and most of them can’t really muster up responses that are more complex than “Cool” or “That girl seems cool.” Once, a Chinese guy compared himself to Chinese food, which I’m still trying to force my brain to accept as a joke and not as a threat to my sanity, but other than that, it’s a mix of men who like to model, are close to their families and are looking for “the one.”
That leads me to, what I believe, is the creepiest part of the show: the contestants’ commitment to finding “the one” is terrifying. What they lack in personality, they make up for in sheer ability to tell you all the things that, if you were to go out with them, they’d do for you. I can’t decide if it’s the worst dating strategy in the world, or the second worst dating strategy in the world, just behind kidnapping your crushes’ family. I could be wrong, but to hear a guy say “We’d travel the world together and I’d cook you food AND LOVE YOU, THE ONE” has got to seem off-putting for a woman who only knows the man’s name and the fact that he likes the one Jackson 5 song that everyone’s heard of.
It might be because I’m a man who doesn’t understand the tactful art of romance, but if I was introduced to someone by being told his needy, wishful ideas for our future, I’d immediately look around the room for his knapsack of animal skulls, and a weapon to defend myself with. But he’s a model, so creepy can be forgiven because he has abs, and she won’t know her mistake until she wakes up from a power nap to find thirty text messages asking why she doesn’t love him anymore.
The women on Take Me Out seem to all be in their late twenties to early thirties, and they all look like they haven’t seen a man since one tricked them into being on the show. I could describe all thirty of them, but, if you need a clear mental image of the group, imagine being dropped into a tank of sharks, but all the sharks want is someone to tell them that they’re pretty. However, there are two that are particularly notable, my favorite girl and my least favorite girl.
Zaza
My favorite girl is Zaza, a bundle of emotional issues, who has the kind of accent that makes her sound like she’s going to burst into tears at any moment. Zaza came onto the show with a bang by turning off her light and explaining that she turned it off because the guy was being vaguely similar in some way to her ex-boyfriend, which is like trying to attract a man by showing him a picture of his own scorched genitals and the blow torch that she brought for practice. Zaza has only gotten down to the final two once, and I can imagine that a date with her would be trying to calm her down through the bathroom door until her schizophrenia medication kicked in. I love Zaza.
Whatever.
The other is Natasha, who has a habit that a lot of big women on television fall prey to, where they can’t get through a single sentence without letting you hear about how fat they are. Natasha will say things like “George, you’ve shown me a lot of appetizers, but I’m still waiting on the main course!” because, if she didn’t say that, the audience would be stuck wondering if she knew that her celebrity look-alike was the Russian assassin in The Punisher. Natasha is the most annoying woman on the show, saying “Honey” and starting too many sentences with “I’m a big girl, so…” so her chances of being taken on a date drop to a number seen when you’re subtracting something from nothing. Words can’t really describe how annoyed I get with Natasha and her inability to act like a normal human. Her script is just the clip art picture of a hot dog. Natasha’s legal defense against cannibalism charges would be holding up an empty box of toaster strudels. Her resume is condiment smudges on a napkin.
Overall, no one comes out of Take Me Out unscathed. It does for dating what meteors did for lizards, and might be the most painful thing to watch in television history, which means that you should totally watch it.
I don’t think any article will ever have enough insults about George Lopez for my liking. This one comes close.
Zaza sounds like a girl I totally would’ve dated three years ago. And Nastasha sounds like one I dated four years ago.
this article is just fucking awesome! and spot on in every way haha. zaza is my fave too.