Coming Attractions: Age of Love

Editor’s Note: Please welcome our newest staff writer for Age of Love, the incomparable Ting Lee!!

My name is Ting Lee and I have seen the ads for Age of Love. I must tell you two things:

1) I remember riding in the car with my mom to the mall when I was twelve years old. She was forty. We were listening to Paul Simon’s Graceland. She reached into her purse under her seat and pulled out a shiny Radioshack tape with handwritten labels. Without a word, she popped the shiny Radioshack tape with handwritten labels into the tape deck and put the cover back into her purse. Big band music came out the speakers. I looked at her. She looked straight ahead. Someone had made my mom a mix tape. This was astonishing and frightening.

2) When I was in my early twenties, I would put on my best baby doll dress, go downtown, and find a man wearing a tie to buy me Amaretto Sours. This was neither appropriate nor unusual.

I tell you these things, Procrastinators, because this is the dawning of The Age of Loverius! The show that asks: if pressed, and televised, does a man prefer to marry his daughter or his mother?

TVgasm snagged an interview with the host of Age of Love, Mark Consuelos, and the Executive Producer, J.D. Roth.

JD Roth and Kelly Rippa’s Husband

Our Hero

Ting Lee: I have a question for Mark. Did the drama of this dating reality show remind you of the soap opera drama?

Mark: That’s a great question (laughing). You know what? I-I-I- don’t think you could write the stuff that is on this show. You can’t write it. It’s so good.

Ting Lee: This show cannot possibly be better than when Hayley found out you were a bigamist and you tried to get her drunk even though she’s an alcoholic and then she left you and then you saved her from a burning warehouse and then you secretly sold crack to protect your family.

JD: Let me jump in here? Mark was great? He worked on another show with me as well and that’s why we ended up hiring him on this show because there’s a certain comfort, a certain warmth? Not to talk like he’s not here but instantly when you meet him you want to go have a beer with him? And although you probably don’t want to go to a bar with him? Because you’re probably not going to get any girls?

Ting Lee: First of all, I hate people that talk in questions. Thank god you’re not the star of the show. What I hear you asking, JD, is if it’s alright that you wouldn’t want to pick up girls in bar when you are with Mark because all you can think about is him hugging you. So, are all the geezer ladies on the show desperate hos with failed marriages?

JD: We don’t have any forty year old women that are bartenders. We don’t have any women that are– what do you call them, not models but– car show girls. We don’t have any actresses. We don’t have people that are that level of reality show character. They are accomplished women.

Ting Lee: Oh my god! I have to call Trishelle from the Real World and tell her to get her real estate license so she can keep working into her 40s! Here’s my question: if Mark Philippoussis wanted to do charity work for older women, why didn’t he just donate to breast cancer?

Mark: The thing about Mark Philippoussis is he’s a stand up guy. He went into this, or realized he had to go into this with an open mind. He’s really a throwback, an old fashioned guy… he’s really looking to find someone which I really respect.

JD: I want to jump in on that. . . because Mark, we call him Flip. . .before we started the show…?…he made it very clear to me that if we were looking for a guy who was gonna kiss every girl and get every girl in the jacuzzi, that wasn’t him? And I think that kind of quality in a guy has not been seen on television for a long time. Stand up guy.

Ting Lee: Yeah, I hate when guys try to get me in the jacuzzi. I’m always like “I can smell all the bitches that were here yesterday!” But, seriously, how’s he supposed to fall in love with a withered, pre-owned woman?

JD: Here’s what happened. He thought he was going to be on a normal dating show? He thought the women were going to be young and beautiful… and he was only half right. When the first one came out and said, “Hi, how are you, I was born in 1967 and that makes me 40 years old,” he was definitely shocked. When the second one came out and said they were 42, he was even more shocked and by the time the third one came out, I think he started to realize there was a pattern forming. And certainly by that point it went systemic? It went from his head all the way to his toes and he kind of chuckled a little bit like, “Oh my god”? And to his credit, he handled it very well. He tried to keep an open mind. He really did embrace the idea and then something really weird happened. . . he started falling for them. As he starts to fall for the 40 year olds, and understand there is a sophistication and a life experience there, we introduce him to a group of twenty year old girls.

Ting Lee: A deus ex machina! Brilliant! He must have been like “Ohh, thank god I can stop convincing myself I’m interested in this crab apple’s 14 year old bulimic daughter!”

JD: (laughing) We always joked behind the scenes: ” Is Flip gonna rob the cradle or the coffin?”

Ting Lee: Well, I already know the answer to that. Come on. The kittens trample the cougars. They make pinatas out of them.

JD: In an obvious way, the kittens weren’t real threatened by the cougars. But what you see in the show –everyone’s going to assume, oh I know what’s going to happen, he’s going to go for the younger woman, but I would say, don’t assume anything. What happens definitely surprised us.

Ting Lee: Yeah, yeah. How’s Flip going to pass on his 127 mph serve if his wife is already menopausal?

JD and Mark hang up. Oooooook.

Well, Procrastinators, what do you think will happen? Will Flip and his new wife be shopping for eyeglasses to correct her failing night vision or a new lender to get her college loan out of default? I guess we’ll have to wait for the dawning of The Age of Love! Show starts Monday the 18th! Check your local listings.