There’s surely an off-chance that we’ve all watched at least a single episode from one of the hundred or so reality dating shows available on cable when we were young. Whether it was from the Bachelor and Bachelorette, or 90 Day Fiance on TLC, you’ve had to have heard this genre at least once in your life. I’m very concerned if you haven’t.

On the note of reality dating shows, it’s also the month of Valentine’s Day! A month that’s meant to represent the blossom of love in the air that big corporations take to fill their stores with consumerist crap that ends up in deadstock stores. Besides, whether you’re single, in a relationship, or stuck in a situationship where you insist it’ll get further than that, it’s a time we’re bound to be out and about since it falls on Saturday.

So, regardless of whatever issue or lack of plans you’ve got, I’ve got a show for everyone stuck at home Saturday night.

Picture this: Bret Michaels, the lead singer from Poison, hosting a show that’s currently free on Amazon Prime, trying to find a girlfriend with a cast of around 25-ish women. No, yeah, it’s just him trying to find a girlfriend. Each episode (consider this a warning) is around an hour long within the eleven-episode first season.

Rock of Love, a three-season series, is likely one of the most realistic embodiments of the worst (and the few of the best) parts of the late 2000s. The style, the attitude, and the lack of censoring parts that absolutely should be covered. For the last bit, I’m guessing it had been because it originally premiered on VH1, a network predominantly targeted toward young adult men.

I’m not going to get too much into the show, since I believe it would be best for you to actually check it out yourself…

The First Episode: “Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time”

Remember how I specified it was twenty-five girls? No, yeah, in the first few minutes of standing outside the mansion, five girls were immediately eliminated. Mind you, it hadn’t even been Bret to eliminate them, but instead his security guard, Big John.

We love Big John anyway, okay, guys.

This action, which was eventually justified after the first season when they revealed there were only supposed to be twenty girls anyway, doesn’t even work out since one of the five ends up begging her way back onto the show.

Besides becoming one of the more notable drunks of the season, the rest of the girls go on to wild out for the rest of the episode alongside clearly intended “sexy” scenes that just seem awkward or worse: easy to point and laugh at.

With these scenes, it certainly highlights the clear direction the rest of the show plans to follow…trashy in the best way possible.

Even then, there’s honestly so much that happens in what’s supposed to be the introductory episode between the cast and the viewers, I’m not actually sure how much I can legitimately go into without raising concern about what we write about here.

The Girls

I feel like I could have said this a million times now, but to summarize the group: trashy, stereotypical, and wild. It’s definitely the type of cast I would recommend picking out of the rest at the beginning to cheer for. The camera work certainly helps in showing which characters are actually important to the show, really only emphasizing the clear disinterest Bret has for specific girls when the elimination ceremony happens at the end of the episode.

Around six girls were eliminated, while there were supposed to be fourteen—the beggar ended up causing it to be 15 instead.

Out of all of them, my favorite was probably Bonnie. I’m still mad she didn’t end up getting as far as I hoped, since she was noticeably more shy in comparison to the other girls.

I don’t want to spoil any major conflicts or anything similar about the cast, and again…would rather you see it for yourself when you have the time to.

The Bret

I didn’t want to admit it, yet he actually showed himself to be quite the charmer, more than I had anticipated. Though all of this goes out the window as each episode progresses. I would even say this becomes most obvious when he goes as far as making one of the contestants get a crappy tattoo of his name on the back of her neck.

(Spoiler: she doesn’t even end up winning despite that, and hadn’t been able to cover it up until 2015.)

Besides his attitude, which he refers to in the second season as “A lot of Rock of Like” and “Rock of Lust” for whatever reason that I couldn’t possibly figure out…he still has a surprisingly great wardrobe throughout the show.  Always wearing a hat, though and almost always wearing a bandana with it.

Bret Michaels, in the closest modern-day example, is a rock equivalent to Tom Felton…in a less embarrassing way, obviously, but the point is still there.

He became popular with Poison between the mid-80s to mid-90s, yet couldn’t drop his whole rockstar bit and made a whole show acting as if he was the same man from before. It’s basically when Felton went on to play Draco’s dad in that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Broadway show. They both tried to relive the “glory days.”

Anywho, besides a weird host with an even weirder (though way more entertaining) cast, it wouldn’t hurt to watch something new for once. However, If you aren’t looking to watch an entire season in one day, I would recommend watching Papa Meat’s video on it! 

Either way, you’ve got to at least give it a chance, especially if you’ve got no plans for Valentine’s Day…