Season of the bad boy

On 'Perfect Match,' the question is whether a 'fuckboy' can change—and whether anyone really wants him to be reformed.

Harry Jowsey. Source: YouTube.

The latest season of Perfect Match is all about the bad boy.

It’s not just that producers stacked the deck by casting men with reputations as womanizers and heartbreakers. The main dramatic thread of the first six-episode drop relies on the question of whether Harry, a 27-year-old Australian with the biggest “fuckboy” reputation of them all, is reformed—or could be, for the right woman.

A timeless question. One that powers rom-coms and romance novels and many a Bumble date. But, aside from FBoy Island, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reality-TV show put quite so much narrative weight on the bad boy trope.¹

If you’re unfamiliar, Perfect Match brings together a bunch of single people from the Netflix multiverse. This season, they’re pulling from Love Is Blind, Too Hot to Handle, The Mole, Dated & Related, and The Circle. These reality-TV stars live together in a villa in Tulum and have to couple up, otherwise they’re booted from the show. It’s musical chairs but for dating: new people are routinely brought in, which skews the numbers, and then inevitably some people have to go home. At the end, the couple voted “most compatible” wins.

Last season focused on Dom, who fell hard and fast and cried a lot of tears for a woman who didn’t love him back—but then he ended up winning the show with Georgia, a later match. This season is focused on Dom’s opposite: a man with a reputation for sleeping around and playing with women’s emotions.

In fact, Harry, who rose to fame on Too Hot to Handle, announced his reputation at the very start of the show by claiming to have broken up last season’s winning couple, alleging that Georgia cheated on Dom with him. He also claimed to have never watched the show before because, as he put it, “I had three ex-girlfriends on it.” Harry admits, “I’ve been a very naughty boy in my life.” But he’s a changed man, he repeatedly tells his castmates and the cameras. He’s gone to therapy and read some self-help books. Now, he’s “dating to marry.”

Of course, the producers are sure to drop hint after hint that he is actually unchanged. He pleads to his first match, Elys, to not listen to all the whispers about his reputation. Just trust him. Then he swiftly abandons her for another woman, while coaching her, through a smirk, “If you love something, let it go.”

When he’s sent on a blind date, he tells the camera that he sure hopes it isn’t someone he’s already “spunked inside of” (at which point you might ask which self-help books he has been reading). His date turns out to be Jess from Love is Blind, and they decide to pair up. He’s effusive, affectionate, and surprisingly cool about the fact that she’s a single mom. But when the whispers start up again, Jess starts to question his intentions, and he breaks down in tears. “I never questioned you,” he says. “And I just wish you never questioned me.” Jess ends up apologizing to him.

In a preview for the forthcoming episodes, a new woman enters the house and Harry claims that they have “smashed” in the past, and that his castmate Stevan “creampied her.” At this point, the producers have dropped enough red flags that it seems Harry is poised less for a redemption narrative than a takedown. Then again, they allow in enough I’m-a-changed-man moments that the question of whether he’s reformed stays in play, and that is what propels this season.

In the background, too, you’ve got a smattering of micro-bad-boy storylines. Xanthi is booted from the show, after the tattooed Pete Davidson-esque Stevan chooses someone else, and she tells the camera: “I wish I could say I was surprised at Stevan but… I did choose myself a bad boy and we all know, sometimes, bad boys do bad things.” At another point, Micah, from Love is Blind, asks Justin, from Surviving Paradise, “Are you, like, a bad boy on your show? Were you naughty?” He responds, “I’m not too naughty.”

On a reddit thread for the show, one user conducted a “Flavors of Fuckboy™ Analysis,” labeling Stevan as The Sad Loverboy Fuckboy, Dom as The Artsy Fuckboy, Katz as The Funny Fuckboy, and Bryton as The Young Fuckboy. Harry is deemed the Classic Fuckboy:

Love bombs new women and easily distracted, leans into women’s perceptions that they will be the one to change him. His tears are real and not fake, he genuinely feels bad for himself when attacked even when he caused the reactions he is receiving. No self awareness of how he hurts others- to admit fault would take a hit on his own power and superiority over women and his own self esteem. Can feel deep and intense emotional of empathy- but only towards himself. Cannot genuinely form meaningful connections with others. Entitled and self serving.

At first glance, it all feels like a reversal of the usual conventions of these shows. I’ve written endlessly about Love is Blind’s portrayal of women—especially how the show’s dramatic tension often circles around their suitability as wives and mothers. Women contestants have been cross-examined by potential fiancés about past infidelities and dumped at the altar for not being maternal enough. The show doesn’t actually hinge on “the question of whether ‘love is blind’ so much as whether a woman is an appropriate woman,” as I wrote in the past.

With this season of Perfect Match, the question isn’t whether a man will deem a woman to be wife material; it’s whether a man is boyfriend material. But, really, really, it’s the same fundamental dynamic. It’s about a woman being chosen by a man. It’s about being good enough for a man—whether it’s for him to “put a ring on it” or reform his bad boy ways.

What I have to wonder is whether anyone really wants Harry, or any of the other “bad boys,” to change their ways. There’s a bit of flirtatious delight in Micah’s voice when she asks Justin about being “naughty.” Despite being dumped, Xanthi seems to actually relish Stevan having done “bad things.” The threat of “naughtiness” keeps viewers snagged—out of horror, intrigue, uncertainty, and maybe also envy.

Part of the appeal of bad boys is that they can be avatars for hetero women, a way to live vicariously. As I wrote a while ago in a piece on the sensitive 90s bad boy: “For girls, lusting after ‘bad’ is much safer than being bad. This aligns with the way in which women more broadly claim, or settle for, power and freedom attained through men—by pleasing them, by being desired by them, by being married to them.”

When I think back to the bad boys of my youth, I don’t know that I desired them so much as that I wanted some of what they seemed to have—an entitlement to freedom, adventure, and the unabashed pursuit of their every desire. I was a rule-following people pleaser pining after rule-breaking self-pleasers. And, yes, of course, the fantasy of being the one to change them, to be chosen, which is really a fantasy about desirability and power.

Harry understands the role he's playing on the show, and in his personal life. He also seems to understand that reality-TV viewers, who are overwhelmingly women, often watch these dating shows in hopes of trying to get a handle on their own love lives. He just launched his new podcast—called Boyfriend Material—where he playfully recounts his past hijinks and offers dating advice, including guidance on how to handle that “slimy little sea urchin who won’t text you before 9 p.m.”

In the show’s trailer he promises, “I’m gonna give you all the dirty little secrets of what actually goes inside a man’s brain so that you’re equipped to wrangle the man of your dreams, who may also be a walking red flag.”

1. FBoy Island was a dating show where half of the men were self-described good guys and half the guys were self-described fuckboys masquerading as good guys, and the women were tasked with trying to figure out who was who. Basically, the gamification of heteronormative swipe-based dating?