Reality dating shows don’t have great odds for lasting coupledom, though Love Is Blind, with its obscured faces and bodies, apparently fares the best in terms of matches that stick. The new Netflix dating show Sexy Beasts (July 21) takes only the face out of the equation, obscuring contestants’ heads with mascot-style costumes: a panda, wolf, mouse, rooster, or for some reason, a demon. Then it pairs them off, faster than you can ponder whether a mouse and demon could really make a go of it out there in the real world.
Bizarre antics aside, one is tempted to get a little optimistic about where dating shows are headed. Sexy Beasts proudly advertises contestants who are “ready to say goodbye to superficial dating” to find The One, and are willing to don elaborate prosthetic animal masks to do so. Could this novel setup prove we’ve evolved past the usual boozed-up, heteronormative hot people in hot tubs? Does it mean we’ve arrived at a dating show that’s fluid or nonbinary, or at the very least, truly anti-lookist? Could this be a radical new dating show for furries?
The answer to these questions is no, no, and…maybe?
Sexy Beasts may not be about faces, but it knows that what’s below the neck still counts. An animal mask can’t thwart outrageous self-confidence, much less a bangin’ bod. And these bods are fit, thin, hetero, and able-bodied. Still, to convey just how desirable they are while sporting a freakish dinosaur head, they’ll have to improvise. A big-bicep beaver confesses he looks at asses first, and personality second—while frequently giving big-ups to his big guns (20 inches, if you’re curious). Another contestant is a self-professed nerd, he says, but definitely the hot kind. The show frequently cuts to contestants mugging for the camera with their best campy come-hithers, scenes that look more like a commercial for living it up after getting the Gardasil shot.
The cardinal rule of all dating show casting is finding extremely extroverted hot people who know they’re hot. Sexy Beasts is no different—but in refusing to deviate, it immediately undermines its own anti-lookist premise. Still, chemistry is the goal. To that end, each episode pairs a masked chooser with three masked contestants, who enjoy a speed dating round full of excessive bravado and innuendo. Then, one contestant is eliminated for the crime of failing to vibe. Fine—after all, this is about “personality compatibility,” right?
But before the rejected personality is forced to do the walk of shame, he or she is unmasked, strutting in to show their rejector (and remaining contestants, and us) the hotness they’ll be missing up top and revealing the show’s ultimate source of joy: Now that the contestant has seen how attractive the person they just nixed really is, will they be extremely bummed? Here’s hoping!
That joy is the gift that keeps giving: After a proper date with the two remaining contestants, there’s a second round of elimination and reveal. Then, the two animal heads left standing find out if they can bear to look at the real face they just ditched those other two smokeshows for.
It’s a gas. But it hardly matters what’s under that beastly getup, because, again, conventional attractiveness is the baseline. That’s not a spoiler; the show isn’t called Questionably Attractive Beasts.
Misleading premise or no, Sexy Beasts isn’t without its pleasures. One is the awkward near-slapstick of watching a woman with a dolphin head try to nurse a beer, or a man with a beaver head try to kiss through enormous rubber teeth. Another: Rob Delaney’s good-natured but snarky narration. Watching contestants struggle to cough up innuendo or a personality, occasionally for what seems like for the first time, is a treasure. Especially when those attempts are less than scintillating. “Are they sensitive?” a deer woman coos at a rooster man when caressing his mask’s dangly bits in one episode. (Uh, it’s a rubber mask.)
Still, there’s a clear eroticism in some contestants’ fascination with each other’s animal heads. And some really lean into the part, one growling caress at a time. An animal hotness pecking order quickly emerges. Viewers will find themselves wondering impatiently whether this rhinoceros or mandrill is good looking underneath, but also asking: Will the less attractive animal heads be eliminated first? How do some people still seem “face hot” even while wearing a frog head? Am I sort of attracted to this wolf?
Only time will tell if Sexy Beasts proves whether true love can be found by substituting human heads for animal ones on a single date that appears to last about as long as a movie. Love Is Blind at least gave its (also hot) contestants far more time to chat. Maybe all this show proves is that attraction has a way of revealing itself, no matter what you throw over its head. But for now, we’ll come for the animal heads, and we’ll stay for the human head reveals. It’s a small thing, but it’s more exciting than reality—where a personality can only win the day if you actually have one, long after all the animal cosplay has ended.
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