Opinions vary, but personally, we believe there’s room for a lot more high-concept fantasy in reality dating. More eerie entrances, more mystical moments, more —let’s just go with it — smoke machines. Why can’t a reality series inject a bit more “Brigadoon” into our “Bachelor”?

This is what we crave, and it’s what “The One That Got Away” delivers. Since leaving “The Bachelor,” producer Elan Gale has been trying his hand at more experimental dating shows (see: “FBoy Island,” also gloriously back this summer), and his newest is a 10-episode series on Prime with a time-travel twist. Six singles await missed romantic connections from their past, who arrive through a magical portal (some rocks surrounded by purple uplighting and smoke machines) for another chance at love. There are Confirmation class buddies, high school classmates, exes and friends’ exes — even current best friends — and they’re all ready to shoot their shot with one of the leads.

The concept is absurd and absurdly fun, and it leads the show into some interesting directions. Some aspects are, frankly, pretty troubling! For one thing, the implications of bringing back people from someone’s past for them to date again are simply different for women than for men. While the men are mostly brought peers, friends, and old hook-ups to date, the women are often faced with people they have never really had a connection with and share little in common with. The women then face pressure to give a real chance to whichever random men who showed up expecting a date, even if they feel uncomfortable with the romantic attentions of those men. One woman is sent a man who had a crush on her when she was just 18 and he was almost 30; another is sent a man she’s never spoken to who follows her on Instagram. Like…. yikes!

But the leads do have a fair amount of power within the show; they alone decide when their love interests are sent away, and while they decide, up to two of their possible connections live in a house together with all the other portal arrivals. The non-leads, dealing with a fair amount of emotional anxiety about their fate, quickly bond with each other and become vital supports, but their new friends can disappear at a moment’s notice, without even saying goodbye, if the leads choose to send them away. The dichotomy between the two groups — leads and arrivals — is stark, and creates a class hierarchy so notable that it is openly commented on by the arrivals and bubbles to the surface in at least one dramatic confrontation.

We dug into all this, plus our favorite love story of the season and all the spiciest drama, in this week’s episode. Hope you enjoy! xo

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We’ve been watching…

Seasons 2 of “The Flight Attendant” and “Only Murders in the Building” have been keeping me and Greg occupied on our rare free nights. -Claire

I breezed right through the first season of Hulu’s “Maggie,” a moderately charming romantic comedy of errors about a psychic who begins seeing visions of her own romantic future. -Emma

We’ve been reading…

Elain Hsieh Chou’s madcap satirical novel, “Disorientation,” which follows a miserably directionless PhD student as she undergoes a disillusionment with her course of study that leads her to a political awakening. Ingrid Yang is a Taiwanese-American graduate student in the East Asian Studies department of Barnes University, a fusty New England college not far from where she grew up. She’s studying a Chinese-American poet, Xiao-Wen Chou, but has little interest in his work, let alone any idea what to say about him in her dissertation; at every step, her course of study has been nudged along by (mostly white) advisors who promised her job security and acclaim if she chose the right research subject. It’s a sedate place to start, but the novel soon turns into an academic mystery, an investigative caper, and a raucous send-up of American academia. As Ingrid herself — someone who always longed to fit in — begins to see the white supremacy that permeates the university hierarchy and how seeking its acceptance has left her alienated from herself, she takes the reader with her on a consciousness-raising journey. (And stay tuned for the Jordan Peterson-esque turn taken by one of her professors.)

Also, I have been feeling complicated things about the new Dakota Johnson “Persuasion” adaptation (mainly despair mixed with an unwilling fascination), and I absolutely adored Brandon Taylor’s newsletter on the movie. In it, he really digs into what makes Jane Austen’s novels tick — especially her more melancholy later novels, which include “Persuasion” — and what makes an adaptation of them successful (that is, understanding what the novel itself is actually about, rather than getting distracted by the most superficially appealing plot points). On the novel: “Where some Austen novels chronicle the bright, flashing episodes of youth, Persuasion follows a young woman who has to go on living after those episodes have concluded prematurely.” YES. I was almost crying by the end of this essay, which made me want to reread the book instead. Highly recommended: Jane Austen’s “Persuasion.” -Claire

I too was obsessed with Brandon Taylor’s “Persuasion” essay. (Honestly, his newsletter always makes me think and emote and become very jealous of his immense talent!!!)

I felt the same way about Jia Tolentino’s gorgeous, affecting New Yorker essay about the sacredness of abortion care. “Even within the course of the same pregnancy, a person and the fetus she carries can shift between the roles of lover and beloved, host and parasite, vessel and divinity, victim and murderer; each body is capable of extinguishing the other, although one cannot survive alone,” she writes. “There is no human relationship more complex, more morally unstable than this.” -Emma

We’ve been listening to…

Call me a narcissist but I DID listen to our appearance on “Sounds Like a Cult,” which is currently doing a “Cult Girl Summer” run of bonus episodes. We talked about the cult of dating apps, and even remembering the two years that I tried to date on OkCupid was difficult, but we all felt much better by the end. -Claire

The Top Hits of 1997 playlist on Spotify in preparation for the Backstreet Boys concert I went to over the weekend with my friends Liv and Alison. Speaking of which, the show was fantastic! It was nostalgic and full of pure, unadulterated joy. Also — A.J. is now the hottest and most talented one? -Emma

We’ve been buying…

Megababe natural deodorant! I have been wearing some kind of antiperspirant deodorant since adolescence, and recently I became fed up with two things: My pits still get wet and stinky by the end of the day, and the chemicals in the deodorant make me more likely to get yellow armpit stains in light-colored shirts. While searching for a replacement, either highly chemical or highly natural, I learned that basically every deodorant gives a significant amount of people an armpit rash, and they WILL leave close-up photos of this in the Target reviews section. However, the reviews for Megababe’s Smoothie Deo, a fruit-enzyme-powered natural deodorant, were pretty good. I got it, I’ve worn it for a couple days, and it seems to work better than my previous Dove antiperspirant deodorant. As of now, I’m a convert, but stay tuned for any future rashes. -Claire

I hadn’t checked out J. Crew much since it’s Jenna Lyons days, but a recent newsletter from my friend Mattie Kahn about how the brand had gotten good again, made me curious. They were having a giant sale, so though I usually resist buying final sale items, because I am a big returner, I took a risk and bought a handful of elevated basics I thought would probably work — and I was NOT disappointed. My absolute favorites include this lightweight linen beach button-up (in the perfect shade of blue), these silky drapey white cargo-style trousers, a very practical cropped tank, these extra chic cat eye sunglasses in tortoise, and these waterproof cross-strap EVA sandals which feel like walking on clouds. -Emma

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