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Please, just tell me when it's over.
By Merethe Najjar — Written on Jun 14, 2020
Meeting someone new is one of life’s happiest, but sometimes hardest, quandaries. You want to make a good impression, build up a good rapport with the other person, and get that ever-so-coveted kiss when you feel a connection.
But apparently, someone at TLC thought that cramming the awkward initial meeting, small talk, and first kiss together in the first few moments of seeing someone for the first time ever was a good idea.
They mistakenly believed that their show, Love at First Kiss, which premiered in 2016, was the basis of a great series — and not just thirty minutes of the audience sitting there in absolute cringe-worthy horror as they squirm at what they’re seeing on the screen in front of them.
Case in point? Meet Josh Basili.
Basili is nervous, and it’s really, really easy to see. On the show, as he meets women and kisses her — or mashes lips with her, at least, and sometimes not even that — each meeting somehow becomes more awkward than the last.
It's like a horror movie: you wind up just watching it through your fingers, eyes closed almost to slits, pushed as far back away from your screen as you possibly can be, because you’re cringing so hard that your insides hurt.
Basili is on a show about kissing, and it’s soon made very clear that he knows absolutely nothing about it.
In fact, watching Basili get and give kisses is absolutely one of the most awkward things you will ever see in your entire life. And that’s absolutely a promise.
Each successive woman gets an even weirder treatment, and poor Basili remains dumbfounded and confused by the art of kissing. Apparently, he was actually so bad at it that a kissing coach had to be brought in, and she encouraged him to use his hands.
It was a great idea, in theory, except for the fact that watching Basili try to do so was equivalent to watching one of those cat vs. cucumber videos. Seriously, you will never see someone so utterly terrified to touch another person as Basili was.
Basili’s bizarre appearance had been shared thousands of times, probably by people who were just as utterly mortified by the show as he was.
I would almost hedge a bet that more people had just seen the clips of Basili than people actually watched the show, since it pretty much seemed destined to fail.
And it basically did, since it hasn't returned after the first season, and I feel pretty safe in saying that it probably never will.
Love at First Kiss initially premiered in August 2016, but it didn’t picked up much steam with viewers, thankfully, and it seemed like this was one show that would be better off making like Basili... and running away.
As for Basili himself, viewers saw him propose to a woman named Roxanne on the season finale, which seems like a pretty long way to come when just a few episodes ago he didn't even know how to kiss.
Roxanne said yes, but since the series never made it back for another season, it's not known whether or not they actually ever made it to the altar. I'm wishing them the best, nonetheless.
Merethe Najjar is a professional writer, editor, and fiction author. Visit her website, MeretheWalther.com, or follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Editor's Note: This article was originally posted in October 2016 and was updated with the latest information.