Lovetown, USA

This past Sunday, the OWN Network premiered Lovetown, USA. On this show, Oprah challenges the town of Kingland, GA to focus on love. The show features two life coaches, Paul Brunson and Kailen Rosenberg, who help six individuals search for romantic commitments as well as encourage local residents to confront their conflicts with each other.

Each single person has their own set of challenges that are prohibiting him or her from finding love. While the overall romantic challenge is that they  all live in this small town, it is evident that each person has their own set of issues that has caused their singledom.

The six singles are:

Franchesca, 23: Franchesca is a legal secretary with a 6 year old daughter. She’s sweet, driven, and personable. Despite being a young mother she managed to overcome the odds. She mentions that she gave birth to her daughter and started college in the same week. Now that’s determination!

Martina, 45: Martina is a local, hot school teacher who mows the lawn in her bikini and doesn’t follow through on dates. She has two sons, one biological and one foster. It’s obvious that she has a big heart and a lot of sass.

Alicia, 27: Alicia is an ambitious actress/model who is battling pancreatic cancer.  She’s confident and has not let cancer deter her from being a positive person. The fact that she does not mask her baldness makes her fearless.

Ron, 31: Ron is a hunky coast guard with a young daughter. He’s genuine, charming, and ready to settle down. Everyone around him is married ad he feels that it is time for him to do the same.

Charles, 27: Charles is a graduate student who served in the Navy and is just looking for an intelligent, nice, and interesting woman who doesn’t bore him.

Dan, 31: Dan is a bar owner and a ladies’ man. While he doesn’t think he is a player, dozens of local ladies disagree. At first glance, Dan seems  to be arrogant but as we get to know him, we discover that he is actually very vulnerable. He has not made peace with the loss of his mother and their strained relationship with her at the time of her death.

The more interesting part of the episode, aside from the dance feud (more on that later), is the mixer where we get to see all six singles in action. At the mixer, we see their vulnerabilities, and strengths. Ron and Charles fare out well. They maintain easy conversation throughout the night with several ladies and while navigating the scene meanwhile Martina is being overly aggressive and momentarily reveals that she had a miscarriage with her awful ex-husband to a complete stranger before quickly changing the subject. Yikes!

Franchesca is a wallflower for a lot of the night as is, surprisingly, Alicia. They manage to breakout out of their shells by the end of the night but it is apparent that Franchesca is not approachable and Alicia is a bit more insecure than she lets on. Dan, the playboy, is clearly nervous and constantly putting his foot in his mouth. What happened to he playboy?

The show ends with the mixer and next week we get to see our 6 singles go on dates. I’ll definitely be watching.

This show is heart-warming, inspirational, and light-hearted. It’s a nice break from all the slapping and name-calling of other reality shows. Hopefully this experiment will show that if we show love and compassion for others we can forge strong bonds and timeless romantic relationships. We’ll see if love can transform Kingsland in 30 days.

Are you watching Lovetown, USA? Do you think that love has transformative powers? Why do you thin it’s so hard to treat others with love and compassion? Do yu thik the six singles will find love?

Lovetown, USA airs every Sunday at 10pm on OWN.