Upsetting Day: Baggage (Patreon)

I've found the dating game show our generation deserves. Do we want it? Absolutely not. It abandons everything we know about dating shows. It isn't going through the motions of a "social experiment" in order to convince the right hot people to bone. This is a dating show for gross little goblin people to see if they can locate another gross little goblin who will disgust even them. It's a show for people who want to watch Rumpelstilskin go ass to ass with another Rumpelstiltskin. It's hosted by Jerry Springer, who is shocked every time he discovers he agreed to host this show.

The basic premise of the show is that three contestants come with little silver suitcases full of their deepest, darkest secrets ranked from smallest to largest pieces of baggage. Contestants vie to see if they can say the most outrageous thing and still win the fabulous prize of a single date with someone equally willing to indignify themselves for basically nothing.

The prize is one date, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say probably not a good one. They don't really advertise the prize. They're not hyping up the gourmet dinner or the hot air balloon ride these two repellant people get to go on. I don't know where the date is, but I'm guessing a Waffle House between the hours of two and four A.M.. That is where these people belong. They are Waffle House people who've escaped into our reality.

It's difficult to choose a specific episode of Baggage more deserving of dissection than any other. There are four seasons, and it had relatively high ratings "by Game Show Network standards," which is grading on a pretty enormous curve. Any TikTok of a cat punching a guy in the dick has more views than every episode of Baggage combined. However, by GSN standards, that's such a massive hit it even got a spinoff called Baggage On The Road.

I was hoping it would be a Mad Max-style game show where they toss the rejected Gremlins and their baggage out of a big spikey truck, but it's just the exact same show filmed live in different cities. Jerry Springer also hosts this version, but even he can't tell you why.

The only notable thing about Baggage On The Road is that they do man on the street interviews with people about what baggage is a dealbreaker for them, and we get to find out just how low the bar is for men. All of the women say they want someone who is not married or currently drunk, and they are good to go. That's probably how I ended up watching a television show where a man who wears a fanny pack in the bedroom won the love of a woman who was, I guess, into that?

I think the Baggage episode that deserves to be highlighted is the special "cougars and cubs" edition. It's not necessarily the weirdest episode of Baggage but it so badly wants to be. For starters, they have an audience who is not into cougars for some reason. As soon as Jerry announced this was the cougar episode, people started booing. "No, I want to see the regular freaks! Bring me the usual stinky freaks!" The crowd wails, but Jerry no longer heeds their tormented cries. You will see the freaks he wants you to see, PEASANTS.

The cub, as he is introduced, is named Paris, and he has a lucrative career as a timeshare salesman, a job that is not technically a crime! Paris has three potential pieces of baggage in his big red bag. He could HAVE SURPRISING PIERCINGS THAT SET OFF AIRPORT METAL DETECTORS (I'm assuming they phrased it that way because you can't say "pierced taint" on the Game Show Network). He could REFUSE TO CELEBRATE BIRTHDAYS OR HOLIDAYS. Or he could FAKE ORGASMS.

Once we meet the three cougars for Paris to pick from, it's immediately clear none of these women would have a problem with anything in that bag. If Paris said he was looking for a woman with the softest skin to make a suit out of, these three would fight to the death for a lotion bottle on-camera. Their first round of secrets is nothing; one woman reveals she steals toiletries from hotels, which isn't even stealing. Those are provided with the room, and so are the pillowcases if anyone asks.

In the second round, however; we finally get to the real freak shit. One woman reveals she has an entire storage unit dedicated to Hello Kitty. On an interesting and probably unrelated note, one of the three contestants is very clearly wearing a Hello Kitty necklace from Claire's. Paris is disgusted by the idea of owning a storage unit. So disgusted he doesn't eliminate the woman whose baggage was…

Always? Hahaha, did she bring them on the show? You, a person unfamiliar with the terrors of dating game shows viewed mostly by dogs who just need some noise during the day to stay calm and people experiencing major depressive episodes, might ask. Of course, she pulled out her used breast implants and wiggled them around for everyone to see. Of course, she's attached to them! They've been with her for fifteen years, and of course, she was not eliminated for simply lugging biomedical waste around in her Birkin bag. Did you not remember there was a woman who owns a storage unit?

Freed from suffering the indignities of storage, Paris can now focus on the two Rumpelstiltskins he prefers. It's the woman who constantly uses baby wipes on her vagina and wants to marry Donald Trump Jr. versus the woman who steals from hotels and carries her used breast implants with her at all times. In the final round, we will learn something worse than those two things. Or, at least, that's what we're promised will happen, but both of these women find a way to turn their final piece of baggage into a humblebrag.

This is just a subtle way of telling everyone you've got a dog. That's going to entice even the most insane timeshare salesman to want to meet that dog. Who doesn't want to see the dog when they learn there's a dog to be seen? The breast implant woman's final piece of baggage is that she has called off three weddings, including one at her bachelorette party. What a fun and completely unverifiable fact! I would suggest she might be lying, but the breast implant thing seemed fake too, and she brought the sticky, wobbly receipts.

Naturally, the woman with security breast implants wins the game. Paris doesn’t want to meet a dog because he is terrible. Now we get to find out Paris’s one big piece of baggage. Here’s how that goes…

Jerry Springer: Which of Paris’s potential pieces of baggage would be the hardest to accept for you?

Security Breast Implants: If he faked orgasms! That would be so weird who does that.

Paris: Me. I fake orgasms

Security Breast Implants: And I love that about you.

They embrace in front of a suitcase that says I Fake Orgasms. The crowd boos. Jerry Springer gives a thumbs-up.

I'm not sure what happened to these two crazy kids after their single Jerry Springer-funded buffet trip, but I'm sure it was absolutely haunting for everyone involved. This social experiment has brought together two people who otherwise might never have gotten to creep out an entire national television audience with their unsettling personalities.

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