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Dating in the 21st Century

Does dating ever change? That's the question hovering around ABC's newest dramedy Cupid, about a man who's either the god of love or a delusional crazy who thinks he is. The show, which premieres tonight, stars Bobby Cannavale as Trevor, the maybe-god on a mission to match 100 couples, and Sarah Paulson as Claire, the supremely grounded love interest/celebrity shrink/court appointed guardian with whom he trades witty banter, heartfelt epiphanies and mixed drinks. The show's central tension isn't whether Trevor's really Cupid (he's probably Cupid), but whether Trevor's faith in the big romantic gesture and love at first sight is a better—more powerful, more helpful, more successful—approach to relationships than Claire's level-headed belief in mutual respect and taking it slow. In other words, does a guy schooled on love and dating 3,000 years ago know more about matchmaking than an MD schooled by the Ivy League and Oprah? The show's answer is usually yes: Claire really needs to lighten up.

But dating has changed—not just in, erhm, the last 3,000 years, but in the 11 years since Cupid first aired. Fourteen episodes of the series, with Jeremy Piven (so charming once!) and Paula Marshall in the lead roles were broadcast in 1998 (you can watch them here). Except for a new cast and a move from Chicago to New York, Cupid has weathered its hiatus more or less intact—and that's too bad, because this little thing called the Internet took off in the interim and it really shook up how lovelorn strangers meet and interact with one another.

In both the original and current series, Claire runs a singles group where Trevor finds the heartsick men and women he eventually pairs off. In the old series that was an acceptable narrative trick. Now it's implausible. If Cupid were a mortal he wouldn't be bothering with small-fry gatherings, he'd be running a dating site. Maybe one called something like... Okcupid.com?

The cloying speech Drew Barrymore gave in He's Just Not That Into You ("I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work so I called him at home and then he emailed me to my blackberry so I texted to his cell, so now you have to go around checking all these different portals to get rejected. It's exhausting") irked, but it was onto something. Technology has made dating, and the manners of dating, newly strange. Cupid gives all this fresh weirdness a pass because it's shackled to 1998, a not-so-distant past that's long gone. Cupid's not lacking all charm (it's made by the same guy who wrote Veronica Mars after all), but it's not nearly as interesting, or relevant, as it could be.