One of the guys in sports suggested I check out The Pick-Up Artist on VH1. This features a so-called master named Mystery helping doofy or nervous guys learn how to pick up women -- and CHANGING THEIR LIVES! (Emphasis is Mystery's.)

I had watched the first episode and then kind of forgot about it, but I watched a couple more episodes this weekend, and I'm not really sure how I feel about it. I like that the guys are gaining self-confidence and learning how to talk with people. But I don't like how contrived it all seems. Mystery and his, uh, Mystery Men speak in all this jargon about sets and social worth, and I swear they have more acronyms than the military. The whole thing seems to reduce women to targets and interacting with them to a game, which feels pretty patronizing. (Also, the edgy makeovers are a little much. "He has streaks! Now he's cool!")

I much prefer the dynamics of Beauty and the Geek, whose fourth season kicks off tonight at 8 on the CW. I just feel like on this show, the guys actually learn how to interact with people on a real level instead of this contrived way on The Pick-Up Artist where it's all about the "close."

But hey, I've been married seven years and I'm about as out of the loop on the dating scene as you can get, so maybe Mystery's way is what people are looking for. But I'd rather just have a conversation with someone than find out they were using tricks to manipulate me into thinking a certain way about them.