TODAY'S REALITY TV participants are a talented group: they make tough business decisions, re-wallpaper other people's living rooms, embark on rigorous global tours, and grapple with the travails of communal living – each week taking risks both physical and psychogenic in front of a national audience that most of us would decline to undergo in the company of our most intimate acquaintances.

Arguably the most trying of these assignments is the one documented on shows like The Bachelor, Joe Millionaire, and Who Wants to Marry My Dad?, in which a friendly horde, then an alliance-forming pack, then a back-biting, trash-talking few, seek the answer to a burning two-part question: is this the man/woman I'm meant to be with, and what sort of cash prizes will I receive if I make it to the final round?

Season after season, they come to compete but stay to fall in love – with Trista, with Bob, with "Joe," with whoever's at hand. They laugh, they cry, they try to relate. They demonstrate they're fun-loving/good listeners/good sports, and then they mostly strike out and pack their bags. What keeps these hardy souls going, aside from the hope of lucrative spoils and a good audition-tape clip? Perhaps it's the knowledge that they're not alone – it's all been done before, if only in the movies.

And where else would one turn in search of guidelines for acting out the ersatz romantic plotlines delivered to us each week via The Bachelorette et al? Reality doesn't resemble life, but these season-long falling-in-love montages, in which people go through the motions of losing their hearts under tight timelines and bizarre circumstances, bear a strong resemblance to the paint-by-numbers rom-coms. Which I guess means that date movies have a purpose: getting deep enough under people's skin to actually warp their notions of, and interactions in, love. Unfortunately for the contestants, there can be only one Julia, Meg, Kate, or Reese – the rest will have to settle for being the one that got (sent) away.

Lynn Rapoport