‘All New Dating Game’ Turns Over a New Leaf After 23 Years on Tube

Remember the good old days--or whatever kind of days they were--when casual sex was a laughing matter? Remember when the “Dating Game” bachelorette would pepper her panel of mystery suitors with such scrutinizing inquiries as, “If I were a hot fudge sundae, what kind of topping would you be?”

“There’s no place to go with a question like that--you are straining to get back into the gutter,” said Jeff MacGregor, host of “The All New Dating Game,” which airs weeknights at 6:30 on Channel 13.

Twenty-three years and a few social transitions after it debuted on national television, “The Dating Game” has cleaned up its act. “Today, people are more cautious sexually than they were in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” MacGregor noted. “I think that attitude is reflected in the tenor of the show.

“In the past, the questions have been so leading or lascivious that there was no sincere way to answer them. This season our intention is to ask questions grounded in the reality of dating, so you get things like, ‘If you came over to pick me up and I was 15 minutes late, what would you talk about with my parents?’ ”

Although the contents have changed, the package remains the same: a trio of eligible men or women vying to smite their interrogator from behind a partition--and to nab an all-expenses-paid Hawaiian vacation in the process.

Fear not. Risque banter still spices the show, as contestants boast of their killer kisses and their seductive semantics. You don’t put three guys and a gal together on one stage without expecting the occasional double-entendre.

However, behind the scenes, “The All New Dating Game” is so antiseptic that it is almost asexual. Whether age 16 or 36, winning contestants are accompanied on their excursion by a chaperon who monitors their every move.

Most couples maintain a platonic relationship, and at trip’s end disappear from each other’s lives like passing cruise ships in the Caribbean.

“As soon as we started talking backstage, I knew that Brad (her ‘bachelor’) and I were just going to be friends,” said Stacy Barber, 26, of Corona del Mar. “I thought he was real cute--all-American, blond hair, clean-cut. But a little on the short side. I like my men taller.”

Before they took off for the Bahamas, Barber instigated a discussion with her date about their respective intentions. “I thought it was the fair thing to do,” she said. “I didn’t want him to have his expectations built up.”

The couple kissed just once during their entire five days together--on the airplane home. “We were talking and suddenly he reached over and gave me a little kiss, and he said, ‘I just had to do that once,’ ” Barber recalled.

She and Brad, who lives in Santa Barbara, have not seen each other since their rendezvous last October. “I didn’t go on ‘The Dating Game’ thinking I would meet Prince Charming--I’m much too realistic for that,” said Barber, a customer service representative for an automotive store. “I went on it for the whole fun thing of being on TV, and to win a great trip somewhere.”

Deborah Roughen of Costa Mesa echoed Barber’s experience. She and her dating-game pick, Mark, spent an amiable week in Western Samoa.

“Mark was a nice, sweet, innocent guy. I couldn’t have asked for a better date,” said Roughen, 23, a student at Cal State Fullerton. “But he wasn’t my type. He was young, not very mature; I like older guys. I looked at him as a brother. We didn’t have any kind of sexual relationship.”

“ ‘The Dating Game’ is typical of dating in general; you don’t fall in love with every person you go out with,” said producer Scott Sternburg, who proudly takes credit for mopping up the show’s dialogue over the past year. He isn’t aware of any marriages that have come out of his revamped program.

After eight months of hosting “The All New Dating Game,” MacGregor has learned to recognize the signs of a match made in purgatory. “If the contestent’s smile gets bigger as his or her date walks around the wall, you know you’re in trouble,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Ha, ha. Oh, God, look at him.’

“Sometimes at the end of the show, I’ll ask the first two contestants how they’re getting along. And he’ll go, ‘I think she’s great,’ and she’ll go, ‘Oh, he’s OK.’ ” Imitating his reaction to the awkward scenario, MacGregor put on an uncomfortable grin and waved to an imaginary camera, saying, “Bye-bye, everybody!”

“Then there are other moments when there’s this instantaneous click, but those are fewer and further between,” he added.

One such “click” occurred for Irvine resident Bruce Ward. “I knew the moment I met her that we’d have a blast,” said the 23-year-old computer programmer.

Ward and his “Dating Game” mate spent a week last March in Lima, Peru--but that is about all the information he would divulge about their trip. “I’m not going to say we kissed, I’m not going to say we didn’t kiss,” he stated, dodging the weighty issue.

But Ward did reveal that he has kept in contact with his co-traveler, who is conveniently located in Huntington Beach. “I think we’re building a stronger relationship,” he said.

Contestants have the option of forfeiting their trip, in which case the remaining winner may invite a companion of his or her choice. Thomas Gotuzzo’s “Dating Game” match backed out at the last minute, so he took along a friend on his jaunt to Utah.

“I wish Dolly (his date) had given me more notice,” said the Huntington Beach resident, a student at Cal State Long Beach. “But it didn’t hurt my feelings because I didn’t know her, except for the one time we met. She said that she didn’t know how to ski and that she had mid-terms.”

Whatever their level of maturity and mutual attraction, “Dating Game” victors are joined by a chaperon on their getaway. The chaperon shares with them candlelit dinners for three, tags along with them on daytime outings, and even rooms with them--that is, with the same-sex person in the pair.

“We were a group,” Barber said. “The three of us would meet for breakfast in the morning, lounge around the pool together, sightsee together. By the end of the trip, we were like best friends.”

“The chaperon makes it more comfortable for everyone, especially in the beginning when you don’t know each other,” Ward observed.

“Dating Game” couples who hit it off might wonder why the powers that be insist on a chaperon overseeing the activities of two consenting adults. For one thing, Sternburg explained, “we don’t really know these people we’re sending away on a trip together,” though he added that “The Dating Game” has never encountered a problem as devastating as rape.

For another thing, many trips are partially funded by tourist bureaus of countries plugged on the show. “We don’t need any trouble in England or China,” Sternburg said. “All of a sudden the headlines read, ‘Dating Game Couple Burns Down Their Hotel Room’--we don’t need that.”

The bottom line question: Why would anyone undergo the anxiety of appearing on national television to woo a faceless interviewer with responses like, “My definition of the ideal guy is you,” all for the sake of winning a week in Mazatlan with a total stranger--make that two total strangers?

“I did think twice about it because I had to use vacation time to take off from work,” Barber said. “Normally, when you go on a trip, you want to spend it with someone you really care for--and here I was in this paradise with two men I barely knew. But it was still a lot of fun.”

As is the case with many of the contestants, “Dating Game” scouts called Barber, she didn’t call them. “I thought someone was playing a joke on me,” Barber said. Rather, a friend who had been on the show passed along her name.

Gotuzzo and Ward also were recommended by friends. “Dating Game” personnel applied another tactic on Roughen; a headhunter recruited her one afternoon while she was attending a surf contest at Huntington Beach.

“At first I said, ‘I’m sure, I don’t need to go on ‘The Dating Game’--I never have a problem getting dates,” Roughen recalled. “But then he told me about all the fantastic trips you can win, and I decided it sounded fun.”

Prospective contestants are put through a battery of interviews and tryouts before landing on stage. Those who make the final cut generally have two things in common--youth and attractiveness--but Sternburg claimed that neither is a prerequisite.

“We’re not looking for a 10. You don’t have to have muscles or a fabulous figure, so long as you have a terrific personality,” he said. “There’s no age limit, though our contestants’ ages tend to run between 16 and 30.”

Many female contestants might just as soon dump Bachelor No. 2 for MacGregor--who is, in Roughen’s words, “totally good-looking.”

“I get my share of invitations, but I make it a rule not to date contestants,” he said. “I am no more a dating fiend than Alex Trebek is the world’s smartest man because he hosts ‘Jeopardy!’ ”

MacGregor, 30, formerly a talk show host in Minneapolis, approaches his job as “Dating Game” emcee with benevolent sarcasm, often spouting wry witticisms at contestants’ more bragging or inane remarks. “What I do is meant to be funny--not patronizing or nasty,” he said.

“ ‘The Dating Game’ is a comedy show. We’re not conducting an oral exam for a Rhodes scholarship. We’re not solving world problems. We’re just having a good time.”

Who Pays?

That used to be an easy one: he does. Is it different today? If you’re a woman, do you still expect the man to pick up the check? If he expects you to share the expenses of an evening, are you offended or pleased? And men--are you offended if she offers?

And So to Bed?

In the age of AIDS, is sex still an assumed part of a romantic relationship? Or was it ever? How well do you think you need to know someone before becoming sexually intimate? How can you be sure you’re ready to take the step--and how much of a risk, both emotional and physical, is involved? Have you given up on sex, permanently or temporarily? Why? Does it seem worth the sacrifice?

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