Moms on the lookout

“Momma’s Boys,” which premieres tonight on NBC, is a dating game in which three young men, with the help or hindrance of their mothers, each choose a young woman to be their everlasting second-fiddle love.

Apart from the Oedipal twist, it seems to be pretty much your standard “Bachelor”-style hookup show, the women all bunged up together in a fancy dormitory, in this case a seaside Santa Barbara estate, where they will fuss and fight and even make friends as they undergo the familiar cycle of ritualized challenge and ceremonial elimination.

Firefighter Michael, real estate guy Rob and college hockey player JoJo are the boys; Lorraine, Esther and Khalood, respectively, their mothers. Two of the sons still live at home. Their moms do their laundry, buy their underwear, make their beds, scare off potential girlfriends. They are loving, controlling, possessive, admiring and supportive in varying and sometimes disturbing degrees.

“He’s a beautiful boy, physically,” Lorraine says of Michael, in their audition video as he strips off his shirt. “He has a great body, he really does.”

“To me, he’s definitely a stud,” says Esther of Rob. That is not how I want my own mother to think of me, particularly.

Still, they are upbeat, friendly women and bring to the contest some sense of fun. (Though there is pain clearly on the horizon.) And then there is Khalood -- a reality-show producer’s dream, a person who has no idea of what a nightmare she is and, more important, no inkling of what they will make over her. (A meal.)

“I cannot have a black one,” she says in a pre-game interview of her son’s potential mates. “I can’t have an Asian one, and I can’t have a fat-butt girl.” Also: “No Jewish girl! I cannot stand them!” No Muslims need apply, either. “It has to be a white girl.” (“Just like momma,” says Khalood, somehow unmindful of the fact that she herself is an Iraqi woman married to a man named Bojanowski.) On a more positive note: “I want her to cook, I want her to clean. Petite, pretty and she does what I tell her to. I don’t think it’s a lot I’m asking.”

As the prospective brides represent a spectrum of ethnicities, and as none seems the type inclined to take orders from a mother-in-law, well, I don’t have to tell you -- hilarity will ensue. One wonders whether Khalood has shared any of these opinions with JoJo and just why he’s exposed his mother to this kind of public disaster.

“To make the experience more authentic” -- in a new use of the word “authentic” -- the women represent “stereotypes moms typically love” (medical student, teacher, a girl who uses the phrase “picket fence”) and “others who give Mom serious concerns” (a girl who burps, a girl who’s been in jail, a girl who paid for her second breast job with student loan money, the 2008 Penthouse Pet of the Year, who seems very nice). But there are too many of them for the moment -- 32 -- for any but a few to register.

The old Oedipus tale ended with the mother hanging herself and the son putting out his eyes. That is, perhaps, a story for some future Showtime series, but this one is weird enough for now.

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robert.lloyd@latimes.com

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‘Momma’s Boys’

Where: NBC

When: 10 tonight

Rating: TV-14-L (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14, with an advisory for coarse language)