At some point in the past five years; perhaps between the eighth season of Love Is Blind and the 437th rebranding of The Bachelor; televised dating quietly stopped being about dating. Instead, it became a parade of bronzed narcissists dry-humping on bean bags for the chance to sell flat tummy tea and boner pills to strangers on Instagram. Into this rich tradition steps Netflix’s latest entry, Sneaky Links: Dating After Dark, a show that dares to ask: What if your ex-booty call was also your soulmate? (And what if you were filmed trying to figure that out while shirtless, emotionally stunted, and surrounded by Ikea furniture?)
If you, like me, are 43 years old and unaware that “sneaky link” is Gen Alpha for “booty call,” you’re not alone. Apparently, the term “booty call” was too on-the-nose for a streaming platform that also produces prestige dramas about Elizabethan corsets and talking bears. Instead, we get “Sneaky Links,” a phrase that sounds like a sketchy URL you click by accident while searching for airfare.
The premise is diabolically simple and simply diabolical: six singles check into a low-rent motel that Netflix is marketing as “boutique” because it has a pool and a neon sign. They think it’s just another dating show. But plot twist; six of their former Sneaky Links soon arrive, armed with secrets, abs, and emotional availability last seen in a plastic fern. Each contestant is handed a rotary phone; because nothing says “horny nostalgia” like analog technology; and encouraged to make late-night calls to rekindle. or reject these deeply unexamined “relationships.”
There’s a therapist, of sorts: Spicy Mari, who is neither spicy nor especially Mari. She watches the feeds like a low-budget Truman Show archivist and occasionally jots things in a notebook, presumably about chakras and attachment styles. Alongside her is Chloe Veitch, a Too Hot to Handle alum who acts as host, oracle, and walking lip filler.
What transpires across ten meandering episodes is less a study of romance than a gentle lobotomy of common sense. Contestants pair off, break up, call each other at ungodly hours, and occasionally cry near the pool. New people arrive. Old people leave. A man with a lion tattoo on his sternum says something like, “I think I’m ready to be a better man,” while someone in the editing room sighs and overlays a dramatic ukulele riff. And repeat.
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To its microscopic credit, Sneaky Links is trying; sort of. It’s a tad raunchier than your average primetime dating show, although it mostly achieves this by leaning heavily on words like “vibe,” “energy,” and “I’m just not ready to be vulnerable yet” while people writhe on daybeds. But in a television landscape where a show called MILF Manor already exists; and involves grown men dating their friends’ moms; this feels like arriving late to a very weird party with no snacks left.
Visually, the show resembles a freshman film student’s thesis project, if the thesis was “What if The Real World took place inside a Love’s Travel Stop?” The lighting is harsh, the angles are confusing, and the set decor appears to have been sponsored by Marshalls’ clearance section. At one point, someone stares longingly out a motel window while dubstep or a song that annoyingly catches what’s happening in the motel plays softly in the background. Is it irony? Is it tragedy? Is it a deleted scene from The Sims: After Dark?
The men; shirtless, always, by some invisible clause in their contracts; seem genetically engineered in a lab powered by Axe body spray and Monster Energy. The women oscillate between earnest vulnerability and cold calculation, often within the span of a single camera cut. One contestant says she wants to be taken seriously, moments before licking whipped cream off a stranger’s navel. It’s a metaphor. Probably.
By the end, no one proposes. There are no roses. Just a vague option to leave the motel “together”; whatever that means in an age when commitment lasts about as long as a TikTok trend. Some do. Some don’t. All of them, presumably, now sell protein powder or are being courted for Perfect Match: Senior Edition.
Ultimately, Sneaky Links isn’t offensive, or even shocking. It’s just… empty. The sort of show that reminds us how profoundly uninterested we’ve become in connection, and how extremely interested we are in watching people fumble through intimacy while someone narrates it in a British accent.
So, is there any dating reality show we won’t do? Absolutely not. This is America. And as long as there are cameras, influencers, and unused motel rooms with free continental breakfast, love; or some semi-nude clone of it; will always find a way.
Or at least a sneaky link.
One Response
Well-said!