Old Enough to Be His Sister

On the 'Age of Love' Opener, Smoke but No Sparks

On NBC's (not so) new reality dating show, "Age of Love," there is a group of 40-something women who get called "desperate" and "pathetic" and have their breasts described as "saggy" by a group of 20-somethings who come across -- at least in the first episode -- as vapid and wildly catty. And they're doing all of this for what?

Why, to win a relationship with a past-his-prime tennis star known for sulking, fighting with his fellow Aussies on the tour, and maybe or maybe not cheating on a long-term girlfriend with Paris Hilton (he denies that in this week's People).

There had better not be any access to Google in the standard-issue luxury pad where NBC is putting these ladies up, because one whirl of the search engine on this guy might send them home of their own volition.

Or maybe not. Maybe they're just in it for the 15 minutes of fame, to heck with the prize at the other end.

That prize would be Australian tennis pro Mark Philippoussis, a 30-year-old who is supposedly looking for love after more than a decade of hard partying, and exclusively (by his own admission) dating only women younger than he. Though he does have a really great head of hair.

Philippoussis admits from the get-go that "I've been perceived as something of a playboy," but says he's looking forward to meeting the "girls" -- then tries mightily not to look thrown when the seven women he meets the first night are all significantly older (one even has a 25-year-old son). Clearly, all the women were instructed to tell Philippoussis their ages at the first meeting for maximum shock value, though one is brazen enough to make him guess and he gamely says 36 or 37 to a woman a decade older than that.

(Next week, perhaps someone will ask if she looks fat in these pants, and Philippoussis can provide a service to men everywhere by demonstrating how not to answer that question.)

The show is hosted by Mark Consuelos, also known as Mr. Kelly Ripa, and in his on-camera interviews Philippoussis makes brilliant comments like, "I'm learning a little more not to judge a book by its cover" and "I'm out of my comfort zone." At least, he was out of his comfort zone, right up until the end of the first hour, when the 20-somethings appear, all posed like Charlie's Angels, with backs arched and arms thrown over their heads to maximize the cleavage factor. For the first 24 hours, Philippoussis -- and the older women -- are all led to believe that the first seven ladies are his only options, and their only competition.

Billed at the outset as "the ultimate dating experiment," "Age of Love" is so chock-full of cliches it's comic. We get references to crow's-feet, and so many tick-tocking biological clocks you wonder if the show has a fertility doctor on retainer. The 20-somethings entertain themselves in their apartment by playing with a hula hoop in as little clothing as possible. The 40s? You've got one reading a book, one doing laundry and one working on her needlepoint.

The oldest candidate is 48; the youngest 21. (One of the 40-somethings is technically 39, but, hey, big difference. She's still "old" in this universe.) NBC has nicknamed the two groups the "Cougars" and "Kittens." Just go ahead and guess which is which. And the formula is pretty much like "The Bachelor," only without the roses and with all those pesky frown lines. Philippoussis gets to go on "dates" to determine whom to keep and whom to send home. In the first episode, he makes three of the older women rappel down the side of a building to find out whether they can keep up with him.

Really, we kid you not.

Age of Love (60 minutes) premieres tonight at 9 on NBC.