A screenshot of the Ready to Love trailer.

/ YouTube/OWN

A reality TV series about singles in their 30s and 40s from the D.C. area premieres tonight on the Oprah Winfrey Network. “This season is gonna have you ready to call your representative in Congress,” says host Thomas Miles — aka comedian “Nephew Tommy” — during the preview episode.

Ready to Love, now in its fifth season, is hitting the nation’s capital to “crack the code in D.C.” and represent “Chocolate City’s finest,” Miles says. Previous seasons were set in Atlanta and Houston.

The all-Black cast features 20 contestants from the Washington region, all of whom claim that after years of unsuccessful relationships, they’re looking for something real. Most contestants say they live in the D.C. suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, and they list professions including hair salon owner, electrical engineer, nightlife CEO, and marketing manager. (OWN declined to make contestants available for interviews ahead of the show’s premiere.)

The show was filmed in the D.C. area, including at a sprawling mansion in McLean where the cast spends lots of time hanging out. The casting special includes shots of downtown D.C., the Capitol, the monuments, and oddly, a stretch of Wisconsin Ave. in Bethesda. (A real treat is seeing a shot of Mexican restaurant Guapo’s in the background as Miles introduces one of the contestants.) In one scene, a contestant/personal trainer works out and slams a tire with a sledgehammer at Total Source Fitness near Union Market.

Here’s how it works: 10 men and 10 women mix and mingle over the course of the season. Each week, the men can vote to eliminate one woman from the group, and the women vote to eliminate one man. At the end of the season, two couples remain, and must decide whether to part ways or try to make it work. Miles also promises some “curve balls” thrown in throughout the run.

Be warned if you think this show will resurrect your faith in the D.C. dating scene: Even the preview is filled with relationship red flags. The first few scenes are full of one-liners that will make viewers scratch their heads. A tech startup founder boasts about her sandwich-making skills and confesses that her type is “medium ugly” men because they’re more likely to treat her right. Or what about the personal trainer who claims to be the “most romantic man in D.C.,” but says he’s been on at least 100 dates in the last year? Another hopeful romantic who works as an intimacy coach says the “DMV is small” and mentions that she was recently dating a man until she found out he was married.

Some fans have already started to share their reactions online, including one viewer who tweeted, “Ready to Love DC is about to be [messy].”

A commenter on YouTube defended the region’s dating pool: “This is NOT the best that DC/DMV area has to offer.”

The District has gotten recognition on “best dating scene” lists over the years: D.C. was named the country’s second-best city for singles by NerdWallet in both 2014 and 2015. Last month, Apartment List crowned the city the best place for singles. Maybe the many ways folks have been dating during the pandemic – virtual dating shows, touting their vaccine status — finally earned us the trophy.

But not everyone on the show agrees with those reports. “D.C. dating is competitive as hell,” one woman complains in the premiere. Or as another contestant puts it: “The D.C. dating pool has some pee in it.”

Ready to Love premieres tonight at 8 p.m. on OWN. A preview episode about the cast is available now. 

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