Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/TLC
Netflix viewers raised their eyebrows last year when the streamer announced Dated and Related, a series that sounded semi-incestuous. Siblings, cousins, and other related duos entered a Love Island-esque villa to find love—each one canoodling around with the other love-hungry singles, while their relatives were doing the same thing right next to them. It was a little cringey but, all in all, tamer than the title suggested.
Dated and Related looks like a G-rated Pixar movie compared to MILF Manor, a raunchy romp with that huge relative twist. Going into the TLC series—yes, this is on TLC, though it feels like it should live on HBO Max next to FBoy Island—we knew that we would be meeting a handful of MILFs looking for love. What we didn’t know is that the dating pool would be completely made up of their sons, also eager to sleep around in the same villa. The hilarity! The awkwardness!
If MILF Manor sounds familiar, you may be thinking of MILF Island, a fake competition show developed by NBC in an episode of 30 Rock, in which older women schmooze with eighth graders on an island. Though there are some differences—there aren’t 20 MILFs, there are eight; there aren’t any eighth graders, but there is a 20-year-old—MILF Manor feels like it was ripped straight from Liz Lemon’s desk. It’s satire drawn up into a real show.