Watch My Show: Are You The One's Rob LaPlante Answers Our Showrunner Survey

Castmates on MTV's The Real World have been hooking up for years. What if you added money as a incentive to pair off those frisky twentysomethings? That's the premise of MTV's new dating competition Are You The One?, which airs Tuesdays at 11/10c. Executive producer Rob LaPlante, who also serves as executive vice president of production company Lighthearted Entertainment, filled out TV Guide Magazine's showrunner survey to explain why, when it comes to guilty pleasure dating shows, Are You is the one to watch.

TV Guide Magazine: I've got room in my life to watch just one more show. Why should it be yours?
Rob LaPlante: Are You The One? is fantastic guilty pleasure TV. Twenty hot MTV-aged singles living together in paradise with a $1 million motivation to hookup with each other. I think you can fit that in your DVR.

TV Guide Magazine: Who should be watching?
LaPlante: People who love reality dating shows are the obvious audience, but the social experiment aspect takes the show up a level from the standard one guy/one girl date and eliminate situation. My favorite part of the show is the gameplay, because it taps into a very fundamental dating question: If your perfect match was standing right in front of you, would you even know it?

TV Guide Magazine: What happens if we don't watch your show?
LaPlante: We're already casting Season 2. If you don't jump on the train now, you may miss the beginning of something special. Besides, first season reality formats always tend to be the juiciest because the cast has nothing to reference before playing the game.

TV Guide Magazine: What's the best thing anyone has said or written about your show?
LaPlante: I found this on Twitter and couldn't be more proud of the show's addictive quality: "Started to watch Are You the One online tonight. Four hours later I'm still going."

TV Guide Magazine: What's the worst thing?
LaPlante: Also from Twitter, I take this one as a backhanded compliment: "I honestly think #AreYouTheOne is my new favorite reality show, and it makes no sense and everyone's awful but I don't care."

TV Guide Magazine: Who was right? 
LaPlante: Both of them!

TV Guide Magazine: What's an alternate title for your show?  
LaPlante: Televising Dating Life in Your 20s

TV Guide Magazine: Give us an equation for your show.
LaPlante: The Bachelor multiplied by The Real World plus Millionaire Matchmaker divided by the board game Mastermind.

TV Guide Magazine: Come up with a premise for the spin-off.
LaPlante: Same premise, but in You Can't Be the One the cast must identify the worst person for them rather than the best. Would be hilarious how wrong they would be, but I bet they would have a much easier time winning the $1 million.

TV Guide Magazine: What credit of yours would you prefer we forget?
LaPlante: I started in scripted. Having far more fun now.

TV Guide Magazine: Tell me one thing about your cast.
LaPlante: The biggest compliment I can give the cast is they left it all out on the field. None of them were immune to some kind of drama at some point during the shoot!

TV Guide Magazine: If you weren't producing this show, what series would you most like to be an executive producer on?
LaPlante: I love King of the Nerds. They're my people.

TV Guide Magazine: Let's scare the network. Tell us an idea that didn't make it on the screen.
LaPlante: Some of the challenges we came up with were classified as "too sexual." But don't worry, I've got them in my back pocket for next season.

 TV Guide Magazine: Finish this sentence: "If you like _______, you'll love our show.
LaPlante: If you like to play matchmaker with all of your friends, you'll love our show.

TV Guide Magazine: Pick another show, any show, to start a fake feud with.
LaPlante: You've got something to say, Juan Pablo? Bring it on, right here, right now!

 TV Guide Magazine: What other show would you like to do a cross-over episode with — and how would that go?
LaPlante: The cast of Glee stop by the mansion unannounced, sing the cast a song, drop the mic and walk out without any explanation. 

TV Guide Magazine: How will your show change the face of TV as we know it?
LaPlante: Good reality TV is rooted in finding real answers to questions relatable to anyone. We got great on-screen emotion from our cast, because they actually cared about finding the answer. That's where I think we're going. Reality is going to get back to being more real. But also, if Bieber and Miley do Season 2, ignore the first part, because our mission will be complete.

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