The Right Swipe
The Right Swipe (2019)
Written by: Kyra Jones & Juli Del Prete
Dating has become digitized. Is romance dead? How do people stay hopeful when confronted with a sea of problematic men on dating apps?
These are central questions in Kyra Jones and Juli Del Prete’s The Right Swipe, a two-episode pilot for a series about two women who start a business to help men who are seriously looking for love present themselves better online. As long as they don’t date their clients, they feel they can help women find good men online.
Unfortunately, they’re confronted with a sea of men who are not ready to date or should not be released into the dating pool. There are few dateable options, so when good men (or exes) show up, their ethics are seriously challenged.
Superbly directed with crisp graphics, colorful design, lush cinematography, and a banging soundtrack from Chicago’s feminist hip hop duo Mother Nature, The Right Swipe has the feeling of a light romantic comedy complete with the necessary undertone of serious drama. Behind every funny story about the horrors of being single is the dark reality that men are not raised or incentivized to care about the desires and needs of other genders. The series accomplishes this by showing how even “good” men can fail to recognize that their partners are not actually enjoying sex or acts of kindness, and how easy it is for men to violate boundaries. In a funny, B-story, we also see their nonbinary roommate, Eden, who seems to be the happiest of the three living outside of the norms of the gender binary, heterosexuality, and monogamy.
The series persists on a steady clip of situation comedy and crackling writing, such as:
“Girl, you know you’re about to be 26. Ain’t nothing wrong with a green card marriage or a BlueCross BlueShield card marriage,” India (Kyra Jones) tells Margot (Juli Del Prete).
Or, “Even I would swipe right and I’m dead inside.”
Just as the series flips the nomenclature of the Tindr era – “swipe right” for the one you like – it also flips the situation comedy on its head: centering women’s desires but flipping the trope of women feeling the need to help men do better. Ultimately, the responsibility for healing our relationships to love is on all of us – but more on men!