New show digs up singles past

This time it’s “do (over) or die”.

In new reality series The One That Got Away, a group of singles are sent back to the dating drawing board. The idea? To see if sparks fly in the end – again – with missed connections from their past.

The show, which premieres June 24 on Amazon Prime Video and will be hosted by singer Betty Who, follows six contestants. Everyone faces “the portal,” an entrance to the set that’s obscured by clouds of dry ice for maximum drama.

As each wannabe lover waits nervously, water features rippling in the background and exciting music playing, someone from her past emerges from the mist — a childhood friend, a Jurassic heartthrob, a flirt from a work conference, an old college coed.

“I already suffer from anxiety. So walking through that foggy, ridiculous scene, my heart was definitely pounding…in that moment, just standing there waiting for the person to arrive,” said Kasey, 28, a New Jersey-based Twitch streamer and one of the singles in the show.

“It’s terrifying and so discouraging. You only see the silhouette of a man – it’s like something out of a horror movie. You think, ‘Who is that? Is he here to kill me or is he trying to love me?’ It didn’t help calm me down until I saw her face and you actually started talking like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re here.'”

Jeff, 28, a travel blogger from New York, is another single on the show.

“No one’s ever seen anyone do a show like this before,” he told the Post.

“For example, if someone is on ‘The Bachelor,’ they’re all new people [they date]. All the people who came for me are established connections. Maybe I know their families. So we don’t play “What do you do for a living? Where do you live?’ Game. You skip the conversations of the first three dates and dive straight into the question, “Are we compatible or not?” and move on. It was a really intense experience.”

Jeff’s connections have ranged from a childhood friend who knew him before he was revealed to be gay, to a man he went to clubs with on vacation, to a work acquaintance.

“Some people [who came through the Portal] I’ve known myself longer, some I’ve known less, some I’ve only known for a day,” he said.

“The time didn’t matter. It was more like, ‘Where are we today?’ I’m not the same person I was five years ago, and seven years ago I was straight! So it was interesting to see how different they were and to get their perspective on how different I was as a person. Just because you didn’t connect many years ago doesn’t mean you can’t connect today.”

Singles like Jeff and Kasey get a chance to hook up with their missed connections and see if the sparks fly. But every time a single gets into a groove with the person they’re dating, the portal spits out someone else from their past to shake things up.

“It was super tempting to have this whole idea of ​​finding missed connections from the past because I’ve always been in serious monogamous relationships since I was 16,” Kasey said. “The longest break in between [relationships] the ones I had was maybe six months… Maybe there are people in my past I’ve never given a second look. I feel like there’s good potential for that. Because of what connected us – the same school, the same job – I thought that was a better basis for future discussions.”

Kasey said that although she considered who might appear on the show for her, the results were unpredictable.

“There were a few guys that I was surprised that went out of their way to show up for me,” she said.