Late last year, when people were caterwauling over the baseness of ABC's 'Conveyor Belt of Love', a show that was often lumped into the same we're-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket category was the Alphabet Net's summer series 'Dating in the Dark.'

The comparison was a bit unfair. Not that 'Dark' was Shakespeare or anything, but at least it had the faint patina of being part scuzzy dating reality show, part social experiment. Would these people who got to really like each other in a pitch-black room still like each other when the lights were turned on? The surprise of the show's first season was that, no matter what you hear on those sickening eHarmony commercials, both men and women have the capacity to be shallow as hell.

The good news is that we'll be seeing more of that this summer, as word comes from Variety that ABC has ordered six more episodes of 'Dating in the Dark.'

Even though they have experts telling us that the volunteers in The Colony will internalize their situation and begin to think of it as their real lives, I don't believe it. The premise of the show is to take ten ordinary people from a variety of backgrounds and sequester them in a warehouse. Then we'll all pretend it's post apocalyptic Los Angeles and they have to find a way to survive.

But it's just not working. Two episodes in, and I'm not buying it at all. I'm not even really buying that the volunteers are buying into it. They seem just like any other reality show participant, enjoying their moment in the spotlight. The producers have rigged up marauders to go after them, but does anyone really believe they're in any danger? A true post-apocalyptic scenario would be a nightmare of terrors and fears with mortal peril at every turn.

I didn't have a lot of faith that ABC's Dating in the Dark would make for good television. But it's surprised me. In only two weeks, it's already made interesting observations on attraction and the human sport of dating. The only drawback for me so far is that virtually everyone is attractive on the show.

If the point is to see if personality can overcome physical appearance, then shouldn't you bring in some people who aren't conventionally attractive? And I mean more than just having a hot blonde with some acne and a couple of people with about fifteen pounds of extra weight around the middle.

Nevertheless, we did get a bit of shallowness, as well as people learning that it does pay to get to know someone before you judge them on their looks alone. Of the six couples we've seen so far, only two have walked away after seeing one another. And only one of those was based on physical appearance.