U.S. Navy Lt. Andy Baldwin, centre, went fishing for a wife in the 10th season of the reality series The Bachelor. (Adam Larkey/ABC/Associated Press)Brody Jenner is a member of the current Hollywood brat pack and one of those Paris Hilton types who is mostly famous for being famous. (His tenuous claim to celebrity: He's the son of Olympic decathlete Bruce Jenner and appears on MTV's unscripted series The Hills.) Now Jenner is about to have a TV show of his own. MTV recently announced that he'll be at the centre of Bromance, a show that, to quote the cable network, takes "a successful TV format and turns it on its head in an irreverent way." That successful format would be the dating reality show, a direct descendant of the dating game show. Where does the irreverence come in? Bromance will feature contestants engaging in "group dates," "alone time" and "hot tub elimination," with the grand prize being entrée into Jenner's entourage.

The concept of auditioning to be Jenner's new "bro" may seem absurd, but it has been a long time coming. How did we end up here? The following is a timeline tracing the evolution of the dating show, from The Dating Game to Tila Tequila:

1965 – The Dating Game

Chuck Barris created many iconic game shows (The Newlywed Game, The Gong Show), but The Dating Game was his first and biggest hit. It set the prototype for every romantic competition on TV ever since. A man or woman queried three suitors, all of them coyly shielded from one another so that their responses would be the only way to gauge mutual attraction. Racy for its time, it's sweet by today's standards. It was resurrected four different times, finally ending in 2000.

1983 – Love Connection

The announcer promised this was "where you hear all the intimate details of a first date!" A man or woman sat on the pastel set and picked a date from various candidates presented via a big screen (high-tech for its day – they were really just sitting in a room backstage). After the two potential lovebirds paired up, they would return to re-hash their first date on the next episode. Its "intimate details" are amusingly quaint by today's standards: In one episode, a contestant confides her "fetishes," one of which is insisting that her date's shirt and socks match. The show resulted in 31 marriages.

1999 – Blind Date

Like many hit shows blamed on Hollywood, Blind Date actually originated in Britain. This show finally took the camera out of the studio to be the third wheel on a date. It also upped the ante with scenes involving mud baths, hot tubs and things one generally used to have to pay to see. Sometimes you still do: Blind Date offers pay-per-view uncensored versions with titles such as Blind Date: Dirty Dirty Divas. This was one of the first shows to exploit what can happen when you mix alcohol and an exhibitionist's love of the camera.

Bisexual internet/TV personality Tila Tequila chooses between boys and girls in her dating show A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)2000 – Cheaters

And this is what happens when America's Most Wanted is introduced into the bedroom. Disingenuous host Joey Greco gets a private eye to track a lover suspected of infidelity, then Greco and his crew (camera, sound, producers, bodyguards) ambush the cheater en masse. This show is outrageous – and strains credibility. It's hard to believe a sweet-faced woman in milkmaid braids would happen to find her husband on all fours in a hotel room, with a transsexual dominatrix poised to spank him, at the exact moment the Cheaters gang bust down the door. The confrontations often erupt into violence, including the time Greco was stabbed on a sailboat. The producers probably loved that (he recovered).

2001 – Temptation Island

The ultimate anti-honeymoon. This controversial Survivor-inspired show proved that if TV can make couples, it can break them, too (or spend three seasons trying). Four couples were taken to a beach paradise, separated from each other and surrounded by gorgeous, half-naked singles in a test of fidelity. During the initial season, one male contestant described the experience as being like "a Pepsi challenge, except it's ladies instead of a soft drink." Classy. The series spawned 10 international versions (with the Dutch, French and Bulgarian ones still going strong). The most unbelievable part of this concept is that there is no cash prize; apparently masochism is the best reward of all.

2002 – The Bachelor

In this show, 25 women are presented to one eligible bachelor. He dates them, tests them, then eliminates them systematically until he has found his one, true love. Women who make the grade are bestowed with a bloom during the rose ceremony each week. Less than a year after the first season premiered, a gender reversal was introduced with The Bachelorette, featuring rejects from previous seasons of The Bachelor. Both shows are still on the air.

2003 – Joe Millionaire

This show was all about tricking gold-diggers. A gaggle of women vied for the affection of a millionaire, only to discover at the end that (surprise!) he's really a construction worker. If the chosen woman agreed to stay with him despite being cruelly deceived about his financial status, the pair would both (surprise again!) be given a million dollars to be split between them. Thanks to such gimmicky plot twists, the show was short-lived.

The Hills' Brody Jenner will star in the upcoming reality show Bromance. (Matt Sayles/Associated Press) 2006 – Flavor of Love

This entire show was a live cartoon, from the music and graphics to the star himself, Flavor Flav (of Public Enemy), and his outrageous accessories. Flav had his pick of 20 women, who each had to court his affections. This led to such absurd competitive challenges as the Pimp My Gurney episode, in which the female contestants had to "nurse" the star's broken heart. (Some turned his hospital room into a strip club, while others came up with ideas more suited to a children's birthday party.) The winner of the third and final season was nicknamed "Thing 2" by Flav; her twin was "Thing 1." The series launched two spinoffs and became a way for aging former celebs to stage a comeback – see Bret Michaels of Poison and his fiesta of drunken bikini wrestling, Rock of Love (2007).

2007 – A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila

A former gang member turned wildly popular MySpace star, Tila Tequila parlayed her Web 2.0 fame into one of MTV's highest-rated series. Her twist on the dating formula? She likes boys… and girls. It makes for equal-opportunity self-exploitation. Other than the bisexual twist, it was a standard set-up: win Tila's heart. But did Tila really find true love in the first season? The winner complained, "She never called me after the last show and no one would give me her number." Aw, really?

Coming soon – Bromance

In Brody Jenner's series, the dating game goes platonic. How many episodes before a bro starts crying when he is asked to leave the bachelor pad? Before a drunken, amorous bro hits on Brody? Before a bro rides a motorbike off the roof and into the pool? The storyline possibilities are limitless. At the end of six episodes, Jenner will have found his new BFF.

Hannah Sung writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca