'Are You the One?' Season 3 Trailer Reveals Bad Pickup Lines and a Big Twist

Before you go rolling your eyes about another MTV reality show where attractive young people get drunk and hook up with each other, take another look at Are You the One? It’s more of a social experiment than you think, and an addictive guilty-pleasure at that. As evidenced by this exclusive trailer, that love-or-money experiment is getting darker as the series enters its third season, premiering on Sept. 24.

As with past seasons, if 10 perfect matches — decided upon by a team of professional matchmakers, psychologists, and even the contestants’ friends and exes — are discovered by the end of the season, those 20 people split $1 million. But, unlike previous seasons, if the panel goes a week without finding any matches, that jackpot diminishes by $250,000. Four weeks without a match, and the hopefuls become epic failures, destined to be mocked by friends and, well, us, until the end of time.

And some deserve to be mocked anyway.

“Wealth shouldn’t be measured by the amount in your bank account — it should be measured by the effect you have on others,” one slick fellow muses to one of the ladies in this preview. “You’re a wealthy girl.” Looks like someone brought their A-game to Hawaii!

Inevitably, the fun — and the fights and the chair-throwing — will heat up when people pair off… and then find out they are not a perfect match. Do they stay together because the heart wants what it wants, or do they part in order to win the big bucks?“

Are You the One? Season 3 premieres Thursday, Sept. 24 at 11 p.m. on MTV.