Scott D. Pierce: Ex-Mormon goes dating across the country in ‘Swiping America’

Four people go looking for love in “Swiping America,” a new “rom-doc dating series,” and one of them is a Utah native/former Latter-day Saint who tells viewers she’s still struggling to overcome her religious upbringing.

“The church definitely affected me sexually. I still feel bad sometimes for kissing boys,” Reagan Baker says in the first of eight episodes, which start streaming Thursday on Max. “I’ll be, like, ‘Oh, man. Such a sinner!’”

If kissing is a sin, there’s a lot of sinning in “Swiping America.” It features four single New Yorkers — two straight women (Reagan and Kesun); a lesbian (Ashleigh) and a gay man (Kris) — who travel to eight cities across the country, where the show’s producers swipe through dating apps and choose blind dates for them. Each cast member meets five people in each city for quickie, 30-minute dates, then chooses among those people for longer dates.

The show has plenty of lighter moments — lots of laughs — but it’s not just frothy fun. Each cast member reveals things about themselves and their lives that are heartfelt. Even heartbreaking. Which is definitely the case with Reagan.

“Walking into it, I thought it would be just this fun, light, new, wacky experience” she told The Salt Lake Tribune. “And it ended up being so much more of a challenge, to be honest.”

The first impression in Episode 1 is that she’s been cast as the “dumb blonde.” And she plays into that. But in Episode 2, her story will bring tears to your eyes.

“A friend of mine calls that my performance art. … I like to throw people off. I like to see who immediately judges me based on the way that I look,” Reagan said.

The 38-year-old said she grew up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — as a “mainstream Mormon. I would say, actually, extreme, devout Mormon.” In a big family, where she was home-schooled. Although she’s identified as a former Salt Lake City resident, Baker actually grew up 250 miles away in Cedar City. And she couldn’t wait to leave Utah behind and move to NYC when she was 20.

“I moved to New York, kind of trying to leave the church,” she said. “And then I didn’t know anyone here and I didn’t have any friends or money or anything. And I found an immediate community with the church again.”

She quickly started dating a church member. “I got married. And then I got divorced,” Reagan said. “Actually, my ex and I, we left the church together. And then we got divorced.”

And, she said, the way she was raised left her pretty much unprepared to be anything other than a housewife and mother. “One day, I realized I could actually be very successful, and I didn’t need to be married, and be home with a bunch of kids.”

In the series, she says her religious upbringing affects her to this day, but she does not slam her former faith. “I didn’t really want to be one of those resentful ex-Mormons,” Reagan said. “It just didn’t work out for me. It can totally work out for other people. … And I’ve learned to actually appreciate [the] social aspects of the church. The church culture. Certain things, I think, have actually really suited me as I’ve fine-tuned, dropped the things I don’t like, kept the things I do.”

FINDING FRIENDSHIP • Cast members do find a few possible love connections, but the series is pretty tame when it comes to sex. Cameras are turned off if it happens.

There is talk about sex, R-rated language and some full-frontal nudity, which doesn’t feature cast members.

One of the bigger — and most pleasant — surprises of “Swiping America” is how quickly the four cast members bonded, formed friendships and supported each other.

“Our personalities were just compatible,” Reagan said. “We all decided to do this because we’re open-minded people, and we have a certain confidence about us that would take this kind of a risk. And I think that made for a very safe, kind of easygoing household. None of us were competing with each other.”

That point is pivotal. “Swiping America” is not a competition. None of the four cast members date the same people. As a matter of fact, Reagan said that she was told in her first interview with a casting director that producers didn’t want any “arguing” or “drama,” and even off-camera “There was never any drama in the house at all the entire time,” she said.

She remains in frequent contact with the other three cast members. “We FaceTime, we talk, we meet up. It’s great.”

AWFULLY AWKWARD • “Swiping America” may have more awkward moments per episode than any other reality show, which really isn’t that surprising. Blind dates can be awkward, and each cast member had five blind dates in each of the first seven episodes — for a total of 140 blind dates.

“I think that awkwardness is a low-level emotion that I should be better than,” Reagan said, “and so I almost never admit to feeling awkward. However, this was really awkward.”

None of it is mean-spirited, but there are moments that are definitely uber-awkward. Reagan said she actually felt that the most in some of the follow-up dates after the blind dates.

“I felt like I had all the power. I was the one that was, like, ‘Him. He can come back,’” she said. “That alone made me feel incredibly awkward.”

And she admitted she sometimes contributed to the feeling.

“I tried really hard to make sure my date didn’t feel awkward. Or maybe I wanted him to feel awkward because I was bored,” she said with a laugh.

CHANGED FOR THE BETTER • Reagan said she didn’t sign on to “Swiping America” because she was looking for love, but because she was “bored. It was the end of the pandemic. They approached me and I was, like, immediately — ‘Yes, I’m out of here.’

“I really wasn’t even sad or lonely before I went to do this. I was really dating a lot,” she added. “And then when I was there, there were times I was, like, ‘I’m sad about my dating life now.’ But I think it was good for me to really take a look at the way I date and see that there were some things that were, long-term, not working out. ... It definitely put a big mirror in front of my psyche.”

When she returned home, she said, she “changed a lot of my behavior with love and dropped a lot of my bad habits. I really did. It was like a funny kind of love rehab. I didn’t know I was addicted to love until I did this.”

ANOTHER UTAH TIE • The series was created and produced by Stephen Warren and Johnnie Ingram, who have some history in Utah. They’re the producers of “We’re Here,” the drag queens-across-America show that stirred things up in St. George earlier this year.

“Swiping America” is no more controversial than “We’re Here,” but there are gay people in it, so some will be offended by their mere presence, no doubt.

NAMED AFTER A PRESIDENT • Reagan was born while Ronald Reagan was in the White House, and, yes, her parents named her after the 40th president of the United States.

“When I was born, they sent Ronald Reagan a picture of me and said. ‘We named our daughter after you. And he sent back a picture of him with his horse,” she said with a laugh.

ON TV • The first two episodes of “Swiping America” start streaming Thursday on Max, the streaming service formerly known as HBO Max. Episodes 3-6 debut on Thursday, June 22; Episodes 7-8 start streaming on Thursday, June 29.

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