You may or may not be familiar with one of MTV’s most recent shenanigans – A Double Shot at Love with the Ikki Twins. This not-so-novel reality dating show idea was most likely derived from shows like “The Bachelor” or “Average Joe”. However, in a brilliant move by MTV, there were now two, not one, girls looking for “true love”. The twin sisters would effectively date the same 16 people - and work together to narrow down the dating pool each week by sending people home.

When examining the relationships between all the members involved, it is clear that the network represents a very unstable complete graph. All of the potential daters were involved in closely knit friendships with one another, as well as with each of the sisters. However, the twins were somewhat in competition with one another, creating an animosity between the two. This negative tension only grew as the show edged closer and closer to the finale – in which the two had to choose their mates from the two remaining daters.

According to Cartwright and Horay, a complete graph can only be structurally balanced by two different means. All the nodes must be connected by positive edges, or there must be two groups of friends who are each connected to the other group by only negative edges. When it came down to the finale of “A Double Shot at Love”, this was most certainly NOT the case:

When the finale revealed that both sisters chose the same dater, and therefore only one of the twins would be left with “true love”, the entire unstable network exploded! Both twins were involved in unstable triangles with one another. They began feuding, which left the rejected dater crying and the selected dater pinned right in the middle of the fighting girls.

This is the link to the video of the reunion that took place after the show had finished airing: http://www.mtv.com/videos/a-double-shot-at-love-one-shot-too-many/1604218/playlist.jhtml . It is basically an interview of both of the twins, and both of the final two potential daters (the one that was chosen, as well as the dater that got sent home without her happy ending). When watching this segment, it becomes apparent that the unstable network, long after the show finished airing, is still an unstable network. None of its edges have yet flipped to make the network become balanced. Tension still lies within the edges.  Not until the twins manage to make peace with one another will the tension be completely worked out of the system.