In the premiere episode of Boy Meets Boy, host Dani Behr told the audience a piece of information that none of the men in its cast knew when they signed up: Half of the 14 suitors vying for the affection of human resources professional James Getzlaff were actually straight, and that if they deceived Getzlaff well enough to win, they could walk away with $25,000.

Boy Meets Boy, the very first same-sex dating show, which premiered 20 years ago this summer, was widely derided for its twist. Entertainment Weekly labeled it one of the 20 worst reality TV shows ever and characterized its twist as cruel and offensive. Despite this dubious distinction, the shows executive producer, Douglas Ross, who founded Evolution Media, the production company behind Vanderpump Rules and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, called the show daring and well-executed in an interview with HuffPost and said that it is one of the shows hes still most proud of.

The twist, Ross says, is what appealed most to the execs over at Bravo, which was looking to reinvent itself and move beyond its somewhat stodgy image as a channel dedicated to the fine arts. The heart of that experiment, he adds, was that it flipped a societal script on its head: For the first time, even if only for two weeks in Palm Springs, contestants would live in a world where straight men were closeted and queerness was the norm.

If you look at it in the right frame of mind and if you have a sense of humor, its actually very progressive and its a great social experiment, Ross said, adding he was surprised a sector of the audience was offended by it. I would still pitch that show.

Boy Meets Boy was pitched as a gay version of The Bachelor , which premiered that January. It debuted when reality TV, like me, was entering something of a formal adolescence.

The suitors on screen, who were mostly white and fit, bore no resemblance to my 14-year-old self, but the show still left me slack-jawed. More real queer people were being shown on TV: Queer Eye had debuted just two weeks prior, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show would premiere that September. But Boy Meets Boy registered differently for me. I saw a group of men dating each other on TV, making the possibility that it might happen to me somewhat nearer than it had been before.