Just about five minutes ago, we debuted Episode One of our second season with Mark & Audrey of Cheap Dates. But there’s some surprises in store! For their second season, Cheap Dates has morphed into a show called Illadates. Same premise — the charming couple explore every neighborhood they can each Thursday — but with some twists this year. After the jump, we chat for a minute with Mark Schoneveld about all things Illadates.

So! It’s nice you have you and Audrey back. I understand there’s been some changes afoot: Cheap Dates is now Illadates? Please to explain.
Yeah, unfortunately Cheap Dates was already taken. By some dude and his lady doing an audio podcast in Chicago. He trademarked it.
You know, there’s only ever a few good ideas in the universe at any given time. Did you guys use the existential crisis presented by this to alter the show?
LOL, nah. We’re still Cheap Dates at heart. But we did take a few liberties in how we’re approaching it. We’re classy geeks, so we figured losing the ‘cheap’ was okay. Plus, our dates weren’t bottom-basement cheap (like drinkin’ Pabst in paper bags in the park).
But we’re gonna do some fun new things… Double Dates, Theme Dates, that kinda stuff. We’ve got a few surprises up our sleeves.
New theme song? People were always asking us about that War On Drugs songs from last season.
Well, we love Adam (from WoD), but I kinda got sick of that song after listening to it a million times in editing. We love him for lending it to us, but Audrey and I went ahead and wrote our own funky jam to fit a bit tighter in the intro. It’s kinda tongue-in-cheek, but it makes us laugh so we hope it’ll do the same for others.
If anyone’s got some music suggestions for us, by all means, we’re listening. Next season will need a new cut, for sure!
Yeah – would you mind if we put out a call for (royalty-free) music with you as well? We’re working on loads of new stuff for the fall season of PTV, all of which could use tunes. Send your jams to philebrity[at]gmail[dot]com. Meanwhile, what was your favorite episode from last season?
You know, I really liked our Manayunk/Roxborough episode 12 — that was a great date, super inexpensive and who doesn’t love a hike in the Wissahickon?
Also, ‘Goes to Jail’ was cool. I had never been to Eastern State Penitentiary before, and it’s wicked cool.
Awesome. Well, congrats on the new season! And love to Aud!

New episodes of Illadates air every Thursday on Philebrity.tv. And you can view them all here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 3:54 pm.