Date Lab: This time, she got to pick her date

Most of the crowd clamored for Bachelor No. 3, who had won them over with a dead-on impression of Jigglypuff from Pokémon. Funny guy! But maybe too funny. Jill, 29, moonlights as a stand-up comic, and she’s not too keen on competing for the punchline. “I need my guy to have a sense of humor,” she said later, “but they also have to know that they’re just not as funny as me.” Her friends would know this, and signaled to her from the audience by holding up two fingers.

And that’s how she ended up on a date with Bachelor No. 2, Rob Sale, the not-too-funny guy with the shaved head, neatly trimmed beard and clear-frame glasses. He wasn’t her type — none of the three bachelors were, if she’s being honest — but then again Jill’s type is very specific, and in theory she’s trying to break the pattern. “My type looks like he just got done skateboarding down his parents’ driveway,” she said. “So that’s something that I’ll be working on in 2020.”

Rob, meanwhile, could scarcely believe his fortune when he laid eyes on Jill. “I was just like, ‘Oh, wow,’ ” said the 32-year-old cybersecurity analyst. “She is just incredibly good-looking. I was stunned.” They chatted backstage over white wine. Jill was easy to talk to. His parents who live in the area came over, and he introduced her. “I was like, ‘You know I was hoping to save that for much later,’ ” Rob told me later.

Suffice it to say Rob was looking forward to their date. We sent them to Centrolina, an Italian restaurant downtown. Rob figured if the evening went well, he’d take her to McClellan’s Retreat, a cocktail bar where his buddy works. (And if it didn’t go well, he’d go alone.) “My mind-set was just continually reminding myself that I was playing with house money, basically, and not getting too excited about what could happen.”

Jill’s mind-set was that the date would be a good time, which is her default approach. She could not remember having been on a truly bad date. This was not, she assured me, because she has excellent taste in men. Maybe it was force of will, or the fact that she could redeem any awkward or crappy moments for stand-up material. But for Jill to have a bad time, she said, the guy would have to be spectacularly bland.

Not a problem in this case. Rob knew about wine (and ordered a bottle of Barbera d’Asti in an impressive Italian accent). He knew about sports, and had a ton of hobbies: He’s in two soccer leagues, does competitive karaoke (!), is on a pub trivia team. At one point he somehow zagged from talking about the Atlanta Hawks to talking about William Faulkner, and she had to stop him because she’d lost the thread. (Rob doesn’t recall the connection either — “Probably something about how they’re both depressing and Southern,” he says.) Still, Jill says it was “refreshing to not just talk about the same things on a first date.”

For Rob, things picked up right where they left off at the Date Lab event, with Jill charming him with her wit, confidence and good looks. “I learned that she’s a very driven person,” he said, and was left with no doubt that she would succeed in stand-up comedy. More than that, though, she was just fun to talk to. So far, so good as far as Bachelor No. 2 could tell.

Except here’s something else that Rob learned: Jill was moving to New York in a matter of weeks. It came up while he was asking her about her comedy career. “It was deflating, I guess,” he said later. “But not fully.” After dinner, he coolly suggested they go to McClellan’s, and off they went.

But before you start composing poems to star-crossed love in the comments section, this was not destiny foiled by geography — or epidemiology, for that matter. His decision not to go in for a kiss when they said goodbye, sometime after 2 a.m., she said, was the right one. He was a “great hang,” Jill told me, but it was “not a romantic connection.”

It was a date that led nowhere, but it was, at least, a healthy exercise in getting excited about what could happen in a world where people look forward to spending carefree hours in the company of near-strangers. And that’s something we’ll all be working on in 2020, if we’re lucky.

Jill: 3.5 [out of 5].

Rob: 4.5.

They texted a bit but didn’t go out again before Jill moved to New York City a few weeks later.

Steve Kolowich is a Post Style editor.