‘Ghosted’: ephemeral and profound

Future historians studying our weird times might do well to pore over “Ghosted: Love Gone Missing” (9 p.m., MTV, TV-14). Combining heartbreak and social media forensics, “Ghosted” returns for a second season.

Faced with a plague, “Ghosted” has been shot remotely. Strangely, that doesn’t seem to matter. For the uninitiated (or merely old, like me), to be ghosted is to be suddenly abandoned by a loved one (or presumed loved one). One moment you’re sharing intimacy and continually texting, and the next minute, he or she simply vanishes — blocks your calls and unfriends you on social media.

It doesn’t have the high stakes of Showtime’s new series “Love Fraud,” about the search for a sociopathic bigamist embezzler. But nobody likes to get dumped and then treated like they don’t exist. So they call Rachel Lindsay and Travis Mills, the hosts and sleuths behind “Ghosted.”

Rachel “calls in” to the show from her apartment in Miami, and Travis shares an apartment with his dog in Los Angeles. But once they’re on Zoom, they are a team.

In this season opener, they try to console Joanna, a single mother from New Jersey, who invited her Uber driver into her life and who was won over by his affection for her son. At times she seems more hurt that her son has been “ghosted” as well.

From their respective coastal perches, Rachel and Travis search out friends and social media “friends” of the couple to check out Joanna’s story and discover the veracity and consistency of what she has shared. And what she hasn’t. It would be unfair to reveal too much more.

While this looks and sounds like every other reality series, “Ghosted” offers a sadly revealing look at what it’s like to seek affection and companionship in the era of smart phones and social media, a time when the very means of “communication” keep people at a remote distance that has nothing to do with COVID. It’s a view of life and love lived almost entirely as a virtual experience, a “reality” that can vanish

at any moment. It’s rather chilling.

At the same time, you can sit back and watch this just for the hair extensions, piercings, tattooed fingers and press-on nails. As someone whose MTV-watching days are decades behind me, I was both bemused and rather shocked to hear Rachel and Travis greet each other with, “Yo” and “Wassup?” Isn’t that something their grandparents used to say?

› Characters from “Meet the Browns” graduate to the new series “Tyler Perry’s Assisted Living” (9 p.m., BET, TV-PG).

Senior citizen humor

is tricky territory. “Golden Girls” remains beloved. Fox’s retirement home sitcom “The Cool Kids” lasted one short season.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

› Talent moves into the semi-finals on “America’s Got Talent” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG).

› “Koko — The Gorilla Who Talks” (8 p.m., PBS, repeat, TV-G, check local listings) profiles a primate who entranced a generation.

› A teacher and a tycoon fall in love in the romance “Marrying Mr. Darcy” (8 p.m., Hallmark, TV-G).