Oh, Good
God. Another season of The Bachelor
is here. This time it’s The Bachelorette’s
turn. Hurrah, equal opportunity abasement.
I’ll admit,
I used to watch the show. I even bought into the “true love” aspect of it for
the first, oh, three times. Then I stuck with it another season or two just for
the recreation of watching all those drunken, sobbing, catty oh-no-she-didn’t moments. But after a
while, the entertainment value of watching younger, prettier women degrade
themselves and each other even lost its appeal. Or maybe I started watching The Real Housewives franchise, which
adequately fed my desire to feel superior to thin blondes. Either way, I stopped
watching, certain that if a reality junkie like me was tired of it, everyone
else would soon be, too. Even if viewers weren’t turning away, surely they
would run out of women willing to subject themselves to the humiliations of the
show.
Alas, I was
wrong. There seems to be no end to the number of desperate 23-year-olds certain
that Mr. Right is just a limo ride and eight or nine glasses of champagne away. I
think in seventeen seasons of the show, only one woman has ever bowed out
before the rose ceremony because she actually stopped to consider whether she liked him. Those are incredible odds that out of 25 women, every one of
them falls for whichever guy the show happens to serve up. Are women really that
acquiescent these days or are they all drinking some kind of Mormon Kool Aid in
the back of that limo? What I’d like to see, frankly, is a Bachelor who purposely acts like an asshole during the show, and let’s
see how many of the women stick around. I’m betting most of them, sadly. The
Rose Ceremony is The Bachelor version
of Sally Field’s acceptance speech: “He likes me. He really likes me.” Cringe.
I like to
think The Bachelor women are in on it
and just want to win, whether they’re taking home a fiancé or a booby prize. They’ll
get their fifteen minutes of fame, and if they’re really lucky, a contestant
spot on Dancing with the Stars. Yes, that’s
today’s version of a television star --
people who get engaged two days after one of them just slept with the lucky runner-up.
It makes me
yearn for bygone reality shows like Battle
of the Network Stars. Those were the days when TV knew the definition of a
star. They wouldn’t let just anybody don knee socks and matching headbands to compete in
that obstacle course. No, you had to be a real star like Kristy McNichol, Parker
Stevenson, or Adrienne Barbeau. You had to earn your star status with a hokey
television show or at least a few After School Specials. Teen Beat pin-ups like Leif Garrett, Scott Baio, and Willie Aames
earned their celebrity status. They might’ve kissed as many girls in one week
as the Bachelor, but they did it on their own time. If people like Farrah
Fawcett, Suzanne Somers, and Lynda Carter were going to show off their breasts,
they were going to do it for the sake of art, not in hopes of a rose. (What? Are
you saying Charlie’s Angels wasn’t art?) They had television standards back
then. Stars would only get in hot tubs and suck face on television if it were
scripted.
Ah, so
maybe we haven’t fallen so far after all. Today’s version of scripted TV is a
little more opaque than the laugh track days. A former Bachelor, Brad Womack, got lambasted by viewers for having the
nerve not to fall in love within the allotted eight weeks of the program. How
dare he not follow the script! Here the viewers are, totally invested in
whether DeAnna or Jenni gets the final rose. They blog about it, they Facebook
about it, they chat about it. Only, the viewers are more invested than either
of the women. DeAnna and Jenni are probably just psyched to get to go to Tahiti
or Belize or whatever paradise ABC sends the final "ladies". More important than
going home with Brad or Sean or Travis is going home with two and a half carats
of Neil Lane.
I’ll
concede it’s possible they may have real feelings for the guy. I mean, who
wouldn’t after being wooed on fantasy-like dates in magical locales. It’s not
hard to impress a date when someone else makes the plans and foots the bill. But what's a date with him like when a major television network's not involved? I'm betting popcorn and a movie is more likely than lobster and a yacht. Will he spring for a large with extra butter? That could make or break a relationship. Instead of
taking a trip to New Zealand, they ought to be taking a trip to Costco. How
much beef jerky does the man eat on a regular basis? That’s
going to decide whether you make it for the long haul.
Then again,
maybe I’m old fashioned. The long haul for a Bachelor couple might be making it through a Vodka launch party in
Vegas. Since they date and get engaged within two months, maybe everything’s in
fast forward. If Bachelor couples
count their time together in dog years, they’re all a success. If not, well, there’s
always next season. Oy.
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