Have reality dating shows ever actually been about finding love?
I am skeptical to believe any of the most attractive 20-somethings in America are simply incapable finding love like the rest of us.
“I came to you and comforted you too!”
“I even gave you a special rose!”
Gerry, ABC’s first-ever “Golden Bachelor” said these words to a contestant who he was confronting over her having told another contestant to “zip it” about her experiences with the leading man.
The story started last week. Episode three of the show marked a turning point — finally, tension surfaced among at least a couple of the ladies. The one later confronted by Gerry started a tiff with another woman who liked to share what her dates and conversations were like with the lead. For any standard watcher of the show, this wasn’t an unusual practice. People do it all the time.
Not without drama. Talking about your dates with the lead on “The Bachelor” or “The Bachelorette” could spark other jealous contestants. They are all desire the same future beau, fiancé, spouse.
The tension this causes on the mainline shows usually leads to long running feuds that can span four episodes, five, even the entire season. Instead, Gerry found out about what happened. Pulled aside both parties. And sent the “zip it” party home at the end of the episode. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have much in the way of feelings for her anyway.
But it’s notable that he was able to send her home. It’s oft-discussed on the show how the producers will force leads to keep someone around far longer than they would’ve liked — for the drama.
“The Golden Bachelor” has seemingly broken every rule of reality dating shows.
It’s not a million hours of television (two hours per episode for Bachelor, Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, or 60+ episodes for Love Island). It’s just one hour per week and just eight episodes total, though I’m sure that will change if it’s successful.
There’s not that much drama. Sometimes there’s chaos, yes, (love you April!) but it’s always good chaos, like sitting around over ice cream and playing never have I ever and telling people you had sex on a steering wheel.
They’re not part of some weird “experiment” as Netflix constantly calls “Love is Blind,” where all of the contestants try to find love without ever actually knowing what the other person looks like.
And most importantly, the people on there actually want to find love.
They’re not trying to be influencers. They are 60-75. Most of them don’t even use social media. Even when they are, their social media use is earnest, sweet, lacking the toxic trappings of trying to find the perfect filter or caption or hashtags or audience. These people could probably care less if a post got zero likes or 10,000.
Sure, there is something to be said for the fact that they are older, come from a different time. There’s a mound of reasons why you could argue that these people are different, better suited for actually finding love.
But do you really think that in 50 years the would-be influencers who vie to be on “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” are really going to be trying to build their brand?
The people on “The Golden Bachelor” have lived lives. Have loved and lost. They are widows. Were married for 40+ years. Got divorced, more than once. Were single for decades before hoping, praying, this show would be the place. One of them, our Beloved Sandra, missed her daughter’s wedding to be on the show. Her daughter telling her, “Mom, I’ve got my guy. Now you go find yours.”
Every single one of them, even the woman who told another to “zip it,” just want another chance at love. They are tired of being alone. They miss having someone.
They are in the phase of life where it might possibly be the hardest to find another soulmate. They haven’t lost hope, but they are keenly aware that fruition is much harder than it once was.
The problem with this franchise, with many reality dating franchises, is the pool of contestants. I realize now that’s always been the problem.
I get the idea. Most people once upon a time when this franchise started were still getting married in their mid-20s. Strike while the iron’s hot.
But it’s not the 2000s anymore. Marriage happens when you’re 29 and an old hag! When you’re 35 and decrepit! When you’re 47 and wrinkly!
So much of dating now has moved past your 20s. My brother met my sister-in-law when he was 29 and she was 30. They got married right before she turned 31. The age of 15 wedding invitations a year has moved from when you’re 25 to when you’re 32, 33, 37.
No wonder so few of the relationships actually turn out well. These people are still figuring themselves out. They’re allowed to. We don’t have to rush into marriage anymore.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t date at all in your 20s. You go on failed dates, a lot of them, that’s how you learn what you want.
Putting a bunch of 24-year-olds on a search for love in two months means putting a bunch of idiots on a search for love for two months. (I’m one of them, but I’m not about to go on a dating show!)
This column exists as proof that dating isn’t easy. But finding the one isn’t supposed to be easy. You’re looking for someone to spend the rest of your life with, or hopefully at least a few decades, not the next bloke from the bar who glances your way.
It’s not that I’m skeptical that the most attractive 20-somethings in America are simply incapable finding love. Maybe it is hard for them. (Their personalities have often not been … great.)
More it’s just that they aren’t — and neither am I — ready to find love in 90 days.
The issues of age and finding love have been percolating on the show for years. The oldest Bachelor we’ve had, Arie Luyendyk, was 36/37 when the show filmed. And the women he dated ranged from 22 to their mid-30s. Several of the women over the age of 30 shared a room and it was sharply referred to as the “Cougar Den” by some of the younger contestants. Ageism shone toward a group of people who were in some cases, what, three years older than those “youth”?
Your twenties are meant to be spent building out your career. And that’s the dilemma of the show. These people must leave their jobs during the middle of the year for anywhere from a couple weeks to four months — more if they go onto “Bachelor in Paradise.”
It’s a running joke that every time “The Bachelor” that there’s suddenly a nursing shortage in America, as seemingly a quarter to half the contestants left their jobs at hospitals caring for patients to join the show.
Jobs aren’t easy to leave for long periods of time, cruelly, as a result of capitalism. Jobs especially aren’t easy to leave for long periods of time when you’re 24 and have quite literally no experience. How is an employer going to react when you tell them that you quit your last job to go on a failed search for love for an undefined amount of time?
So many of the contestants go back on the show, again, and again. Likely because they didn’t care to go back to their jobs anyway, but the show doesn’t exactly create an environment where the off-ramp to the real world is easy.
What are the contestants left to do? The easiest option is to use the show as a platform, for more followers, for a new career. Become an influencer, a celebrity. Make money through brand endorsements and commercials. Make money off of your faux attempt at love.
Perhaps “The Golden Bachelor” is the reset the franchise has always needed. I doubt the mainline shows will change, but I would love for them to.
Take “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” and make all the contestants 35-45, a time when there is an actual urgency to get married.
A time when people are actually ready to settle down.
A time when “exploring a connection” isn’t an odd euphemism for being willing to sit next to each other at a sandy bar on a beach in Mexico for a drink.
A time when people who are still single have actually, genuinely struggled to find love. Or, at the very least, a time when they’ve likely attempted to find love.
Maybe some of them have been divorced. Maybe some of them have loved and lost. Maybe they’ve been cheated on, wronged, grieved.
They’ve learned how to move on.
The contestants on “The Golden Bachelor” have experienced all of that. They’ve been cheated on. They’ve been divorced. They’ve loved and lost. They’ve been wronged. They’ve moved on.
So they’re not here to fuck around, as Sandra would say.
That’s what we want out of dating shows. We want to see ourselves, our friends, our families. Reality dating shows don’t get the luxury of other unscripted television. They don’t get to just be dramatic for the sake of being dramatic, even if they choose to be.
Reality dating shows tap into the most essential part of our lives. That’s not something to take as lightly as the producers behind these shows often do.
We build entire economies around love. Dating apps. Restaurant menus. Hotels. Drinks. Cruises. Wine tours. Bridges.
All of those, while taking advantage of the human desire to find companionship, at least respect the endgame.
Right now, “The Bachelor”, “The Bachelorette” and “Bachelor in Paradise” choose to ignore the actual journey toward love in favor of chaos they think ensures ratings stability.
As long as a few couples every once in a while work out, just enough for the franchise to have so-called “Bachelor Royalty,” ABC execs and producers can feel like they’ve done enough. They can continue to market the shows as a “journey that works.” Because of those models, occasionally, we end up with the poor supplicant who ends up on the show actually looking for love but ends up in a hellscape beyond imagination. They never last.
So, we live in a world where the Bachelor franchise commoditized love into a form so toxic that all we are left with is a pool of drunk singles who could care less about finding a future.
But is it really want anyone wants? A reminder that dating sucks so badly that even when you are on a show where the entire goal is to get married in the end, there is little to no hope of it actually working out?
More than just my Love Story
Is Grindr the Sexy New Linkedin? (Yahoo)
Carolyn Hax: Her soon-to-be ex is grieving, but she’s still seething. (I understand rage toward an ex, but I’ve never read such cruelty.) (Washington Post)
30 Gay Love Songs: Men Singing About Men. (Billboard)
Help! My Straight Friend Keeps Complaining That She Wishes She Was Gay. (Slate)
Cheers y’all,
Note: The names of the people in my columns have been changed to respect their privacy — and to allow me to spill a bunch of tea about them without remorse.