The Bad Bach(elor)
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This post contains spoilers for season 28 of The Bachelor.
Would I consider myself part of Bachelor Nation? I want to say no, but I also know I will be tuned into the upcoming season of The Bachelorette, so… maybe? I initially tuned in because I needed something distracting but not too involved to have on while I did my annual Marie Kondo-esque closet purge. Folding clothes is pretty mindless but I have specific ways I like things folded, so my eyeballs cannot be glued to the screen the whole time, so nothing with subtitles or distracting visuals and nothing with super complex plots. Normally I would just rewatch a Star Wars movie, but I decided that since The Bachelor was constantly featured in romance novels and streaming on Hulu, I might as well watch a couple episodes for the context and background information.
As soon as I saw Joey’s doofy Botox half smile, I was hooked. 32 women? Two of them are sisters? Jess is out of control and it’s only episode one??? How could I not be totally sucked in?
I understand that reality television is fake. I understand that the show is highly edited to present the girls a certain way (the villain edit is real, y’all). I did a bunch of research into why the show is overall kind of problematic (besides the obvious exploitation of love and vulnerability for Instagram followers, there are also no intimacy coordinators on set - the job falls to producers, and only 20% of Bachelor/Bachelorette couples have successful relationships), because I thought this post was going to be a big brain think piece about the dark side of reality television. I made a list in my notes app of things I wanted to talk about like trauma dumping on national TV and the disingenuousness of the relationships as demonstrated by the A-frame hugging and kissing. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that A: I hate that sort of cynicism in others and I definitely don’t want to perpetuate it in this space and B: There is a lot of fun, good things that I took from this show as a reader and a writer and a consumer of media in general. Does it still have it’s problems? Absolutely. But to pretend that reality television is somehow more toxic than scripted TV and movie production is untrue and once again perpetuates the idea that things primarily consumed by women are shallow and vapid and unworthy of being taken seriously.
I know that this has a lot to do with gender socialization, and obviously this show is marketed to women, but there is a reason shows like The Bachelor and Love is Blind (which I have not watched yet) are so popular. We can be cynics and say it’s because it’s like watching a train wreck, you can’t look away, but I think it’s really because it’s wonderful to watch people fall in love. Romance novels are perennially popular because the people reading them want to see love happen. I watched the bachelor because even if I do think Joey is a doofy Botox crybaby, I enjoyed watching him go on dates with the girls and watch them fall in love (or not). The ratio of dramatic cat fight train wreck drama to sweet moments of connection was not as high as you might be led to believe.
A lot of the drama was manufactured in order to get you to tune in, a trick of editing in the previews for the next episode. The season opens with Joey crying because he “just did not see that coming” and I thought it was his rejection from his season on The Bachelorette. It was not, it was meant as teaser material for the finale, which I think I figured out with like four episodes left in the season. Of course all was not as it seemed (I had my money on Joey being unable to commit and not choosing Daisy or Kelsey, who I had my money on as the finalists, because he still needed therapy from his time on The Bachelorette). Turns out, the “history making moment” was just that Daisy figured out she wasn’t the one, and talked to Kelsey, and they rode in the limo together, and then Daisy told Joey she knew and walked away with her head held high. Joey then proceeds to cry about this.
There were moments of drama this season, (Maria and Sydney being the big one) but it didn’t dominate things all season. When you bring 32 people together and stick them in one place and they aren’t allowed contact with the outside world and every moment of their life is recorded, of course conflict is going to happen. But, the idea that women are catty and dramatic any more than men is bullshit, and is a patriarchal myth meant to discredit women and keep them from coming together to realize that there is in fact no good reason for men to control everything. And it’s not like there isn’t drama between the men on the Bachelorette. I read all the Entertainment Weekly recaps from last season and it seems like Adrian and Brayden were stirring the pot at the same level as Maria and Sydney, except they were both presented as morons whereas I think that Maria was just not a fake bitch and Sydney felt threatened.
If anything, the highest drama moments happened during the Women Tell All episode, where they are asked leading questions by Jesse Palmer, who is quite possibly the most dramatic part of the show (any time he stepped in to be like ‘Ladies, this is the final rose’ and the went back to wherever he was hiding was so funny to me). Whether we want to admit it or not, we need conflict to push stories along. The conflict doesn’t have to be high stakes all out cat fight drama, it could just be the conflict of we all want Joey and have to grapple with our feelings, and all the girls in the mansion become best friends, but there still must be conflict, or viewers wouldn’t watch. But to say ‘oh, I hate those shows because of the drama’ is reductive. All story telling requires conflict, and when the conflict is between women we call it drama and act like we’re above it. When it’s the conflict in stories that are not primarily marketed toward women (Man vs. Wild, Hell’s Kitchen, Survivor, Master Chef) we just call it conflict and don’t act like it’s trashy. We might not say it’s the smartest thing on TV, but “trashy” gets saved for shows that feature women and are marketed to women.
When it’s Maria and Sydney clashing it’s just trashy drama and they’re just doing it for attention because the conflict has an emotional basis. It is written off because it’s two women and the patriarchal programming causes us to think it’s petty because a man would never throw a tantrum like that when he doesn’t get his way (anyone else read the article about all the men who punched their TV’s after the Superbowl? Or did I hallucinate that? Maybe I hallucinated while men complained about Taylor Swift ruining football, which is for men (a real thing a coworker said to me) and it was all a dream).
Speaking of Maria, I think she would have been a much more compelling Bachelorette than Jenn, but whatever. I’m still going to watch. Because at the end of the day, I am here for watching people fall in love (sort of. I will admit that being in love after spending maybe like a grand total of 40 hours with each other one-on-one but not really because there’s a film crew is a stretch). I want the escape of watching other people live lives that I am not living (32 suitors sounds like it would be fun for like a month and then I would be tired).
I want Joey and Kelsey A. to live happily ever after. Whether that’s with each other until the end of all time or separately after being engaged for whatever length of time that Joey had told Lexi when she asked what his plans were before she walked out (like 2 years or something?), neither one deserves to be punished just because they agreed to be on this show, just like no one, regardless of gender, should be punished for being part of Bachelor Nation (unless you’re harassing Rachel or the other girls and then yes, you deserve to get kicked off the island).
Other Things I Read and Watched This Week
Bound - Unstabler with a full head of hair? Wild.
The Conformist (Il Conformista) - Viewing courtesy of the UNLV Film School.
Only You - Itly? What’s my wife doing it Itly? This was so good 10/10 a true rom com written by Diane Drake and directed by Norman Jewison, who also directed In the Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, Fiddler on the Roof, and Jesus Christ Superstar (plus a bunch of other great movies).