Season 15 Bachelor Brad Womack explains to his harem that because he's an ol' fashioned, gentlemanly type, there's only gonna be room in his life for one Very Special, gold-digging, fame-seeking, shallow Barbie clone.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Of all my guilty pleasures (and there are a few, among them infomercials and reruns of Felicity) the most shameful has to be the compulsion to watch The Bachelor (or Bachelorette, as the case may be). I watched the first few seasons of it, but around about season 550, I just stopped, and that lasted for at least a couple of seasons.
Until one night when I had nothing better to do and I turned on the TV to the Bachelorette. It was the season with the Canadian woman and they were taking a train through the Rocky Mountains (one of my most favourite places). The woman and her harem of guys frolicked and made out all through the mountains, while one unlucky fellow got the boot and was left at a railway station. And damn it all to hell, I was hooked again!
So now it’s been three seasons and I can see no end to this. There will be an infinity of Bachelors/Bachelorettes because of people like me. I like to think of myself as a reasonably intelligent person – I browse through People magazine, but I also (seriously) read The New Yorker. Which is why it’s such a mystery to me why I can’t stop watching this vacuous, inane show where nearly every single person is no one I would ever want to even make small talk with in real life.
Maybe it’s that I’m fascinated with trying to figure these people out – trying to understand why someone would go on a show like this in the first place (though the obvious explanation is for fame and nothing else), and how they all swear up and down it’s because they want to find love, as if the show was their last possible hope. And how the Bachelorette can be in tears, reaching for the final rose to give to one of the poor saps standing there looking pathetically hopeful – and how none of them just throw up their hands and say “Enough – I’m leaving this freak show!” My husband says they are all just actors, but are there really that many people who think this show is their way to an acting career? And what about the families they end up visiting – they’re all actors in on it as well?
These things trouble my mind – and I hate that. And I hate that I try not to talk about my Bachelor problem, but often find myself just blurting out to people that I watch it, almost like a cry for help!
Unfortunately, help may not be coming any time soon. I heard there’s supposed to be a new spin-off show airing in the near future featuring several of the Bachelor/ Bachelorette rejects crammed into the same house and doing challenges, à la Survivor, the object being to see who of the lot will find “love.” All I can say to that is, God help me.
