I Felt Like Crying.....

I happen to be a fan of The Bachelor on ABC---I know, I know, you wonder why I would waste my time watching a train wreck!  Well there is this fascination about human romance that I have always had, and this show is perhaps the most crass example of constructed romance I have ever seen.  Somehow it is compelling!

Anyway, this week’s episode was the ‘Hometown Visit’ program where the bevy of 25 beauties has been winnowed down to 4 ‘lucky’ candidates who have managed to survive the rose ceremonies and now get the dubious honor of introducing their ‘maybe’ fiancé to their families.  

The promos for this episode create mega-drama, as if the families are skeptical and negative about the outcomes, but in fact the actual meetings and questioning by the parents and siblings of the prospective brides is pretty mundane and expected.

Bekka

                                                      Tia

Lauren

 

                                                     Kendall



This season’s bachelor is Arie, a rather vanilla fellow who is 34 and an ex-race car driver.  At first I thought he was suave and debonair, but after watching him stick his tongue into 20 of the girl’s mouths I think he is more an opportunist! 

His intellectual firepower is less than I  expected when I first met him, but over the ensuing episodes I really tired of him saying, “ I love that!” every time a prospective candidate cooed or said something that expressed her interest in him.

What I didn’t expect to happen was that over the course of the culling of the women that didn’t fit Arie’s concept of what a wife should be, I actually came to admire and like the ultimate 4 candidates that he selected to go on hometown dates with.  They were all different and pretty intelligent.  Quirky to be sure, but singular, and for whatever reason they all are falling desperately in love with this guy who they met 6 weeks earlier.

(I keep thinking about when I was that age and what I wouldn’t have given to have 4 gorgeous women all tell me they were falling in love with me and I had the luxury of choosing!)  My sense is that each of these women, in fact all 25, seem so desperate to find ‘true love’ that they almost can’t help falling in love with this potentially ‘perfect man’.

So Arie goes on hometown dates with all 4 and meets their families.  He gets along with everyone and the girls are terribly excited to see him mesh with their families.  Arie tells all the fathers and mothers that he ‘is falling’ for their daughters, and yet I know that at the end of this episode he will tell one of them goodbye.  This is complicated by Arie’s stupidity in telling each of these women that he ‘is falling’ for them too!  What a jerk! 

What can we expect when the moment of truth comes and he gives out 3 roses to 4 girls? 

Heartbreak!

What I wasn’t prepared for was the empathy and pain that I felt for Tia, who was the unlucky girl who didn’t get the rose.  The crushing emotional despair on her face and the nauseating close ups of her crying and decompensating in the limo were awful.  Then, to think about her walking in the door of her family’s house and be met with the sadness for her loss by the people who had such high hopes for her success at love made me want to cry.

That’s not the worst.  Now I think ahead to the next two women who are in love with this guy and will meet the same fate as Tia.  If he were such a magnificent catch I think I would feel REALLY bad!  But, nonetheless, they will have the same heartache and be devastated.

Is this really entertainment?  I guess in the age of Trump, it is better than seeing people blasted to pieces by weapons in almost every other TV show on the air….but I don’t know…

Maybe it’s time to move to a monastery!

And finally, will the victor find true love with Arie, Vanilla Man Race Driver?  Ask Ann Landers!