Early & Alone #16: I Love That
I started watching The Bachelor with my roommates in January. I'd always been a little curious about the show, or more appropriately, I was curious about the rituals around watching it, the way people would watch every week, then gossip about what had happened. It was like sports...with roses and glitter and really cheesy music.
The Bachelor has been around since 2002, and has launched many spin-offs, including The Bachelorette. The most recent season was the show's 22nd, its ethos firmly embedded in our culture. Though I'd never seen the show before this year, I was familiar with the basic idea--dozens of women live together in a mansion, without access to social media or television, and compete for the heart of one man. It bears a lot of resemblance to a cult, if you think about it. The bachelor goes on a series of dates with the women, selecting them for one-on-ones, elaborate day-long affairs that usually end in a candlelit dinner and then some awkward dancing to live music, while the couple is eerily alone (unless you count the many cameras and producers, of course), and group dates, which are exactly what they sound like. This season's group dates included a demolition derby, bowling, hiking, and a turn at the Moulin Rouge (oh yeah, the women escape the mansion to go to all kinds of fun locales if they make it toward the end of the season).
At the end of each episode, there's the rose ceremony, in which the bachelor calls out the women he'd like to keep seeing and asks them each, "Will you accept this rose?" Invariably the women giggle and grin and say some variation of "Of course!" or "Always." The women he doesn't call say an awkward goodbye then climb into the back of a black car, where they are whisked away to whatever awaits them back in the real world. As the season progresses, these goodbyes get more and more fraught, with the women often sobbing through the car ride, telling the producer who's riding with them, filming, how much they loved him, wondering how they are going to live their lives without him in it. As the season progresses and fewer women remain, the bachelor does "Hometowns" in which he visits each of the women's families, sharing a meal with them before being inevitably awkwardly threatened by some male figure in her life ("you hurt her and I will kill you," etc. etc.). And then, three remain, so they finally get to visit a "fantasy suite" (ie do sex stuff) if they so choose. After THAT, it's down to two, and now it's time for the women to meet the bachelor's family, before he finally chooses the winner--i.e. the woman he's going to propose to, the whole premise of the show.
It may sound like I hate this show. And...I kind of do. I hate the idea of it. I hate watching beautiful 25-year-old women cry and say things like "This was my only chance at love." I worry about them. I worry that they think this is true. I worry that women believe they need to wear high heels, put on a full face of makeup, curl their hair, and wear ridiculously skimpy outfits in order to demonstrate their worthiness of love. It's all so performative and heteronormative and demeaning. There's a creepy emphasis on "the family" and marriage. The show's entire existence is framed around the pursuit of marriage as a final goal, an idea that's already dangerously pervasive in our culture.
What, you don't tie your shirt up to expose your midriff when you go bowling?
But, here's the thing about The Bachelor: it's also highly watchable. There's something about reality television that sucks us in, makes us want to see what happens next. And at the end of the day, despite all the makeup and cameras and ridiculous situations, you grow to like these women (most of them)--you're rooting for them, and for their happiness. It's escapism in its purest form.
Except...this season's finale. Oh man. I'm not kidding when I say I had nightmares after watching it. Arie, this season's titular Bachelor, was pleasantly bland throughout the season, laughing and saying "I love that," in response to pretty much anything a woman said to him, before sticking his tongue down her throat. At 36, he was nearly a decade older than the majority of the contestants, a fact that seemed to bother no one.
The show's pretty useless host, Chris Harrison, (whose lines during every episode include "There's just one rose remaining. When you're ready.") has been touting the drama of the finale, but no one believed it, as they have allegedly promised this level of drama with every single finale. But this year, it turns out he meant it. Because this year, Arie really fucked everything up.
The two women left at the end of this season were Becca K, a 27-year-old, down-to-earth brunette from Minnesota who was funny and genuine and beautiful, and Lauren B., a blonde 25-year-old whose principle lines included things like "Wow," and "I'm just really afraid of getting hurt again" (she was apparently engaged once before, which is impressive for a 25-year-old). Throughout the season, Arie loses his shit every time he's near Lauren, telling her he's "deeply" falling for her, despite the fact that he can barely get her to say 7 words to him (at least on camera).
Shockingly, Arie chooses to propose to Becca, getting down on one knee in a field of alpacas in Peru, as one does. Just a few minutes before, he is forced to say goodbye to Lauren, who is understandably shocked, as Arie has committed the Bachelor's gravest sin--telling two women he loves them. She is whisked away in a giant SUV, and Arie moves on with his life, proposing to the other woman he loves.
Until...he changes his mind. In the Bachelor formula, the happy couple must live in secret in the months following the filming of the finale and the airing of the show. They can meet periodically but everything is kept hush-hush, as not to spoil the surprise of the finale. At the end of the finale, they show what's called "After the Final Rose," when the bachelor and his bride giggle and talk about wedding plans, while Chris Harrison drags out the runner up and a group of other women from the show and they rehash it all. This season, in a stunning move of narcissism, Arie ambushes his fiancee during what was meant to be a "happy couple" weekend for them. He arrives with a camera crew and no suitcase, and immediately tells the confused Becca they need to talk. "You're scaring me," she says, hesitantly, as they sit on the couch. He does nothing to allay her fears, instead methodically pushing through with an excruciating break up, telling her he never got over his feelings for Lauren, and that he had basically regretted every moment that he'd spent with Becca following the proposal. "What, so, you want to be with her now?" Becca asks, clearly blindsided. "Yeah, I want to try," Arie responds, his face dead of all emotion.
Given the situation, Becca holds it together surprisingly well. She tells him to leave, which he does, only to come back inside 30 seconds later, to just sit and watch her grapple with the fact that the person she loves, whom she expected to marry, has just told her he loves someone else. He never offers her comfort or shows emotion of any kind. Instead, his presence feels like a plea for absolution. He is guilty, he wants to be assuaged, he is the Bachelor, he must be loved and revered. In an unprecedented and calculated move, the breakup is filmed with two cameras and aired unedited, which Harrison contends is a first in "reality television history." This style of camera work serves to intensify the already heightened emotion, the audience forced to reckon with Becca's raw pain on display. Are we complicit in her misery by tuning in to watch?
The "After the Final Rose" segment aired the following night, live, and Arie got down on one knee all over again, this time with Lauren. The two beamed with happiness and told Chris that nothing else mattered except their own happiness. Arie confidently said he was "1000% over" Becca, with whom he'd just had an awkward exchange after no contact following their breakup. She asks him for answers, which he can't really give. He doesn't appear remorseful at all. Instead, he seems relieved, eager to continue with the REAL love of his life. Later in the show, it's revealed that Becca will be the next Bachelorette, giving her another chance at love, which probably assuages any guilt Arie or Lauren or anyone who was privy to her on-camera suffering may have had. Happy endings for all!
Except I can't stop thinking about the breakup, about Arie and Lauren's shiny happiness in the face of Becca's pain. What was striking about watching the breakup in real time was the silence, how no one knew what to say, how there was no resolution or easy ceremony to wrap things up. Quite frankly, it was triggering, I would think for anyone who's been through a painful and extended breakup, especially if you were blindsided by someone you expected to spend the rest of your life with telling you they were not only in love with someone else, but no longer in love with you--that they were unsure they'd ever really loved you at all.
Whew, anyway! Becca's season of The Bachelorette premieres on ABC on May 28 and I will probably be watching. I think watching a bunch of dudes compete for a woman's affection won't be as upsetting as watching The Bachelor is. Hopefully, anyway. Only time will tell.