I have been a temporary bachelor since last weekend, when Kathy headed off to California for some R & R. This has happened from time to time- with a couple of similar getaways for her, or when I’ve been gone for a week on choir tour- and I suppose it’s some indication of the strength of our marriage that we miss each other as much as we do and find ourselves reminded of how comfortable we are with each other. For me, having Kathy absent does present a couple of perks- like being able to play opera videos at full blast at all hours- but those perks are so vastly outweighed by the Emptiness of this big house and the absence of that special someone who I care about and who cares about me.
I don’t know if Kathy’s absence had anything to do with it, but for some reason I found myself watching the finale to “The Bachelor,” also known as “The Show I Love To Hate.” And this is as good a time as any for me to say that I do not think ill of anyone who chooses to watch it. If you are entertained by “The Bachelor,” I see no reason why you shouldn’t watch it and enjoy it for as long as it’s on TV. But I have to say why this show drives me crazy, because if I don’t, I am going to explode. And you wouldn’t want that to happen, would you? Not after I’ve cleaned the house for my wife’s long-awaited return from vacation?
Reasons “The Bachelor” drives me crazy:
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1)THEY ARE LOUSY MATCHMAKERS: The series purports to be this exciting means for people to find True Love. If it’s such a great way to do that, than why is the track record of these couples so abysmal? The abysmal statistics suggest to me that most of these Bachelors would be just as apt to find True Love by hanging out at their local Applebees and proposing to the first waitress who got their order right. . . or by throwing darts at the phonebook, for crying out loud. To me the fallacy is the assumption that anyone is likely to find True Love under such ridiculously contrived circumstances, replete with rules designed not to help the Bachelor make a good choice but rather to ratchet up the suspense and supposedly create a riveting television show. (The creator of the show, Mike Fleiss, has publicly stated that the show is much more about great television than it is about reality. And numerous former contestants have complained about the extent to which the show turns out to be scripted.) Which brings me to my second complaint:
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2) THIS IS A LOUSY TELEVISION SHOW: Now we’re definitely leaving the world of fact and entering the dicey arena of opinion. But it’s my name at the top of the blog, and my honest opinion is that this show is more tedious than anything else on television right now. And that goes for soap operas in Spanish and anything on the Fishing Channel. I should back up here and say that there may have been spurts of interesting drama over the years that I have simply missed by watching the show so sporadically. But this week’s finale was, in my opinion, skull-crushingly dull. For two hours we heard this very nice, very sincere bachelor (I think his name was Sean) bemoan the difficulty of having to choose between Catherine and Lindsay – again and again and again. I was tired of hearing it after the first 5 minutes- by 110 minutes into the program, I was was ready to strangle him or myself or both just to end the frustration. And the two young ladies he was torn between were even less articulate than he was, and seemed utterly incapable of saying anything that was truly revelatory about themselves or the Bachelor. The one spark of freshness in the two hours was when we got to meet the Bachelor’s family, who flew to Thailand in order to help him make the decision. They were lovely people and also fun and fairly interesting. But you guessed it: they were as indecisive as their son was…. although I appreciated the fact that Sean’s mother shed some tears at one point as she revealed a genuine concern for her son, advising him not to propose to either girl if he wasn’t completely sure. That was probably the smartest thing anybody said in the whole two hours- and the most interesting.
Then again, I suspect that none of these people is quite as dull as they come off. Surely somebody says something interesting sometimes – but those moments must end up on the cutting room floor because they don’t want too much to be said too quickly. Surely Sean’s family had something interesting to say about the two young ladies they had met – “so-and-so sure talks a lot” or “so-and-so just didn’t seem quite as genuine as the other one” – etc. – but instead all we got to hear was how lovely they both were and what a tough choice Sean was facing. Blah blah blah. Tell Us Something We Don’t Know! Anything!!!
But that’s just the tip of the Uninteresting Iceberg. My other major frustration with this show is that when the Bachelor goes out on these dates, you never hear them talking about anything other than themselves and the date itself. As they’re sitting in some fancy restaurant, all we hear them talking about is how wonderful the meal is, and then one of them says “after this, I thought we would take a paddle boat ride.” And when they’re paddling around the lake, all we hear them talk about is how lovely it is and “I thought after this we would take a walk through the woods.” Never ever ever do you hear them ask a question like “what do you think about same sex marriage?” or “what’s the best book you’ve ever read?” or even something as basic as “are you a messy person?” All we get is “after this, we’re going on a paddle boat ride.” I guess there must be a lot of people who find such topics fascinating or the show wouldn’t be as popular as it is – but I am not among them. But beyond such banter being boring, it’s also pointless for the task of really getting to know someone in a meaningful way. And is this really what real people do on real dates? That’s not how I remember my dates with Kathy. On the other hand, I wasn’t exactly Sir Lancelot when it came to wining and dining and wooing (the first restaurant to which I took Kathy was a place where you get your food on trays) and most of our first dates were concerts where you don’t get to say much of anything short of whispering “do you have a cough drop?” But on these fairy tale Bachelor dates, the conversation seems so staged, so self-conscious, so self-centered…. and the kind of talk that leads nowhere in terms of really knowing the other person or knowing what life with them would really be like.
If the show were only uninteresting, that would be one thing. But I actually find it to be excruciatingly uncomfortable as well because of all the time it spends doling out painful rejection and disappointment. I mean, in the best possible scenario, the bachelor ends up with one of the young women vying for his affections- which leaves all of the other women essentially discarded for one reason or another. I suppose when we’re talking about someone unlikable who gets the boot, we might take perverse pleasure in such a spectacle, but when the young woman is somebody as sweet as Lindsay, the “runner-up” in last night’s bachelor finale, it’s a painful thing to witness. So is witnessing as nice a guy as Sean having to inflict that kind of pain on someone else. As I watched that unfold last night, I kept thinking “was there really not a better way for this gentle hunk to find a woman to marry? Wasn’t there a way for him to find a life partner that would not have involved such excruciating heartache?” And as I thought about that, I started wondering if The Bachelor doesn’t entertain us the same way the Romans were entertained by Christians being thrown to the lions. I suppose most competitive contests have many more losers than winners, and depending on what’s at stake, the losses can be heartbreaking in every sense of the word. But I can’t quite imagine a scenario when loss or defeat is so brutally personal.
At one point in the sequence involving Sean’s family, his mother asked one of the two young women whether or not they believed in the “Bachelor Process.” I don’t remember much of her answer except that it was a chirpy “yes” followed by some vague, mushy talk about finding one’s soul mate. I found myself haunted by that question to the very end of the show, and not just in terms of how I would answer that question – with an emphatic and unhesitating NO. I kept thinking about the hundreds of men and women who have been part of the Bachelor and the Bachelorette programs over the years, wondering how many of them really were believers- versus how many of them were simply acting on a desperate hunger to be noticed, to be in the glamorous spotlight of celebrityhood. And for those who do begin as sincere believers (and I’m sure there are some) how many of them are still believers as they exit the franchise. I can’t imagine very many of them believe that this show is a great way to find true love.
Then again, I found the love of my life in about the most wholesome and unglamorous place you can imagine – church choir. The point is that we met just in the course of living our day to day lives, and one the best things about that is you are so much more apt to see the real person, complete with all of their gifts and faults. An awful lot of people opt for living together to get to know each other even better. Kathy and I didn’t do that, but we did take a trip out to New England together during our engagement, and I think we gained a deeper understanding of each other in that experience than two people possibly could get from a ride in a paddle boat and dining on Lobster Thermidor. And 22 years later, we are still together and just as in love.
Of course, real life is about more than reality, and any opera fan had better be prepared to admit that! In the end, I suppose all of this comes down to what each of us prefers as our favorite means of escape. For me, my favorite means of escape is in the hallowed halls of Grand Opera. If for you, that’s “The Bachelor,” then watch it and enjoy it! If it’s “Glee,” then watch it and enjoy it! If it’s “Girls Gone Wild,” then . . . sorry, I don’t think we can be friends. 🙂
pictured above: Sean Lowe, the most recent “Bachelor,” in a moment from the season finale.