“I came here for love.”
This is a line that Bachelor contestant Angela said while crying on camera after being sent home. Seriously? She went to a show with thirty women meeting one guy and expected to find true love?
I decided to watch the Bachelor after hearing all the hype for the new season, and although I’m not one for reality TV, I kept an open mind and tried to find the show’s strengths and weaknesses.
What I ended up with was one of the worst hours of my life and a whole lot of weaknesses, the main one being the Bachelor’s idea of love.
The bachelor this season is Nick Viall, and thirty women will be competing for “true love.” I’m not sure I know what love is, but I’m pretty clear on what isn’t. This show’s idea of love disgusts me; I can’t imagine that what these women gain with Viall through the show can really be seen as love. One reason that I don’t like this belief is that love isn’t some game. There aren’t contestants in love, but according to the Bachelor, there is. If I actually believed the show was real, then it would be brutal. This show plays with the emotions of real people; the bachelor of each season gains connections with many of the contestants and some of these women see it as love, only for him to kick them off of the show days later.
Also, what the bachelor is forced to do is equally awful. Viall in just the first episode had to “break the hearts” of eight women, some of whom already though they had made a connection with him. The position that the show puts the bachelor in is horrible; what Viall does in the show in regular society is seen as a jerk. Viall plays women against each other and can’t gain trust with any of them because he might be having sex with one of the other contestants the next day. Even if he comes out of the show happy, he’s had to hurt 29 women to get there.
Good thing everything is fake.The Bachelor is the worst type of “reality” a reality TV show can be. It was obvious when watching the first show that these were actors. The show really is a production; the creators develop an antagonist, use what seems to be scripted lines in their one on ones with the camera, and have everything planned out just how they want it to go.
In the first episode, the show makes us hate Corrine, making it extremely obvious that she’s scripted to be the villain of the season.Corrine goes over her time limit talking to Nick and kisses him, interrupting one of Nick’s other meetings. Other characters play equally obvious roles.Those who watch this show either know it’s scripted and find an obvious show likable, or those who don’t are entertained by other’s misery, which is kind of sick.
In the first episode, they show us a preview of all that is to come, and I became so much happier that I had only committed to watch one show.
