Reality Check on 'The Bachelor'

First I must admit that in the 18 seasons that “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” have been aired on ABC, I may have watched a TOTAL of 15 minutes of the two shows.
Now it is not because I am one of those snobby people who claim to be too sophisticated to watch “reality television.” In fact I am quite proud to admit that I have watched every episode of all 18 seasons of “Survivor,” so I know how addicting these shows can be once you are hooked.
I have also noted with interest that when checking the “Most Viewed” articles on seascoastonline.com, any article pertaining to “The Bachelor” or “The Bachelorette” almost always ranks near the top. People obviously love the shows and love reading about them.
But as someone who has written a column titled “The Truth About Dating” for over four years, I have always been somewhat perplexed at the very premise of the shows. That is, I presumed that the purpose of both shows was for a bachelor or a bachelorette to select a mate out of a group of women (or men) that were “cast” by the shows’ producers.
And, naturally, the final selection of someone to marry would have to neatly coincide with the scheduled number of episodes for each season. The very premise sounded preposterous to me.
I am someone who ran a dating service for 23 years. I therefore do not believe that one should simply rely on fate to meet the love of one’s life. But the very premise of both shows seems to go much too far in the opposite direction.
How could someone really determine after just a handful of dates (while also dating many other people at the same time) that their final selection was someone they would want to spend the rest of their life with?
It bothered me that this show was once again selling that “Disneyish” fairy tale that you can “spot” your true love in a twinkle of the eye and KNOW that this person is your one true love.
Or so I thought. I decided to do some research on the shows to see, after all these seasons, how these marriages turned out. So I turned to my trusted Internet research tool, Wikipedia. And I found the show’s results fascinating.
I had presumed that all of the bachelors and bachelorettes at the final “Rose Ceremony” would have proposed marriage, AND that they would then in fact be getting married soon thereafter. After all, isn’t that what the shows were supposed to be all about?
I examined the results posted on Wiki, and much to my surprise I saw that of the 13 bachelors, only six were foolhardy enough to actually propose marriage on the season’s final show. And of the six who did, I read the following results:
* Aaron and Helene “broke up after several months”* Andrew and Jen “broke up in December, 2003”* Byron and Mary “are still engaged, but no wedding date planned”* Andy and Tessa “called off the engagement one month after the finale”* Matt and Shayne “broke up in July, 2008”* Jason and Melissa “broke up publicly…during the ‘After the Rose’ finale” (I guess Jason changed his mind and this became a major media controversy)
And what about the bachelorettes? Since women are far more romantic than men (and many have really believed since they were five years old that “Someday My Prince Will Come”) four of the five bachelorettes actually did propose marriage on the final episode. And what happened to those engagements?
* Well, blow me away, Trista and Ryan actually did marry and have two children! How does that saying go, “Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while?”
* Meredith and Ian “were engaged at the end of the show but ended their relationship in February 2005.”
* DeAnna and Jesse’s “wedding was set for May 9, 2009, but they broke up in November 2008.”
* Jillian and Edward (on the season that just ended this week) “will be moving to Chicago… and they stated that they would be married in the next 12 months.” Wanna bet?
So, of the 18 supposed marriages that ABC touted were going to result from “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” shows, exactly one actually happened.
Perhaps these shows are not doing the damage that I was afraid they were going to do, misleading viewers into believing that true love can be found on what is basically a game show. Perhaps both shows are just pure entertainment and nothing more.
If that’s the case, then I’ll just emulate Sarah Palin and use a basketball analogy, “no harm, no foul.”