When you are half-mingling around the water cooler today, the word that is on the tip of your tongue to describe last night’s season finale of ABC’s The Bachelor is: insignificant. If it was two words that you felt you were looking for, then they are: completely insignificant.
At the close of the 17th season of the televised synonym for comfort food, the lack of any morsel of the formula that bares the slightest resemblance to a forward moving narrative, causes us to question why we even keep coming back. It is completely understood that we aren’t really supposed to expect much of a takeaway from the series, the characters, or the plot in the first place, but the casual “why not?” brush off from the general populace, gives us a stark, peephole view into the collective human psyche. What is it about these shows that we find appealing, and why, after running the same tired tread in the floor for 10 years, do we still insist on merely watching a new batch of variables playing around in the sandbox?
Full disclosure: after signing onto this franchise earlier in our publishing schedule, chicken-winging myself into being the chief correspondent for a series that reads more recently like Chris Harrison’s runway for ugly skinny ties, I tuned into the grand finale fanfare an hour late. Yes, I missed the introductions to Sean’s family, but it doesn’t truly matter anyways because even in my limited experience with the show, I could have written the script. The truth of the matter is, we don’t care about the process that transpired over the last 10 weeks, anyhow. The part we care about is sadism and the pleasure we find in other’s humiliation.
Like Lisa Simpson dumping Ralph Wiggum and Bart playing it back in slow motion, the only part about last night’s episode that mattered in our collective opinion, was pinpointing the exact frame that first-runner-up Lindsay’s heart breaks in two. When she initially showed up at The Bachelor mansion after a few too many cosmos, donning a wedding dress, we all silently judged, hoped and prayed for this lunatic to fail. Last night, when the poor girl took off her heels to commence her walk of shame, it had the same bittersweet aroma of witnessing the prom queen take off her tiara and beeline it straight to the bathroom, after the mean girls dumped punch all over her dress for making them feel inadequate all throughout freshmen year. At the same time, buried deep in the back of our minds, we knew it had only been 9 weeks prior, with about 10 full hours of one-on-one time, which made us half second guess how ‘true’ this ‘love’ could really be in the first place. But, that is beside the point.
From last night’s episode, regardless of the almost 3-month build up that lead to the moment itself, Sean getting down on one knee seemed anticlimactic. Catherine barely being able to respond when he popped the question, because she was so overwhelmed with joy that she was physically shaking, wasn’t the least bit noteworthy. When the happy couple rode away into the sunset on the back of a freaking elephant, we couldn’t care less. Happily-ever-afters mean nothing, and nobody gives even a remote shit about winners. The only part we care about is the pleasure we derive from seeing perfect-looking ‘average’ people, lose.
It’s amazing to consider that, at one point in the over-exhausted history of the series, the thought of watching ‘real’ people seeking true love was so compelling that we could barely muster the kind of courage it took to get up off our couch, change out of our flannel pants and put down the garden spade we were using to shovel the triple-fudge Rocky Road, directly out of the tub and into our maws. Sure, ratings for The Bachelor have dipped pretty significantly since the conception of the series, but we have to remember: ratings decreases are measured in the millions. If we only had 9.1 million last week and 8.9 million the next, major media networks see this as failure. The most distressing part of this statistic, to me, is that 8.9 million viewers are still tuning in, week in and week out.
The happenings of last night’s season farewell are not important. The nitty-gritty is completely interchangeable; more of the same old same old and completely insignificant. The particulars are secondary to the grander sentiment at play. Just as American Idol has blooper auditions, and Survivor and Big Brother have blindsides, The Bachelor has heartbreak. The tears and backseat cams are the true real McCoy, and all of the rest is simply a means to an end. A major positive is never having to touch the series again. That is, until The Bachelorette starts back up this coming May.
