I would just like to announce that I love my wife, Michele, just a little bit more today. That revelation comes after watching just a half-hour of The Bachelor last night to see what they used from the show’s trip to the Oshkosh area back in October.
For those of you that did not tune in–and be glad you did not–I can tell you that ABC didn’t make us look too foolish. The visit to Knigge Farms in Omro was cliché “fish out of water” stuff with women in high heels and designer clothes trying to milk a cow by hand and shoveling cow manure. The Paine Arts Center and Gardens looked great–even though they shot in October, so the flowers weren’t exactly in full bloom–but the way the interior shots were framed, it could have been any place with older furniture.
Now, the reason I love my wife a bit more today is that she never stooped to the level of caricature and self-embarrassment that the women appearing on The Bachelor are more than willing to reach. It took me all of ten minutes watching last night’s show to understand why “Nick” kisses the women in mid-sentence: He just wants them to shut the heck up.
I doubled my viewing “pleasure” last night by following the #TheBachelor feed on Twitter. It is even more embarrassing how many people (women and men) take this show at face value–like it is actually X-number of women trying to “win the heart of America’s most eligible bachelor”. Every bit of “drama”–not to mention unintentional comedy–is manufactured. It’s not too hard to realize that the bachelor is interested in two or three women. The rest become either antagonists or sympathetic figures to set up some measure of audience buy-in before their “shocking elimination”.
There is obviously one woman who is taking her “crazy b!*@&” role to heart. She is laying the groundwork for a “career” in “reality television” with comments about Michael Jordan and “Abryham” Lincoln’s napping habits and being too “injured” to shovel “poopy”. If this was actual “reality TV” “Nick” would have sent her off after ten minutes–but you know the producers have told him to get rid of the other “boring chicks” so America can get its fill of the “psycho woman” first.
As far as we know, The Bachelor won’t be back in our area for the rest of this season–so I can go back to my routine of not watching it–ever again.
