“The Bachelor” franchise had long since fallen into a rut in recent seasons, ever since it decided that a regular person could never be the bachelor or bachelorette handing out the roses. No, for more than half the seasons now, the newly crowned mass suitor had to be a reject from the previous season.
This helped not only in marketing — oh, that guy! — it also served as solid recruitment for the flock who’d amass for the humiliation of being one of two dozen desperately seeking attention and eventually marriage from the person in charge.
Whitney Bishoff, the fertility nurse from Chicago who easily coasted to the final rose in Monday’s finale of “The Bachelor,” claims she signed up for season 19 with the specific reason of landing Chris Soules, the husky farmer from Iowa who had to work out extensively since his rejection on the the last season of “The Bachelorette” before they’d let him pass out roses this time.
As single minded as she was in carving her impressive career, she landed the dude and now has the privilege of moving out to nearly nonexistent town of Arlington, Iowa, to be with her man. There was a lot of time to kill in the three hours of prime time given over to “The Bachelor” finale Monday, but not one second was expended asking the key question: How do you feel about giving up your entire career for romance? Or that the man never had to consider for a second giving up his?
Relationships are supposed to be built on compromise and mutual support, but not in what they annoying call Bachelor Nation.
Anyway, Whitney was loved by Chris’ family even more than he did, it seemed. Which was fine with him since what he really wanted was a version of his sister, he claimed. Which was kind of weird. I thought he might go for the other one, Becca Tilley, the chiropractic assistant from Shreveport, because she was more enigmatic and less doggedly eager than Whitney. In fact, the celebrated virgin wasn’t even sure she was yet in love with Chis, which host Chris Harrison thought was the most unusual thing that had ever happened in “Bachelor” history when it actuality it was a woman who refused to pin her emotional progress on a TV show’s shooting schedule.
Yes, she may well have fallen in love with him some time soon, but not soon enough to coincide with the scheduled show finale.
She’s better off, believe me.
It was the dullest season in years, with producers stooping their lowest to try and create villains out of women who were perfectly fine.
Out of this group, when it came time to pick one of the losers to be the next Bachelorette, they really wanted to go with Ashley S., whose funny observations seemed to frame her as pathological (instead they lured her to the offshoot “Bachelor in Paradise” this summer). Then they couldn’t decide whether to go with Kaitlyn Bristowe, the free spirit from Canada who made Chris record a clumsy rap song (because that’s what you do on dates), or with Britt Nilsson, who was an early favorite since she got the first impression rose, but then lied to Chris in admitting that she couldn’t ever picture herself living someplace as bleak as Arlington.
Harrison said producers couldn’t decide between the two, who are not really that different from one another, so they decided to do something else Harrison said had never been done in “Bachelor” history — although it sort of had with an early season of “The Bachelor” when two men were up for Bachelor and the first night women chose between them.
The same thing will happen on “The Bachelorette” when it starts in mid May: The men who are cast will have to choose between them. So the two will have the opportunity to be humiliated on national TV twice in a five month period by their rejection. And from past seasons, it never seems that the guys have much of an impression of the Bachelorette at all other than how hot she is (they’re more on there to win, no matter what the prize is).
Just as Whitney will be unable to keep her career should she continue to Iowa with Chris, Kaitlyn and Britt won’t be in control of their fate at first either. In Bachelor Nation, it’s never a good deal for the women.