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As the finale of The Bachelorette approached, my lack of enthusiasm troubled me. Was there something wrong with me? Was the oxygen in my hermetically sealed bunker getting low? Was it time to remove the duct tape from my nose and mouth? After some dark nights of the soul, I decided that I wasn’t to blame. The fault lies with them—The Other. With Trista, Charlie and Ryan.
While Joe Millionaire captivated the short attention span of the nation and American Idol II averaged 1.5 infotainment scandals a week, The Bachelorette never seemed to hit its stride and routinely placed show in the much-scrutinized Reality TV ratings derby. What went wrong? Well, a lot of things, but here’s a short list:
(1)The Boring and the Beautiful—A great Reality TV show is fueled by its personalities, and The Bachelorette is running on empty. Trista was supposed to provide guaranteed star power but most of her charisma was conditioned out of her during the pre-show celebrification process (see point 2 below). Of course, it doesn’t help that she’s embarrassingly predictable—she swooned at Ryan’s doggerel, held her nose at the sight of Greg T’s déclassé New York City studio and guffawed at the broad, one-note buffoonery of Bob. She’s even couched her final dilemma as a struggle between “the realist and the dreamer” inside of her (read: Charlie has more money.) Actually, the conflict between Charlie and Ryan is more like The Suit vs. The Sissy: Charlie is a jealous Ken doll who likes cars and hair gel, while Ryan is a brawny Man of Feeling who enjoys rhyming couplets and wilting effetely.
It’s a choice of evils, to be sure, but the pickings were slim—there were, among others, a boorish fatso, Bob; a marble-mouthed golden boy, Jamie; an edgy, much-maligned entrepreneur cum auteur, Russ; and a codeine-addled troubadour, Greg T. Sadly, the two guys most likely to provide the Puck Factor got very little airtime. First, Brooke, the cowboy with a girl’s name who bears an uncanny resemblance to Emilio Estevez’s character, Gordon Bombay, in The Mighty Ducks, supplied the show’s best line—“Thanks for standing up for cowboys.” And, in the love-to-hate category, there was Charlie’s bloated, balding gasbag of a brother who held court during the family dinner, waxing obnoxiously on the meaning of love and human life entire. We needed to see more of these lunatics and others like them.
(2) Celebrity, Second Class—By the time Trista did Live with Regis & Kelly to plug the last show, her persona was as programmed as a well-coached presidential candidate’s. For every joke, she had a bank teller smile and for every softball question a rehearsed, boilerplate answer. Since being jilted by the Alex, the oleaginous, original Bachelor, Trista has been transformed from an unlucky-in-love sweetheart to an overexposed celebrity-in-training. Part of the allure of Reality TV is the unvarnished, just-us-folks authenticity of its “stars,” but that illusion is lost when your Everywoman just happens to have a publicist, an image manager, sitcom cameos and the cache to trade autographs for speeding tickets: It’s The Pseudo-Celebrity Bachelorette, and it doesn’t work.
(3) Sexual Devolution—I’ve seen commercials for Walt Disney World (e.g., the one in which dear old dad sucks in his gut to try to impress a theme park Cinderella) that were more sexually suggestive than any situation on The Bachelorette. And while its Reality brethren lowered the bar by featuring nubile maenads prostrating themselves for the affections of a beery frat pledge (MTV’s Dismissed and The Real World), a sub-titled, sloppy off-camera dalliance behind a copse of trees (FOX’s Joe Millionaire) and girl-on-girl action (NBC’s Meet My Folks), all ABC proffered was a weekly glimpse at our heroine in a revealing yet ultimately tasteful bikini. Yawn. In fact, after Trista’s alcohol-induced tryst with Russ in Las Vegas, there wasn’t much in The Bachelorette that would have made a woman in a burka blush, except maybe the occasional use of the term “orgasm.” “Heavens to Murgatroyd, what will they say next!?!” exclaimed your Grandmother. In the end, what The Bachelorette lacked was a Moment of defining, transcendent stupidity—“Thanks for standing up for cowboys.” in the penultimate “Men Tell All Episode” came close, but it was too little too late. Part of the problem was that this batch of participants was just too well adjusted to make it work. In Reality TV, sanity doesn’t sell. We all wanted Russ to be a crazed stalker, but, ultimately, he turned out to be a relatively decent guy, a bit handsy perhaps, but certainly not the needy nut job Christi was on The Bachelor. And that’s too bad. For a second, I thought I was outgrowing Reality TV, but it turns out that it was The Bachelorette that was too mature.