WTF Series, #4 - the Commodification of Love

‘The Bachelor,’ Season 23, Colton and ‘Jumping the Fence’

This show is one of the top long-running ‘reality’ shows in the U.S.  It is watched by millions, especially women. It’s not ‘reality,’ as over a number of weeks the bachelor has to propose to a woman in a partially scripted and controlled setting, usually a bourgeois luxury environment in the tropics. They are really all ‘cast members’ in paradise who make sure never to criticize the show in public. (And whose contracts forbid it...)  Last week the season’s Bachelor, Colton Underwood, jumped a fence in Algarve, Portugal – really a gate - and left the show early.  Big stuff, as no bachelor or bachelorette has ever done this before. Perhaps this jump is the beginning of the end for The Bachelor as a ‘reality’ show. After all, this is the obvious selling of love. 

Like Never Leaving the Prom

In this season several women also left the show without being shown the gate, which bummed out Colton to no end.  On The Bachelor, being booted means not receiving a rose from the bachelor in a cringe-worthy ceremony, after which the woman has to leave immediately.  So it seems bailing out of the show early is now the thing to do.  The situation itself is intolerable if you have any inkling of emotional reality.  Many men and women just sign up for the TV exposure, their careers or the luxurious trips.  And you have to wonder what class of people can leave their jobs for several months to be on a TV show? A majority of the bachelors do not actually marry the woman they choose on the show, so the whole thing is a moving traffic accident.  One even got a divorce in a bit more than a month.

The women are mostly long-haired airheads, seemingly cloned.  In this season, two contestants from Southern beauty pageants were included. Most of the women are from the U.S. South or California, so you can intuit the anti-feminist and conservative cultural cachè behind the show.  Cat fights and feuds abound between the women, as they fight or rat on each other to compete.  The producers always choose some narcissistic, disruptive or unstable women to stir the pot.  There are a few low-key sincere types.  African-American women are on the show, but they usually get sidelined, as this is a mighty-white event. This season’s show featured a nasty feud between one African-American woman and the most obnoxious of the bachelorettes, Demi.

The filmed conversations between the bachelor and his suitors concern their ‘feelings’ and never any practical or factual issues.  Which seems odd if you are going to marry someone.  Colton and other bachelors are evidently coached on how to talk.  Many of the bachelorettes say dull uber-conventional things when they are not fighting, cognizant of the camera upon them. In one case, Demi, the loudmouth blonde, tearfully told Colton that her mother had just been released from jail.  Instead of showing surprise and asking ‘what did she go to jail for?!’ he just acted concerned.  (Really?  Mom’s in jail?)

Colton is a former bench-sitting football player – in shape, dumb, sensitive and semi-handsome to some.  His selling point was that he was at 26 a ‘virgin.’  So the tension was if he’d lose his virginity on one of the final fantasy suite ‘overnights’ with the bachelorettes.

At the crucial point in this isolated la-la land, only 3 women were left for him to choose.  He tried to convince the blonde and immature Cassie that he loved her even if the show ended.  This didn’t sway her because her Dad had surprised her in Portugal and told her that Jesus believed marriage to be a lifelong marriage contract – ‘death do you part.’ So it shouldn’t be decided on in 12 weeks.  Duh and Death!

Run Colton, Run!

Cassie’s southern California family seem to be fundie Christians, which should make any suitor wary. Because of Dad’s intervention, Cassie left Colton and the show in the standard limousine.  (Should Colton marry into a family that believes Jesus thinks marriage is for life?  Don’t do it, Colton!)   

This refusal led Colton to shove the camera, then leave the hotel compound and actually jump the fence into the Portuguese night, disappearing in the dark.  It was fucking great.  That fence represented the whole Bachelor setup, a closed compound of fabricated monetary click-bait.

In the dark of a Portuguese road, Chris Harrison, the vapid Bachelor wrangler, couldn’t convince Colton to return.  Colton was "done with this shit." He was tired of getting rejected and that made sense.  For a time he trashed the season and good for him.  But his rebellion did not last.

Harrison comes across as the announcer in the “Hunger Games.”  Behind the scenes, he probably cited Colton’s iron-clad contract with the show to force him back for some more emoting.  So Colton tells the other two women to go home, which had never been done before.  He then knocks on Cassie’s door after she ‘left’ and she agrees to go to Spanish Majorca to meet his upper-middle class family.  Quite an over-the-top and forced suggestion, actually.  Colton allows them to film this event outside the schedule, which shows he never really broke from the ‘program.’ That legal contract is tight!  Eventually Colton gets to say goodbye to his virginity with Cassie - maybe – televised to the last moment before the door closes.  His virginity became the standing sad joke of the season.   And they fell happily in love… maybe. 

The producers of "The Bachelor" have a storyline that they try to force the contestants to follow, prompting conversations and situations for them.  It is possible this new situation was invented, but watchers sense that it was real. A good number of contestants attempt to run, according to insiders. So the story writers worked with Colton's rebellion.

Colton’s break in convention will breathe life into this program’s stale format and will allow advertisers and deluded exhibitionists to continue to sign up.  But it might also prompt more leavings that could eventually undermine the profitable premise that these fake relationships are for sale.

P.S. - 4/14/2021 - Colton Underwood comes out as gay.

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The Kulture Kommissar

March 13, 2019