Suggestion Box: The Bachelor*

The Bachelor should be considered my guilty pleasure, but when I discover other fans of the show I unabashedly discuss it like the people on the show are chimpanzees and I am Jane Goodall. Not because I've lived among them - I would certainly die of alcohol poisoning if I did that - but because I become an expert on the matter. I could write a dissertation on the damaging effect of a woman bringing a single rose into a room full of grown men on an otherwise pleasant evening. I could write a truly terrible love poem comprised entirely of hyperbolic statements overused on the show. But I won't.

Have you ever noticed Chris Harrison's tiny, tiny hands? My friend Patty pointed it out to me, and now I can't unsee how comically small they are.

Each season of The Bachelor promises it's the most. dramatic. season. ever. Usually that's accurate. Of course, the drama is manipulated through sleep deprivation, editing, flowing alcohol, a select few inherently ridiculous people, and interviews and ADR that are done well after the season is complete (Sean Lowe verified this in his book For the Right Reasons, which I am properly embarrassed to admit that I read). Because of all that manipulation, I think of the people on the show more as characters and less as humans, but I still love the drama. I love yelling "WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?!" at the TV when the first person of the season finally breaks and says they didn't think it would be this hard. I enjoy sighing in disgusted exasperation when the villain gets a rose. I even secretly like peeking through my fingers at painfully awkward moments when signals are missed or break-ups are more intense than the short half-relationship should warrant.

So my suggestion is not to remove the drama, but to add more of the lighter moments. By my (completely made up on the spot but probably close to accurate) calculations, they spend 5% of each episode showing the same handful of clips all season that include people crying, fighting, or generally making poor decisions. 23% of each episode is spent previewing what will happen after the next commercial break. I suggest removing these repeated scenes and adding in the more genuine moments. They currently pin these at the end of a handful of episodes and call them "bloopers" or something, but the franchise would improve vastly if there was more focus on this. 

They could show more of the large group of men or women doing very little while waiting for their dates. I'd guess some pretty entertaining stuff goes down, though it might end up feeling like Big Brother mixed with Bachelor if they did too much with the house life. They could show scenes from their travels. I would love to watch those big guys crammed into airplane seats, leaning on each other to nap or drooling on their tray tables. Or the girls without all their makeup, lugging their bags through the airport. Genuine interaction on the dates would be interesting too. They currently air mostly canned conversations with topics that have clearly been fed to them. 

As I write this, I wonder if it wouldn't work. If we humanize these people too much, will it take away from the guilt-free entertainment aspect of the show? Are they better left as overly serious, gossipy characters who act more like jealous schoolchildren than like functioning adults? Let me know what you think (or mercilessly mock me for writing this) in the comments!


*I'm referring to both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. I just didn't want to type both out every time. Give me a break.