Shawn Glinis: Ugh. Whitney a.k.a. The One Who Knows What She Signed Up For."The Bachelor" ended up with Whitney because she’s an absolutely dazzling salesperson. The whole three hour finale revealed what a polished, researched and practiced executive Whitney is for the Love Account. Chris was faced with the famous game show proposition: take the $100,000 and be fortunate for a bit, knowing you at least left the show with more than you came with...or go for what may be a MILLION DOLLARS! He chose Door #1. You know what you’re getting with Whitney—like, I could project their marriage in an Excel document.
Robin Turnblom: I feel like I just watched a close friend make a rash, sillydecision...just as you said a game show contestant would be likely to make. Atthe same time, Chris tends to seem more sure of his choices after the fact,e.g. his interaction with Britt at the tell-all and his discussion with Beccaafter the final rose. And it is hard to reject a person who says things like,“You better not forget how much I love you,” especially when Becca is in themidst of Juan Pablo-ing.
S: I agree, Chris does seem more sure of his choice, presently, but years down the boring line, not knowing what could have been with Becca may kill him.
R: Having not watched more than two seasons of the show, I still agree with ChrisHarrison’s generalization that Chris Soules was the most sincere bachelor ever.You can just tell. Or, Chris is just an amazing actor—if that’s the case,please put him in the next Fifty Shades of Grey movie, Hollywood. Let him showhis...range.
Chris was a perfect juxtaposition to Juan Pablo (or at least theJuan Pablo we saw). Where Juan Pablo was callous, Chris was caring, and whereJuan Pablo never showed emotion, Chris would get teary on screen.
He seems like a genuinely good guy, but we should talk about theidea of “American-ness” that was packaged in the marketing for the show. Chris,a white, Midwestern farmer who sometimes goes to church, just happened to be on "The Bachelorette" last season. So it was in part chance that he became the nextbachelor after Juan Pablo. However, we now have the problematic juxtapositionof the “Foreigner,” who last season did not follow the show’s premise andaudience expectation and did not get engaged, and the “American,” who seems tobe all in for love and got engaged when he was supposed to. One Bachelor printad in particular brings to mind Chrysler’s “American Import” TV spots, whichstart out with a Japanese or German narrator speaking about his respective country’stradition, before realizing the car he is narrating about is in fact Americanmade. The Bachelor ad shows Chris standing in a red barn doorway, and the printto his left reads, “Traditional. Classic. All-American.” "The Bachelor" iscapitalizing on the timing of Chris’s stint on the show with Juan Pablo’s,echoing Chrysler’s celebration of some supposed return to form and what “real”America supposedly looks like. Let us not forget, too, that ABC was actuallysued for racial discrimination on The Bachelor. According to NPR, in 2012 ajudge dismissed the case in favor of ABC on First Amendment grounds, but it’sobvious that ABC was getting called out on some bad decision-making that wasgoing under the radar for too long.
S: Chris iscertainly a nice human being who displayed a capacity for empathy, care andconcern for all of the women. More importantly, as you mention, he’s visiblysensitive. He wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable throughout the show. His care forthe women seemed to manifest in ways that transcended what ABC might havewanted him to do for the sake of ratings (e.g. not putting women through roseceremonies). For these reasons, the show’s All-American marketing scheme areperhaps subverted. Chris embodies plenty of quintessentially Heartland Americanqualities that unfortunately play into the larger inter-textual narrative thatABC is cultivating between last season and this one that you mention, but I’mwilling to take the good with the bad here...or blindly focus on the good. Onestep forward for having a subtly feminine All-American farmer man, one stepback for xenophobia?
As far as "The Bachelor’s" treatment of race, season 19 offers Exhibit Amber. If you remember her, you get the point. If you don’t remember her, you get the point.
R: A casualviewer or even non-viewer would probably be able to pinpoint what is thebiggest logistical problem of the show in general: time. Becca’s journeyemphasized that this season. She wanted to feel what she could call lovesooner, but for whatever reason—I’m guessing mainly time—she wasn’t thereby the final rose ceremony and was not ready to drop everything in her life andmove to a remote farm in the middle of Iowa for a guy she liked but wasn’t sureabout. What a crazy woman! Even though Chris may be the most sincere yet in hisLove Quest, and I really feel more invested in his happiness than I should befor a stranger, this doesn’t mean that he and Whitney will last. Maybe I’ll beputting my foot in my mouth 40 years from now, but I say the odds are stackedagainst them. Then again, some people say you either “know” or you don’t.Still. A couple months just isn’t long enough to get to know one person wellenough to spend the rest of your life with them in wedded bliss. Especially ifyou’re dating between one and 25 additional people during that process.
S: Agreed.As much as Chris seemed flexible and understanding about Becca’s time issue,that seemed to be the deciding factor for him. But more than that, I justdidn’t see enough chemistry between Chris and Whitney, especially juxtaposedwith him and Becca. When someone says “I love you,” and you reply, “Ireciprocate those feelings,” you don’t stay in love forever.
S: It’sreally a two-woman race between Ashley I. (a.k.a. the Kardashian) and Kelsey(a.k.a. the Black Widow). What makes the race exciting is that they offer twodiametric types of "drama." One cultivates drama amongst her while appearingquite put together: Kelsey. She’s a master manipulator. The other seems to havea genuinely dramatic attitude that lacks self-awareness: Ashley I. She’schildish. These dynamics are what made the 2-on-1 date so...well, dramatic.That and a gaggle of helicopter shots that I hope was homaging the denouementof Solyaris. Just like Kelvin is forever left to toil on a hopelessplanet that terrorizes you with your own memory, Ashley and Kelsey are left tothe desolate Badlands alone, together with the person that represents their opposite.My answer: Ashley I.
R: Mychoice is closer to Kelsey on the spectrum of dramatic personalities: Carly.You step out of the limo singing on a pink, portable karaoke machine and youknow some drama will go down. Carly’s reactions with and without the otherwomen around may not have seemed as thought out as Kelsey’s, but what Carlyseemed was honest—to the camera alone and to the women who thought they wereconfiding in her as a friend. This to me is the most destructive type of dramaqueen: the frenemy. She managed to crumble the relationships of other women andChris, of herself and other women, and of herself and Chris.
S: I’m soglad you mentioned Carly and her widespread destruction. While she isn’tsomeone I want to spend time with, to me Carly was strangely and sadly Shakespearean.She was never meant for the show; she doesn’t fit the existing algorithm forcontestants and she knew it. The only thing she could do was hope for somefinite but much needed attention before conceding failure to play recon forChris. Someone draft a screenplay.
R: LeavingAshley I. and Kelsey out in the middle of nowhere in the Badlands was prettybizarre. I think I get what the show was trying to do, but I couldn’t reallyappreciate it because I was just wondering who was going back for them and howthey were going to get out of there. The lake camping was also a weird choice.One man and a camp full of women in bikinis is too close to the premise of anexploitation horror film to be a fun group date.
S: While Ihad the same problems of logistical concerns during the Badlands and anunderwhelming feeling toward the sad-excuse-for-a-lake date (the only time Isympathize with Kelsey, as a co-Michigander), I was turned off by 1) howinsistent the show was on competitive farm-related group dates, and 2) theon-brand transparency of Disney’s synergistic Cinderella date...asbeautiful as Jade looked.
R: Although, the Disney date was the catalyst for one of myfavorite-but-slightly-manufactured moments from the season: Ashley I. loungingin her own princess garb while gnawing on a corn cob.
S: Mine ispretty simple: Becca quietly saying “I’m a virgin too.” The meek, shy woman inthe shadows comes out slowly to tell THE VIRGIN that she’s a virgin too. Beccaswiftly and necessarily undercut Ashley I.’s entire constructed identity in onetrue afterthought.
R: I likethat. I'll go with a Carly classic about Ashley I., "Her mouth isn't avirgin."
S: AshleyI. Hands down. I feel kinda bad with this answer, but it’s painfully obvioushow virginal she is whenever she went in “for the kill” (as Jordan calls it).Ashley tried to envelope Chris’ head every time they kissed. She doesn’t knowhow to play it cool on the way around the bases.
R: I’mgoing to have to say Jordan. Mostly because she was so bad at kissing whendrunk that she didn’t even make it to the kiss. And then talked about it. ToChris.
J: ‘Um...so….’
C: ‘Anyhoo..’
J: ‘How ya feelin’?’
C: ‘I am doing good.’
J: ‘I was gonna go in for the kill but now—’
C: ‘The kill?’
J: ‘Yeah. Like, makeout, like, I’m like, I gotta do it! Like, I need to go in for it! Now it seems awkward...um, anyway.’
S: That’s a good point; I thought people were usually better at kissing when they’re drunk.
R: Usually they at least make contact!
S: Britt. Those Chucks look dynamite on her.
R: Chris Harrison’s pocket square/Kleenex.
S: While Ihave a clear winner for this one, it’s complex because more than past seasons,the last five or six women were quite civil and tightly bound in a way thatmerited respect. As much as I respect Whitney, to me she says “good co-worker.”As hip and cool as Britt is, she has some major center-of-attention type shitto figure out. She’s the type of person everybody wants to be friends with butwhen you become close, you find out how little she cares about you. As fun andrelaxed as Carly seems, frankly she’s depressing. She’s the friend that you cannever tell about anything good happening in your own life because they’ll justcompare it to their own failures.
It has to be Kaitlyn. From her first appearance, Kaitlyn has beenconsistently awesome. Sometimes, ABC’s paradigm for contestants breeds lowexpectations, so when Kaitlyn came on the scene, I was like, “Whoa, she’s like,funny!” And she has her head on her shoulders, handling all of the toughsituations in admirable fashion. She’s fun, low maintenance, relatable and byfar the smartest person I’ve seen in any season of "The Bachelor." I’dhang.
R: I thinkmost people on a reality television show probably have center-of-attentionissues to figure out...and Britt actually seemed like a loyal friend to many ofthe other contestants. But, you stole my pick! I would say Kaitlin too. Sheseems to be able to find something fun about any situation. That being said, ifI’m in the right mood, I think Ashley S. would be pretty fun to hang out withtoo. Kelsey Poe did call her an “evil genius” on Grantland’s The Juliet Show.Mesa Verde is a pretty cool-looking place, you should Google it sometime. Welp,I guess I’ve identified my three potential new best friends. A relaunch ofParis Hilton’s reality show with me as the star?
R: Theaudience response in the "After the Final Rose" special was overwhelmingly forKaitlyn, so I don’t even know why there is any contest between Britt andKaitlyn as the Bachelorette. I can’t read producer’s minds so I figured Britthad something of a chance, but was not enough of a contender to go head-to-headwith Kaitlyn. The fact that the guys who make it on "The Bachelorette" aregoing to be the ones deciding who gets the rest of the show based on theirflash impressions from the first night is maybe the worst idea I’ve everheard. The fact that the Bachelorette already seems to have such little agencyon the show (she is expected to seriously consider moving to where herpotential husband works and lives instead of vice versa, the final two dudespick out the ring instead of her proposing) is amplified by this decision,which is driving me away from wanting to watch it at all.
S: Asdubious as the revised format is, I think once Kaitlyn inevitably beats outBritt, she will make the program exponentially more interesting than everbefore. Kaitlyn is the closest contestant this franchise has ever had in theway of an audience surrogate—in every situation, I would look to Kaitlyn totry and navigate what was going on. It’ll be nice to have that type of personalityin the constant spotlight.
R: One thing that stood out to me was theattention paid to the relationships between the women, who, as you mentioned,by the end of the show were more tightly bound as friends. There is always dramabetween certain women on "The Bachelor," but there was more time spentthis season on the positive interactions between them. Just after she wasdumped, Britt seemed more upset about Carly’s comments to Chris than thebreakup itself. Kaitlyn legitimately seemed to have fun just hanging out withthe other women at the lake. Jillian even stood up for Kelsey at the tell-all.But there is still a confusing double-standard being held for the women on theshow. When Britt confronted Carly at the tell-all, we heard the classic, “Thisisn’t about making friends” and “Why do you need friends?” from the otherwomen. But when Kelsey took the hot seat, the tone became, “There’s a reasonyou don’t have any friends here.” It’s almost as if a contestant is supposed tobe in it for herself and to forge a relationship with the Bachelor, but mustalso be so “naturally likable” that she just happens to make friends along theway, as if she just can’t help it. You can’t have it both ways, people!
S: Because the women were so comparatively closeknit, the show’s drama derived more from the trauma of the show’s scenario (theemotional toll this show takes on these women) as well as the downrightpoignancy of the show. This season was kind of strange in that way because itmeant that the middle chunk of the season was more interesting than the finale—it sounds odd on paper, but it was just nice watching these women bond.
As milquetoast as the finale was, Becca’ssituation offered viewers a glimpse of subversion. My girlfriend and I boththought Chris was going to choose Becca; their chemistry was palpable...or atleast evident. But Becca “lost” because she wasn’t willing to submit to Chris and therefore the central concept of "The Bachelor". As my girlfriendsmartly pointed out, Becca wanted to know if Chris was willing to change forher instead of the other way around. She didn’t adjust her needs in the faceof silly time restraints.
I’m on record saying last season of "TheBachelor" was the best yet, but where that season made for spectacle thisseason’s emotional dynamics were compelling. Here’s to hoping ABC continues toseek out more bachelors that embrace their feminine traits and ditch themachismo.
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