Why I'm Obsessed With The Golden Bachelor

"Red Rose" by Mustang Joe is marked with CC0 1.0.

Hey Honey,

Okay, I know what you're thinking: reality TV is not your thing, and romance as a genre is also not your thing, so combining those two things must be the worst, right?

I'm not going to try to convince you to watch it. But I do think that something really wonderful and different is happening with this show, and I want you to at least understand why I love it.

So first of all, as I've written before, I didn't expect to like The Bachelor franchise either, but I started watching one season for research on a novel a few years ago and ended up really liking a couple of the contestants and just, well, got hooked. But the part of it I always disliked was the drama between the contestants. Someone interrupts someone else's time with the bachelor or bachelorette, and then there's a big argument about it, people's egos get involved, blah blah blah. I get that these high-drama moments are appealing to some folks, but to me it's kind of painful to watch. 

And then comes The Golden Bachelor, which I wasn't even sure I was going to watch, but there wasn't much else I wanted to see at that particular moment, and the guy they chose to be the bachelor, 71-year-old widower Gerry, seemed sweet and kind. So I thought, why not give it a try? 

So here's what blew my mind, right off the bat: it's not common to see people in their seventies on television, and it's especially not common to see women is their seventies on television, and it's vanishingly rare to see women in their seventies in romantic roles on television. Like, I'm sure there are some examples out there (The Golden Girls, probably? Though I never watched that one myself), but I can't think of a single movie or TV show I have actually seen with a 70+ woman in a romantic role.

So that feels groundbreaking to me, and so important, because it turns out that there are a lot of older women out there looking for love, and they are real and gorgeous. This might not mean much to you, or men in general, but it's hard to articulate how important this is to me, seeing women in this role.

Secondly, because everyone is older and wiser (pretty much all of them are grandparents), there's almost no drama! This particular group of women seem to genuinely love and support each other. There's sadness and jealousy, of course, because the whole concept is set up to breed jealousy, but apart from one small squabble where one woman asks another to stop gushing about her wonderful date with Gerry (which they then work out respectfully), everyone truly seems to just want to help each other. Like the respectful gentility of The Great British Bakeoff has merged with The Bachelor formula and made a baby (grandparent?) that we can all enjoy.

Thanks for listening to my rant. I don't need you to watch it with me, but I do need you to respect my love of the genre (and maybe make me some popcorn).

xoxo

Nicole