I have a thing for the bachelor. No, not the personality-less boytoy that is this season’s current love hunter Jake, but the TV show itself. I await the arrival of a new season of The Bachelor with the type of anxious hand wringing normally reserved for small children who torture their siblings around Christmastime. Will the women be crazy? Will they inexplicably fall in love with a man they have spent only a few hours with and shriek at the mere mention of his name? Will their one-on-ones reveal their vile personalities while they remain disturbingly sweet around the bachelor himself? Will he figure out that the only one good enough for him is someone who chooses not to go on television to find a spouse?
Normally, this complete absorbtion in the show manifests itself in gleeful chuckling as I predict which of the women will be first to cry/swear/proclaim (she is only here to find love) while fast forwarding through endless recapping of what’s coming up next and the handing out of roses at the endlessly drawn out “will you accept this soon-to-wilt flower” ceremony. Just get to the woman crying in the driveway before being shoved into a windowless van already!
Unfortunately, this year I realized I am the same age as most of these women on the show: 25. Traditionally, I mock the youngsters on the show for being so desperate that they think reality TV is the only option left for finding love. If he is really so perfect, he wouldn’t be on television dating and groping twenty other women, now would he ladies? But 25 is different. People I know are actually getting married now and my parents no longer react with a shocked look on their face when I tell them about so-and-so’s engagement.
And yet, these 25 year olds on the show seem so much older than me. I would like to think this is because their copious amounts of make-up make them look like rapidly aging trophy wives, but it is more likely because they know what they want: white picket fences, dogs, a bland pilot husband, or, at the very least, fame. Though their biological clocks may be ringing a bit too early in my opinion, I am no longer in the age range at which going on The Bachelor is the craziest thing one could do. To be honest, that scares me more than the likelihood that Jake’s nice-guy persona is a cover for his Dexter-ish secret identity.
So, I need to find moral superiority over these lovestruck loonies some other way. And I do this by reminding myself that I have a real job. I’m not a “career consultant” or “model/salon owner” or “dogwalker,” which, to be honest, on this show, all really mean the same thing: “unemployed, living at home, clutching a pillow at night bemoaning my single status while consulting the newspaper horoscopes praying that the tall, dark, and handsome stranger knocks on my door to rescue me from a life of tedium while my parents pay him to move me to another state so they no longer have to worry about their 22 year old spinster daughter.” At least my career is succinct: I am a lawyer. I may not know what the future holds, but at least I know it doesn’t involve Chris Harrison. And with that knowledge, I can go back to chortling over crazy eyes, blatant product placement, constant flying metaphors, and the inability of these girls to hold their liquor. To The Bachelor, may it continue to provide me with hours of amusement!
