“The Bachelor”: Senior Edition

For those Readers who have been living in the bottom of Life in the Boomer Lane’s in box, you might not be aware of the latest news about “The Bachelor.” “The Bachelor” franchise is maybe the most lucrative reality show ever in the history of the entire world. This is, of course, if one doesn’t count “The Apprentice,” in which the star later went on to become Supreme Beloved Ruler of Planet United States, raked in bazillions for himself and his family, and won every Mr US Bodybuilding contest for the remainder of his life and for several years beyond.

“The Bachelor” is predictable fare. It takes a bunch of hot, sexy, young women and parades them in front of one hot sexy young guy. Then, throughout the next 23 weeks, Hot Sexy Guy goes on “dates” with these Hot Sexy Young Women, and each week gets to dump one of them until only one is left standing. He then either proposes to her or not, depending on how he feels at the moment. The women, for their part, all stay together in one big house and spend most of their time falling in love with The Bachelor, and crying. There is a lot of alcohol involved.

A spinoff, “The Bachelorette,” works exactly the same way, except the husband wannabees don’t cry a lot. They mostly just hang around, looking buff. There is a lot of alcohol involved.

ABC has now come up with what they think will be a great new spinoff for the franchise. They have decided to create a senior edition. This means all contestants will be over age 65. This is interesting for several reasons.

The first is that the contestants now are quite young. Two-thirds of women who compete on “The Bachelor” are aged 23 to 27. For comparison, two-thirds of the men on the show are 28 or older.

They could have easily done an over 35 version, which would still be way older then the demographic is now. This would have been less jarring for viewers, especially for those with single parents. Instead, the producers chose to completely skip over an entire generation, roughly those age 35 to 65. If they did a 35 or 40 plus show, the contestants could act roughly the same way they so now, but hopefully with a bit less hysteria.

LBL imagines that a thirty-something viewer might be a bit creeped out by watching people their parents age engage in inebriated foreplay and long fits of wailing and hand-wringing.

Another concern is that, when viewing the astonishingly embarrassing behavior of a lot of the contestants on the current show, one can easily chalk this up to immaturity and youthful indescretion. These folks have only recently been toilet-trained, and here they are contemplating making lifelong decisions. It’s tough to do that with people in the over-65 age group. Older folks have emotions as well, but at least the drama plays out in a much more subdued way. It’s tough to run screaming out of a room and collapse onto the floor when one is dealing with arthritis in one’s hip or knee.

Now we get into territory that will, no doubt. have some Loyal Readers frothing at the mouth. LBL anticipates this and wants them to know that she refers to our Beloved President’s way of dealing with his surly federal government intelligence community. Like our Beloved President, LBL hereby puts Loyal Readers on notice that they are welcome to express whatever opinions they like. They should do so, however, with the knowledge that LBL takes all comments personally, and that there will be consequences for such ill-considered actions.

Here goes: The current “Bachelor” franchise depends heavily on form-fitting attire for women and an extravagant display of breasts and booty. With all due respect to the endless gym trips many women over age 65 make or the countless yoga classes they attend, the aging process has a way of sticking a big fat tongue in your face even as you grunt and groan. In other words, bodies change over time. That is not to say that the human body, in and of itself isn’t beautiful at any age (Loyal Readers can now breathe again, for the moment).

It’s simply that senior women are, for the most part (She adds the remainder of this sentence to discourage comments like “I know A LOT of stunning senior women!”), beautiful in a different way than twenty-something women. Hey, few would argue that a toddler girl is beautiful in a different way than a twenty-something, right? Aside from “Toddlers and Tiaras,” our culture doesn’t reward toddlers for walking around in slinky clothing and high heels. Unless the producers get this fact and figure out a different way to present older women, there will be a real issue for a lot of viewers.

A lot of the shows have had big, emotional “reveals” from some of the contestants. Compared to the baggage that older folks carry around, these seem quite tame. It’s not that older people are any less able to make good choices in life. They have simply had more time to make poor ones.

LBL has looked at the online application to be a contestant on the senior version of the show. It’s pretty tame and predictable. The most provocative question is “Why do you think your marriage failed?” She can imagine that few people will say “because I screwed up” and then elaborate.

LBL would like to know how many applications the producers receive. She would also like to know the ratio of men to women. She would even like to know how many people sever their current relationships in order to try for a spot on the show. She suspects that more info will come out as time goes by. And she will be here to fill you in. It’s a lot better for her psyche to do that than to follow political events. And she should add, in all honesty, that if she weren’t happily married and also really freaked out at the idea of being on national television, let alone being dismissed on national television, she’d probably be filling out an application right now.