25 VS. 1: Given how many people have come here to see what I said about Joe Millionaire, I figured I'd better have something to say about The Bachelorette, which debuted on ABC tonight.
But I really don't. With the exception of FOX's Bachelorettes in Alaska last summer (there was really nothing else on -- and the show did feature salmon-catching and ax-hurling), I've never found any of the reality-dating shows to be that compelling. I'm not interested in watching people deceive themselves into thinking they can fall in love with a stranger in a matter of days; I'm not interested in reality shows where there's not a real venue for back-biting and other forms of nasty behavior. I guess part of it is that when a show really just relies on a binary choice (I love her/I love her not), it's hard to "play along" at home and figure out how you'd be doing things differently from the contestants.
The Bachelorette, in theory, I guess is supposed to be all about our reactions to seeing the genders swapped. Okay: it was kinda cool seeing guys squirm and tense up as they worried about being among the fifteen chosen by Trista from among the initial 25. But beyond that? Seeing one woman taking the opportunity to hook up with a bunch of guys who are all living together isn't new or shocking -- that was my sophomore year in college. Nothing scandalous or interesting there.
No, the only interesting part is that since they cast as The Bachelorette the woman who had been dissed in the finale of the first season of The Bachelor, a large number of the twenty-five male contestants signed up specifically to meet and woo Trista herself. It put this weird stalker-ish tone on the whole program -- "Hey . . . I saw you on that show, and you were real hot, and that guy was a dick, and I knew as soon as I saw you on that show that I wanted to date you," etc. Like, shouldn't she be bothered by this kind of attention?
Apparently not. Most of the stalker-ish guys have made it onto the next round. I, however, probably won't: watching people fall in "love" in a contrived setting just doesn't do it for me.
Nor, for that matter, did CBS' Star Search, which just reminded me that I never watched it the first time it was on either. Unlike American Idol, it's not going to have the intensifying drama of seeing the same group of people back week after week, and despite the inspired casting of Ben Stein as a judge, seems to have none of the acidic Cowell-Jackson sting in the judge's remarks. To the contrary, Naomi Judd, Carol Leifer and guest judge Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan, (Chaka Chaka Chaka) Chaka Khan just didn't have anything interesting to say at all to the performers. Seriously, it was all on the level of "you've got a nice voice" and "you were good" -- it was almost as if someone at CBS decided, "well, we've got to let the judges talk, since that's what they did on Idol", but forgot to remind them they they ought to have something worth saying.
It's just a lame-ass talent show, only they forgot to invite the talent. It'll be off television by mid-February, and host Arsenio Hall can go back to hanging out with Chunky A and talk about back in the day, when he used to be funny -- hell, used to matter.
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