If anyone doesn't who they are, you, my friend, have a lot more will power than I do. These two happen to be the product of the last season of the television show "The Bachelor," which I have tried many times to refrain from watching, but keep getting sucked into.
Do I think I'm watching a TV show about two people who want to fall in love? No. Do I think I am watching a show about two people who think they're going to fall in love? No. Personally, I think it's a show about 25 (well, 26 including the titular character his or herself) famewhores who want to parlay a stint on a show that presumes to be about finding love into a career filled with crappy TV jobs that are basically just handed out to people with little to no prior experience. Think jobs that have "correspondent" and "guest" in their names. But, watching the show happens to lead to two habits I not-so-secretly partake in - following "Hollywood" gossip and schadenfreude. And it must be said...good or bad, real or fake, the show is what people in the biz would likely call "good tv."
In the end, I'm sure I'm not alone in awaiting the fateful days when the resulting pairs which these shows manufacture inevitably split. I read the Us Weekly and People magazine articles that pit them against each other in rival interviews, allowing them to rehash the details on their relationship's demise in the same manner as that of its blossoming - publicly. And every time, with every couple, I am left with the same feeling.
I recall watching the second season of the Bachelor/Bachelorette installments what seems like many years ago, when a dancer named Trista Rehn searched for love among a sea of successful, attractive, available men. She was put up in a beautiful mansion, wined and dined on what most would consider "dream dates," swooned and fought over by multiple men at one time, and eventually proposed to by the "man of her dreams." I was young with a non-existent love life at the time, still living with my parents, working at a local convenience store, and putting myself through community college. In short, I was the kind of viewer who actually saw "reality" in this "show," a kind of reality that I desperately wanted and knew for certain I would never have. She found a fairy tale. Where was my fairy tale?
Fast-forward a few years later. I watch the show online a day or two after it airs on television. I am job-hunting and cleaning and running errands and doing laundry and everything I can to keep my mind off of how much I miss him, even though he's just at work and this is everyday life. There was probably a time when I would have been embarrassed to admit that I miss him after only a few hours, that no time compares to the time I spend with him, including the time I give up for him on Monday nights when the show airs, but know deep down he'd give right back to me if he truly thought it would make me happy to watch it then. Sometimes I wish we lived in a dream mansion, but many times, one bedroom, two cats, and a balcony that houses a few dead plants feels like one just the same. Because of him. Sometimes I think about how nice it would be to be constantly wined and dined in fancy restaurants, but many times, a buy-one-get-one dinner with coupon at Hershey's Steakhouse feels like the Ritz. And sometimes (rarely), I think about what it would be liked to be married to the strapping fireman and living a highly publicized, but "picture perfect" life in Vail, Colorado. Many times, though, I go to bed thanking God for my own Prince Charming, a government worker who wears Kohl's polos to work most days and leaves his socks around the house. A Prince Charming so great, he doesn't pick on me too badly for watching crap television like The Bachelor and getting all worked up over it.
My very own fairy tale. Resplendently ordinary and everyday, nothing that would titillate an audience save for two cats who are titillated by anything on a string, but it's mine. It's given me a lot of insight and experience so far, and left with me with my final impression of reality romance shows like The Bachelor - they're "good tv." Nothing more, nothing less.
Thanks, babe.
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