Fairy Tale Nightmare: 20 ‘Bachelor’ Seasons

Ah, another season of ABC’s fairy tale romance known as ‘The Bachelor” wrapped up Monday night.

Ben Higgins, the reality show’s Prince Charming (and a 26-year-old software salesman from Indiana), got down on one knee and proposed to — spoiler alert! — Lauren Bushnell, a flight attendant from Marina del Ray, California (the blonde shown above). Cue the violins and sweeping kissy scenes in lush, tropical Jamaica.

Fairy tale? From a cultural standpoint, “The Bachelor” is more of a nightmare, especially for any parent with a tween or teen who might want to tune in. Ridiculous values and terrible messages are served up along with super skimpy bikinis, humiliating rejections, and endless drunken embarrassing cry-faces.

Add in this season’s gimmick: Higgins spent the first two hours of Monday’s finale with his heart “split,” because he insisted he was “in love” with two women. One of them, JoJo Fletcher, a real estate developer from Dallas, poured her heart out only to wind up sobbing in a car as she was sent home (the brunette in the red dress, in one of the photos with this article). It was just the latest in a long line of demeaning stunts, where hurt feelings and loss of dignity are the most “real” things about the reality show.

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Let’s review all that we’ve learned over the past 20 “Bachelor” seasons:

• It’s OK for a guy to date 28 women at one time. That’s how many Ben started with this season.
• It’s OK to go on a “two-on-one” date. Women must have their bags packed so that they can be ready to leave straight from the date as soon as the Bachelor kicks them to the curb.
• It’s OK — if you’re the Bachelor, that is — to spend successive nights with three different women in a “fantasy suite.” Whose “fantasy” is that, by the way?

Up until last season, there were some attempts made by the women to show they didn’t actually “do” anything but talk while spending the night in that fantasy suite. Last season, “Bachelorette” Kaitlyn Bristow “shocked” fans by openly discussing the fact that she had sex in the fantasy suite with Nick Viall, a bachelor she later dropped. Then she went on to tell Shawn Booth, to whom she is now engaged, how much she regretted getting intimate with Nick.

“There is sex,” show creator Mike Fleiss told TheTVAddict.com in 2010. “(On average), the guy will wind up having sex with about three women during the course of the show.”

The female contestants have sunk lower since the start of “The Bachelor.” From dentists, lawyers and software engineers, it is now more common to see someone like this season’s Tiara from Redmond, Washington, who listed her career as  “Chicken Enthusiast.” Other recent jobs: “Manscaper,” “Free Spirit” and “Twin.”

“Appearing stupid” must be the new “appealing.”

And every season needs a villain — so if you even think about going on the show, you risk being portrayed that way. “We are very careful in our casting to develop characters that the audience is going to root for and root against,” Fleiss admitted.

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We have also learned it’s OK to get engaged on TV after knowing someone only six weeks with cameras trained on you the entire time. You might get an all-expenses paid TV wedding, even if you know it’s far more likely you’ll break up within six months. The odds are against you.

In 19 seasons of “The Bachelor” and 11 seasons of spinoff “The Bachelorette,” there have been five weddings.

Technically, however, only one “Bachelor” couple is still together — Sean Lowe and Catherine Giudici, who wed in a live TV ceremony last year. Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney (Malaney was the runner-up on his season) are still together, too.

On the “Bachelorette” side, Trista Rehn, who starred in the first episode of the show, and her firefighter hubby Ryan Sutter just celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary. They have two kids. Ashley Hebert and J.P. Rosenbaum had a televised wedding in December 2012 and in September 2014, they welcomed a baby boy, Fordham. Desiree Hartsock and Chris Siegfried got married in January after meeting on the air in 2013.

And that’s exactly why fans keep tuning in. If you strip away the low-rent, TV-induced raunch — buried deep down there somewhere, sometimes, maybe — there is a fleeting semblance of old-fashioned romance.