Virtue, Bachelor-Style

This season was about "redemption."  But the values on the show sometimes don't translate into real-world values.

Here's a helpful primer: The Bachelor Dictionary!

The 15th edition of the reality show known for roses and romance wrapped up last week, and it used more "values language" than previous seasons.  Why?  Well, if you’re a long-term Bachelor fan, this season’s gentleman Brad Womack might’ve looked familiar.  That’s because he was the bachelor in a season that ended with him sending both of the last two remaining women to the limo of shame.  That means that he was -- officially – The World’s Most Hated Bachelor.  Until now.  After three years of self-imposed exile, depression, and therapy, he came back.  And he was ready for redemption. Now that’s word you don’t hear much on reality television.  But this season, lofty words abound: forgiveness, courage, loyalty, and – oh yes – love.  However, when used in the context of this show, the definitions aren’t quite what they are in the real world.  Need help understanding what these beautiful people are talking about?  Here’s a helpful primer:

Bad decision:  In Bachelor-speak, this is the decision not to marry or propose to two women one barely knows and for whom one has no real feelings.

Example: Brad having the audacity to send home DeAnna and Jenni three years ago merely because he didn’t love them.

Changed man: a male who spends three years in therapy trying to figure out why he used good, common sense not to propose to practical strangers on national television.

Example: the producers insist he’s had a metamorphosis, because he’s coming back to the same show to experience the same cattle call of total strangers in beaded gowns.

Taking a risk:  in normal life, this means you weigh the pros and cons of a decision, and forge ahead in spite of the fact that the outcome is not guaranteed. In Bachelor-speak, it means doing something slightly uncomfortable like singing, getting into the ocean, or any number of activities designed to create a damsel in distress situation.

Example: when Brad took Ashley to Los Angeles' landmark Capitol Records and made her record "Kiss from a Rose" by Seal, who later came on and sang a song from his new album, in a brazen example of romance disguised as product placement. Brad commends Ashley for being able to take a risk by singing in the nice comfortable environment of the studio.

Conquering your fears: In normal life, this means getting over your fear of public speaking or spiders. In Bachelor-speak, it means participating in some death-defying experience to prove to the man that you are free-spirited enough to – let’s say it together – conquer your fears.   

Example: Brad and Michelle had to rappel down an L.A. skyscraper to get to the swimming pool/hot tub where they ended their night.  Repeatedly, Brad acknowledged that he wants a girl who can conquer her fears, just in case he ended up marrying her and she refused to rappel down a building to pick up the kids from pre-school.

Journey: a basically polygamous living circumstance where dozens of women serially make out with the same guy.

Example: Both the women and men will say, “This is a wonderful journey towards the rest of my life.”  Or, when the women’s feelings are hurt because he’s giving attention to another woman, she might say, “I realize this is all a part of the journey.”

Ladies: In the real world, it’s a sign of respect toward women who act politely and with a certain degree of modesty.  In Bachelor-speak, the word is roughly translated, members of the reality tv harem.

Example: Host Chris Harrison would address the group as “ladies,” before they did things like put fake vampire teeth in to look sexy, put on dresses with plunging necklines, and make out with him in front of the other ladies while they pretended to shoot an ad for the Red Cross.

Therapy: Short sessions conducted by a guy who may or may not have been a doctor, but had a great accent.

Example: Though the therapist encouraged him to open up to each woman, he never once mentioned that trying to find a wife on national television while serially making out with twenty women might not be the best formula for success.

Coincidence: Any of the carefully contrived plot lines that put the contestants in the utmost discomfort.

Example: One of the contestants (Emily, who was the last woman standing) had a fiancé named Ricky who was a racecar driver-turned-owner who later died in an airplane crash.  This didn’t stop the producers from taking the group to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and have everyone do a few laps around the course.  While Chris Harrison insisted they’d picked this event long before Emily was chosen to be on the show, the resulting episode was a gut-wrenching, salt-in-wound experience for everyone involved.  Hope it was worth it, producers.

The Right Reasons: A generic phrase for any suspicious behavior who appears to harbor ulterior motives for fame, fun, adventure, money, and travel instead of simply wanting to immediately get measured for a wedding dress.  Though it hasn’t been used as much this season, it is historically the most over-used phrase in Bachelor-speak.  If a contestant is accused of not being there “for the right reasons", she might as well pack her makeup bag.

Example: Country crooner Wes Hayden’s betrayal of Jillian Harris in a previous season, when it was discovered that he had another girlfriend at home and was using The Bachelor to promote his nascent singing career by writing and “spontaneously” performing songs for Jillian.

Insecurity: The unwillingness to overlook the fact that The Bachelor had “overnight” dates with other contestants days before proposing.

Example: When Emily was at home watching the entire episode as it aired, she realized that he had “overnight dates” with other women, even after he supposedly had fallen in love with her.  When she brought this up on the “After the Rose” episode, Chris Harrison later accused her of being “insecure.”

In spite of this odd strategy for finding love and a low success rate (The show has only produced two marriages in fifteen seasons), The Bachelor’s season finale earned 13.8 million viewers who believe in happily-ever-after. So why do people watch it week after week?

It’s silly, and funny, and it has a touch of the “can’t look away from a car crash” vibe.  Yet it also appeals to our longing for love, for connection, and for courage.  So we (at least some of us) fall for it.  Every time. If it’s packaged well enough that we can squint our eyes and pretend we’re witnessing something real, it’s easier to believe it’s possible to find the real thing. 

Which means not breaking up as soon as the roses wilt.