Bachelor In Paradise Is Beautifully Deranged

It is the perfect unintentional satire of modern dating.

The newest season of Bachelor in Paradise premiers tomorrow, and my girlfriend is roping me into a night of rosé and gossiping at her friend’s loft much in the same way that she traps me in auditory Gitmo by blasting Taylor Swift at our apartment every day. The last time I indulged in this masochistic guilt-watch was a season involving a perpetual roid-rager named Chad who had too much to drink and proudly proclaimed to a similarly meat-headed confidant that he wanted to be “more like Hitler” because people feared the Furher, went on a strange sloppy rant about being murdered, and struck out horrendously with a woman with a deformed arm—then proceeded to call her “stubby.” I couldn’t find the specific clip of this magnificent self-own, but the video below is a sample serving of the beginning of a series of events that only further spiraled downward into unmitigated smoothbrain behavior.

Even if watching Bachelor in Paradise is a diminished and demeaning experience, what makes it exquisitely trashy is its delicate balance of horniness and desperation. The transparent disposability of identikit off-vibe shows like Too Hot to Handle is evident in its oversaturation with thirsty British fuckbois twitching uncontrollably and blurting out, “You know fockin’ wot, mate, I’d crawl on broken glass just to suck the dick of the bloke who shagged Arianna.” The Ultimatum is utterly psychotic; its premise is that a couple that is insufficiently committed to marriage will have their relationship problems magically solved if they start swinging with other couples and then be forced to decide whether they want to marry each other after three weeks of emotional and/or physical cheating. And a show called Milf Manor is on the depraved bleeding edge of reality programming, and anyone who could derive any pleasure from watching it is a terrifying mutant.

The multi-front relationship free-for-all format of Bachelor in Paradise makes it an incredible satirical commentary about the state of modern romance. The mounting anxiety that pricks and prods at our insecurities as first dates are treated like pseudo-job interviews, as people’s quirks and qualities are prerequisites to check off on a list of preferences and red flags that we can either whimsically accept or reject because each right swipe gives us more options but more tenuous connections. The ridiculous and unrealistic expectations that come when people feel entitled to a romantic lifestyle they don’t have to work for. The vanity of reducing people to specific superficial attributes, but without a narrative to create a sum of these individual parts. The desperate need to be in a relationship because of a lack of identity to handle the power of independence and self-determination. The increasing number of dates following the law of diminishing returns, the rapid pace of casual bites and cocktails blurring the details and intricacies until any distinguishment becomes irrelevant.

It all culminates into a reality TV show that is an active reenactment of people’s inability to grapple with their own shortcomings: Why improve yourself when you can gawk at other people’s trainwrecks? This allows the audience to laugh at their own mirror reflection instead of cry. Bachelor in Paradise is a concentrated dose of the absurdity of modern dating, the expectation of instant gratification, to forge a magical connection within hours of meeting someone instead of allowing bonds to develop over time. This is all-American consumerism co-opting romance.

I acknowledge that my brain is diseased and overanalytical, grasping to find the profundity in gossipy entertainment. Whenever I watch the regular Bachelor franchise, I attempt to intellectualize my irrational emotional investment in why a guy named Chasen didn’t get a rose. I’ll tell myself that if there is an ounce of genuine emotional connection in any of these relationships, The Bachelor/Bachelorette accidentally makes a strong case for the legitimacy of polyamory. This same perspective makes it difficult for me to enjoy The Office because I see it as the ultimate distillation of the notion of capitalism sure sucks sometimes but we’ll laugh and get through it, which is really just a resigned nihilism that comes with wasting away at a dreary office job and coming home to watch a show set in a similar environment.

The source of my tedious hyperanalysis likely stems from a latent insecurity; if I were single and selected to star in Bachelor in Paradise, I would have to compete with tall Adonis tree-like figures. I would show up to the set and the producers would tell me this isn’t the set for Man vs. Food. I am also too judgemental to be on The Bachelor, which I understand makes me guilty of all the prissy-bitch tendencies previously enumerated in this bizzaro rant.

• “Red nail polish?? I don’t date floozies!”

• “Wurshington? There are no ‘Rs’ in that state!”

• “‘Katheryn’ with a ‘y?’ Sorry, hun, I don’t date women who sound like the protagonist in a YA mystery series for 12-year-old girls.”

• “OK, ladies! Today’s game is called, ‘Let’s Dip You In Water and See if You Come Out a Different Person!’”

If I were ever the Bachelor, the series would last one episode and end with me and Jesse Palmer sitting on a couch in an empty mansion room eating pizza. I would look over and shrug, “Guess it was a bad crop this season…”

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