Match Fakers

The "Bachelor" confirmed: Travis Stork and a bevy of contestants party on the Riviera. Courtesy Citytv.

In a television age where networks will yank a lousy series off the air after a single episode and new pilots lurk like vultures waiting for a “critically acclaimed” drama to be pulled mid-season, the longevity of reality TV stinker The Bachelor (two-hour finale Feb. 27 at 9 pm on ABC) is something to behold. Eight seasons in (plus two in which the romantic hopeful was a bachelorette — a term I hadn’t heard since a certain 1970s game show), it still lurches along like a drunken prom queen, dress torn and makeup smeared, a bright toothy smile plastered on her face.

I guess I’m not the only one who finds such a train wreck compelling. Who knew it could be so hard to turn away from a show featuring a chiseled dullard choosing between a bevy of beautiful, cat fighting, vacuous women, the whole sordid thing tricked out in the formula froth of hetero romance: champagne, cocktail dresses, limousines, fur throws, candlelight and, of course, long-stemmed red roses.

At first, it was the novelty of watching people willingly endure public dating with the potential for international exposure of their humiliation when they get dumped; but increasingly, The Bachelor is entertaining because it has become a hilarious parody of itself.

The show’s producers have tried countless twists to dress up the rather basic premise of boy meets girls (makes out with as many as possible, chooses one and then dumps her once the cameras are gone). They’ve moved the set from various indistinguishable Los Angeles mansions to an “edgy” New York loft; chosen a so-called bad boy as the bachelor instead of the usual thick-necked, good-natured football player type; and they’ve asked back several beloved-by-the-audience dumpees to try their luck on the other end of the dating game. They’ve even paid for (and televised) the lavish, pink $3.8-million wedding of one of only three couples that have survived the post-show letdown.

This season, they’ve cranked up the thrills by having a bachelor with a degree in medicine and a porn star name (Travis Stork — and, no, sadly, he’s not an obstetrician). Plus, the pièce de résistance, it’s set in Paris, complete with “intimate” dates atop the Eiffel Tower and cruising along the Seine, a bikini-clad yacht party on the Riviera and a chateau that serves as home base. The show’s writers get to insert such zingers as “Who will go home a doctor’s wife?” and ominous warnings to the girls that they’ll “be on a plane back to the United States” that very night if they don’t get a rose.

But The Bachelor: Paris ends up feeling less exciting and romantic, than, well, silly. Watching reality television is half willing suspension of disbelief and half yearning for a kernel of truth, for (fleeting) insight into real people’s lives. But on this season’s Bachelor, the truth bit has been tossed out the window and it seems as if everyone except the people in front of the camera realizes that it’s a joke inside a joke.

Every rose has its thorn: Travis Stork with the two finalists, Moana (left) and Sarah S. Courtesy Citytv.

The Bachelor was always a bit wacko, but now it seems deliberately twisted. The show’s even managed to make the Eiffel Tower seem cheesy — a glittering monument to romantic cliché. This time around, the women “hoping for a rose” aren’t the usual Miss America castoffs, but seem like drag queens embracing the high camp of extreme beauty and romance rituals — more girly than the girls. With Farrah Fawcett hair and trowelled-on makeup, they’re straight out of transvestite central casting. And the claws-out girl fights are practically pro wrestling material. On last week’s Women Tell All episode, a couple of bitter dumpees snarled in their corner, bringing one of their flock to tears with accusations that the woman was fake and never really cared about Travis. I watched this display half expecting one of them to pull off her wig and totter off haughtily with a wiggle of her girdled derriere.

It’s been obvious for several seasons that no one ever says anything remotely interesting or unique about how they feel or what they think — the girls all “came for the right reasons” (a couple of weeks in a fancy house? free makeup and clothes?), made a “unique connection” and “feel lucky” to have had a chance to meet the bumbling, dull-witted dude. In this latest incarnation, however, it’s become just plain absurd. You could get utterly smashed playing a drinking game that involved taking a slug every time someone utters these now-familiar banalities, suggests that they were going to take the relationship “to the next level” or when Travis calls something or someone “amazing.”

In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that it is the editors and producers who are playing a game — or are at least engaged in some complicated joke, poking fun at the long-running show and the goofy trappings of dating. Surely it can’t be possible that not one single person on the program has said anything surprising — although, the physician who got dumped in the first episode after revealing to the camera that her “eggs are rotting” and telling Travis she was looking for someone to join her in the “reproductive phase” of her life was, uh, fresh.

Aficionados know that the show has always been heavily edited, even orchestrated from behind the scenes. It can’t be a coincidence that the girl who seems like the biggest crackpot in the house always survives to the final three. Witness Moana, this season’s dark horse and a contenda in tonight’s finale, who is by turns vampy and a heaving, sobbing catastrophe. And spotting the red herrings planted to throw viewers off the identity of the leading lady can be good sport — who could have missed the clues when it looked like Travis and Winnipeg’s own Sarah B. were headed to the altar, until, that is, he dumped homegirl because she got so drunk she didn’t remember what happened on their date. But the background machinations now seem to have gone even further than all that.

The whole conspiracy galvanized for me in the take-him-home-to-mama episode. Susan, a wannabe actress and one of the final three challengers for the ring, was exposed by her own mother as a Machiavellian manipulator who’d do anything (including luring in an unsuspecting bachelor) to make a name for herself in Hollywood. It felt like an end of the Roman Empire moment, in which the whole decadent, bloated corpse of the show was exposed for the flimsy springboard to fame it’s become. (When she was booted off the next week, Susan acted shocked, sobbing that she didn’t understand why he’d let her go since she’d been so “professional.”)

My guess is that the editors, producers and writers have seen the future and realize that the end is nigh for reality television. It’s gotten so extreme that it’s all just a pop culture joke. They must figure why not embrace the goofiness, amp up the camp, cue the portentous music (“Ladies. Travis. This is the final rose tonight.” Pan to lip-biting beauty), make everyone seem even dumber than they (surely) are and subtly acknowledge that, odds are, the hookup won’t last past the TV time delay. Instead of the joke being on The Bachelor for clinging on too long, ha-ha, the joke’s on you.

Andrea Curtis is a Toronto writer.

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