I totally understand that I’m an outlier in the female population when I say this; but I’m not really a fan of The Bachelor/Bachelorette. Sue me. “Drag” me. Roast me with spiteful comments during your Monday wine night watch parties. Do what you must, but it’s just not my cup of tea.
I’ll admit, I would watch it back in high school with my girlfriends after practice, but even at the age of 16 I thought the idea of watching one person date 20 other people was odd. I thought it was even weirder when my friends ended up heartbroken every time the “winning” couple announced their breakup a month after The Final Rose. One guy with multiple women on Sister-Wives is “gross”, but one guy making out with 10 different women over the course of a few hours is something we as a generation obsess over? I don’t bite. Like, is that not the absolute definition of a fuck-boy?
And don’t even get me started on the hat-trick Fantasy Suite dates and everyone managing to “fall in love” after spending a collective total of a few hours getting to know each other. You’re drunk off champagne on a private yacht in Bora Bora, Becky, of course you “have never felt this way before”.
So yes, I used to be a part of Bachelor Nation, but that was when the contestants didn’t have obvious ulterior motives and had legitimate careers that spanned beyond “Free Spirit”, “Chicken Enthusiast”, “Social Media Participant” and the most recent fan-favorite, “Musician”.
Cue Jed Wyatt.
The dog-food jingle superstar who even admitted to Bachelorette Hannah Brown during their very first one-on-one date that he literally signed up for the show to promote his music. Honestly, I respect the hustle. It’s a huge platform and for someone trying to grow a business, and while those kind of success stories are VERY few and far between, that’s a pretty good way to get a large social following for basically nothing. Make some new friends, go on crazy vacations, have unlimited access to top-shelf liquor, and when you get back, you have a solid foundation ready for you on social media? Shit, sign me up.
Unfortunately, Jed didn’t hang around just long enough to get some good publicity before getting acceptably sent home on a drunkenly emotional 6th week elimination. He went All. The. Way.
Jed proposed to Hannah with a cringe-worthy song (because of course he had to whip his guitar out one more time for the fans back home) and Bachelor Nation collectively vomited in disgust. I know this not from watching the show, but from watching the endless marathon of Instagram stories of everyone yelling in disbelief or the zoomed in shot of their TVs with the caption “HE BROUGHT OUT THE FUCKING GUITAR”.
To put it simply, people didn’t like him. They didn’t like him at all, but they LOVED to talk about him and oh, the drama. So naturally, what does ABC do? They give Bachelor Nation a spin-off quite literally FULL of Jed Wyatts.
According to Variety, ‘The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart‘ will feature 20 single male and female musicians all there to “find love” (lol right) while competing in musical challenges and performing for “some of the biggest names in the music business”. The couples that reveal the most “love and devotion” in their performances will continue to compete until a winning couple is crowned. Okay…
Can’t wait to watch literally anything else on April 13th.
