I have lived with boys my entire life. I have woken up to SportsCenter, come home and discreetly turned down the volume of whatever game was going on, and tried to zone out the zombie apocalypse on Sunday nights. But now that I have a female roommate, a whole new devil moved into our home; The Bachelor. My roommate, like many women, would float home on Monday nights to the anticipation and seduction of, dare I say it, Juan Pablo. Despite being dead set against shows exactly like this one, I found myself casually tuning in periodically until Juan’s exotic Venezuelan accent and rock hard chest sucked me in entirely.
Every Monday seemed farther apart from the one before as I eagerly awaited the romance and imagined being the lucky girl picked out of a pack of 27 beautiful women to ride off into the Fijian sunset on an elephant ( I don’t even know if there are elephants in Fiji). It didn’t take long for me to realize that watching this show was affecting me, more than that, disrupting my relationship. My fiancé would hand me a box of chocolates on Valentines Day, or take me to dinner on my birthday, and I’d think, or accidentally say, “Why can’t you set up a private concert with my favorite band while we bungee jump down a waterfall surrounded by candles and baby monkeys?” To which he respond, “because I’m not backed by ABC.”…If you loved me you’d find a way!
I am not ignorant about these lies, and this show still subconsciously ninja’d its’ was into my brain until I had doubts about my life. I found myself so angry at this show for making me unsatisfied with my perfectly healthy and REAL relationship. Whether we are aware or not, these shows affect us! They ruin women’s expectations for romance, and completely distort their idea of true love, at least that’s what I think Don Jon was trying to get across between the obnoxious Jersey accents and abhorrent masterbation scenes.
But then the show took a giant turn. I’ve never gone from wanting to be someone’s dirty little concubine, to absolutely despising them so quickly. In the season finale Juan Pablo, with a disgustingly giant Neil Lane rock in his pocket, chose not to propose to anyone, I was outraged! How dare he not commit his entire life to a woman he met 6 weeks ago! What does he mean he doesn’t know her well enough to love her?! Stop being selfish! This isn’t about you Juan, it’s about all of us out here that want to believe in some bullshit love that doesn’t really exist and spend the rest off our lives turning down good guys in pursuit of it!
It makes me giggle that this show upset me so for not being a realistic representation of love, and then pissed me off for delivering the exact opposite. Because the truth is, we don’t watch reality TV shows to see reality, we watch them to escape it.
Flimsy Film Critics 