HE LOVES ME, HE LOVES ME NOT

We all have our vices. 

The least damaging of my own menagerie is that I watch The Bachelor. 8 p.m. EST, Monday nights. Clockwork.

And this week, as some of you may know—emphasis on some—was the finale of Joey Graziadei’s season (Season 28) as the series’ eponymous lead. 

If you aren’t familiar with The Bachelor, it’s a reality television franchise in which one lucky lad charms and gets charmed by a couple dozen beautiful, hand-cast women—each with an impressive collection of sparkling evening gowns. They start out in the famed Bachelor Mansion here in Californ-eye-aye before traipsing around the European continent for awhile, the Caribbean islands, or some other fabulous locale—all the while, amidst “cocktail parties,” “group dates” and a number of coveted “one-on-ones”, the Bachelor picks off his contestants like rose petals until one remains. She gets the final rose, and a Neil Lane rock. Her runner-up, or someone close to it, becomes the next Bachelorette within the Bachelor franchise cosmos. Rinse. Repeat.

Listen. I know what you’re thinking. That at least shotgun weddings have some rhyme and reason. But I started watching this show with my dad back in middle school, and slowly but surely, turned him into a believer in love at first camera cue. Behind his informal dalliance into Catholicism, it was the most radical conversion he ever made for our family (in which there are 3, reality TV-addicted daughters).   

And despite my loyalty to the franchise, I—like many Bachelor Nation fans—had grown disenchanted with the show in recent years, which has seen a slew of incompetent male leads. Uncharismatic. Emotionally unintelligent. Some with a penchant for reneging on their final rose-awarded women to revisit previously-eliminated contestants. 

I never asked for much to buy-in. But that wasn’t gonna cut it with a pair of pruning shears.

And then, Joey Graziadei (28) came along. Tennis pro. Great cheekbones. Genuine. Funny. Intentional. A crier, in a good way. Dare I say … a good guy.

But even with such a promising frontman, I really can’t pin down why I developed such an affinity for this past season of the show, or its cast of contestants. My best conjecture is that, in a (sometimes) lonely place like Mammoth, they started to feel adjacent to … friends? 

And while that’s something best left to flesh out between myself and the therapist I should have, what I will say is that you come to empathize with these women—many of whom, I’m near to in age—beyond all the love-centric stuff. Familiarly, they’re grappling with the loss of family members, or battling health issues, or just trying to make it through school. 

Exhibit A and B:

The front runner—and fan favorite for much of the show’s run—was Daisy Kent (25). A Minnesota-born account executive, Kent’s recent and profound hearing impairment had left her with a cochlear implant and a fear that any potential partner would see her as damaged goods.

“I’m used to someone loving me, but still not … wanting me,” said Kent, on Monday night’s episode. 

And then, there was Kelsey Anderson (25), a kind-hearted New Orleans denizen and former military brat who entered Bachelor Mansion still in the throes of grief from having lost her mother to cancer.

Anderson and Kent both admitted, midway through the process, that they were falling in love with Graziadei. That’s not atypical for the cadence of a typical Bachelor season. But, until the finale, Graziadei had reciprocated the sentiment to neither. That is atypical. ‘Til the end, both women were equally positioned to be “chosen” by Graziadei (an oft-used word by the cast). What’s more, Anderson and Kent grew to be close friends while filming. Also, atypical.

Lest we forget, reality television, like any well-wrought fiction, relies on character tropes. We wouldn’t keep up with the Kardashians, or relate to the Real Housewives if we were actually watching the humdrum of their lives. We watch reality television because it is just that—television. On the cutting room floor, its characters are made by way of hyperbolic versions of the people they approximate. Some are made into villains. Some are allowed to be the good guys. And we, the audience, turn a blind eye to those exaggerations because it is a relief to watch another’s life without the burden of demonstrated understanding for who they are, in full. That’s what reality is for.

But what made Graziadei, Anderson, and Kent so compelling was that they were all the good guys. The Bachelor, this season, turned its cheek on reveling in the concept of desperate women boxing each other out for the sake of a man’s attention—a man who, most of the time, could have been a stand-in for a sack of flour with decent hair. On the whole, the cast was not portrayed by the show’s production as frivolous playthings—they were normal, complex people vying for love by non-traditional methods. 

*But hey, who among us can say that love hasn’t driven us to do crazy things.

Don’t get me wrong. There were plenty of pot-stirrers and name-calling early on. I’ll concede that a sausage maypole was involved when the crew traveled to the archipelago of Malta. But it’s a testament to Graziadei that, through it all, he really did make some genuine connections with these women. As for Kent and Anderson, and straight from the horses’ mouths, they themselves had shared meaningful conversations about loss and mourning. From both, it was clear that these experiences were not pushing them into a relationship moored only by its semblance of stability, but were using their past to inform what they sought after in a future partner. 

For me, the most powerful moment of the season was a conversation between Kent and her father during the “Hometowns” episode—a recurring structural element of the show in which the Bachelor meets the families of his final 4 prospects. 

Back home in Minnesota, Kent reveals to her father, Brandon, that she’s falling in love. But that she’s bungling all of it by keeping her guard up—a result of the struggles she’s had with her health. 

“Shoot the shot,” Brandon tells his daughter. And then a joke. “It’s not like you’re gonna lose your hearing over it.”

“It’s not like I’m going deaf again!” Daisy responds.

And the two laugh. 

“Right,” Brandon says. “It’s only love.”

Lo and behold, Daisy tells Graziadei how she’s truly feeling, and lives to see another rose.

And then, there was Monday night.

Tt’s down to Kent and Anderson. We all know the stakes: One woman is to be promised eternal love. The other will get sent packing. 

And without getting too far into the rose bushes, Kent’s picking up on the fact she’s not the one. 

So she visits Anderson’s hotel room mere hours before Graziadei is set to get down on one knee (an unprecedented move in Bachelor history) and essentially gives Anderson her blessing; an acknowledgement that she is not the fated choice. It is difficult to say which of these women handle the situation with more grace, but both get into the same SUV to meet Graziadei (also unprecedented) before Kent steps out, flips the script, and lets the Bachelor, himself, down easy (also unprecedented). 

And you feel guilty—really you do—for watching such a beautiful fission between two beautiful people on national television.

“The thing is, you’re not going to choose me,” she says. “And as much as that hurts, I know you said you wanted the best for me. So I’m gonna do what’s best for me, and I’m gonna go.”

“You don’t understand how special you truly are,” says Graziadei.

Yadi, yadi, yada. And then Graziadei offers to walk Kent to the car.

“I think that’s something I should do on my own,” says Kent. “But I’m pulling for you. I am.”

And then, just moments later, Grazaidei proposes to the lovely and overjoyed Anderson. And damnit, we’re pulling for them too. Roaring fanfare. Champagne flutes. End scene.

I can’t stop thinking about it. And if you think that’s contrived, here’s why it isn’t:

For so many years, The Bachelor worked hard to champion an old ideal of love—that love is true (and therefore, the love we want) only when it comes easy and fast. And that we must humor the demands of a whirlwind romance, bar none, even if it means compromising parts of ourselves. Our female friendships. Our intuition. Season 28 was a departure from the series’ status quo in that it taught us even love which has reached its terminal has not failed. If the best it came to offer was that we might know ourselves better for having held it, that’s no consolation prize. It’s a goddamn rose.

I think Kent walks away from Graziadei on her own volition because she heard the double entendre in her father’s advice (and, as the daughter of a sage old dad myself, we know that there are always double meanings in the advice doled out to us).

“It’s only love,” he had told her. Don’t be afraid to accommodate it, if that’s what you want. Don’t be afraid to let it go, if it doesn’t fit quite right. Come on kid, you’ve been through tougher growing pains than this.