Is it time to stop watching 'The Bachelor?'

Justin Kirkland, Special to USA TODAY
Published 12:07 p.m. ET March 6, 2018 | Updated 12:16 p.m. ET March 6, 2018

I started watching The Bachelor during Season 17 with Sean Lowe — admittedly pretty late in The Bachelor game. The franchise wasn’t really in my wheelhouse, and I started watching simply to mock it.

I’m a big enough person to admit that by the end of the season, I found something irresistibly charming about the serendipitous chance of love that can happen on national television. Sean is still married to Catherine Giudici, the woman he chose at the end of his season. They’ve since had a baby and remain fan-favorites.

But on the first episode of this season’s two-night finale, the premise of The Bachelor came crashing down a couple stories. Becca Kufrin was proposed to by Season 22 Bachelor Arie Luyendyk Jr., only to have the proposal rescinded a couple weeks later.

Unfortunately, these things happen in life. We are human, forced to decide and err in the most painful of ways. But what made Monday’s episode so incredibly cringeworthy is that the rescinding happened about 50 minutes before the three-hour window of TV came to an end. (There are still two more hours left to air Tuesday night.)

So for the better part of an hour, we watched a dual camera feed project the real-time downfall of a woman who had invested her time and emotion into a process she believed might work. And though it may not be the most sympathetic perspective, we watched a man have to rectify the error of choosing incorrectly in front of millions of viewers.

More: ‘The Bachelor’ recap: Three hours, two devastated women and one worst finale ever

More: ‘Bachelor’ finale breakup: The Internet explodes, blames Arie Luyendyk Jr. and ABC

It conjured, in an unpleasant way, the summer of 2017 when Corinne Olympios and DeMario Jackson became the spotlight of a national scandal in which a “did they or didn’t they” situation arose after an internal report of sexual misconduct was made on the set of Bachelor in Paradise. After a bout of heavy drinking, a crew member came forward with allegations of misconduct and filming was suspended.

Production resumed following an internal investigation that found no evidence of wrongdoing. The footage in question was not released, but that’s not to say it wasn’t utilized as part of the show. When the show began to air, the storyline was stretched across three episodes. The incident made waves and countless headlines, and think pieces ranged from the importance of protecting women from vulnerable situations to the framing of men as sexual predators. To put in bluntly, a significant portion of Bachelor in Paradise content rested on the premise that viewers and media would stick around to find out if DeMario raped Corinne. There was even a promotional campaign for the return of the show that some found so distastefully exploitative of the incident that ABC pulled it.

That’s not to say that the aftermath of Monday night’s episode is equal to that of sexual misconduct. That couldn’t be further from the truth. At its most basic level, Becca and Arie and Lauren have chosen to be a part of a process that doesn’t have to comply to the notion its viewers signed up for. They have agreed to a reality show, and that reality show delivered on its promise — to provide emotionally compelling television. The emotion is not particularly yours to choose, which is why Twitter and #BachelorNation found itself in such discontent.

But host Chris Harrison made a point to highlight that the series would do something it had never done before: reveal raw, unedited footage. It took the content we consciously knew existed and pushed it into our faces as if to say, “This is how the sausage is made.” And in the wake of that, it pawned the emotional waste on its own star, a man who was hardly ever embraced by Bachelor Nation to begin with.

As Arie chose Becca as his fiancée, then rescinded his proposal to pursue a relationship with Lauren, cameras followed the former couple around a house for an hour to document every tear and curse word and heartfelt conversation. The split screen between them captured every emotion along the way so that no raw word or wet tear was missed. And as many of us hit social media to complain about how grotesque the process was, we were seemingly cosigning along with the franchise’s larger goal —gather viewers, create an audience, provide a base for the next season. It’s the same smut that we had when the franchise’s summer installment seemingly capitalized on a potential sexual assault.

I’m 27, just like Becca, and hardly without fault. I could sit here and drink my Cabernet Sauvignon and posture about how Becca is dumb for signing up for a show where love is simply unachievable in a two-month filming window. Or I could consider my role in this machine. One side of The Bachelor‘s equation depends on the men and women who believe in its process enough to take part in it, but on the other side is us. We cannot condemn the misery of contestants until we stop demanding it.

To pretend that one think piece will change the system is as innocently naïve as those who enter the franchise looking for love. But when the next season inevitably comes to fruition, will the audience remember those left in the franchise’s wake? Or will viewers return for the promise of the love they initially signed up for?

For this recapper, that initial promise seems forever tainted by the unedited emotional tolls ABC has chosen to air.

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