The Golden Bachelor: A Failed Experiment

W ith age comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes a general rule that older people can do and say things young’uns wouldn’t dare. This usually results in two archetypes: The dirty grandpa, or the Julie Andrews. ABC’s homme du jour is the former.

The Bachelor franchise expanded this year to feature The Golden Bachelor, which is all you’d expect plus about 40 years. Silver-fox bachelor Gerry Turner is 72 years old, and his 22 girlfriends ranged this season from 60 to 75. ABC has produced a number of Bachelor spin-offs. Most famously, the Bachelorette (because why shouldn’t a woman take center-stage) and the Bachelor in Paradise (an anything-goes drunken bacchanal). Some spin-offs fizzled out. Bachelor Pad ran for two seasons because it incentivized love with money, Bachelor in Paradise: After Paradise was too dull to last, and Ben and Lauren: Happily Ever After? aired for one season until Ben and Lauren’s breakup decisively answered its title’s question. Wedding specials and season reruns were both short-lived Bachelor ventures, but ventures they were.

So, few were surprised when ABC devised its next machination. It was only a matter of time. “After more than 20 years of fostering young love on The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, The Golden Bachelor showcases a whole new kind of love story — one for the golden years,” according to the show’s official description. “On this all-new unscripted series, one hopeless romantic is given a second chance at love in the search for a partner with whom to share the sunset years of life. The women arriving at the mansion have a lifetime of experience, living through love, loss and laughter, hoping for a spark that ignites a future full of endless possibilities. In the end, will our Golden man turn the page to start a new chapter with the woman of his dreams?”

Fans must wait a couple more weeks to find out. “Grandzaddy” Gerry just finished up hometown visits, which means that next week, the ceremonious women-tell-all episode will air, and the week after, we’ll see if the old fart finds love after all. His final three are Faith Martin (61), Leslie Fhima (64), and Theresa Nist (70).

Age seems like it would be a virtue in the reality-dating pool. Older people tend to think through their actions unlike, say, the champagne-guzzling Ashley P., who was super “bumski” when 2013 Bachelor Sean Lowe rejected her offer for a spanking. Almost a decade later, Ashley is married with two children. Adulthood served her well. Gerry and the contestants have felt life’s struggles; they had extensive experience of adulthood before arriving on the show. They understood that love doesn’t come easily or even at all — and that it doesn’t guarantee a happy ending when it does come.

Faith is a teacher and horse-lover who has two sons and four grandkids. She and her ex-husband Brett Coffey Martin, who died in 2022, were married for two decades before they divorced in 2005. Leslie is a former professional figure skater with three kids and three grandkids. She famously dated Prince and has multiple ex-husbands, one of whom cheated on her. Theresa is a financial-services professional with two children and six grandchildren. She was married to William Nist for 42 years before he died in 2014. Gerry has his own tragic history. High-school sweethearts who wed as teenagers, Gerry and his wife Toni were married for 43 years. She died suddenly in 2017, weeks after the couple retired and bought their dream house.

The Golden Bachelor cast members adopted many of the same tropes as their younger counterparts. For example, the semi-perverse man who can’t keep his hands off his girlfriends and the ladies who vie for sexual attention. Gerry seems like a nice old man. He probably is. But the premise of The Golden Bachelor is that age is a non-consequential factor in love, and two of Gerry’s final three are among the youngest contestants on the show. The other is the slimmest contestant, and Gerry makes his infatuation with her tiny figure well-known. Man’s carnal desire for a youthful, sexy plaything — a desire the Bachelor franchise was built around — is present even after 70.

For an old bachelor, Gerry has no new tricks. He tells each woman he’s in love with them. In regular seasons, bachelors can get away with confessing their love to multiple young women because, after all, these women are young. They will recover. This season, such an admission is dangerous. Age means higher stakes; Faith, Leslie, and Theresa will survive heartbreak, but it might be the last heartbreak they can stomach. Time, that thing other Bachelor contestants can afford to waste, Gerry’s women keep precious — a realization that made this Bachelor season almost unbearable to watch.

This week was the infamous “hometown” week, when normally, contestants introduce their parents to the bachelor. Parents for the most part are settled because their daughters still have eons to find a nice man if the bachelor doesn’t work out. Faith, Leslie, and Theresa sought approval from their children and grandchildren, who were all scared yet thrilled to see the women happy.  Grandkids professed their affection for Gerry and asked him to come back. Families caught glimmers of hope for their widowed loved ones. All while the philanderer told each family how “in love” he was.

“I’m hoping for him and her at the end. Here they are, with a chance to do this again, in a whole different way though. It’s not replacing the spouses they had, because you can’t,” Theresa’s daughter Jen said, sobbing. “It doesn’t really feel that weird, for some reason. It doesn’t change how much love we have for my dad, you know?”

Gerry won’t be a casual boyfriend to the woman of his choice. He’ll also be a replacement father or grandfather to his partner’s family. For The Golden Bachelor to succeed, Gerry had to prove he was up to the task. He had to prove, unlike bachelors before him, that he was motivated by a desire for companionship. Gerry was supposed to be wise and The Golden Bachelor was supposed to inspire a hope that love prevails no matter the age. It was a hefty responsibility to place on any grandzaddy.

Addictive dating shows are fun because the floozies who wrestle half-naked in a mud pit to get a man’s attention don’t require an audience’s emotional investment. In The Golden Bachelor, Bachelor nation has finally dreamt up a memorable concept. That the show is unforgettable is not a testament to its success, but rather to its masterly descent into an emotional hellscape that young, dumb 20-something-year-olds could never reach. Is that a triumph?