‘The Golden Bachelor’: A Failed Experiment

With 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.

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Haley Strack

Haley Strack is a former staff writer at National Review.

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With 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.