I’ve never been a fan of The Bachelor and its various spinoffs, but for the latest one, I decided it might be worth a look, because The Golden Bachelor features as its star a fellow named Gerry Turner. He’s from Indiana, he’s a widower, and he’s 72 years old.
Evidently having plumbed the young-guy-seeking-love theme as much as they could (and reversing the roles with The Bachelorette) the producers of the ABC-TV franchise decided to see what an older group of people could do–and what kind of ratings they would generate.
Yes, it’s a tough job, but as they say, somebody has to do it, and Gerry (pronounced like “Gary”) agreed to take on the task. And so far, viewers appear to like the idea. The premiere episode garnered some 9 million viewers across all platforms, impressive numbers these days for anything on TV that doesn’t involve NFL football.
The series follows a familiar format. All the women are thrown together in a mansion somewhere in southern California, where they have to live and interact while awaiting the various “dates” with Gerry and the tense episode conclusions in which he will invite a few to advance with him to the next round, while the others have to pack up and go home, wondering what might have been.
The show is designed to create conflict, first and foremost among the women, and then within Gerry himself, as he struggles to sort out his feelings about each of the ladies. All of them are attractive, all have very desirable qualities, and under other circumstances he might find himself satisfied with pursuing a relationship with any of them. In the real world, such things take time, but on TV they rush things along. That’s part of the attraction, I suppose. Every episode, the viewer is asking, “Who’s he going to pick? Who’s going home?” Favorites among the contending women quickly emerge. Some are very aggressive, some more demure. Always, the viewer is wondering, “How much of this is staged, and how much is real?”
I had a question like that when Episode 3 began, showing Gerry alone and weeping. My first thought: What does he have to cry about? Inside that house are a dozen attractive women who all want to go to bed with him. But then I thought, Maybe he’s thinking of his late wife, whom he lost to a sudden illness six years earlier, shortly after they’d retired to their dream home. As it turned out, it was because one of the contestants, Joan, had just told him she had to leave the show to help her daughter through a difficult pregnancy; the clip was a “preview” snippet to lead into the episode. Joan, 60, a school administrator from Maryland, had just enjoyed a date with Gerry that probably put her right at the top of his list, only to dash both of their hopes the next day. (Real back-home emergency, or feigned? Nobody’s telling. We’ll give Joan the benefit of the doubt.) Joan wasn’t the first to pull out of the show early; a week before, Marina, another 60-year-old educator, was nowhere to be found despite having made the cut at the end of the premiere. Turns out she had to go home due to a family problem, too.
These “reality” shows–as if there’s anything “real” about a competition that is almost completely staged–always involve conflict and never resolve until the final, tense minutes of the last episode. But maybe The Golden Bachelor is actually showing us something that adults of all ages needed to see: senior citizens falling in love.
Challenging the senior stereotype.
Seniors often get a bad rap in today’s culture. More often than not, they’re viewed as demanding (“Where’s my damn discount?”), dismissive of the younger generation, hopelessly hung up on antiquated things like religious faith, and–worst of all–conservative politically. But every generation of young people fails, at least initially, to view their parents and grandparents through a lens that takes all their work and sacrifices into account.
My own grandparents raised families through the Great Depression and World War II, social upheavals that my generation could only read about and view on grainy black-and-white films. For Americans under 40 today, those cataclysmic events are pretty much ancient history, usually relegated to a few paragraphs in high school history textbooks that tend to place more emphasis on things like the civil rights movement and the rise of feminism.
As I grew older, I found much more to appreciate about what my grandparents, and even my parents, had gone through. What was it like to have to quit school after 6th grade to go to work and support your large family? That’s what my Grandpa Tindell had to do. How about shoveling coal out of rail cars for a dollar a ton? That’s what my Grandpa Carpenter had to do. My mom’s family lost two children to illness in a day when medical care was often unavailable because few people had insurance and fewer still the money to afford medicine. My dad served a hitch in the Army because that meant he could use the G.I. Bill to become the first Tindell to graduate from college. Yes, there was indeed much to admire in what those two generations of Tindells and Carpenters had to face and overcome, and they did it with an admirable combination of dignity, faith and discipline that I have worked all my life to emulate.
Today’s seniors have opportunities for personal growth that their parents and grandparents didn’t have. Medical treatment has extended lifespans, and if you are conscientious about watching your diet and exercising, having a vigorous and high number of “encore years” is not only possible, but likely. I saw very active people in their 70s and 80s all the time when I visited my parents in their Arizona retirement community. So, I’m not at all surprised that Gerry is fit and active (he loves pickleball) and the women who are vying for his ring are the same. But for some (no doubt younger) writers, this seems hard to grasp: What “The Golden Bachelor” Says about Desirability as We Age.
I just watched the next-to-last episode, and (spoiler alert!) there’s been no sex on the show. At least, none that has been shown, or even hinted at. Has Gerry been “making out” with some of the contestants? Sure. How far has that gone? There’s been nothing to imply that it went any further than the hot tub (with Leslie, 64, a fitness instructor from Minnesota) or aboard an amusement-park ride (with Faith, 61, a teacher from Washington). Presumably, there have been a few moments that Gerry and a gal or two (separately, of course) have stolen away from the ubiquitous cameras.
The writer of the piece linked to above, Myisha Battle of Time, specializes in relationships in her articles. She’s a “certified sex counselor and dating coach” who claims to have begun her sex counseling career while in middle school. She doesn’t list her age, but her photo puts her around 35 or so. Maybe older; she herself writes in the Time article that the selection of contestants on The Golden Bachelor focused “on a narrow population of seniors, all very fit and active.” Well, why not? Show me any “reality” show that always presents a diverse cross-section of the population. The producers were surely looking to boost ratings by having attractive contestants, as they do for every iteration of the franchise, but maybe, just maybe, we can look at Gerry and his women as people whose lives we can try to emulate, rather than as fantasy objects who don’t reflect the real world of the Social Security generation. They’re certainly not perfect; Gerry is up front about his struggle with grief after his wife’s untimely death, and virtually all of the women talk about the challenges they’ve faced in their lives: widowhood, divorce, health crises and more. But they impress me as people who didn’t let those challenges take them down. They stood up to them, adapted, improvised, overcame. One thing they all obviously did was take care of their bodies, so that they can do things like play pickleball, hike, dance, and rock a low-cut dress or a well-tailored suit. And, they’re a group that doesn’t much care for the catty behavior displayed by younger contestants on previous seasons of The Bachelor. Gerry always conducts himself as a gentleman, too, which is something I’m told is also unusual for the men at the center of the series. Imagine that–senior citizens being polite and helpful to each other. What a concept!
I often wondered what my own retirement would be like. Not just what I would do, but why. I decided early on that I would not just continue my commitment to fitness into retirement, but enhance it. Not having to work–or, at least not having to work full-time–meant I could go to the gym and the pool more frequently, sharpen my martial arts skills in the dojo, and join Sue on adventure trips that have seen us do things like hiking through the Andes to Machu Picchu, biking through Spanish Andalusia, riding horses in Tibet and exploring Mayan caves in Belize. We’re now training for our biggest challenge yet: climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, set for next October. I have a feeling that’s a goal Gerry and whoever he chooses as his new love would go for, too.
Who will he select? That’ll be decided on next week’s show. He’s down to three women; it should’ve been two, but he couldn’t make the choice between Theresa, 70, a financial services professional from New Jersey, and Faith, the teacher from Washington. (She’s also a radio announcer, which piqued my interest.) He’d already chosen Leslie. Next week, we’ll find out who joins Leslie in the finals and then who gets the cherished rose at the end. As for Joan, the Maryland school administrator who was an early favorite before having to drop out? She has nothing but good things to say about her experience: 20 Questions with Joan.
Who am I rooting for? I think I’m pulling for…Gerry. He has a tough choice to make, but it’s been week after week of tough choices. I’m also pulling for him because he lost the love of his life and no guy wants to go through that. I’m still with the love of mine, and I cherish every day with her. I can’t imagine ever presenting another woman with a rose, but six years ago, when Gerry was my age, he probably couldn’t imagine that, either. Good luck, buddy.
A Strenuous Writer's Life 