Taylor Frankie Paul is Bachelorette! Wait, what?
It may sound like an AI generated meme, but it’s 100% true. Taylor, the perennially-viral, soft-swinging, sometimes problematic yet incredibly watchable, mommy influencer turned reality star via Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is the next sweetheart looking for love on ABC’s 20-year-old dating show. To say this is a surprise to those of us who have watched and observed the syrupy sweet reality competition for decades is an understatement.
The Bachelor franchise has always stuck by a somewhat silly dogma—that despite the fact that its premise (one star dating 20+ suitors) is ridiculous and inherently a little raunchy, the show is at its core a pure slice of an Americana fairy tale. The star is always seeking their true love and happily ever after, the suitors must be there purely for these “right reasons,” and the ultimate goal is a successful heterosexual marriage between two beautiful people who could be the best-looking neighbors on your cul-de-sac.
With their selection of Taylor, though, the franchise is essentially tearing up that entire ethos in one fell swoop. The decision to put her in the lead completely changes what the show is and acknowledges something that’s been true yet unspoken for years: In reality, The Bachelor franchise is an influencer factory.
We watch because we want to see hot people making out and drama between groups of suitors fighting for the attention of the same person (and ultimately, the audience). The fact that successful couples, and many runners-up, were able to turn their time on the show into fame and lucrative brand deals was supposed to be gravy, but in actuality, for many it was the ultimate goal. To be honest, Taylor Frankie Paul is a radical choice, but it may have been their only choice if the show wanted to maintain any cultural relevance at all.
It’s pretty obvious to me at this point that The Bachelor franchise has been on the decline. I’m not determining this by ratings, which are an imperfect measure in this day and age, but on what I observe in the cultural zeitgeist. Ten years ago, I and many of my friends and colleagues watched The Bachelor and The Bachelorette (and its hornier summer spin-off, Bachelor in Paradise) every week with fervor, completely locked in to the show and the drama. Now, no one I know watches it regularly, even my most diehard reality TV devotee friends.
Simply put, the show’s unwillingness to evolve hampered it to the point where it didn’t seem that interesting anymore. Its problems with race are well-documented—this is a franchise that didn’t cast a Black man as the Bachelor until 2020–and its purity culture uptightness has long begun to wear thin. No one watching seriously believed every contestant was on the show so they could get engaged and married to the lead, yet the show stubbornly insisted that was the case.
