TOP 5 REASONS I DON'T WATCH
5. I don't need another show that's "so bad it's good." At least as long as the CW exists.
4. I have a Twitter feed. If a "Bachelor" contestant kills and eats one of her man-hungry housemates to keep the numbers down at "the most overblown rose ceremony ever," I'm pretty sure @TVGMDamian or @jenniferweiner will be all over it. And don't think I don't appreciate them for it.
3. The crying. The endless crying. That promo for this season, in which some woman is shown just sobbing? That's the most honest ad ever produced for "The Bachelor." I take it for the warning it is.
2. I live in 2012, not 1812. And if I want to be transported back to the prefeminist days when it was "a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife," I can reread Jane Austen, whose male characters ended up with wives, not TV gigs.
1. It's the darkest show on television. Like FX's "American Horror Story," it takes place in an oversize mansion where there's a lot of shrieking and at least one person disappears each week. Like AMC's "The Walking Dead," it's populated by people who can't be trusted to disappear forever, but may well return in other, even worse incarnations of "reality," where they'll endeavor to suck out our brains, one cell at a time.
- Ellen Gray
TOP 5 REASONS I DO WATCH
5. Love, exciting and new. If this show isn't the extended, modern-day, PG-13 version of "Love Boat," I don't know what is. Who cares if, in so-called reality, the couple who makes it to the end really stays together? As long as they fall hard and dramatically on-camera, and we can stand on the lido deck to bid them goodbye, we fans are happy enough. We believe!
4. Reliability. Some things never change - and never should. Host Chris Harrison's lines ("Gentlemen/Ladies, the final rose," and, "Say your goodbyes") are a soothing constant. So is the steadfast presence of at least one train-wreck contestant, who will be said to be there for "the wrong reasons." Also, if you take a sip of beer each time someone on the show says, "amazing," "journey" or "amazing journey," you'll have yourself a very enjoyable drinking game. (Trust me.)
3. Self-confidence. So what if I'll never have the contestants' perfect blowouts or sixpack abs? It feels great, really, to know I'll never, ever make a public fool of myself the way these people do.
2. Pure enjoyment. Never in a combined 22 seasons of "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette" has a single episode taxed my brain or given me a nightmare about a special-victim crime.
1. Numbers. The 9.5 million American viewers who watched last season's finale can't be wrong.
- Lauren McCutcheon
