The Discerning Bachelor

You might wonder what I've been up to so far during this holiday. The answer is quite simple actually - I've been watching television. In fact, a bit too much for my own good I suspect. Watching too much television is never a good thing for your mental health, especially more so when you have nothing to sober you up - an anatomy textbook, for example.

But even worse than watching the telly for hours at end is watching those absolutely horrible programmes so sneakingly labeled as 'reality shows'. I remember a couple of years back, I sat down through 50 of the most depressing minutes I ever hope to witness on television.

Was it the evening news? It was not. Was it the first half of a Bundesliga match? No it was not. And neither was it the second half.

It was a show so bad, it had me pinching myself just to make sure it was really happening and not just an awful manifestation brought about by my dreadful imagination combined with eating a cheese sandwich too close to bedtime.

It was a show unsurpassed in my memory for plumbing the terrible shallows which the human heart is capable of. It was The Bachelor.

The Bachelor is - or rather, was - another addition to the already large family of reality TV programmes. But unlike such flimflam and flummery such as Survivor and Big Brother and The Apprentice, the reality in this show is all too painfully evident.

The bachelor of the title is a good, wholesome American by the name of Alex who is allegedly quite a catch. And if you happen to believe the producers, he's more than just a catch - he's the whole sardine run. In a brief biographical sketch, we are told that Alex is handsome, that Alex is rich and that Alex used to swim a lot when he was in university. We are also told by his optimistic mum that Alex is unmarried because he 'hasn't found the right girl yet'. Aww. Poor Alex.

But no, lucky Alex! For he's about to meet the right girl! More than twenty women from all around the States have been mysteriously sourced by the producers - through classified advertisements and cards left in telephone booths, I would assume - and they are going to spend the next several weeks vying for the honour of marrying Alex.

Does this sound perverse to you yet? Does it sound like an inversion of all that marriage is supposed to represent?

We are then introduced one by one to the participants. Why, I wondered, are they doing it?

These women wanted to marry, the same way they once wanted Malibu Barbie for Christmas and that was that. They all spoke the language of love. "I believe in true romance," said one contestant. "I believe in love at first sight," said another. "I believe that there is a soul mate out there for everyone,". None of them demonstrated the ability to hear to what they were saying.

Needless to say, The Bachelor was appalling to watch. In the (supposedly) climax of the first episode, Alex speaks briefly to all 20 plus women, then evicts 10 of which he finds least appealing. They stand facing him in a semi circle of frozen grins, like waxed beauty queens.

I was frozen with pure fear of what might come next. I never did find out.

Fast forward to the present, and the producers have done it again with - no prizes for guessing - The Bacholerette, which is even more awful as it now rhymes with Laundromatte.

Oh, the humanity.