Get Hitched, Get Cool Stuff

Another season of ABC’s “The Bachelor/ette” wrapped up last night with DeAnna Pappas picking professional snowboarder Jesse over dependable account executive Jason, a divorced single father (ah, too bad for him…insert pause for tears, ice cream runs, various other emotional withdrawal techniques). While I haven’t watched the show with any consistency since 2005 when Bachelorette Jen Schefft was driven to tears deciding who to give “the final rose” to (mainly because she didn’t care a lick for either bloke), I will admit to occasionally tuning in to the various finales for old times’ sake. I mean, what girl isn’t a sucker for a tearful proposal set in an exotic clime at sunset? It’s porn for the X-chromosome.

“The Bachelor” is probably the most banally predictable of the “reality” shows – the guy always proposes, the couple always breaks up within two to three months of the conclusion (since its launch in 2002, there’s been only one actual wedding), and the dialogue from season to season is utterly interchangeable. The show’s recipe for wedded bliss: add a handful of “I think he/she’s my soul mate,” sprinkle in a dash of “I was so ready to be in love,” and then mix in a pinch of “spend forever with me.”

More and more, it seems this on-camera matchmaking charade (a wildly durable formula in the ratings department) with its cliché heavy drivel and romantic over-the-top getaways (“let’s spend the afternoon on a private island in the Caribbean, then we’ll cuddle at the chalet in Vail”) masquerades for the broader society’s idea of love. On screen and off, it’s easy to confuse matrimony with materialism – Americans spend an estimated $161 billion a year on weddings. The happiest DeAnna looked all night was when the show’s host mentioned the cool free honeymoon to Greece they’d receive as a parting gift – not to mention the likely cool free wedding “event” and baby shower to follow…should they hang on that long.

It’s hardly a new trend: Marriage by incentive – get hitched and get cool stuff. It’s just never before attained the current level of gimmickry. What happens when the cool stuff dries up? Or when snowboarder boy breaks his leg and can’t foot the bills? No pun intended.

“When I first came into this, I could never have thought that this process was real,” says Jesse of the lovely locks, in one of the show’s more revealing lines. Then he heads out to propose -- on cue -- to his sweetie in an exquisitely choreographed exchange.

It’s not real, Jesse dear, and yet it is.

The unreality of it all has sadly become our reality.