As M6 launches its new reality TV show, Golden Bachelor, this Wednesday, we hope that it will not end like its American equivalent…
This Wednesday, the M6 channel is launching its brand new event program, Golden Bachelor. The concept: twenty mature women will try to seduce Landry, a rich sixty-year-old widower who wants to find true love after years of celibacy. After The Bachelor, which started from a similar principle but with a much lower average age, the show is once again adapted from an American success, “The Golden Bachelor”, a huge phenomenon across the Atlantic last year, with millions of viewers for the broadcaster ABC and endless buzz with each episode.
In the American version, it was a septuagenarian, Gerry Turner, who had gone in search of a new life partner after his widowhood. A mixture of attachment and rejection of the character, the audacity or clumsiness of some candidates, and especially the upheavals of the season had ended up winning over the audience. At the height of the season, a rivalry between two candidates, Leslie and Theresa, will be brought to its climax until a cruel epilogue: Gerry will have dangled victory in front of Leslie until the end, only to then shatter her romantic dream, breaking up with her in front of millions of viewers.
So it was Theresa – Theresa Nist by her full name – who would get her hands on the most coveted retiree in the United States and even put a ring on his finger. A lavish ceremony was broadcast live last January in front of millions of fans, which would be nicknamed “The Golden Wedding”. On the program, pomp, glamour and certainly a nice check for the two stars to allow the cameras to come and join in the party.
Why didn’t it work out between Gerry and Theresa?
But then, crash. Three months later, in April, the star couple of the show announced their separation on Good Morning America. Sad news for fans who believed in this beautiful late-blooming love story. The reason given for this huge failure couldn’t be simpler: Gerry and Theresa admitted that they couldn’t agree on where they would live together. Theresa, from New Jersey, and Gerry, from Indiana, initially considered moving to Charleston, South Carolina, to start their new life. But it quickly became clear that neither spouse was ready to sacrifice their daily lives and move away from their grandchildren for the other.
“We looked at houses in South Carolina, we looked at New Jersey, and we looked at house after house, but we never took the plunge,” Theresa would later tell ABC, not too embarrassed about getting divorced so soon after her marriage. Let’s not forget that this is all reality TV…
Other reasons for this disaster, probably just as plausible, have indeed been mentioned. First, the format of the show, which pushes the candidates to commit themselves at full speed, far from the time that a “normal” relationship can require. Feelings can be exacerbated by the buzz, but the laws of romantic relationships do not change because your meeting was broadcast on television… And even if one of the arguments of The Golden Bachelor claims that more mature people will know better what they want, it remains quite acrobatic to venture into marriage so quickly.
Even if two people love each other – as Gerry and Theresa still claimed in the spring – being a couple also requires work and sacrifice. It requires that sometimes, you put the other person first. In short, being a real couple when the cameras are off is harder than when they are on. And that is probably the main reason for Gerry and Theresa’s breakup: once the media had drained their love story and the public’s attention had moved on, their relationship no longer made any sense, neither emotionally nor commercially. It remains to be seen whether Landry, the French Golden Bachelor, will be able to learn from this sad experience.