ABC/Felicia GrahamWhat is up with this season of The Bachelorette?
Week after week, as we've attempted to watch Kaitlyn Bristowe find the man of her dreams, something has just felt off.
It's not that we don't care as much, because we actually care a whole lot. We've been rooting for Kaitlyn to be the Bachelorette since midway through last season of The Bachelor, and we can't remember the last time we latched onto a contestant as early and with as much enthusiasm as we have with Shawn B.
The issue also definitely does not lie in Kaitlyn's sex life. The fact that she sleeps with somebody before she's technically supposed to actually humanizes her a bit, because duh. Sex (and all related activities) is a major part of most adult relationships, and it's foolish to expect a lot of modern people to find the person they want to spend the rest of their life with if they don't get to get to know each other in all ways possible first.
The "problem," or at least the interesting thing about this season, has more to do with the fact that it almost feels too perfect, like the drama was written for a drama, as opposed to a reality show.
We all know reality television isn't totally "real," but usually people on these shows feel like real people. They may also feel like crazy people, but people nonetheless. The characters this season feel like a perfectly cast ensemble. Now, we're not saying anyone is faking the show. It's more like the love is just gone, and replaced with endless drama we can barely keep track of.
To start off the season, we went through a grueling two-night, three-hour ordeal in which two women were introduced to a bunch of men who would then choose which one they would rather date by putting flowers in boxes. It was awkward and it was weird, right down to Britt immediately finding herself in a relationship with one Britt-loving musician named Brady.
Every rose ceremony since then has featured some sort of drama as one of the guys blows up at Kaitlyn or Kaitlyn blows up at one of the guys. It's gotten to the point where the rose ceremony, which used to be such a climactic, characteristic moment of every episode of any Bachelor nation show, is sort of an afterthought. The rose ceremony has gone from the climactic end of the episode to the beginning, or the middle, or wherever it happens to fall, if it happens at all. Sometimes it's not even necessary, since the guys just keep taking off on their own.
Speaking of which, so far, everyone who has been eliminated has either brought in on himself in a very obvious way (Kupah, Clint, Ian, etc), or we've almost never heard him speak. All the clear series regulars are still in the running, while we could probably tell you who's going home next based on whose names we still can't remember.
Meanwhile, the episode where Nick arrived felt like a reunion episode of Degrassi or CSI, where some weird event threw random long-gone characters awkwardly into the show to generate some nostalgia.
How the heck did Ashley S. become Kaitlyn's hairdresser? How did Ashley I. meet Nick? Why didn't Kaitlyn ask her for advice on the Nick situation?
And how on Earth did it just so happen that the most controversial contestant from the last season of The Bachelorette also has eyes for this season's Bachelorette?
Among the current cast, Clint and JJ's little bromance came out of absolutely nowhere, after Clint started out as just a nice guy who drew silly pictures, and their "breakup" and JJ's subsequent backstabbing came equally out of the blue.
What prompted Ian to lose his mind about Kaitlyn's apparent disinterest in him? And there just happened to be a soft-hearted healer who talks to plants on a season where the main lady is a big fan of aggressive displays of violence?
Everything feels so convenient and endlessly dramatic in a way this show has never been before, and none of it is helped by the fact that we know so very little about Kaitlyn herself. We don't know anything about her childhood, or her family, or even her job. She's apparently a dance instructor, and yet she barely brought that up when taking dance classes with Ben H. last week.
She melts when Ben Z. goes on about his mother, or when Shawn B. talks about the car accident he survived, but gives nothing in return. Believe us, we get it: opening up to people is hard. But when you're the leading lady on a reality show that claims to be all about finding real love, being closed off just isn't really an option.
Even if it's actually fame she's seeking, you still have to be willing to go all out, either in the vulnerable, human direction or in the full-on crazy train direction. Kaitlyn seems cool, but that is mainly based on how much she likes to rap. We don't know anything else about her.
Ratings, meanwhile, don't seem to have changed much compared to Andi's season. That glorious, Emmy-worthy episode in which Amy Schumer tore some of the guys apart just barely beat some of the series' lowest rated episodes ever with 5.37 million viewers, but The Bachelorette remains the number one show on TV on Monday nights.
It has also remained popular on social media, and currently sits at number three on Nielsen's list of the top tweeted-about shows each week.
However, not all those tweets are positive, and if there were stats for which show is most hate-watched or even pretending-to-hate watched, The Bachelorette would probably take the top spot on a weekly basis.
Even hate-watching this season feels strange, though, because everything feels at once too real and not real at all. We sometimes can't help but feel like we're witnessing guy after guy realize that he's been duped into falling for a woman who's not what she appears to be, while she's just there to have fun and see what happens.
On the other hand, it also feels like we're watching a woman get yelled at by guy after guy just because she's doing what she wants to do. Neither way of looking at it is very fun, or very promising when you're expecting to see two people in blissful love by the end of the season.
It's hard to root for a woman we know nothing about and a bunch of guys who seem to be losing their marbles at the drop of a hat, but at the same time, it also makes it easier to make poke fun at everyone involved, and isn't that what reality TV is all about in the end?
In any case, the official Bachelorette Twitter account promises that tonight's episode "changes everything," so maybe any and all issues with this season are about to disappear completely. Or, maybe they're about to explode into a million other questions that we will likely present to you when the episode ends.
Either way, we're in this for the long haul, so all we can really do is sit back see how it all goes down, while also voting in the poll below.
After you vote, head to the comments to let us know how you're feeling about this season of The Bachelorette, and then settle in for what is sure to be a very interesting Monday night.