Like millions of other TV viewers, I watched the season finale of "The Bachelor" this last Monday night. I'm terrible for feeling this way, but I've always watched the final episode of "The Bachelor" just to see how the bachelor dumps the girl that he doesn't choose to live happily ever after with. There's usually lots of tears and this week's finale was no exception. I know that sounds cold and heartless, but hey - it's not nearly as heartless as telling someone on nationwide TV "I don't want to live happily ever after with you."
For some reason, Americans are fascinated by "The Bachelor" and its sister show "The Bachelorette." The shows get very high Neilson ratings, so even if people don't openly admit that they watch, the ratings prove otherwise. My guess is that we watch it so we can see the beginning of a "happy ever after." I did some research and discovered there haven't been too many happily-ever-afters among the bachelors and bachelorettes. Out of the 12 previous seasons of the two shows (not including the season that ended this week) there are only 3 surviving couples: Charlie O'Connell and Sarah Brice, Byron Velvick and Mary Delgado, and Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter. The happy-ever-after rate comes to 25% - one out of four. That's not very good odds for Andrew Baldwin, this season's bachelor and Tessa Horst, the woman that he chose and even proposed to during the season finale.
During the final episode, Tessa said that if she wasn't chosen, she couldn't go back to the life that she lived before she met Andrew. I translated that to mean "If he doesn't pick me, it's the end of the world." Tessa is a social worker, but after hearing her say that, it seems to me she might be in need of social guidance herself for some apparent self-worth issues. I did a little more research, and found out that "The Bachelor" was filmed over a six-week period. That means that during just six short weeks, this guy weeded one woman out of twenty-five, and fell in love with her and asked her to marry him. And in that same six week period, Tessa fell in love with him and told him she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Yep, this happened in a mere six weeks. Some of you are probably saying "Now, Puddin, quit being a hardass and let them live happily ever after." But I have a hard time believing that in just six weeks, all of that can happen. I just don't think you can know that the other person is the one that you want to spend the rest of your life with after just six weeks. Maybe I'm wrong, and I should be using my parents to prove that I'm wrong -- on my parents' first date, Dad told Mom that she was going to marry him. She laughed at him and told him he was crazy. They'll celebrate their 49th anniversary next month.
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