Before I’d even watched The Golden Bachelor, I had a feeling that this one could be different. It’s not just that the Bachelor spin-off’s 71-year-old leading man, Gerry Turner, has a folksy vibe that screams, “Take me to your family reunion to play cornhole.” And it’s not just the charming, accomplished, fascinating women that Gerry has the privilege to date—although they certainly don’t hurt. More than any individual character, what’s set Golden Bachelor apart in its first two episodes is its ethos. Unlike The Bachelor and most other conventional dating shows, this one is actually on its cast’s side.
As fun as chaotic dating shows like Bachelor/ette, Love Is Blind, and FBoy Island can be, they also rely, at least to a degree, on humiliation. From the goofy contestants who tend to go home on Night One (if we’re lucky) to those who behave badly as the proceedings intensify, these shows invite us to recoil in embarrassed anguish at all the weirdness humanity has to offer. The Golden Bachelor, on the other hand, respects its elder contestants enough to frame their stories with dignity and context. The end result? A show that’ll make you laugh, cry, and maybe even believe in flash mobs again.
The Bachelor might be more than two decades old, but its “Golden” counterpart is brand new—and so, this week opened with all of the women moving their things into the mansion. There were gasps of delight over the pink rooms, and there were raised eyebrows when the women realized that some of them would be sleeping in bunk beds. (Much respect to Sandra, who declined to take the top bunk in deference to her knees; this nonsense should be reserved for the twentysomethings in the franchise.)
In a refreshing change of pace from the flagship series, none of this week’s petty irritants seemed to succeed in turning the women against one another. The bed situation resolved quickly, as did a later moment of frustration in which bachelorette and dance instructor Leslie—who once dated Prince—didn’t get the outfit she wanted for a photo shoot on a group date. “I’m allowed to feel upset—I’m allowed to feel that,” she said. “But once I show my emotions, I’m kind of over it… I’m not gonna let this affect my time with Gerry at all.”
For now, at least, it seems like Gerry and the women vying for his heart share the perspective that life is too short to get caught up in immature squabbles. The women often compliment one another, and this week, one devastated contestant told Gerry as she left that he had an incredible group of women to choose from. What’s even more captivating, however, is the emotional intelligence on display here. Sparks are flying left and right already, and it’s largely because Gerry and many of the women he’s dating communicate so openly.
While younger Bachelor contestants often rely on cliché word salads about their “journey to find love” and the “walls” they need to tear down along the way to being “chosen every day,” these contestants are on another wavelength. Gerry has been candid from the beginning about the deep loss he felt after his wife Toni’s death, and the women have responded in kind by sharing their own experiences, even when they’re painful.
This week, what could have been an awkward group date turned into a moment of connection when Gerry pulled retired interior designer Nancy aside after a photo shoot in which he said she didn’t seem “herself.” Photographer and Bachelor favorite Franco Lacosta was conducting a romance novel photo shoot, complete with costumes, and Nancy wound up wearing a wedding dress—which sparked a sudden, overwhelming surge of memories.
“I’ll be honest with you: I haven’t had a wedding dress on for, gosh, 36 years,” Nancy said, “and it was when I married the love of my life. And I was like, this invokes and brings up so many emotions that were all good. I was lucky to have my husband. I was lucky he’s the father of my three children. But just having on a wedding dress, it was overwhelming.”
Multiple women this season have commented on how attuned Gerry is to all of them, and it shows. So often on group dates, a contestant’s big feelings will go unnoticed, furthering their sense of alienation and isolation in the house. By noticing Nancy’s distress and addressing it, Gerry opened the door for romance. He listened carefully and opened up about a moment from about a year ago, when he smelled cinnamon on the street and thought of the baking his late wife did during the holidays. “That instant, when I smelled the cinnamon, got me just as hard as the wedding dress got you,” Gerry told Nancy. “... It just comes out of nowhere.”
As the two found solace in one another, I predictably cried—and at the end of the afternoon, it was Nancy who received the group date rose.
Nancy doesn’t necessarily have this thing in the bag just yet, though. Gerry still seems pretty sweet on Faith, the high school teacher and “fun-monger” who won the First Impression Rose, and Theresa—another frontrunner who got a birthday cupcake and not one but two kisses from Gerry last week. He gave Ellen a framed picture of them together from the group date this week, and he opened up with Joan about their shared experience of losing spouses.
But it was Theresa who won the season’s first one-on-one date this week—a nighttime trip to a diner that started with headlight troubles and ended with a flash mob set to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.’” Was it corny? Oh, yes. Did it feel like a throwback to 2010? Absolutely—but is that necessarily a bad thing? Gerry and Theresa, at least, seemed to have a grand time as they sashayed out of the diner along with the staff for a dance party.
Clearly, Golden Bachelor is going all-in on larger-than-life romance. (If the choreographed dance moment wasn’t enough, the previews for later episodes keep touting a hot air balloon ride—the most whimsical form of transportation ever created.) But more than that, this season is all about fun. Gerry’s birthday this week facilitated a cookout with presents, singing, and dancing. Competition or not, everyone seemed to be having a good time. If only every Bachelor season could be this blissful.
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