It certainly seems like a lifetime or two has past since I was last splayed across my lazyboy, an unrepentant voyeur of ringmaster Chris Harrison and another hot batch of twenty-five cranky — unleashed — Bachelorettes all clawing after a reasonably debonair, half-serious Bachelor. The latter descriptor necessarily leaving the unctuous, tiddly and way unserious Bob Guiney (who fairly singlehandedly destroyed the once titanic franchise) in a queer category all his very own.

By David W. Taylor (Email The Author)
Reality Reel Media
01.12.06

It wasn't merely ironic, was it?, that the love-jerk Mr. Guiney was almost unrecognizable during the opening Bachelor: Paris montage of past televised glories. A shot of Bob's curly nape; a small glance at his profile — interestingly, we didn't catch a full-frontal of his grinning mug until a series of subliminal-like flash clips showcasing the previous male leads. I guess Mike Fleiss had had his fill of Guiney-mania too and has exacted a whiff of revenge.

I can honestly say I, for one, will never get tired of The Bachelor format — whether it is skewered by someone as blatantly ill-equipped to emote maturity as Bob Guiney or a character as loopy and loose (but in the end, noble and knightly) as Charlie O'Connell, who I last remember shaking some maracas on a KuKouKuNuKu bus in Aruba. Which is bizarre to note if only due to Aruba's recent pedigree as a dark place tainted with the unsolved disappearance and likely rape and murder of American high school student, Natalee Holloway. Life and Reality Television are indeed both interchangeably awful and strange.

I've loved The Bachelor since Alex Michel and I do so now. I am saddened and disappointed that the ratings have plummeted and that the show has almost crashed upon TV's rocky shore of oblivion. It is disheartening that The Bachelor: Paris continues the downward spiral: Monday's premier drew a lackluster 6.2 million souls. I wish it were not so, but it is. I want The Bachelor (and The Bachelorette) to continue forever... but this now seems increasingly like a hollow dream. I blame the producers and such for casting the sidekick-vocalist Guiney — for some godawful reason — which made the show's once lofty premise a laughingstock. He was about as dead-set on finding a soulmate as Ted Bundy. The buzzword for the show was no longer finding "love" but simply having "fun" with a bunch of chicks. And the show has really never recovered. At the very least, I suppose, amid the carnage, the ravenous media-star Mr. Guiney was able to sell a few of his pop CDs and glitter tees.

With The Bachelor: Paris, the producers have obviously decided that to continue further on down this Guiney-fashioned highway — to this carnival-like love-shack (the last clone starring Charlie O'Connell) — was a huge mistake and have thankfully returned to The Bachelor's bedrock core of long-term relational intentions, though even here, with 33 year-old ER doctor Travis Stork, it is perhaps a case of too little too late for a jaded American public.

But the good news from the show-opening promo is that Mary and that bass fisherman, Byron Velvick, are to be married in November and the strategic placement of words and pictures also made it seem that things were promising for Mr. O'Connell and Sarah B. And the good news continued... that our Bachelor this go around was a serious man who seemed more inspired by life's more mundane pursuits — family, friends, career — and less fickle about whether he was going to be able to spoon with multiple partners on nationwide television or get a spin-off Reality contract on cable. It's significant also that he's chosen to locate his ER practice in Tennessee — a decidedly less-driven, conservative, family-oriented locale — than in, say, New York or L.A. Though this may have a lot to do with oppressive malpractice insurance rates outside the hinterlands?