The Bachelor Season 20: Show Analysis

The Bachelor Season 20 finale had approximately 9.3 million viewers. The drama on the show, specifically the women’s relations, perpetuate negative stereotypes of women and normalize the unnatural love affairs that are presented on the show. The drama presented on the show is nothing like normal relationships, which is part of the appeal of the show in the first place. “The underlying messages of the shows are beyond terrible. We’re essentially told that all women in their twenties should be desperately searching for a man to marry (most of the 30-something bachelorettes are portrayed as a particular breed of desperate), and that women are, in general, complete and utter nutjobs. Although, of course, this only applies to white women, as people of color
rarely get cast.” (Gray, 2016). The contestants on the show are often portrayed as desperate, go through very dramatic heartbreaks and are featured getting into fights, sobbing hysterically and going to desperate measures to get a guy. This negative portrayal of the female contestants allows female viewers to feel better about themselves and their own lives and appreciate their own relationships (or even lack thereof). “Love isn’t a 12-week competition of white wine and tears that you can “win” — but there’s something kind of satisfying about imagining that it could be.” (Gray E,2016) The Bachelor is a form of relief from the normalcy of our mundane lives.
Obviously the whole setting of The Bachelor is unnatural. No one in real world falls in love like that, which is probably one of the reasons The Bachelor has such a low success rate when it comes to maintained long-term relationships. Another much more interesting reason some people watch the bachelor is because they are in a Fantasy League. Similar to a fantasy league for sports a group of friends get together form a “league” and all pay their dues so they can see who's lady will win. There are some where it is a simple bracket similar to “March Madness” then there are some leagues where it is a point system with different actions and outcomes until the season is all added up and whoever has the lady with the most points win. In these fantasy leagues they don't have any stats from last season like most fantasy leagues but only the superficial judgements from the contestants bios and headshots. For a complete set of rules and point system on the fantasy league see appendix
B.
How has The Bachelor changed over time throughout the Social Media Age?
By 2009 over half of all people use social media(Pew Research Center, N.D.). That is why we chose to start watching season 13, which aired in 2009, and onward. For our research we watched episodes starting at season 13 and going to the most recently aired season, season 20. This is a very racy show with some extrinsic characters but it was found that some of the earlier seasons were slightly less racy and contestants less extrinsic than later seasons. This was specifically noted in the premiere episode of season 13. When the girls got out of the limo, they simply introduced themselves, said where they were from and went inside. The weirdest thing one did was come out in fake vampire teeth (for who knows why). In later seasons girls come out with no shoes, arrive on a bicycle with a piano, more than one has worn a wedding dress and in season 20 a girl even arrived with a mini horse.
Some small elements of the show, such as the deliberation rooms design, evolved over time as did contestants styles but those things are to be expected. By viewing episodes from season 13 to seasons 20, we found that their was no a dramatic change in The Bachelor throughout the social media age.