The Bachelor vs The Bachelorette

Illustration: Carter Klassen · The Sentry

Bachelor is catty drama at its finest

Opinion by Sang Dao

When it comes to finding love on a television series, nothing can beat The Bachelor. What about The Bachelorette? It’s an inferior sibling series left in the dust.

What makes The Bachelor better than The Bachelorette is the raw drama from the contestants. A good reality tv show needs people crying and arguing.

The Bachelor has grown women weeping over a man they barely know and whom they could possibly end up marrying. Whenever something goes wrong, like having a bad date because somebody’s ex-boyfriend shows up, drama ensues including, more often than not, a lot of tears.

One of the most enjoyable factors of this show is the arguing between the contestants. If the contestants end up disagreeing on anything, that conversation will be dragged on over the entire season. Look at contestant Victoria F. from the most recent season of The Bachelor; she has been sobbing in almost every episode, and the other women complain about how childish she is. Viewers want to see people getting angry at each other because it keeps them on their toes. As the drama goes on, contestants get more irritable making the conflict escalate each time.

Another difference between the two shows is confrontation. In The Bachelor, the contestants are upfront about their feelings. They will talk trash to each other as if it is nothing. The passive aggressive comments make people laugh because the women are all stuck together for weeks. Once something is said, it will circulate throughout the season.

In The Bachelorette, almost nothing happens between the men and it makes the show sluggish.

The Bachelor has everything a reality tv show needs because Drama is almost always at the core of everything. One quote from this season that best encapsulates this quality show comes from Kelly Flanagan :

“Like, I almost wish I wanted to throw you guys in front of buses.”

Bachelorette flips the formula for the better

Opinion by Amanda Blackman

Reality TV is not meant to be thought provoking or revolutionary in its content, but rather to provide an escape into a place where someone else’s life crumbles before the eyes of the world while also living a life many people secretly strive for. What better way to do that than escaping into The Bachelorette? The Bachelor simply pales in comparison to the glory of The Bachelorette.

The goal of reality TV is to give the viewers a different world that they secretly want to live in, whether it be a Real Housewife or a Kardashian. To do this, the show needs to be an escape for the most people as possible. The majority of Bachelor Nation fans are women. When watching a world where one fellow woman is fawned over by 30 drop dead gorgeous men, it gives female viewers an opportunity to put themselves in her shoes. Plus, this strays away from the tired trope of multiple women competing for the affection and attention of a single man.

If that same viewer puts themselves into the shoes of a catty house fight, she’s likely to check out from the escapism the show is meant to provide. It’s simply an ineffective show.

Sure, the drama of the women heightens the show from an outside perspective. It can get catty, yes, but that level of pettiness can get to be too much, especially all of Victoria F.’s constant crying. It gets old. Fast.

But what doesn’t get old? The bro-ness of The Bachelorette. The rumor mill still occurs between the men, yet the balance of the calm makes it bearable. They also tend to immediately view the woman as “theirs,” bringing out the macho protector vibes that the leads to relationships growing deeper faster while adding a dimension to the drama that The Bachelor simply cannot create.

Plus, the goal of the series is to allow true love to be found. According to a critical examination of the shows from Middlebury University, The Bachelor has a success rate for relationships of only 11%, while The Bachelorette has a much higher 30% success rate. If true love is meant to be found, only one series has struck gold.

The Bachelorette is a perfectly constructed escape from a mundane world. It does everything that The Bachelor does, just infinitely better.