As a long-time viewer of the Bachelor franchise, I feel like I’ve seen it all, especially now with Clayton being the first Bachelor turned down at the proposal. However, something I feel that a lot of us did not see coming was the show deciding to feature two bachelorettes in the same season. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this choice as a fan of the show, and a woman myself. Would they have chosen two bachelors? Is this because Clayton set them up as a group in the finale by doing a group breakup? Finally, can this process prove to be successful for both women, Rachel and Gabby? Here are some of my thoughts on this upcoming season.
If you’ve never seen any of the shows from the Bachelor franchise, you’re still most likely familiar with the setup. One lead, called the bachelor or bachelorette, dates around 30 contestants who identify as the opposite gender. As you can imagine, dating this many people could be tricky for anyone, especially because most of these contestants are regular people prior to joining the cast, but adding another lead into the show for the same amount of contestants? Now that seems like it is going to cause drama. The premise of the show is that the lead will find “the one,” and propose or be proposed to by the finale, and my concern with having two leads sharing the same group of guys is that the process won’t treat Gabby and Rachel like the individuals they are and how they deserve to be treated. My hope was that the production team would include more contestants for each woman to date, essentially one set of guys there for Rachel and one set there for Gabby. Some sources have already started to leak photos of the men cast as the contestants and so far it looks like it will be the same size pool, about 30, for both women to share. So far, it feels that there is little customization for both women, although we can’t say for sure yet as this has never been done on the show before.
Now, I understand why the producers have chosen a bachelorette duo for this season over a single bachelorette, as both Gabby and Rachel were crowd favorites, but would they have tried this out with two bachelors instead? The probable main reason that Gabby and Rachel will be a duo rather than individual leads themselves is because of the breakup and rose ceremony from the last two episodes of this past season. If you haven’t seen or heard about the disaster of a finale on social media, Clayton told Gabby and Rachel he was in love with both of them at the same time, revealing that he was intimate with both contestants in front of each other at the rose ceremony. He also did not forget to mention he was in love with Susie, a contestant who left the show the previous episode. Not only did he reveal these details as a group to them, but he also chose to do the final breakup for both of them, together in the same room. This solidified the two women as a group in Clayton and Bachelor nation’s eyes and is ultimately why I feel they have chosen a duo over giving each woman their own season. I still feel that this is the wrong decision as we’ve had back-to-back bachelorettes with crowd favorites Michelle and Katie, but they each had their own individual season and contestants.
Personally, I don’t think that the producers would attempt to do this with the show’s counterpart, the Bachelor, which stars a male lead. Because Clayton treated these women as a group, doesn’t mean that bachelor nation wanted to see these women put into another scenario where they would be grouped together, and especially not where they had to split the same amount of contestants. My prediction is that this season will be one of the least successful the show has seen, further contributing to the franchise’s decline in popularity.
This upcoming season is sure to give fans surprises that we’ve never even thought of. The past few seasons have had unconventional endings, and I feel that this season will follow suit. For Gabby and Rachel’s, sake I truly hope that they can find the happy endings they are looking for, and if they can pull this off successfully, it could lead to many new and interesting seasons ahead. The new season is set to air on July 11 on ABC, and we will see if this season can pull off a duo, or if it will contribute to the show’s steady downfall.