Romance By Chance

I have never watched The Bachelor. I have as most of you know watched my fair share of other reality shows usually competition based shows like American Idol, Survivor and The Amazing Race. I also have counted on Big Brother as a guilty summer pleasure. This year, The January, former Venezuelan professional football player Juan Pablo Galavis almost had me give it a shot, but again... I stayed away. Juan Pablo is just simply hot, and the brief shots of him shirtless on the ads almost had me moving my reality television romance boundary.

Most reality shows are about relationships, usually the relationship between the contestant and the audience. It is why producers tell us so many back stories, especially on the singing competition shows. They want us to connect with someone on the show, someone we will be loyal to and pull for week after week. Many of the shows I listed end up with romances between players, Big Brother in particular loves to exploit what they call showmances. These romantic, or sexual connections are not though at the core of the show.

We spend our lives trying to connect with others and I cannot help but find shows that exploit this primal need we all have to love, and especially to be loved, difficult to watch. Although most of the Bachelor's interactions are scripted and staged, they are still based on our basic need to mate. Putting 20 or 30 women (or in the case of The Bachelorette, men) against one another for the affection of someone paid to be the center of attention makes no sense to me. Almost though Juan Pablo, almost...