“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness” – Nietzsche.
“Being in love is literally the greatest feeling you can feel” – Nick.
There has been a lot said about Nick from The Bachelor. ‘Gormless’. ‘Dull twazzock’. ‘Post-moral nuclear wasteland’. But one thing all of you cynics and fancy-pants ‘intellectuals’ cannot say, is that Nick from The Bachelor does not know what a feeling is. You can feel feelings. And he knows that.
We are fewer than five minutes into episode one of the 21st (21st!) season of The Bachelor, and the word ‘literally’ has already been used literally well over 200 times. We are introduced to Nick, a beefed out, man-scaped monolith of musk. A cheeky glint and wicked sense of humour is desperately trying to claw its way out from his long-dead eyes.
30 women arrive. There are an inordinate number of brunettes, and an inordinate amount of red dresses.
The drama is already coming thick and fast. ‘Thick’ is the key term. Which of these women will steal Nick’s heart? Who will fall at the first hurdle? Who is this Corinne we’ve been hearing so much about?
By episode nine the three who remain are Vanessa Grimaldi (Special Education teacher), Rachel Lindsay (Attorney) and Raven Gates (Miscellaneous). I saved you a trip there.
Also, spoilers.
Corinne Olympios is very much the Iago of the piece. She is the Edmund, the Caliban. She is the one devastatingly privileged student you would openly laugh at if they spilled their soy caramel latte down the front of their vintage FILA tracksuit.
Corinne is a giggling, erratic, Nick-straddling, outspoken lightning bolt of (trash) television gold. And she has a nanny. The perfect cocktail.
Reality TV lives and dies on its ability to throw loveably hateable characters at your face like a mad clown with a stack of pies.
But Corinne transgresses. She exists on another plane of childish shenanigans and tantrums. ‘Is she for real?’ people gawp at the television. It doesn’t matter if she is or isn’t. Corinne isn’t a character that people love to hate. She is a character people live to hate, and then hate themselves for loving. I love her in the same way that I love the film Mamma Mia. Everything about it is hateful. But it does not care. And you love it for that.
As a whole, this season of The Bachelor has made very few waves.
Despite every promise that “the game has changed” or “This season won’t make you want to self-immolate” it remains a pillar of predictable, spoon-fed mush. If that’s your thing, or you lack a set of teeth, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Image: PicJumbo @Pexels.com