Guess what: I am something of a scholar. I have long been a precocious student and reader! I revere the written word! I have a distinct memory of being in 2nd grade and telling my teacher I had read A Separate Peace and her telling me it was best to read other things as it was not likely I had access to that comprehension level. She was right, but I still read it :)
In addition to reading, I also partake in the renowned pastime of Watching. Often, it is Watching Reality TV.
I love watching the spectrum of emotion without having to take any of it on. I love seeing people who are very different from me – despite whatever act they are being produced to present – get caught in the same human experience that I do. I think Naomi Fry writes about this really well , how this stuff is meaningful tonic. It’s no accident that psychoanalysis imagines transcendence of ego as being able to watch the different aspects of self as characters playing on a stage. Sigh!
Food often interrupts whatever suspension of disbelief a show presents me. I honestly feel each type of show, unless it is Top Chef, treats food awkwardly. Either way, I am less interested in formal competitions of skill and more interested in the quotidien signifiers of food that define a show’s universe.
I’ll explain. There’s a profound specificity around food in the Universe of each Show. There’s a unique shake to the salads of the Kardashians. The rustle of pizza in the Summer House nighttime kitchen. On RHONY, shit goes down at the Regency. With the Housewives in general, it’s always more about Where You Go than what you eat.
Each show illuminates some reality beneath production, admitting and asserting that characters have bodies that must be fed. I want to zoom in! I could get lost in the Bravo Universe (perhaps already have) so let’s start simple. Romance Shows. Specifically, the Romance Show: THE BACHELOR
EVERY SEASON IS THE MOST DRAMATIC SEASON YET
I think The Bachelor is the best place to start here. I have been on and off The Bachelor for a few years, but right now I Am Officially On.
Contemporary context
In thinking about this, it feels important to contextualize through a pandemic lens. The intense COVID-years kept the contestants isolated, which then raised the stakes on their physical interaction. Everyone was touch-deprived and vaguely manic. This meant, somehow, that there was more kissing than ever before. Also might explain Clare’s wild antics in running away with Dale… but that’s for another time.
Okay so there was more emphasis on touch, and also less to do because these were the years where the show stayed stuck at a resort in southern California. This meant more filler challenges, mostly based on physicality. This was stuff like running around eating a million peppers “for love”.
The Silhouette of a Date
These ‘food game’ antics presented a contrast from the way that food is normally treated on the show. It’s an open secret (and a kind of hilarious visual) that food is always left untouched on The Bachelor. It sits on each date’s table, probably very cold. Nary a napkin in a lap!
Apparently, mics pick up the sound of chewing in an intense and unpleasant way. So contestants are told not to eat and are brought food beforehand, instead. I will say that these meals are where most of the emotional conversations occur! But like… why is food there?
My take is that they should just skip this dinner performance. It feels outdated and wasteful and weird. Even more, it realllly interrupts the suspension of disbelief that a person has to have in buying into the idea that the show has honest emotional gravity. If dinner isn’t real, why should their connection be?
The same goes for ‘Hometowns’, when the top four contestants get to bring the Host home and show them their world. Most of the time, this means a family (disoriented but ready for primetime!) gathered in a very staged rental home. I completely understand why this would happen (who wants everything on camera? Not all of us!), but if you look closely you can often see little fam photos shoved in the corner of an Airbnb. I find this to activate a similar ghostliness to the cold dinner food and it makes me remember why some people are weirded out by reality TV.
This is one way Ariel was so smart this season: this broad skipped the apartment visit and just took her man out to eat!
Prop food as Identity
We can’t consider this all without, unfortunately, encountering “food as a bit”. This is basically food or drink as a personality accessory or stand-in for a character’s identity. The perfect example of this mechanism backfiring was with poor Kelsey a few years ago.
This season, Gaby brought a shot of maple syrup for Zach so that he would remember she was from Vermont but also so that he would remember her. How bad would it look if a lady brought you syrup and you didn’t remember her name! When she gives him a taste test of different syrups, she seemed actually devastated that he doesn’t know which was real. What Is Real, Gaby???
The thing that I REALLY struggle with is contestants being like “here’s a donut, let’s both eat it together at the same time”. First, it means that these people have premeditated this one bite so much that they have convinced producers to go fetch the required supplies for what ends up feeling like a brief, empty performance. Second, when is the last time that it really worked to both eat the same object at the same time. This also seems like a touch deprivation vibe to me, but either way I feel safe saying that it ends up being clumsy.
Food is also a space where the contestants like to do cheeky innuendos like hot dog stuff. Because sex is so taboo on the Bachelor (this week’s ep!), food is used as playful in a very middle school way. Though I have sympathy for the repressed libido, I do cringe.
I think what I am trying to say here is that food, such an unswerving element of *being* gets either awkwardly erased or hyper-performed on this show. It’s funny because I truly do believe people fall in love on The Bachelor. I wouldn’t watch it if I didn’t! I think these shows are amazing because despite the farce and pagentry, there actually is a profound human organic thing that does happen and feels raw and meaningful.
So! If the premise of the show is that two people build a fantasy within regular life, it feels vaguely deflating to totally skip the many moments in which a real body, trying to engage with real experience, feeds itself.
PARADISE: THE ID
While The Bachelor seems to have a lot of secret rules (uneaten food) that only make sense if you spend your time doing research (me! for better or worse), Bachelor in Paradise is ALL ABOUT BREAKING RULES AND THROWING THEM INTO THE OCEAN! If The Bachelor is Daytime, Paradise is Nighttime. If The Bachelor is Left Brain, Paradise is Right. If The Bachelor is about Growing Up and Settling Down, Paradise is about being Young and Messy. If The Bachelor is Super-Ego, then Paradise is Id!!!
Bachelor in Paradise is where everyone goes if they got sent home from The Bachelor but might still make good television. They go to find love, but also to Let Antics Ensue. Sex is much more transparently addressed on this show (there is a Boom Boom Room. Disgusting phrasing!), fewer gowns and more speedos. There seems to be a much more relaxed perspective on bodies; everyone sits together outside at meals, sleeps lazily in bunk beds, gets drinks from their sandy beach bar, and generally Lies About and Makes Mischief.
Food becomes a chaos vehicle. John Paul Jones goes on a date where he eats the food!
Mari throws Kenny’s birthday cake in the fire!
After all of the compartmentalizing that comes from organized love in The Bachelor, there is some relief, really, to watching it all get set aflame :’)
I am grateful for both Daytime and For Nighttime, for Performance and Aversion, for Super-Ego and for Id, and for Bachelor Nation At Large
When I think about The Bachelor’s relationship to food, I gulp air and hold my breath. When I think about Paradise’s relationship to food, I exhale so hard I cough. Neither is great for digestion.
I can’t critique, however, without offering a solution. Here’s my pitch for what I want to see:
It’s the first night of the first day that cameras have been turned off off. The winner of the Bachelor, a woman in love, has just disembarked a long plane ride. She heads to the secret Airbnb she has to stay at for a week. She’ll be mostly inside and incognito until they tape the next time she sees her fiancé. After a very long journey, she gets to be alone.
The waistband of her leggings dug into her belly on the commercial flight home and her skin feels dry from the altitude. She is tired and maybe hungover. She’s a little sore, though she barely worked out on their post-show getaway. She hasn’t done skincare in a week.
She gets to the house, which is cute but smells a little chemically. It’s weird not to have cameras around, but nice to feel the quiet. She opens her suitcase, where she’s stored everything: unwashed swimsuits, running shoes with rocks from the beach, Rose Ceremony gowns, date cards. Next to wilting, long-stemmed roses (she saved each one), is the fresh, crinkly plastic of a snack she packed with her to eat upon her return. This is her new life and this will be the first sustenance that fuels it.
What is it????????