Just an old-fashioned love song.

Last night I was coerced by my houseguest into watching "The Bachelor" on ABC. I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the show--I was once coerced by a girlfriend into watching an episode, so I pretty much knew what to expect--but I have to admit that last night's season-ending extravaganza was a bit more over-the-top than I expected. One cannot help but wonder how much of this nonsense is real and how much of it is staged, since for me, and for most of the rest of the relatively normal people on the street, it's hard to comprehend how anyone can be so smart and successful as the participants in this show purportedly are, and so stupid and shallow at the same time. (I lean very heavily to the "staged" side of the equation.) But at the same time one has to wonder how such a pile of dreck as this show not only made it to the air, but found an audience over several seasons as well, and even managed to spin off another highly successful version covering the other side of the equation, "The Bachelorette". Who is watching this garbage?

A word about my guest: she is far from dumb. In fact, she emigrated to this country from Eastern Europe four years ago and has already mastered English to a degree that I can only hope my nieces will someday achieve. (That's a story for another time.) She studied law in her home country, and as much as she enjoys pop culture as much as any other girl her age, she also keeps a close eye on the national and international news, and has a distinct, mature, and insightful perspective on the world. She's no dingbat. And she is fully aware of the absurdity of this program, and the tactic of dragging things out that the producers use to such effect in keeping their viewership enthralled until the next brace of commercials. There are no secrets here. So when I asked her why she liked the show, I expected a good, solid answer, one that would make things clear to me, and she didn't disappoint:

"Because he's really cute."

Okay. That settles that.

Clearly, there's nothing wrong with a little harmless fun on the Boob Tube. There is a long tradition of matchmaking shows on television, and for the most part they've been mildly entertaining and, at times, pretty humorous. But I have to say I found nothing funny or entertaining in last night's show. The Bachelor, Jason, had to choose between the two finalists, Melissa, a 25-year-old sales rep from Dallas, and Molly, a 24-year-old department store buyer from Grand Rapids. Both girls were attractive, witty, and smart (begging the question why they had to be on the show in the first place), and Jason was himself the standard picture of success: handsome, well-off, and a young single dad (the current bad-boy imprimatur for Really Good Guys). In the end, after a heart-wrenching (blech!) heart-to-heart with the devastated Molly, Jason chose Melissa. The strings swelled, rose petals fell from the sky, and the sun suddenly shone a little brighter. For the happy couple, of course; Molly was left to talk to the camera through her tears--from the back seat of a stretch limousine, on her way to the airport, of course.

But this season, there was a twist. About six weeks after the Final Episode there is a follow-up, called "After the Rose", when the "contestants" are brought back together to discuss their experience on the show and reveal their "plans for the future". Normally, there is a studio audience present to witness this exercise in emotional self-immolation, but this time the show was taped without an audience. We were told it was to protect the emotions of the players in this tawdry little drama, because Jason had a surprise: he had fallen out of love with Melissa (already?) and wanted another chance with Molly, his true "soul-mate". And in the grand tradition of The Bachelor--let's face it, the show is designed to break twenty-four hearts for us so that we may glory in the triumph of the twenty-fifth--he was going to do it right there on this last episode.

How generous of the producers to shield poor Melissa in her grief and humiliation from a studio audience of a couple hundred--while broadcasting this train wreck to millions, in prime time.

In the event, it was all one could have hoped for. Jason was brought out first to spew some pop psychology and a few mea culpas, and then we broke for commercial. Then Melissa was brought out to suffer her lashes, and, like the good, down-to-earth Texas girl she is, got seriously pissed off before breaking down in tears and rushing away. And then we broke for commercial. Molly was then brought out to discuss her feelings, and the host asked her, facetiously, what she would do if Jason asked for her back. "I've dreamt about that every night," she said. Then we broke for commercial. Finally Jason was brought out to sit next to Molly, spew some more bilge about his soul and whatnot, and ask Molly for a second chance.

Oh, the drama.

During the next commercial break--the long one--I turned to my houseguest and said something to the effect of "Molly would turn him down flat if she had any self-respect at all." "Self-respect has nothing to do with it," she replied. Bingo. I told you she was smart.

Needless to say, Molly, after some hemming and hawing, decided that everyone deserves a second chance, even a deeply emotionally confused idiot like Jason, and the newly-minted Happy Couple pranced off the stage together, arms around each other, laughing all the way to the bank. At least one would hope so. Because this is one marriage that is clearly a business deal, and should it ever actually come off there's going to have to be plenty of money involved somewhere down the line.

Now, I have no illusions that there is any "reality" involved in this reality show. It's a set-up of course, and the acting, at least on Jason's part, wasn't good enough to cover up that fact. (I have the feeling that Melissa was in fact the genuine article, and wasn't in on the plot. But that's just a feeling.) And anyone with half a brain knows that this show is designed to produce revenue, not happy marriages, so these kinds of shenanigans shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. (Except, perhaps, sweet Melissa, which would mean, of course, that she was way too nice to be in on this disaster in the first place.) The troubling thing is the way the show commoditizes love for the viewership: it's something to be acquired, a product like the latest gizmo being advertised between the tears, and the competition to get it is fierce. There can be only one winner on this particular Love's Battlefield, and she gets the prize, Jason, who, on paper, looks like quite the catch. The other poor losers, the ones not deemed worthy enough to live the fairy tale life with this made-for-TV prince, get a limo ride and a story to tell their friends. (And some money, too, I'm sure. No girl is going to run the risk of being humiliated like this for free.) What the viewers get is something even more ignominious: a roadmap to acquire love rather than find it, a strategy for building that which should grow on its own. And the chance to feel pity for someone who has gotten it even worse than they, when it seemed like they had the chance to get it all--and that, of course, is really the point of the show: it's not about the Fairy Tale of the Prince and the Princess, because that's a story we've all heard since childhood, and no one past their adolescence believes it anyway, at least not the way it's told. It's about the tears along the way.

There is a final episode next week, when we get yet more follow-up on Life after The Bachelor. I don't know what they're going to have for us--whether, for instance, Jason and Molly are making their plans or have cashed their checks and gone their separate ways--and I won't be watching. One night of this every few years is more than enough for me, thank you very much. But I do hope that at least a few of the girls who were trampled along the way have come away from the experience with a new and deeper understanding of love--that it isn't something to have and lose, but rather something to feel, deep inside, where the soul is supposed to be. Maybe at least a couple of them have come to that understanding, and have opened their eyes, and found someone who isn't the perfect match "on paper", but rather "in here". Maybe at least a couple of them have the chance to really be happy. Especially Melissa. She seemed so sweet.