Those tuning in to the newest season of The Bachelor this week might have noticed that things felt a bit different than they have in the past.
Sure, there were the usual talks of finding true love, but it felt a bit more genuine. Almost as if thatâs the goal of this season. To break down this noticeable shift, podcast host Kate Casey invited Lizzy Pages and Chad Kultgen, hosts of Game of Roses, to discuss what this means.
âGoing through 2022, all of those shows, we saw the leads get abused, we saw the players get abused to levels we have never really seen,â said Kultgen. âIt became hard to watch.â
The escalated drama on the show started to go beyond that of a typical reality show and it began to turn fans off to the entire franchise. Kultgen feels that Rodney Matthews being dumped on the most recent season of Bachelor in Paradise was when fans and contestants alike hit their emotional limit.
âThat moment to me, was kind of like the final straw for a lot of viewers of the show,â he said. âThe audience felt the same as the players at that point.â
The host hopes the producers learned their lesson and Pages said the pair is curious about the thought process that went into this bachelor specifically. Zach Shallcross is the man of the hour every Monday night, but the show has still not explored who the new bachelor is as a person.
âChad and I definitely think that there was an element of wanting the bachelor to be somewhat pliable and easy to guide and steer around,â said Page. âThatâs our main theory for why they chose Zach Shallcross who they hadnât really built up as a character at all and kind of still havenât.â
Kultgen and Pages are predicting that Shallcross will get engaged at the end of the season and make it last six months. They suspect thatâs what the producers asked of him when they brought him on as the new bachelor. But who are these two, and what are their qualifications on what it takes to be a contestant? Well, they actually wrote the book on it: How to Win The Bachelor: The Secret to Finding Love and Fame on America's Favorite Reality Show.
Listen to âTHE BACHELOR PREMIERE WITH GAME OF ROSES PODCASTâ to hear the full discussion around the season premiere of The Bachelor. Find Reality Life with Kate Casey and Game of Roses on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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