I Hated The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart. Had a Terrible Time, Truly Was Miserable Every Moment. I Will 100% Be Back For the Next Season.
The Bachelor franchise dove into uncharted territory this spring with Listen to Your Heart, a singing competition show that combines the performative romance of the franchise’s regular programming with the glitzy showmanship of American Idol. I didn’t buy into a single aspect of this God-awful show. Hated every person on it, and couldn’t wait for it to be over. Every moment was complete and utter misery. I will 100% be back for more.
You may be wondering why, if I hated it so much, I watched the entire season, which consists of six episodes, each two hours long, to which I say: grow up. Anyone who’s a part of Bachelor Nation knows that watching The Bachelor and Bachelor-adjacent shows has little to do with actually enjoying them. It’s more like the producers have figured out how to stream literal crack through your television and into your actual brain, so before you’ve even finished watching your first episode (at the pleading behest of an already-ensnared friend), you are hopelessly and interminably addicted.
If you don’t know how Listen to Your Heart works, here’s how it goes: we begin with a mansion full of 12 men and 10 women, all of whom share the dream of being singers, and all of whom are, sorry, huge fucking nerds. They pair off according to, essentially, who they made eye contact with first on the first night and compete as couples by singing John Mayer songs into each other’s faces for three episodes and then Rita Wilson gets to decide who wins. The criteria, you ask? The stakes? Not quite clear. I mean, the winning couple gets a dual recording contract, and a string of tour dates for some fuck-ass Bachelor-branded road shows. They also get to…stay together, I guess? But if they get sent home, and they like each other and want to give things a shot, they can still be together? Like, on their own time, after the show? And probably still get famous, given the exposure the franchise provides, likely in the form of, oh yeah, recording contracts and tour dates.
Initially I didn’t think I was going to be able to stick with LTYH past the first episode. Ten minutes into the series premiere, watching the aspiring performers “organically” break out into song in a not-so-subtle attempt to vie for camera time, I was having triggering flashbacks to being in college and going to musical theatre kids’ parties that would always, ALWAYS end with them standing around in a circle singing and harmonizing (harmonizing! at a party!) with each other.
Though the show stumbles in trying to mirror some of the trappings of regular Bachelor shows (host Chris Harrison has to awkwardly hand out the roses to each couple, date cards don’t really work when those left sitting around the house aren’t people we know and enjoy watching), fans of Bachelor in Paradise may have been optimistic around episode 2 when new performers arrived to shake things up for the existing pairs and their embryonic relationships. On BIP, it goes like this: hot new girls arrive, existing guys get big boners for hot new girls, which causes strife for the girls said boys are tied to, hot new girls get the guys, existing girls cry upon exiting, etc. Sometimes a 6-foot stuffed dog gets thrown into the ocean. The new arrivals + constant recoupling format is the tried-and-true methodology for an ensemble cast, the dramatic bread and butter. It’s something that works so flawlessly and so reliably, to stray from it seems utterly insane.
But stray from it LTYH does, and to mediocre effect. In episode 3, Chris Harrison arrives in the mansion to drop a bomb: you need to choose who you want to be with, and you need to choose now. No more new arrivals, no more exploring options: you’re hitching yourself to one person and you’ll be strapped to them the rest of the time, even if you realize partway through they’re a noncommittal jabroni (Matt) or a smooth-talking closeted misogynist (Brandon). The result of this ill-advised track-switching is that we spend the rest of the season mainly watching the couples perform pop-funk arrangements in front of celebrity judges who spew milquetoast feedback, and virtually no time getting to know the contestants themselves or finding out anything about them that might provide some semblance of a personality and therefore grounds to actually care about them.
Here’s what we do know about the contestants: perhaps most notably, there’s a couple named Chris and Bri. Even though I watched them perform at least six songs together (as well as a date at Guitar Center punctuated by a bizarre little session where they improvised lyrics about their feelings for each other that left me deeply bummed out), I’m struggling to remember a single detail about either one of them because the show did not highlight this AT ALL. I remember Bri was engaged before? Chris had…a dad? I think? Anyway, Chris and Bri won because they embodied the mission statement of the show most ideally, which is to say they did the best job of convincing us that they are into each other based on how much they looked at each other while singing. That said, they are super talented. THAT said, if The Bachelor franchise thinks that crowning an interracial couple on an offshoot show is any substitute for never having had a Black Bachelor and for having an ever-glaring problem with POC, they are sorely mistaken. We are watching you, Bachelor. Step it up. (And don’t think we didn’t notice the big bummer gender dynamics that have become a signature of the franchise. Where were the women playing instruments? How come we only saw women as vocalists and men as musicians AND vocalists?) Anyway, Chris and Bri’s new album (out now!) is called Chris and Bri, and, look, I gotta hand it to them, that is a title that…makes sense! At the same time that I did not find them compelling as a couple at all, I will 1000% be downloading Chris and Bri because I have Stockholm Syndrome for the Bachelor franchise and literally any piece of media it spawns.
Multiple men unsurprisingly fawned over Jamie the first night, because if there’s one thing we love as a nation, it’s a sexy baby with big tits. At 21, and a seemingly young 21 at that, she paired with 29-year-old Trevor, an age difference that nobody on the show thought was creepy but that I highly encourage you to report to authorities if you witness it in your real life. (“BuT mY pArEnTs ArE tEn YeArS aPaRt,” some of you are saying. Yeah, well, your parents aren’t 21 and 29. That’s weird, and if you think it’s not, see me after class.) In a more appropriately matched, if less impassioned, pair, Matt hedged his bets on Rudi and stuck with her despite never being as infatuated as the other couples seemingly were. Rudi was hands down the most talented vocalist of the bunch, and her cool style and gorgeous hair, which was somehow a fantastic performer itself, made her easily the most marketable package for commercial success. For my money, the record deal should have gone to Rudi and Rudi’s hair. But the lack of blinding passion between Matt and Rudi was ultimately their undoing, and their tearful goodbye before the finale had me wondering why they didn’t adopt more of a Survivor “final two” mentality: “Look, we’re not right for each other, but let’s fuckin’ fake it, blow these losers out of the water, and get this record deal.” Although I guess if the show’s premise is to be believed, that the potential for long-lasting love can be observed from a two-minute performance and that the guy from Train is the one to do it, the judges would have seen right through this and immediately deduced that they were not soulmates.
Oh, the judging, by the way? Abysmal. Though a couple megastars like Toni Braxton and Jewel bring up the average with thoughtful feedback and pitch-perfect delivery, the majority is a snoozefest from canonical Bachelor Nation couples like Lauren and Arie (who still have the personalities of 10-day old Triscuits, in case you’re wondering) and forgettable fedora-wearers honestly not even worth mentioning. To be fair, the show handed the judges a pretty raw deal. They were expected to glean information and speak with absolute authority on the emotional inner lives of two random people, who they had never before laid eyes on and knew nothing about their backgrounds, mannerisms, expressions, dynamics…anything. Given a lack of any prior knowledge of the contestants, judges are left with the observable musical performance on which to base their conclusions about the pair’s potential for love. This general cornball framing is sort of my overarching issue with the entire premise of this highly addictive nightmare: the idea that singing well with someone and experiencing onstage chemistry = being a good love match for that person is just absolutely bananastown bonkers.
The entire show is predicated on the notion that performing can be a catalyst for finding and falling in love with someone, and that that’s a good thing. But in my opinion that’s actually…go with me here…a bad thing! A shared spotlight is a huge aphrodisiac, and nobody ever made the best decisions for themselves when they were horny. As a stage actor, I get it. I’ve been struck by co-star syndrome more than once, wherein you play a romantic partnership with someone onstage and find yourself having feelings for them in real life, intoxicated by the magic you feel you’re imbuing the stage with, certain the audience is gripped by the earth-shattering chemistry you so clearly have with each other. But that’s not…anything. Can it be true that you serendipitously meet someone through a performance opportunity who turns out to be a good match? Sure. It can be. A broken clock, blah blah blah. But the idea that a shared love for music — MUSIC! the one thing all 7 billion of us universally love — is grounds for an extraordinary and everlasting romance is bizarre and childish, and I can’t believe I wasted 12 hours of my life on such a crackpot concept, and also that I have to wait probably two years for it to come back, which I will do, happily, because, again, this is a hostage situation and I’m strapped in for reasons unbeknownst to even me.
Look, it might sound from all this like I hated this show. And if that’s what you’re thinking, you’ve got it all wrong. I loved this show. I just hated the framing, the branding, the format, the contestants, the dates, the performances, the judges, and the entire concept. To the producers: congratulations. You’ve done it again. My stupid brain is yours to feed whatever idiotic idea you can dream up next, though it will be hard to top The Bachelor fucking Presents: Listen to Your fucking Heart. Truly cannot fucking wait for it to return.
