Finding Love: as Easy as ABC.

Once a week, for two hours, an audience of fifteen million Americans completely loses its sense of what a normal relationship looks like. This happens, of course, while they eagerly tune into the latest episode of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette.

Let's get something straight: we love the show. It's a different kind of fun than, let's say, Flavor of Love, but it's almost just as much fun to watch people with apparent "class" struggle to keep their cool as it is to watch New York spit in some girl's face.

The thing is, with Flavor of Love, these girls are obviously there to start drama and get famous. On The Bachelorette and The Bachelor, the contestants genuinely come to "find love." One girl/guy dates twenty five guys/girls and we, Americans, find it completely normal. 

It's true that it's just another form of entertainment, but the way we, the viewers, think of the people on the show is downright insane. For example, when someone gets upset or jealous, we consider them "psycho" or "unstable." Yet, wouldn't it be considered completely normal to be jealous of someone who was currently dating five other people?

The Bachelor/Bachelorette don't have any lasting effect on us--we don't walk around in our everyday lives believing that dating twenty people at once is a socially acceptable thing--but during those two hours, everything we know about relationships completely flip-flops. We look down on the people who react to the situation normally and cheer for those who keep their normalcy at bay.

Then there's the fact that 95% of the people who even come on the show are completely emotionally damaged and in no place to be in any relationship at all. At least fifty people who have come and gone through the process have told that fated limo cameraman, "I just can't believe this happened. I came here to give love another chance and I got my heart broken again. I never expected this." Oh yeah, well what were you expecting? Your supposed girlfriend/boyfriend is dating fifteen other people! Do I really need to do the math on those odds for you?

Bottom line: The Bachelor/Bachelorette completely messes up what we perceive as normal in the realm of romance. Luckily it's only for two hours once a week, and then only because we love watching other people fall apart.