I'm Already Worried About The Golden Bachelorette, Even Though Joan Vassos Is The Perfect Lead Choice

Summary Joan Vassos is a fantastic choice for The Golden Bachelorette, but the show might face challenges after The Golden Bachelor divorce.

Joan deserves to find love after a difficult journey on The Golden Bachelor, but the producers shouldn't exploit her.

The Bachelor franchise has a history of more failure than success, which has me worried about Joan's journey on The Golden Bachelorette.

Joan Vassos is the perfect choice for the lead of The Golden Bachelorette, but I'm already worried about the show failing because of The Golden Bachelor divorce and other problems with the franchise. The Golden Bachelor was a tremendous success for ABC, and gave people hope that they could find love at any age. It starred Gerry Turner, a 72-year-old retired restaurateur from Hudson, Indiana, who'd lost his wife Toni six years earlier after 43 years together. Gerry found love with Theresa Nist, a 70-year-old financial services professional from Shrewsbury, New Jersey, who'd lost her husband Billy about nine years before.

The Golden Bachelor seemed to give Gerry and Theresa their happily-ever-after when he proposed to her at the end of the season. They even took it a step further and got married in a live, televised event called The Golden Wedding, on January 4, 2024. However, just three months later, Gerry and Theresa announced that they were getting divorced because they couldn't decide where to live because neither one of them wanted to leave their families. Their divorce rocked Bachelor Nation to its core, and raised a red flag about The Golden Bachelorette for fans like me. Here's why Joan's Golden Bachelorette season might now be doomed to fail.

Related 20 Best Reality TV Shows Right Now Reality TV is more popular than ever. With so many to choose from, here are some of the best reality TV shows to stream or watch right now.

Joan Was The Perfect Choice For The Golden Bachelorette

Joan Deserves To Find Love

Your browser does not support the video tag.

During The Golden Bachelor, Joan, a 61-year-old private school administrator from Rockville, Maryland, was one of the most dignified and graceful of all of the contestants. She was truly there to find love with Gerry, and didn't buy into the drama of the show. During the Golden Bachelor talent show, Joan was scared and nervous because performing on stage wasn't in her comfort zone, which was totally relatable for me.

However, Joan recited an original poem called, "I Just Hope I Don't Vomit on Your Shoes," which was about how nervous she was when she first met Gerry, and why she was excited to get to know him more. Gerry loved the poem so much that he chose Joan for the special one-on-one dinner after the talent show. During dinner, they bonded over not being ready to date after the losses of their spouses. Joan's husband, John, passed away in 2021 due to pancreatic cancer. Gerry gave Joan a rose, and their connection was stronger than ever.

However, sadly, the next day, Joan received a phone call from her daughter, who told her that she needed her at home. Joan later revealed at "The Women Tell All" that her daughter had a "really serious case of postpartum depression" at the time. Joan told Gerry that she had to leave, even though their connection was so deep. They were both devastated, but Joan put her family first in a beautiful moment of selflessness. During "The Women Tell All," Joan said that she didn't know that Gerry had cried when she left, and she felt "really bad that I did that to him."

Joan went on to say that she thought that she and Gerry "had a good chance" of ending up together. She admitted, "I held out hope for a little while, honestly, and I did think a couple of times, maybe I would come around the corner coming home from work, and he'd be sitting on my front porch." This was one of the most heart-breaking confessions during "The Women Tell All" because it showed that Joan really felt strongly for Gerry.

In an interview with The Wrap, Joan even revealed that she was going to return to The Golden Bachelor after going home to her daughter. While Joan was helping her daughter find a doctor, production invited her back and even booked her a flight. She said, "I was going to come back, maybe four or five days after I left. And then my daughter wasn’t good again. We just hadn’t made it far enough — I hadn’t gotten her a doctor yet; I had calls in, but it just couldn’t unfold quick enough." Joan now deserves to find love again on The Golden Bachelorette, but the producers have to allow her to do it without their usual interfering.

Related 10 Bachelor Nation Members Who Should Host The Golden Bachelorette The Bachelor franchise host Jesse Palmer has been doing a fantastic job, but perhaps someone else should host the upcoming Golden Bachelorette.

The Golden Bachelorette Producers Might Take Advantage Of Joan Vassos

Joan Is Too Good For The Golden Bachelorette

Close

The Golden Bachelor producers were master manipulators beyond anything I've ever seen in the history of the show. They misrepresented Gerry as a widower who hadn't been on a date since his wife's death, but an article from The Hollywood Reporter alleged that Gerry had had a years-long relationship with a woman. They also presented him as a retired restaurateur, but the expose revealed that Gerry had still been working as a handyman before the show. Gerry disputed these allegations, but the damage was done.

In addition, all the Golden Bachelor producers cared about were the ratings, and they capitalized on Gerry and Theresa's love by exploiting them with the Golden Wedding. While I understand that Gerry and Theresa are grown adults with minds of their own, it seems that maybe they jumped into their wedding because of outside pressure. I'm very concerned that the producers might misrepresent Joan's contestants or create their usual manufactured Bachelor franchise drama that has plagued the show for years. Joan is too good for this type of show, and she doesn't deserve to be taken advantage of after everything she's been through.

The Golden Bachelor Divorce Is A Dark Cloud Hanging Over The Show

The Golden Bachelorette Cannot Repeat The Same Mistakes

Although Joan is fantastic, I'm worried that The Golden Bachelorette will lead her to making the same mistakes that Gerry and Theresa did. In an interview with CNN, Joan revealed that she won't leave her family under any circumstances. She shared, "That was actually the first question that Gary asked me. We sat down for the first time together and he said, 'You live in Maryland, I live in Indiana. How do you see something like this working?' … My answer to him was – and it still is my answer – I think you almost have to live a dual life."

Joan went on to say, "I’ll never leave my family. They are the most important people in the world to me obviously, and I would expect that to be the same for the person that I end up with because family is so important to me, that would have to be a key part of their personality."

Joan continued, "You have to be willing to … travel and be with that person and maybe spend a couple of months or a couple of weeks at a time … and then maybe eventually, you figure out a destination that would work for you and your families or have another house where everybody gets together." If the producers don't cast men who are from Joan's hometown or willing to relocate, then The Golden Bachelorette will fail.

Joan also said that she's open to getting engaged, but would be happy leaving in a relationship as well. She explained, "If it ends up in engagement, I’m open to that. I do believe this process works. I’ve seen it work for so many couples on The Bachelor, so I believe in the process. If it ends up in engagement, that’s great. If it ends up in, you and I are going to get to know each other better in the outside world, that’s perfect also."

Joan also shared that she won't be rushing to walk down the aisle if she does get engaged. She said, "I probably won’t rush into a marriage right away – and not only because of what happened with Gerry and Theresa. I think it takes some time to really get to know somebody. Out in the wild, in the real world, you need to spend some time there."

All of these comments are sensible and show that Joan doesn't plan to get so caught up in the fantasy of the show that she forgets about the real world. However, they also shed light on how many things went wrong with The Golden Bachelor that cannot be repeated with The Golden Bachelorette if the producers expect the show to be taken seriously. However, if there's no real prospect of an engagement or a marriage at the end, then the premise of the show is lost.

It's going to be very tricky for Joan as she navigates this journey. On the one hand, she'll want to be cautious, but, on the other, she can't guard her heart too much, or the show won't work. My concern is that The Golden Bachelor has caused viewers to lose so much faith in the show that it's now cast a dark cloud over Joan's season. Gerry and Theresa's divorce might be in the backs of everyone's minds, including Joan.

Related The Golden Bachelorette Shouldn’t End With An Engagement After Gerry Turner's Disastrous Ending The Golden Bachelorette will be a very romantic series, but it should avoid the mistakes of The Golden Bachelor, and not end with an engagement.

The Bachelor Franchise Has Had More Failure Than Success

Only One Bachelor & Three Bachelorettes Are Still Married

Close

Although the Bachelor franchise has had some success stories in recent years, there's a long history of failure that can't be ignored. The producers have been using the three latest engaged couples as evidence that the show is still relevant and works. The Bachelor season 27's Zach Shallcross and Kaity Biggar, The Bachelorette season 20's Charity Lawson and Dotun Olubeko, and The Bachelor season 28's Joey Graziadei and Kelsey Anderson all had beautiful love stories, but I've been watching The Bachelor since season 1, and I won't forget the history of the show.

Since The Bachelor premiered in 2002, the show has resulted in only one marriage: Sean Lowe and Catherine Giudici. While Jason Mesnick and Arie Luyendyk Jr. also found love on the show with their runners-up Molly Malaney and Lauren Burnham, respectively, and got married, I can't forget that those relationships came after they got engaged to other women on the show, Melissa Rycroft and Becca Kufrin. They cannot be counted as success stories because their seasons actually ended in heartbreak for the women to whom they originally proposed.

The Bachelorette has a better track record, but not by much. Just five out of the 21 Bachelorettes who've gotten engaged have gotten married, including Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter, Ashley Hebert and J.P. Rosenbaum, Desiree Hartsock and Chris Siegfried, JoJo Fletcher and Jordan Rodgers, and Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo. Unfortunately, however, Ashley and J.P. and Rachel and Bryan's marriages ended in divorce. In fact, beginning with Becca Kufrin's season in 2018, every Bachelorette broke off her engagement after the show, including Hannah Brown, Clare Crawley, Tayshia Adams, Katie Thurston, Michelle Young, Gabby Windey, and Rachel Recchia.

In addition, Bachelor in Paradise has had some successful marriages, but the last two seasons have failed miserably, with every engaged and dating couple breaking up shortly after the season ended. And now The Golden Bachelor has ended in divorce as well. It seems to me that the franchise has run its course, and people have a better chance of ending up heartbroken than happy when they participate. It's scary to think that a woman as wonderful as Joan is about to start a journey that's more likely than not to end up in heartache.

Although I was really looking forward to The Golden Bachelorette after watching The Golden Bachelor, I'm now worried about what Joan's season will bring. All of the hope and happiness that Gerry and Theresa felt came crashing down, and I don't want to see the same thing happen to Joan. The optimist in me wants to believe that Joan's season could be completely different, but I keep reminding myself that the Bachelor franchise has seen more failure than success. However, I'm still going to watch Joan's Golden Bachelorette season with an open mind and an open heart, and hope that she finds her happily-ever-after.

The Golden Bachelorette premieres in fall 2024 on ABC.

Sources: Bachelor Nation/YouTube, The Wrap, The Hollywood Reporter, The Golden Bachelorette/Instagram, CNN