The Bachelor (American TV series)

The Bachelor is an American dating and relationship reality television series that debuted on March 25, 2002, on ABC. For its first 25 seasons, the show was hosted by Chris Harrison. As the essence of the original The Bachelor franchise, its success resulted in several spin-offs including The Bachelorette, Bachelor Pad, Bachelor in Paradise, Bachelor in Paradise: After Paradise, The Bachelor Winter Games, The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart, The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons – Ever!, The Golden Bachelor, and The Golden Bachelorette, as well as spawning many international editions of the shows.
On May 10, 2024, ABC renewed the series for a twenty-ninth season, which premiered on January 27, 2025.
The series was created by Mike Fleiss. The After the Final Rose and other reunion specials were originally produced at Victory Studios in Los Angeles, California, and CBS Studio Center in Studio City, but are now taped at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank. In the most recent run of The Bachelor, it brought in almost $86 million in advertising revenue.
The series follows a single bachelor who is given a list of romantic interests from which he must choose a fiancée. During the season, the bachelor eliminates candidates (see The elimination process) each week which finally results in his last choice receiving a marriage proposal. The participants travel to romantic and exotic locations for their dates, and the conflicts in the series, both internal and external, stem from the elimination-style format of the show.
The description above is simply a general guideline. In truth, the series occasionally deviates from its intended format, which can lead to drama and conflict among people involved in the show. They may include, among other events:
The sixth season was the only season to feature a twist in casting. Since producers could not unanimously decide between Byron Velvick and Jay Overbye for the next Bachelor, the 25 women at the time participating had to decide which bachelor would make the best husband. At the end of the first episode, Velvick was chosen.
Notable cases where the bachelor violated the premise of the show are Brad Womack, who selected neither of his final two women on his first season, and Jason Mesnick, who broke off his engagement in the After the Final Rose episode and several months later proposed (offscreen) to the first runner-up (Molly Malaney)—who he later married. Like Mesnick, Arie Luyendyk Jr. also broke off his engagement and during the After the Final Rose episode, he proposed to the first runner-up (Lauren Burnham)—to whom he is now married.
If a woman decides she no longer wants to compete in the Bachelor, she can leave the competition at any moment. Occasionally, a woman gets taken off the show for violating a rule.
The bachelor has wide discretion in choosing how many and when to present the roses. For example, Sean Lowe presented several roses at his initial cocktail party.
It is common for contestants to be accused of not being on the show for the "right reasons," with their aim not to establish a genuine relationship with the Bachelor but rather to garner fame or attention of some kind. These reasons include: become an influencer, become a cast member on Bachelor in Paradise, Dancing with the Stars, or the new Bachelorette, induce jealousy from an ex-boyfriend or other people in their personal life, or just to simply get free trips to exotic locations.
On February 26, 2009, in an exclusive interview between The Bachelor season 13 contestant Megan Parris and Steve Carbone, Megan commented that the producers edit the footage to create a fictional storyline:
On March 26, 2009, Megan Parris argued that not only was the show scripted, but that producers bullied contestants into saying things to the camera that contestants did not want to say. "There's nothing real about it," she said of the show's trademark "confessionals," in which contestants talk to the camera about the latest goings-on. "It is scripted," she said. "They basically will call you names, berate you, curse at you until they get you to say what they want you to say." Both ABC and Warner Bros., the studio that produces The Bachelor, had no comment.
On March 15, 2010, Mike Fleiss appeared on 20/20 and said that he develops contestants into characters who will cater to his audience's tastes and that they "need [their] fair share of villains every season." Fleiss has come under fire for admitting that The Bachelor has less to do with reality than it does making good television.
On February 24, 2012, during the taping of the Women Tell All episode of The Bachelor, a private conversation between contestant Courtney Robertson and a show producer went public when microphones were accidentally left on in between camera takes. The conversation revealed the producer had a role as a coach, encouraging Robertson to fake certain emotions for the camera.
The audience reactions for The Women Tell All episode are pre-recorded and inserted into the show later.
In December 2011, a producer of The Bachelor sued Steve Carbone, the proprietor of the website RealitySteve.com, for leaking unreleased information about the show, claiming Carbone encouraged contestants of both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette to break their confidentiality agreements. Carbone has denied that the source of the leaks are current contestants. Despite the first two lawsuits in 2012 being settled out of court, a further lawsuit was presented against Carbone in 2017.
The franchise has long been criticized for its lack of ethnic and cultural diversity, eventually prompting petitions and threats of boycott from the franchise's only black lead at the time, Rachel Lindsay. In June 2020, the show cast Matt James as its first black male lead for season 25. James was initially cast for Clare Crawley's season of Bachelorette, which was delayed due to COVID-19. In June 2021, it was announced that long-time host Chris Harrison was stepping down permanently after widespread criticism of comments he had made which excused the past behavior of a cast member who had been accused of racism, saying he was not the "woke police". Harrison acknowledged, "By excusing historical racism, I defended it."
The show has been criticized for stigmatizing virginity, thus reflecting the patriarchal masculinity stereotypes.
The program's success has led to the creation of various spin-off series;
The show was parodied in S1E5 of the Comedy Central TV show Nathan for You. Ben Stiller produced a web spoof of the series titled Burning Love.
In 2013, ABC's late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! has parodied the series as The Baby Bachelor, a sketch where the titular role is given to host Jimmy Kimmel's three-year-old nephew Wesley. Later episodes featured follow-up sketches with similar parodies of The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise.
The Fox network produced a show, Joe Millionaire, based on the premise that the bachelor was a millionaire heir, when in reality, he was not.
On June 1, 2015, Lifetime began airing Unreal, a scripted drama about a producer who works on Everlasting, a fictional reality series similar to The Bachelor. It is based on Sarah Gertrude Shapiro's short film Sequin Raze and her experience as a field producer on The Bachelor.
The series was parodied in the third season of the reality series RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars as "The Bitchelor", where a titular challenge featured the drag performers portraying contestants on a Bachelor-like show with Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman playing the bachelor.