Before we get to reviewing The Golden Bachelor finale, first, a little back story:

A funny thing happened a few days after my initial Golden Bachelor review appeared right here on NextTribe. A journalist friend, Suzanne O’Malley, called to let me know that a friend of hers knew a woman in Iowa who’d been Gerry’s main squeeze for almost three years and had lived with him at his lake house before he ascended to the Golden Batch throne.

Suzanne asked if I’d like to join her in doing an investigative piece about Gerry’s not-so-golden background.

It turns out that Golden Ger was a liar/womanizer.

This news about Gerry was not exactly a shock to me, given what we all know about reality shows. But this time, because the contestants were 60+, Gerry seemed so wholesome, and the show somehow seemed more touching and human because of the nature of the age group, I’d bought in. Now I can’t believe how gullible I’d been. He’s a master salesman, after all.

Indeed, before all the mad make-out sessions started, I had been so taken with his phenomenal ability to listen to and engage with women, that I had even written that with Gerry, the “casting department hit it out of the park.”

The more that Suzanne spoke to her source, (whom we called Carolyn, because she feared being identified) the more insane the story seemed to get.  It turns out that Carolyn is an accountant and had the receipts, literally (the texts, photos, mail, bills, etc. to prove herstory.) Suzanne was relentless in investigating, and double-and triple sourced the details.  It turns out that Golden Ger was not only a liar/womanizer who initiated a date with Carolyn only one month after his beloved wife’s death, but in the end, he also had mocked her weight and treated her cruelly. Plus, he was cheap!

Mr. Integrity? 

Of course, none of that is a crime (maybe the cheapness?)  And it’s not even that Turner was cheating—he was single at the time. It was just that he and the producers really played-up the tearful grieving widower narrative within the show.  He said things like “I haven’t dated in 45 years” or “kissed” in six, both untrue. That goes for “I haven’t met anyone’s family in 52 years,” though he had promised Carolyn’s elderly mother that he would marry her. This tendency to say, “I haven’t felt this way since,” got him into trouble.

For that matter, the only restaurant that the “retired restaurateur” had owned was a Mr. Quick hamburger drive-through in Iowa which he sold in 1985.

Our resulting piece, “The Not-So-Golden Bachelor” came out in The Hollywood Reporter the day before the much-hyped finale. And many journalists doing a post-interview with Gerry, or Gerry and Terry, asked them about the article’s revelations.

The only restaurant that the “retired restaurateur” had owned was a Mr. Quick hamburger drive-through in Iowa.

Gerry basically responded with a prescribed (PR-coached?) speech about how he doesn’t want to pay attention to that now that he is so in love with his soon-to-be-wife, and that they have such a great future to think about.

By the time Katie Couric questioned him about it during her interview with the couple, they started looking like they were in a hostage tape.

Gerry never denied any of the facts, except to say, when pushed about his years-long relationship with Carolyn that it “really wasn’t” that long. Previously, he offered some lame defense about defining the difference between “dating” and a “relationship.”

Then Katie questioned Theresa . And though they’d made their triumphant announcement about their January 3rd televised wedding date just the night before, Theresa grimaced her way through a similar kind of statement, saying that they’d discussed his past, and “I completely trust Gerry, and we really know each other.”

Not even 24 -hours had passed since the wedding announcement, and she was already drawn into playing the grim role of The Good Wife!

With that, let’s get into the much-awaited two-plus-hour finale, which delivered another ratings bonanza for ABC, the best for the Bachelor franchise since 2021.

“I can’t believe I’m here! I’m in Coast Rica and I have two women!” That’s how Gerry opened the finale, offering the first clue to the tastelessness ahead.

If there’d been a cringe-meter, it would have shot from 11 to about 222, and then just self- immolated out of shame.

Binges and Cringes 

What I was never expecting was to see Leslie in so much pain. I felt terrible that Leslie had to be that vulnerable, a human sacrifice of sorts. Not only did we watch her cry during the taped portion in Costa Rica, where Gerry finally told her, “I’ve fallen in love with Theresa, and that’s the direction I’m going to take.”

“Direction?” Too much time in Hollywood?

Earlier, she had given him a lovingly created photo album of their times together, “with room for many more memories.” She told him she loved him “very, very much.”

His answer? “That’s such a special sentiment.”

Whereas Gerry seemed to exude emotional awareness on the first show, here he was making blunder after blunder.

That was bad enough. But what really shocked me was that she then became part of the live show, too. She had to sit there on the giant stage in a packed, blindingly lit-up, massive auditorium and watch the spectacle of herself getting dumped and crying, replayed on the Jumbotron.

But wait, there’s more! Then the producers dragged out the misery by bringing Gerry out to confront her and apologize, live. They hugged, they cried, and it was creepy, manipulative and maudlin, so much so that it reminded me of “Queen for a Day,” a 1950s TV program on which female contestants told their desperate personal tales in hopes of winning mink stoles and washer/dryers. The results were based on an audience meter—the audience had to clap for who had the most miserable story.

Whereas Gerry seemed to exude emotional awareness on the first show, here he was making blunder after blunder.  But I was thrilled that Leslie, the fitness instructor/professional dancer/athlete who had dated Prince, delivered some heavy pushback.

“No offense, I can think whatever the fuck I want right now,” she said to him after he told her not to feel a certain way. “So everything you told me the other night was a lie?” was her understandable reaction

“You made it sound like you chose me, she continued. “You said things to me that made me think that this was going to be it. You led me down a path, and then you took a turn and left me there. …And it’s mind-boggling, to be honest, how you can talk to me all night, say you love me, and then one day—not even a day, 12 hours later—you changed your mind.”

Built-In Cruelty

Some of this cruelty is built into the show, and Ger himself blubbered and shed plenty of tears over it, unfortunately going even so far as to bring in his dear departed wife in an analogy. “I haven’t felt this bad since Toni died,” he cried. “And this is a damn close second.”

On the live portion, Leslie did get to tell him, “The most important thing I fell in love with was your integrity…And because of your integrity, your words meant so much to me.” BURN!

But by being so heavy in the middle with Leslie’s despair, the show’s pacing was way off.

He earlier said that Theresa was the “safer choice.”

By the time the actual proposal came, which was supposed to be jubilant, I couldn’t get her hurt out of my head.

But back in Costa Rica, Gerry seemed to offer a new narrative about his relationship with Theresa. That while it had started out hot and heavy, “we had a great one-on-one,” he said, but then it took a “lull.” He earlier said that Theresa was the “safer choice.”

My interpretation was that the lull started after getting electric shocks from Leslie’s body.

Gerry maintained that everything clicked after the night he spent with Theresa, the New Jersey native, in the fantasy suite. But earlier, I spotted a genuine moment of recognition: at dinner, Gerry finally asked Theresa about her career. Theresa was delighted to talk about what she had accomplished, starting with going to college in her 20s and then learning everything she could about stock trading, resulting in a still lucrative career. Gerry’s eyes lit up like fireworks when he discovered that Theresa (she of the big white house) was a financial advisor and had multiple licenses for trading. It sounds a bit preposterous that he didn’t discover this until the “overnights” in Costa Rica, but it’s possible. Her show-provided bio says she loves hula- hooping and her family.

Who knows what really changed his mind, finally, but the fact that Theresa was so solid financially seemed to have an effect. He always said he’d felt a certain comfort with her, both having had long marriages with spouses who died. She’s a stabilizing force (even back to calming him by putting her hand on his shoulder on their first date). And she came off as much more settled than Leslie, who’s more of an artistic type, a free spirit. She also looked adoringly, even beatifically, at Gerry with her big, dark eyes.

The Golden Couple

So, Gerry opened the first episode and closed the finale sporting a tuxedo. This time he was standing on a stage set for matrimony, surrounded by gorgeous clay-colored pots of flowering tropical plants. Theresa, his golden chosen one, approached in a long, silvery gown. Theresa read her vows.

Then Ger started on in his, until he said, “I came to the realization that you’re not the right person for me to live with.”

Theresa is already starting to talk over his interviews and offer better answers.

He looked down at Theresa, and she looked up at him with a tortured face that was starting to crumble.

Beat.

“You’re the person that I can’t live without.”

Gerry has repeatedly dispensed this bit of Instagram wisdom during the show. He said that it was advice that Trista gave him, but I think it’s been around, and after eight episodes, it sounded a lot less snappy.

But proving he chose the right person for his particular brand of Golden Grandpa teasing and humor, Theresa then laughed, hit him in the arm, leaned into him and said, “That was so good.”

They did seem over the moon with each other while announcing their Jan.3 wedding on the live show. (The nuptials will be televised.) Theresa is already starting to talk over his interviews and offer better answers. I hope they are happy, and that she makes him a better man.

No matter how much it’s gussied up, modernized or diversified, at heart The Bachelor will always be The Bachelor, an inequitable male fantasy out of the swinging Playboy mansion days.

As for the finale, it was one backwards step for man, one awful step for crying womankind.