Last week, we reported on the increasingly popular argument for canceling Clare Crawley’s season of The Bachelorette.
While "cancel" seems to be the preferred term among Redditors, most of the people who have adopted this position are actually advocating for Clare’s season to be postponed indefinitely.
They’re mainly motivated by the idea that Crawley would get short shrift if producers were to try and crank out a quickie season the moment the country is re-opened.
And while it seems insane to think that we might not see the first episode of Clare’s season until 2021, these people may have a point.
Filming for The Bachelorette was canceled — along with just about everything else in the country — in mid-March.
In a stroke of abysmally bad luck, Clare was scheduled to meet her suitors on March 13, right around the time governors all over the country started ordering non-essential businesses to shut down for the foreseeable future.
Her season was set to debut on May 18, but that’s obviously not happening.
The goal now, it seems, is to have the entire season in the can in time for a September debut.
And according to spoiler master Reality Steve, the new version of the show envisioned by producers would look very different from any previous season of The Bachelorette:
“I have learned that The Bachelorette is looking to film the entire [season] in one location,” Steve stated on his podcast this week.
“That means all the dates, and the cocktail parties, and rose ceremonies, and the cast would all live in one resort for the whole time of filming. Zero travel. And I’m talking about — that certainly seems to me, from what I was told — they’re never leaving wherever they’re going," he added.
"Now, I don’t know the location, because what I’m told is they are out scouting right now for a resort to accept them for a five-week filming in July and into August, and it would air in September.”
With the entire cast confined to a resort for five weeks, Clare’s season would probably look more like Bachelor In Paradise than The Bachelorette.
And after her several years of involvement with the franchise, doesn’t she deserve more than that?
No globe-trotting? No adventurous dates in unforgettable locales? None of the usual boundaries between contestants and star?
That’s not exactly what Clare was expecting when she signed on for this experience.
And there are the logistical issues.
As Steve points out, like the rest of the world, Clare is stuck at home these days with nothing better to do than look at her phone.
Which means it’s highly unlikely that the hasn’t perused her list of contestants and pre-selected a few favorites.
If the show proceeds as planned, that shocked expression on her face as the guys pile out of the limousine will be 100 percent fake.
But there’s a silver-lining to all of this.
Clare’s contestants were mostly cast before she was chosen as Bachelorette.
As a result, most are in their twenties, a few are in their thirties, and only one is in his forties.
Given that Clare is 39 and might be 40 by the time her season gets underway, this is a less-than-ideal situation.
Clare has already begged producers to add some older men to the cast, and at this point, they have no reason not to.
So as painful as it will be to wait until 2021, our official recommendation is that producers scrap every aspect of this season — except Clare, of course — and start over from scratch.
The guys who got fired can have a second chance when Hannah Ann Sluss gets her chance as Bachelorette.
Of course, at this rate, that should happen sometime around 2030.
