Granted, LOGO and ABC are vastly different networks with vastly different audiences, and I’m not opposed to a huge network like ABC experimenting with something similar — especially since exposing unsuspecting audiences to the realities of queer dating could be informative. But on the other hand, Finding Prince Charming was messy in very specifically gay ways, and a part of me worries about straight audiences tuning in to judge our community without proper context. A queer version of The Bachelor would inevitably look different than the straight version — is there any part of you that worries how the viewers would respond to that?
Samantha: I would love more space on TV for queer mess. Show me queer women who have all dated each other’s girlfriends getting caught up in love triangles or hexagons or dodecagons. Show me a house full of trans people forming polycules that merge with other polycules before splintering off into spectacular new formations. But you’re right: Whereas straight mess often just gets to play as “amusing” (almost endearing, really), in a reality TV context, our mess often gets weaponized against us and turned into judgment. But maybe we don’t need to worry too much: I think that any version of an LGBTQ+ dating show that airs on a major broadcast network — in the immediate future, at least — would have to be so watered down and play it so safe that it would almost lose the ability to accurately represent our community.
Colton Underwood, for example, is a complex and controversial figure: At one point, his ex-girlfriend Cassie Randolph, whom he met through the show, had a restraining order against him and accused him of stalking her. She later dropped the order and Colton has since apologized to Cassie. There’s deep stuff to explore here about the violence of the closet, and how at our worst, queer people can project our pain onto others, but I don’t have much hope that Colin’s forthcoming Netflix documentary, nor The Bachelor itself, will have the capacity to plumb those depths.
Moving forward, I think we’re going to keep seeing more LGBTQ+ dating shows on cable — and maybe in certain overseas markets —but the big four American broadcast players are going to continue being big, slow-moving barges in the ocean that is our very queer present. They’ll give us an LGBTQ+ contestant every so often again until the audience becomes so queer that the execs have no choice but to change up the formula altogether. What do you see as the future for LGBTQ+ inclusivity on reality dating shows?
Michael: I agree with your assessment that the big four broadcast networks will always be painfully behind their cable and streaming peers in terms of LGBTQ+ representation. (ABC was casting for a senior citizen spinoff of The Bachelor a whole year before the idea of a queer version even became a topic of discussion!)
Still, I think that even on cable, the road could be a long one. I think back to the most recent season of MTV’s Are You the One?, which switched things up by exclusively casting sexually-fluid contestants. For large swaths of the queer community, the season was a landmark moment. (It never reached Drag Race-levels of ubiquity, but it was popular enough for queer bars around the U.S. to start hosting weekly viewing parties.) Yet straight diehard fans of the franchise were so offended by the concept that they actively tried to boycott it. Midway through the season, MTV switched it from airing at primetime on Wednesdays to Monday nights at 11:00pm — and though executives claim it wasn’t in an effort to bury it, I hesitate to believe them.
I similarly agree with your point about shows like these lacking the necessary nuance sometimes needed to discuss some of the realities of queer identity. Finding Prince Charming, for instance, was mired in controversy before the show even premiered after internet sleuths unearthed evidence of lead Robert Sepúlveda Jr.’s sex worker past. While many prospective viewers thought Sepúlveda and LOGO executives should embrace this fact and use the show as an opportunity to help destigmatize sex work, it quickly became clear that everyone involved was much more invested in maintaining a faux sense of propriety — that Sepúlveda and his suitors were all palatable gay men with “good family values,” looking for marriage and monogamy.
Nevertheless, I think queerer dating shows are coming — whether straight viewers approve or not. Several days before Colton came out, the Daily Star reported that the next season of Love Island, a similarly popular dating show, would include queer contestants. Last year, HBO Max premiered 12 Dates of Christmas, a holiday-themed dating show featuring a gay man among the three separate leads. Though none of these shows hold the cultural cachet of a juggernaut like The Bachelor, their existence offers solid proof that there is, indeed, a demand for LGBTQ+ representation in standard dating show formats. Whether we’ll ever get that from The Bachelor? Who knows! But I’d prefer another sexually-fluid season of AYTO anyway.
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