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Worst TV Show of the Week Brought to you by the Parents Television Council	Share |
WARNING: Graphic Content!!! Do NOT push play if you don't want to see the explicit video!!!

Bachelor Pad on ABC

In a previous column, the exploitative reality show Bachelor Pad was singled out for using the technique of “franken-biting” to artificially enhance the sexual content in an episode when there was none. (Turns out that breast implants aren’t the only thing fake about the show.) Well, in the September 6th episode, there was no “franken-biting” needed -- because the sex was out in the open for all to see. Either the contestants don’t see the cameras pointed at their faces or just don’t care. Whatever the case may be, the show’s tawdry antics have once again earned Bachelor Pad the title of Worst TV Show of the Week.

The game shifted in this episode when the host announced that the four remaining men get to choose the woman with whom they’d like to be paired from the remaining seven women. Of course, the men choose the women they’ve already hooked up with. So the three single women – who happen to have the most decorum - are sent packing, leaving the couples to engage in some very public displays of affection. Before, the couples tried to downplay their relationships in order to appear available to the other contestants. Once they were paired off, however, there was no point in hiding the obvious. As a result, they are shown canoodling on/in/over almost everything in the house.

“I love kissing Kiptyn,” Tenley coos. “I love kissing. Kissing is fun and Kiptyn is fun. ‘Cause we are Kip-Ten.” Meanwhile, footage is shown of them -- what else? -- kissing. They French-kiss on the patio furniture as the cameras zoom in.

When David and Natalie win the water balloon toss, Elizabeth and Kovacs highjack their reward by stumbling upon a convertible Lamborghini parked in the driveway. Elizabeth proposes: “We should be the first to make out in this car before they do.” Kovacs immediately concurs. As she climbs from the passenger seat to straddle him behind the wheel, Jessie cautions, “Watch out for the stick.” They begin to make out and moments later, Kovacs is splayed across the back end of the car. Elizabeth mounts him while the camera catches the action from all angles.

In a taped interview, Kovacs sums up his feelings about their relationship. “I’m pretty sure that Elizabeth is looking for something more serious right now than I am. But if a girl catches a bad case of Kovacs, so be it.” Elizabeth might need to worry about catching more than a bad case of the Kovacs when they sneak into the fantasy suite. They draw a bubble bath and once again Elizabeth straddles him while they make out in the tub. Later, underneath the bed covers Kovacs asks, “What do you want to do? Do you want to get naked? If you do, that’s cool. Whatever. Is that awesome?”

She responds, “Well it’s awesome if we’re in love and we’re making love. But if it’s just railing then, no, it’s not cool.”

“It’s not gonna be railing,” he insists. “Are we gonna waste our time and keep talking?”

“I want romance,” she presses him. “Where is it?”

Eventually, after much prodding she gives in, but expresses regret later. In the dark, evidently post-coitus, she laments, “I feel like a stupid girl. What am I doing?” She again tries to wring a drop of romance from Kovacs.

“What did we just do tonight?” he askss her, as if sex in and of itself is romance enough.

“You got laid,” she puts it bluntly.

As the premiere season of Bachelor Pad has unfolded, certain things have become fairly apparent:

A) The show is cheap. Not only “cheap” in the trashy, lazy, lowest-common-denominator sense, but literally dirt cheap. The challenges appear furnished by the 99-cent store - water balloons tosses, spin the bottle, a game of Twister. Apparently, ABC blew their budget for competitions constructing the set for the show Wipeout.

B) The show is patently sexist. Besides humiliating the women by forcing them to conduct their interviews with pie still smeared across their faces after the pie-eating contest, the rewards have mostly been tailored for the men. Male-centric outings have included a rented Lamborghini, a day at the drag races, an evening spent at a topless spa, and bikini-clad body painting. The challenges themselves have also demeaned the women. One challenge had the women in tears as contestants anonymously answered hurtful questions designed to attack the women’s self-esteem. The final insult was the dismissal of the women who didn’t throw themselves at the men. At every turn, the men were put into positions of power and the women were left to use sex as a bargaining chip. This dynamic sadly played itself out in the bedroom that night between Kovacs and Elizabeth.

Jessie might have had sex in this episode, but it’s really the viewers in search of decent, quality, enriching programming that got screwed.

For strong sexual content, Bachelor Pad has once again been named Worst TV Show of the Week.