Still, it’s hard not to feel a hint of dread for Rachel as this “process” draws to its inevitable conclusion. She comes across as an absurdly charming, bright, sincere, emotionally balanced grown-up, not to mention a black woman operating in one of America’s whitest TV landscapes — probably the show’s biggest catch of all time. It would have been challenging for producers to pick a slate of men who could match her physically, intellectually and emotionally, even if they weren’t invested in seeding the deck with fame-hungry buffoons and cryptoracists. (A significant proportion of the remainder are personal trainers.) And we have just watched her say that there is only one man left ready and willing to tell her that he’s in love with her, so maybe she’ll just go with him. As delightfully absurd as this show is, there’s something a little too real about that.
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JON CARAMANICA One of the promises of reality television — and one very rarely fulfilled — is that you might get a voyeuristic peek into a life you might otherwise be shut out of. An unguarded moment is golden. Rarely does it matter what was being guarded in the first place; the obliteration of the wall is the thing.
But even a show like “The Bachelorette,” premised upon the quest for emotional vulnerability, rarely finds its way to true revelation. There are camera operators and grips, producers and supervising producers and executive producers, runners and assistants and Chris Harrison. Every move is the product of a dance that involves many.
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Which is why it’s so intriguing when intruders make their way into the show, as they did Monday night, during Rachel’s hometown dates. Here are temporary characters who haven’t been thoroughly vetted. And though these encounters have some structural scripting — on these visits, there is almost always a one-on-one between the show’s star and a parent, typically the mother, of the contestant — they also offer a welcome respite from the chiseled jawlines and petty infighting that are routine features of the show.
This season’s hometown dates were extremely memorable, largely owing to the extended, uncomfortable trip to Aspen, Colo., to visit Dean’s family, especially his father, to whom he had not spoken in about two years. Dean’s mother died when he was 15, and he told Rachel that in the immediate aftermath, his father had been emotionally unavailable to the point of abandonment. A few years after his mother’s death, Dean’s father converted to Sikhism, took on a new name, Paramroop, and remarried.
Dean has been the most buttoned-up of this season’s contestants, but from the moment he and Rachel approached his father’s house, he was visibly unsteady. And when he and his father were left alone by the others, what unfolded was an intimate, sometimes overwhelming conversation between two people struggling to find a way to hear each other. Dean accused Paramroop of failing as a parent when he was most needed. Paramroop accused Dean of being stuck in the past. The conversation was fractured, messy, wounding — and alarmingly real.
It made for entrancing viewing, and a vivid lesson in what can happen when documentary cameras — a kinder term for reality-TV cameras — are granted the opportunity to witness a genuinely unprocessed, borderline calamitous moment with a minimum of intrusion.
The rest of the episode had some smaller doses of unanticipated reality — the rich Baltimore accents of Eric’s family and friends, the nettlesome intensity of Bryan’s mother, the cumbersome couch with built-in cup holders at Peter’s family’s home — making this episode this season’s best, for reasons that had little to do with Rachel directly.
After Paramroop stormed out of the conversation with Dean, Rachel tracked him down for some of that expected one-on-one time. Initially, he appeared to be open to the overture. But just as the two were set to sit down for their sharing time, Paramroop turned his head and caught the camera’s hungry lens, then walked away, restoring the wall.
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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/arts/television/bachelorette-commitment-issues-and-fraught-hometown-visits.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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