I’m 68. Here’s What Younger Viewers Are Getting Wrong About The Golden Bachelor .

Gerry Turner, the first “Golden Bachelor,” isn’t someone I would date, and not because Gerry, at 72, is too old for me (he isn’t—I’m 68), as he is for every podcaster and journalist whose take on ABC’s The Golden Bachelor I’ve ingested in the past six weeks. He’s too earnest, too bland, too aw-shucks Midwestern, too … well, square. Also, I’m not sure how smart he is. (Though, to be fair, he does seem nice. Very, very nice.)

Of course, I wouldn’t go out with him even if he were my type, because I’m already married, and it’s not an open marriage. (Do pause for a second, sister-watchers, to imagine how Gerry would react to that phrase: blushing, chuckling nervously, Oh, Michelle!—if he even understood it.) My supremely un-square, supersmart, idiosyncratic-in-the-extreme artist-husband and I passed the three-decade point last year.

But that’s not the point. The point is that I’m watching Gerry and his potential fiancées not for the romantic fantasy the Bachelor franchise has purported to be selling since 2002. To be honest, I’d be surprised if anyone watched any version of The Bachelor and daydreamed of being the lead’s beloved. Most of them are pretty dull.

And I’m watching not because I believe that the three women remaining—Faith, Leslie, and Theresa—are truly in love with this very nice Midwestern Every(white)man, or that he’s in love with any of them. They may all think they’re in love by virtue of the temporary insanity the show inflicts on them, isolating them from the outside world, giving them nothing to do but think and talk about the object(s) of their affection. I mean, that’s always been the game. The contestants have to at least half believe the following (in this order, and only in this order): They really like the lead, are beginning to fall for him, are falling in love with him, and finally—the money shot—are in love with him.

I tuned in to The Golden Bachelor because I was eager to see, on my very own TV screen, women my own age—women who’d had, and still have, full, complex, interesting lives: work that is/was meaningful to them, significant past relationships (not just, you know, those two guys who cheated on them when they were in college, and maybe that one guy after college who might have cheated too?). Women with interests and talents they’d honed over the years, longtime friendships, deep ties to their children and grandchildren and communities. Women who weren’t all aspiring influencers. Who’d have something to say that didn’t make me wince because of its naïveté or vapidity or too-neatly-packaged-for-TVity. Maybe there’d even be some insight on display! And I was hopeful that the sort of pettiness, simmering hostility, outright meanness, and endless “drama” that producers predictably stir up and then highlight on the “regular” show wouldn’t be a part of this one—that these women would be immune to that nonsense.

And—wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles—I wasn’t disappointed. I mean, I’d been hoping for a moratorium on hair extensions, but otherwise The Golden Bachelor has delivered. The 22 women around my age who were cast to play opposite (against?) Gerry are obviously having a great time getting all dressed up and being portrayed (tenderly, generously, not crassly) as objects of desire. I can even tell them apart, as I’ve long had trouble doing with the “regular” cast of so many nearly identical blondes with long, gently curled hair. They’re all interesting and funny and clever. And—maybe best of all—their relationships with each other aren’t subtext in this iteration of the show; they’re front and center. They did the hora in the swimming pool! (A real shock and a pleasure in a franchise that generally caters to the evangelical Christian bloc of its audience.) They’re genuinely happy for each other, worried about each other, interested in each other.

I make a habit of reading every smart piece of criticism on The Bachelor that I can find, and these days I listen to three of the hundreds—you read that right: hundreds—of Bachelor recap podcasts. What I want to tell the three-decades-younger crowd on the culture beat is that, contrary to their assessments, The Golden Bachelor offers a pretty fair representation of what it’s like to be in your 60s and 70s today.

When Amanda Hess in the New York Times complains, “One of the women did this age-play striptease [in her limo exit on Night 1] involving an ‘old’ wig and dress, as if to say, Don’t worry, I’m not like those other old people!” it’s clear to me that she’s misreading the bit. Leslie Fhima’s old-age drag wasn’t meant to disparage the other “old people” of her generation. It meant, “For Christ’s sake, I’m not that old. None of us are.” And when I heard Juliet Litman, the host of one of my favorite Bachelor podcasts, Bachelor Party, say in passing that this group of women were of the generation who had been told they should be staying home, not working—“you know, that whole Don Draper generation”—I was dismayed enough to slide into her DMs to say, Juliet! That was not us. That was our parents. (She took it gracefully. She even invited me to be a guest on her show, to represent “the demo.”)

As a new Bachelor pundit, and apparently the only one in “the demo,” I’m here to say that the breathless appreciation by all these millennials of Gerry, a pickleball-playing retiree from a career in restaurant and food distribution, makes me squirm. Is he, really, hot for his age? Should we, really, be lowering the hotness bar because of his age? Seriously, isn’t he just another iteration of the classic Bachelor type—those square-jawed former athletes these same commentators complain about? I got a kick out of Molly Fitzpatrick’s adoring Vulture profile, but I did wonder exactly what makes Gerry Turner more interesting than the long line of young men before him.

As much as I’m enjoying the show, it’s jarring to feel patronized—cooed over—by the people covering it (these old people are so adorable!), and it’s even more infuriating to be told that these old people aren’t the right old people, the ones who accurately represent those their age. All the women on the show are recognizable variations of women my age, to me. I take daily ballet classes with women in their 60s and 70s. Not one of us dresses “our age.” (What the hell does that mean, anyway? And why is it younger women who are telling us that?) Sure, the women on The Golden Bachelor are mostly “tight and toned.” Everyone on reality TV is unrealistically good-looking. Why should those my age be the exception? Why should the cast offer “wisdom and respite” without glamour?

And for the record: Just like the Golden women, my friends in their 60s and 70s get up and dance like crazy at parties when music we like comes on. (And the music we like goes well beyond Motown, OK?)

This is who we are. What a joy it is to see us on TV.

My daughter, age 30—who introduced me to the show in 2018, telling me, “It has everything you like. It’s all about the characters, relationships, feelings”—abandoned me in Bachelor Nation nearly three years ago. She moved on, like a lot of right-minded people did, after the debacle of Matt James’ season and the grotesque remarks former host Chris Harrison made in an interview with Rachel Lindsay. I considered hanging it up too, then stuck it out the way you might stick by a longtime friend despite their many failings, hoping for better from them. (I will note that things do seem to be getting better, slowly, since the ouster of both Chris Harrison and the show’s creator, the execrable Mike Fleiss.)

Now here I am, watching the best version of the show there’s ever been. And rooting for Leslie to win Gerry’s heart, even though it seems clear to me that Leslie, who in her youth dated Prince (and who’s representing all of us old hippie chicks), is much too cool for Gerry, no matter how good a job she’s done of convincing herself otherwise. If he does pick her, she’ll wake up, like nearly all the winners wake up, and realize that it was just a game. They’ll go their separate ways, I’m sure.

But really, as usual, I don’t care who wins. It’s how they play the game I care about. I’m not rooting for Theresa, because her game has no subtlety, no grace—it’s a little desperate, a little studied. Faith is a real contender, and either she or Leslie would be a terrific Golden Bachelorette. As would Joan, who self-eliminated to be with her daughter after the birth of her baby. Or Ellen, whom I loved perhaps best of all, for her Long Island accent, her directness, her deadpan humor. Or Susan, who was hilarious, down-to-earth, and fabulous. Or Sandra, whose limo exit featured Zen breathing and cursing (best limo exit of the season). Or Kathy, who had no patience with Theresa’s oversharing and was the show’s least villainous villain ever, as well as one of the funniest.

Because what were the chances that I’d ever get to see these women on screen? And now, given the ratings success of this first Golden Bachelor season, I’m guessing I’ll be seeing plenty more of them. Bring ’em on. Bring ’em all on. They’re my people.