Hard to see how Bachelor in Paradise can go on
It’s the quintessential guilty pleasure TV show.
Take a couple of dozen comely men and women, turn them loose at a Mexican resort for a few weeks, let the booze flow, tell them they have to pair up to stick around, then let the sexcapades begin.
Oh sure, in theory Bachelor in Paradise is about past Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants getting another chance to find love. And the series has spawned two marriages — one just this past weekend — one pretend wedding and another couple of (broken) engagements.
But for most of the show’s cast, it’s a free vacation with hangovers, hookups and a chance to extend their reality TV fame.
So what happened between Corinne Olympios and DeMario Jackson on June 4 initially sounded like just another juicy plot line: Olympios, a villain and fan favourite from The Bachelor, and Jackson, a villain from the current season of The Bachelorette, got blotto and then down and dirty in a pool.
It would have made for especially titillating viewing when Season 4 debuted in August.
Instead, production has been shut down while Warner Bros. investigates “allegations of misconduct,” the words “sexual assault” have been thrown around and both contestants have hired lawyers: Olympios to “obtain justice,” Jackson to clear his name.
It’s unclear whether producers were present during the incident and, if so, why they didn’t intervene if Olympios was too drunk to con- sent to sex, which is what has been alleged.
As the scandal gets uglier by the day, with he said-she said statements from cast members, few expect Bachelor in Paradise to survive.
Hindsight is always 20/20, so maybe it seems disingenuous to say we should have seen it coming, but it seems glaringly obvious now this kind of fiasco was always possible, especially as the salaciousness got ramped up from season to season.
As I read the first reports on the scandal my mind jumped back to Season 3 and another Bachelor in Paradise couple in a pool.
Notorious Bachelorette villain Chad Johnson and Lace Morris, whose Bachelor claim to fame involved getting drunk and belligerent, got, well, drunk and started making out, alternately canoodling and play-fighting. But things took a turn when Morris decided she didn’t want to play anymore.
Johnson called her a “f---ing bitch,” threatened to throw her under a bus and “duct-tie” her. And when others tried to intervene, Johnson called a woman with a physical disability a “one-armed bitch” and took a swing at a male contestant.
He was kicked off the show the next day but not before being allowed to go to the brink of violence, something that also happened with him on The Bachelorette.
And let’s be honest, disturbing as it was, we viewers ate it up. Part of the reason that Bachelor in Paradise Season 4 was so anticipated was that Johnson was expected to return. And then there was Olympios. The 25-year-old was so beloved by Bachelor fans, with her funny comments and talk about her “nanny,” that there were suggestions of giving Olympios her own spinoff show.
She was also one of the most sexually aggressive contestants the franchise has seen. Her attempts to seduce Bachelor Nick Viall were key plot points during the season and reached their apotheosis with her heading to his hotel room on an unsuccessful mission to have sex, bragging about her prowess and her private parts.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that anything that happened on The Bachelor would justify a non-consensual sexual encounter on Bachelor in Paradise. But you can easily imagine how Olympios’ Bachelor behaviour would be built into a lurid Bachelor in Paradise plot: spurned by the Bachelor, Corinne finds someone in Paradise who appreciates her “platinum vagine.”
Warner Bros. and ABC had not officially pulled the plug on Bachelor in Paradise, either the season or the series, as of Sunday. But to my mind, the show’s already dead.
I can’t imagine it returning to the kind of sexual hijinks that preceded the scandal and were its raison d’être, and I can’t imagine being able to enjoy them the same way as a viewer if it did. Debra Yeo is a Toronto Star deputy entertainment editor and has been writing about the Bachelor franchise since 2010.