The most popular question I’ve had to answer in the last few months is, at its core, very simple. It is this: Why? Why would the three of us – myself, Sonya Bell and Aaron Wherry – choose to take our Wednesday nights and write about a TV show that everyone seems to agree is sort of silly? After all, the premise of the Bachelor Canada is simplistic and a touch regressive. A man selects from a clan of women the one who he figures might be best for a potential engagement. It’s the kind of thing that some might argue sets our culture back a pace or two, assuming it’s moving forward.

I have no idea how to answer that simple question, apart from maybe saying that the idea amused us. Perhaps this is why everyone else watches the Bachelor – to amuse themselves with a bit of arms-length romance that is open to judgement and fodder for pseudo-gossip, and which has no serious bearing on our lives. This show, we have convinced ourselves, is not actually what it says it is. It is reality television, but not television about reality. We will never be put in such a ridiculous situation, we can assure ourselves. And we would never go to such lengths to find a potentially suitable partner, we remind each other.

Yet, when I looked around at the crowd attending (whether they were aware of it or not) the official Bachelor Canada Engagement Party at the sprawling Muzik nightclub in Toronto Saturday night, I began to wonder about that last part.

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