The Bachelor’s engagement party
By Maclean's - Sunday, December 9, 2012 - 0 Comments
Reality TV meets real life, Colin Horgan comes face to face with Brad and Bianka, tweets are tweeted and vodka is consumed
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The Maclean’s Bachelor Panel, Week 9: The waterworks after the final rose
By Sonya Bell, Colin Horgan and Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 29, 2012 at 2:18 PM - 0 Comments
Sonya Bell, Colin Horgan and Aaron Wherry on Brad and Bianka’s love. And Whitney. Always Whitney.
Find all of the Maclean’s Bachelor Panel posts here.
From: Sonya
To: Colin, AaronThere you have it, Canada. The journey of “Canada’s first bachelor, Brad Smith!” has concluded. (It’s a little known fact that all other Canadian men are married at birth.)
In this week’s After the Final Rose episode, host Tyler Harcott welcomed Brad, Bianka and Whitney to turn on the waterworks in front of a live television audience. It was a far more interesting hour than the bachelorette tell-all episode for two reasons. One, we actually remembered everyone on stage. Two, they had something to say – not just scores to settle.
It’s the humanizing aspect that I found most powerful. Whitney, do you read this panel? If you do, I’m sorry that I’m one of those people who brought up the vein in your head, which you understandably found hurtful. (I did so because it illustrated so very well the intensity you were bringing to the competition.)
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Maclean’s Bachelor Panel: Week six
By Sonya Bell, Colin Horgan and Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 4:14 PM - 0 Comments
The fantasy date episode: Brad hunkers down with three finalists (on three different nights) in the Maritimes
Our Maclean’s Bachelor panel reconvenes to consider what they’ve learned from another hour and a half of The Bachelor Canada. Find all of their panels here.
From: Sonya
To: Aaron, ColinIt’s all fun and games until Canada’s Prince Charming turns into a toad.
Bachelor Brad Smith, who has espoused the virtues of commitment and communication for weeks now, handed roses to the exact two girls he has identified as being emotionally closed off and perhaps not ready for a serious relationship: Whitney and Bianka.
Kara, my mascara streams down my cheeks with yours.
It’s safe to say most viewers went into this week’s episode expecting that after Whitney’s cold and calculating side was exposed during the home visits last week, she was going to be the one sent packing Wednesday night. (Well played, you crafty reality TV producers you, well played.) Exactly no one was going to miss her. That included, it seemed, Brad: “I can’t be with someone who’s emotionally repressed and that’s what I get from her.”
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Who wants to marry a Senator’s son?
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 12, 2012 at 2:20 PM - 0 Comments
Sen. Larry Smith will feature in an episode of The Bachelor, starring his son Brad
Andrew Francis Wallace/Toronto Star; Photograph by Marianne Helm
While Justin Trudeau, son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, was attempting to put the moves on the country last week, Brad Smith, son of Conservative Sen. Larry Smith, was putting the moves on a bevy of young women as the star of The Bachelor Canada. It is difficult to say which of the two scions is nicer to look at.
Smith, a CFL free agent, is the star of the first Canadian version of the successful American TV franchise.
In the premiere episode, Smith was presented with 25 single women, nine of whom were dismissed before they had a chance to get comfortable in the Bachelor mansion. Smith, suitably square-jawed and broad-shouldered, will spend the next few weeks whittling down his options until only one potential future Mrs. Brad Smith remains. The official previews promise generous amounts of crying and drama.
Sen. Smith will also feature in a future episode—presumably when the final girls are brought home to meet the parents. Larry Smith was appointed to the Senate in December 2010 on the recommendation of Stephen Harper. He stepped down temporarily to run as the Conservative candidate in Lac-Saint-Louis, Que., last year and was reappointed to the Senate after finishing third. The senator is a former player, executive and commissioner in the CFL.
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Maclean’s Bachelor panel: Week Two
By Sonya Bell, Colin Horgan and Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 11, 2012 at 2:08 PM - 0 Comments
So many questions. No. 1: Why?
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Week 2
Our panel of Sonya Bell, Colin Horgan and Aaron Wherry reconvenes to consider what they’ve learned from another hour and a half of The Bachelor Canada. Last week’s discussion is here.
From: Colin
To: Sonya, Aaron“I’m finding it harder than ever to manage eight women.”
— Brad SmithTo be fair to Brad, handling eight people—men or women—vying for your attention in a small champagne-soaked hotel room in New Orleans, only hours after each of them has given you a private burlesque performance would probably be a bit much for anyone to manage. And to his credit, under the circumstances, he seemed to deal with it fairly well—all episode, in fact. He even managed to deal with Melissa Marie P (for ‘Playboy,’ presumably)’s unstoppable barrage of impatient attempts at getting him into a very serious and heavy conversation about how much he, the Bachelor, does or does not want to love parenthood.
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Prejudging the women on Canada’s ‘The Bachelor’
By Emma Teitel - Monday, March 12, 2012 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments
Sadly, zany malice is just not a Canadian value
Lyle Aspinall/Calgary Sun/QMI Agency
The Bachelor is coming to Canada. We don’t know his name yet, but there is one thing we know for sure: he and his harem will change our great nation forever. Look at the United States: The Bachelor was its original reality romance, and in no time it spawned a trio of similar spinoffs south of the 49th parallel, a smutty trifecta: The Bachelorette, Joe Millionaire and A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila. Alas, here in the Great White North we’re only getting the original. And worse, I am ineligible to apply. As an employee of the corporate behemoth that owns this magazine and just about everything else (the Canadian instalment of the show will air on Rogers-owned Citytv), I am obliged, by law, to abstain from falling in love with the bachelor—or getting embroiled in a lesbian sex scandal with another cast member in the process. Such is life. And perhaps the end of Canadian civilization as we know it.
For those of you who have never witnessed the “rose ceremony” (that’s the clincher at the end of every episode, when the bachelor dishes out flowers to all the ladies he fancies, and sends the others packing), this is, roughly, how the show unfolds: ABC’s The Bachelor is a romance competition in which 25 to 30 women, whose occupations apparently have to end in the words consultant or sales rep, compete for the affections—and hopefully the marriage proposal—of an all-American male counterpart who is usually a businessman, consultant and/or sales rep. Sometimes the businessman is replaced by a “medical doctor” to add diversity (according to the American show’s creator, Mike Fleiss, ethnic minorities, “for whatever reason,” don’t audition). The female contestants on the show range in personality from “down to earth,” to “girl next door,” to “certifiably insane.” Through a process of profound soul searching and steamy hot-tub hijinks, the bachelor eliminates contestants at the culmination of each episode (via a teary-eyed limousine testimonial) until he’s left with only one, whom he immediately proposes marriage to, and files a restraining order against the next day.
And herein lies the danger: the show requires a level of zany malice that is not traditionally Canadian. I may have too much faith in my countrywomen, but it strikes me that while we’d have a surplus of down-to-earth contestants, finding the certifiably insane would, I hope, be a struggle. So down to earth might Canadian contestants be, that the obligatory teary-eyed limousine testimonials after the weekly dump would be few and far between. As the mom of one of my best friends said of Jillian Harris, the only Canadian to make the cut as the contestant on the American Bachelor spinoff, The Bachelorette, “she is the most down-to-earth girl in history.” This is what I’m pinning my hopes on. My fear is that even down-to-earth Canadians might not be able to resist the pull of those American hot-tub hijinks. In which case, a little piece of Canada will be lost forever.
