Spoilers ahead for the series premiere of The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart on ABC.
Despite many of the biggest shows on television running out of episodes due to production shutdowns across the industry, The Bachelor franchise was able to debut its latest spinoff on April 13. Yes, The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart premiered as a series that would combine the Bachelor Nation search for love with coupling off to launch music careers.
Basically, even by Bachelor standards, it's a pretty wild premise. After watching the premiere, I would describe this as some kind of unholy combination of Bachelor in Paradise (but not featuring Bachelor Nation favorites), Big Brother, and The Voice. There was singing and making out and a slightly suspicious rose ceremony, with one guy declaring John Mayer as his idol while one girl had an emotional breakdown over what another guy didn't actually explicitly say.
It was about as much of a mess as I expected, and I'm not the only one who didn't have the highest hopes that The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart could stand up in the Bachelor franchise as anything other than a way to pass the time between the end of Peter Weber's season of The Bachelor and Clare Crawley's season of The Bachelorette, with Bachelor in Paradise to follow.
Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has put an indefinite halt on Clare Crawley's season of The Bachelorette and the 2020 season of Bachelor in Paradise, making Listen to Your Heart the only Bachelor series that is confirmed to air in full for the foreseeable future.
So, Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart is the place to be for Bachelor action for likely quite a while, and according to Bachelor fans, that is enough to get them to watch the musical spinoff. Take a look:
When social distancing and quarantine keeps Bachelor fans indoors and there just so happens to be a new Bachelor series hitting the airwaves, is there anything other to do than check it out? Even if that new Bachelor series is Listen to Your Heart?
Another person on Twitter channeled their inner Kelly Kapoor (who would probably love The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart) of The Office fame for share their feelings:
Hey, social distancing can make changes in us all, at new TV content is new TV content! If nothing else, The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart is new TV.
Another viewer appropriately chose an image of Hannah Ann Sluss -- a.k.a. Peter Weber's original first choice in the last season of The Bachelor -- to share their feelings about Listen to Your Heart:
Something tells me Hannah Ann probably wasn't glued to the TV watching Listen to Your Heart on premiere night!
Another The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart viewer seems more willing to accept their fate with a smile, at least if the gif reflects real life. A disbelieving, somewhat insincere smile, but a smile:
"Look at us" indeed. I for one will be interested to see how the Listen to Your Heart premiere fares in the ratings, coming at the beginning of yet another week of social distancing.
For one viewer on social media, there might be a conspiracy afoot with why The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart has premiered in the midst of a pandemic:
Chris Harrison is the face of Bachelor Nation; is he also the mastermind behind finding a way to guarantee an audience for The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart?
In all seriousness, I think this next person managed to find a video of less than 10 seconds that still manages to sum up the members of Bachelor Nation who ultimately decided to check out Listen to Your Heart:
Well, reluctant viewers or not, Bachelor Nation fans have an option for fresh Bachelor content even while other TV show fans run out of new episodes of current seasons. Besides, is Listen to Your Heart now all that much wilder than Bachelor in Paradise seemed when it launched? Maybe so, but at least it's something to watch and something that should be entertaining.
See what happens next on The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart with new episodes airing on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET in the midseason TV premiere schedule.
