Well, Bachelor Nation, it's taken a looooong time, but we finally know that Season 16 of The Bachelorette will premiere on ABC on October 13. The season has, obviously, already seen a lot of delays, rumors, and behind the scenes controversies, making for a season that's managed to hit the news on an almost constant basis, even though it's only been filming for a short time. While it seems like the announcement of a release date should have set fans on fire (yes, in a good way), the show appears to have another problem on its figurative hands, because fans seem to be really annoyed by everything about The Bachelorette right now.
Don't get me wrong, during my three years in Bachelor Nation, fans have absolutely never lacked a wide number of things to be annoyed about with any of the shows. But, many of those things had to do with the actions of people on the shows as they aired, meaning that fans were still watching and engaged with The Bachelor, The Bachelorette or Bachelor in Paradise. When I checked Twitter to see how people were responding to the news that we'll finally see Clare Crawley's (reportedly very short) journey to love and a lot more time with (reported) back-up Bachelorette Tayshia Adams, fans seem really over it.
Instead of expressing excitement over the new season, fans are simply taking to social media to voice their concerns over several aspects of the new season. Starting with the fact that no one behind the show has officially confirmed that Tayshia will take over for Clare, meaning, as you might imagine, that Tayshia is no where to be found in any promos for Season 16...
In early August, pretty much every media outlet began reporting that Clare found love after only a couple of weeks of filming on this season and that Tayshia would pick up the rose-giving gauntlet, but, that's right, The Bachelorette has yet to confirm the news. It's pretty easy to see why the producers would want to hold off, and let the whole thing play out on TV, but when it looks so certain that we know what's going to happen (just not how, exactly) the silence can feel like they doubt the intelligence of the fans.
As mentioned above, this season has been plagued with the kind of problems that no other season has, and all of them stem from our pesky pandemic. First, production had to shut down on the very day in March that Season 16 was supposed to start shooting. Then, producers had to figure out how to safely film a dating show that usually travels to far flung locations and sees folks doing at least semi-horizontal adult things all the time.
Everyone involved in production, obviously, got sent home to quarantine, but this meant that Clare was able to investigate the men who'd been cast on her season, unlike any lead before, and this is probably what led to her very suddenly falling in love so soon into filming. Speaking of Clare falling in love, several of her dudes had to be recast (with some of them speaking out about it), either because they were no longer interested in doing the show in the coronatimes, or because they just couldn't take a chance on putting their lives on hold later in the year than originally planned (or, because they were way too young, anyway).
Clare also got a bit of negative attention early in the summer for appearing to shade one of her former suitors who'd been cast, by unfairly calling him out on social media. Who am I talking about? Well, it's none other than our new Bachelor, Matt James. As you know, Matt will take the reigns in 2021, and is going down in The Bachelor history books as the first black lead for that show. It was a ridiculously long time coming, and fans were already on his side because he's a good friend of Tyler Cameron's, so Clare giving him guff did not sit well with a lot of people.
In case you're wondering, fans are not just pissed that ABC is acting like Tayshia won't be a part of this season. They're also genuinely annoyed by that date announcement you see above. Everything from Clare's clothing to the "It's about time" slogan, to the rip-off of a famous scene from the classic film The Graduate has set fans on edge. And at least one person in particular seemed truly offended by the reference, and pointed out some hypocrisy in the franchise:
Ooooooh, boy. I don't know if I ever mentioned this in my (many) previous articles about Season 16 of The Bachelorette, but I've been thinking that, with all the problems leading up to and after starting to film, the producers might have really been better off just skipping this season and going straight to Matt in early 2021. Because, this sounds like the over-riding thought from Bachelor Nation on the upcoming Clare / Tayshia season...
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