The Golden Bachelor has been a breath of fresh air for the long-running ABC dating franchise, for its wholesome (if not a little tragic) quest to find 72-year-old widower Gerry Turner a partner to live out his golden years with. The tone is wildly different from the other Bachelor Nation shows, showing a kinder, gentler journey with less angst than the 20- and 30-somethings we’re accustomed to seeing. So excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the ground, after it appears our Golden Bachelor may have just admitted to dropping some inauthentic love bombs on the inaugural season of the spinoff. Say it ain’t so, Gerry!
Gerry Turner appeared on The Jennifer Hudson Show, where he fielded some tough questions from the EGOT winner. Things got really interesting when J-Hud asked whether or not Turner had fallen in love with more than one woman, and he gave the following response:
You know, when you’re in the moment with someone and you get caught up in the excitement and the glamour and the energy of what’s going on, you feel like you’re in love with someone. You might even say the words. And then when you get away from all the energy that was surrounding that moment, and you peel it back, you realize that yeah, that woman was wonderful, but she wasn’t the right woman for you, and when you said or thought that you loved her, it probably wasn’t genuine.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is an expert way of saying, “Yes, but…” Basically it sounds like Gerry Turner did, in fact, feel like he fell in love with two or more people, and what’s more, it sounds like actually voiced those three little words aloud to those certain someones. However, now that he’s outside of Bachelor Mansion — and potentially engaged to one of the lovely ladies — he’s saying that love probably wasn’t real and he was just caught up in the spectacle of the situation.
Saying “I love you” to more than one person has been a big no-no in past seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, so hopefully we’re not in for something as dramatic as Clayton Echard’s “Rose Ceremony From Hell.” But what does this mean for the feel-good love story that has become the highlight of my Thursday nights (if not my whole week)? I don’t want to find myself sloshing wine around the room as I curse Gerry Turner for being careless with these women’s hearts.
Maybe it’s just my eternal optimism, but I actually think it’ll be quite the opposite. Gerry Turner’s semi-admission about feeling love for more than one person just signals to me that he gave himself fully to the process. He made himself vulnerable enough to be open to finding a partner, not to replace his late wife — that was a firm rule he set for himself ahead of the season — but to have someone to talk to about the sunset and keep him from being lonely.
Sure, saying that he was never really in love with more than one woman is probably the safest route to take with Jennifer Hudson’s line of questioning, assuming there is someone waiting at home for him, but I am giving him the benefit of the doubt that he probably did feel genuine love in the moment.
We’ll have to see how it all plays out! New episodes of The Golden Bachelor air at 8 p.m. ET Thursdays on ABC and are available to stream the next day with a Hulu subscription. Also be sure to check out our 2023 TV schedule to see what premieres are coming soon.
