Bachelor Nation has been going strong in primetime for more than two decades now, and ABC is mere months away in the 2023 TV schedule from debuting the newest installment in the franchise: The Golden Bachelor. Unlike The Bachelor and The Bachelorette that usually focus on the leads looking for love in their 20s and 30s, the new show will star 71-year-old Gerry Turner as he searches for a second chance at a love story. A new look at the series quite literally brings out the cheese and features a grand total of one line from Turner... and I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Gerry Turner is the franchise's first senior citizen lead looking for love, and the new promo for The Golden Bachelor leans hard into the notion of certain things getting better with age, including wine, cheese, and love stories. Take a look:
This promo makes it very clear that the newest Bachelor Nation entry isn't going to just be more of the same... and it helpfully gives the correct pronunciation of Gerry Turner's name, because I know that I was pronouncing it "Jerry" instead of "Gary" from just reading it! I'm all for the franchise trying something new now that ABC is going all-in on unscripted options for the fall in light of the WGA writers strike, but I'm just not in loving with Turner's one and only line in the promo. He said:
I don't always date twenty women at once, but I'm about to.
I don't know if it was the delivery or just the fact that pretty much anybody who has heard of Bachelor Nation knows the premise of one lead dating a lot of people at once, but I was hoping for a bit more of a hook from arguably the franchise's most original experiment since the messy The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart. While I know it's premature to judge a show based on a 40-second promo, my first impression isn't the strongest.
Then again, I've known that this show is coming for long enough that perhaps I'm being a little unfair in my expectations. Then then-untitled project was announced back in 2020 with ABC searching for participants, just a few weeks before COVID production shutdowns across the entertainment industry. The Golden Bachelor was finally confirmed for the 2023-2024 TV schedule earlier this year, with a lot of Bachelor Nation fans having the same reaction.
Gerry Turner was then revealed as the lead, and he comes to The Golden Bachelor as a 71-year-old grandfather and retired restauranteur from Indiana, where he lives in his dream house on a lake. He was married to his high school sweetheart, Toni, for 43 years before she passed away following an illness in 2017. He's stepping in front of the camera six years after her passing and is ready to give love another shot with the support of his family.
ABC hasn't announced a premiere date for The Golden Bachelor just yet, but it will air on Mondays nights at 10 p.m. ET following Dancing with the Stars in its return after spending a season on Disney+.
