Today on Katie Couric's aptly named daytime talk show Katie, Couric interviewed three women of The Bachelor she deemed "the bad girls" of the show, Erica Rose (season 9 with the prince), Vienna Girardi (season 14, Jake Pavelka) and Courtney Robertson (season 16, Ben), to see how good it feels to be baddd. Spoiler: two out of three Bachelor contestants give it a thumbs up.
"You know they say nice girls finish last and as we've seen on a few seasons on The Bachelor, truer words have never been spoken," Couric said. "Two of them walked away with the final rose but none of them came home with a lot of friends." Couric's definition of "finishing first" here appears to be ending The Bachelor with a bunch of friends, not a husband, despite the fact that the whole fucking point of going on the show is to "find love", not make a whole bunch of new gal pals.
A better butchered truism that might have worked better for Couric would be "The nice bird gets the worm at the end of the day" because both Vienna and Courtney ended up having contentious break-ups with their significant others after their seasons ended. Though history shows us that it really doesn't matter if you're nice to the women of the house or mean. For instance Emily Maynard, who literally no one ever said a bad thing about, was on two seasons of the show and still hasn't been able to make it work with someone.
During Couric's important panel interview, Erica (one of host Chris Harrison's favorite "characters, I guess I could say" – yes, that is the right word Chris) and Vienna seemed to take the bad girl label in stride and had a good sense of humor about it, but Courtney, who was on a more recent season of the show, still seeemed to be struggling with her image. When Vienna discussed how great it was to look back at the show and watch how much she'd grown since she was younger, she ended up reassuring Courtney that in a few years she'd feel the same way.
"I do feel that way, don't get me wrong," Courtney said hastily, seemingly unwilling to make it appear as if the largely negative comments about her bitchiness on the show to the other girls had saddened her at all – and who could blame her? She was a bitch but it worked for her, and why should she have to apologize now (though she already has)? Furthering cementing her status as the "bad girl" of the group, Courtney won a "Golden Rose" from Katie aka a fake award for the sexy moment where she went skinny-dipping in the ocean with Ben and when we knew he was going to pick her and the rest of the girls should just go home because he had seen her naked.
If this whole "Bad Girls Admit Redemption" thing ever had a chance to work a segment, the producers should have gotten together a panel of the worst guys from The Bachelorette on the show; believe me, there's a bevy to pick from. Though why I'm ever expecting them to treat the men and women participating in this franchise equally is a great question, given their total denial of what the show is about. Chris Harrison even took time at the beginning of the show to argue that since ABC never promises that anyone will get married, it's ridiculous to judge them for their totally terrible track record with relationships. Nothing they do matters!
Ultimately, Katie got the last word. "I know we're calling you the bad girls but I think you all seem really nice," she said to the three women. "Really I do!" Never one to miss the spotlight these days, Chris chimed in: "Katie has deemed you good!"
DISCUSSION
This is one of those shows that I've never watched and then end up surprised to find out how many seasons it's managed to get to. Who is the target demographic of these shows anyway? It doesn't seem ridiculous enough to be worth watching for a laugh. Yet it's not something that seems like it can be taken seriously. I dunno.