Reality TV Still Fails Women: ‘Bachelorette’ Star Jenn Tran’s Experience

Is reality TV here for “the right reasons”?

That’s what fans of the format are wondering after the latest heartbreak for a lead on “The Bachelorette,” the popular women-led spinoff of ABC’s “Bachelor” franchise. It’s a familiar scene: the leading lady’s season-long journey to find love with a male suitor, who is supposedly there for “the right reasons,” ending in total disaster.

Last night, Jenn Tran sat on the seasonal “After the Final Rose” stage with host Jesse Palmer as she sobbed before the studio audience while viewers watched her relive her final choice, Devin Strader, dump her. He broke off the engagement during a 15-minute phone call last month as the season aired.

It was a rough close to a storybook season for the franchise’s first Asian American lead and the first woman to propose to her last man standing.

Watching women get their hearts broken for sport on Monday nights has become its own cultural sensation — just like watching Monday Night Football. So why do we continue to fail them on reality television?

The simple fact is: “Bachelorette” and “Bachelor” seasons rarely wrap with a happily ever after.

In fact, only two of the last fifteen “Bachelorette” final couples are still together today: JoJo Fletcher, the Season 12 lead who married football analyst Jordan Rodgers, and last season’s lead and “Dancing with the Stars” alum Charity Lawson, who gave her final rose to Dotun Olubeko.

Fletcher and Rogers, also brother to NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, were engaged on Season 12 of the show in 2016 and tied the knot in 2022 in Santa Ynez, California. Meanwhile, Lawson and Olubeko said they plan on getting married in 2025.

Each season finale is the most dramatic ever — and several end the same.

In 2018, on “The Bachelor,” race car driver Arie Luyendyk broke up with fiancée Becca Kufrin on-camera as his season ended and later chased after his runner-up, Lauren Burnham. The pair married the following year in Hawaii and now travel the world with their three children.

Kufrin found love of her own, too, and in 2023 married Thomas Jacobs, who faced an onslaught of social media backlash as a suitor on Katie Thurston’s “Bachelorette” season before meeting Kufrin on “Bachelor in Paradise.” The two are engaged and welcomed a baby boy last September.

Then it happened again.

On one of the most talked about seasons of the franchise, former Miss Alabama Hannah Brown made major headlines in 2019 after a drama-filled season ended with a shocker: Her final pick, aspiring singer Jed Wyatt, faced allegations that he had a serious girlfriend directly before filming the ABC reality competition show.

The rumors alleged he planned to reunite with her after the filming wrapped. Brown and Wyatt clashed during “After The Final Rose.”

In July, Wyatt married fitness coach Ellen Decker, and Brown became engaged to Adam Woolard, who is not from the reality TV universe, in August 2023.

And now, Bachelor Nation’s latest casualty: Jenn.

Following the season finale, social media users slammed producers for putting Tran through pain in a public forum.

“It’s not entertainment to watch someone in the midst of such insurmountable pain that they’re nearly gasping for air,” one user wrote in their notes app and shared the screenshot to X. “And it’s not cute or funny that at the very height of that pain you make them rewatch what they just described as the worst day of their life, in front of a live studio audience and next to the person responsible for that pain.”

Another user said, “Cancel the whole franchise for putting her through this … like how are u gunna make her watch the proposal after THAT whole conversation.”

Even the Season 20 star of “The Bachelor,” Ben Higgins, criticized production for subjecting Tran to trauma.

“Jenn should have gotten up in the middle of proposal showers and gave everyone the piece sign,” he wrote. “Walk out of that studio and never turned back. Absolutely cruel and unnecessary to make her watch that back. Cannot believe it.”

When you’re 26, the same age as Tran, everything feels permanent and fleeting at the same time. You feel forever young and like you’re also running out of time − particularly, for some, when it comes to finding love.

Your heart gets broken. By a partner, by people with power over you, by someone you thought would be a part of your life forever. Or by someone (like Devin) who tells you: “I failed you, but everything I felt for you was real.”

We have all faced these moments before. But many of us don’t have to face the other person in front of the entire world. The tears we cry are reserved for our private moments − not for millions of people watching from their couches at home.

It’s “a part of the role.” But when does it become too real? And why does “The Bachelorette” reserve these moments for women?

Tran’s story isn’t over. Like most “Bachelor” franchise alumni, she will appear alongside ex-boyfriend and “Bachelor” Joey Graziadei on the cast of “Dancing with the Stars” Season 33.

And maybe this time, her story will have a happy ending.

Source: USA TODAY