So It's Brad...

Bachelor fans, forgive me. It has been a ridiculous past few weeks at work and I have woefully neglected this blog. My boss is still out on maternity leave, work has quadrupled and I just completed a work trip that took me to 4 cities in 4 days (not to mention I'm off to Atlanta and Orlando this weekend).  I dream of sleeping.  Yesterday, I was having lunch in Rhode Island with my co-workers Lindsey, Maya and Molly.  We started talking Bachelor, and Maya told me she's going to check out my blog again, which made me think, "Holy cow, I really need to start writing again!"  Thanks for inspiring me!!

Despite all of the recent madness, I think it's important to analyze the decision to make Brad Womack the next Bachelor (again). On the one hand, this guy received so much crap for deciding to choose nobobdy at the end of his first go-around as Bachelor. For those whose memories are a bit cloudy, Brad was deciding between Jenni  Croft (the bubbly NBA dancer, I think) versus DeAnna Pappas, future ex-hostess of the Lifetime TV show Get Married (http://www.getmarried.com/), current fiance to Michael Stagliano's twin brother, Stephen.  After rejecting Jenni on the finale, everybody was sure DeAnna was about to get proposed to.  We found out later that Brad had flown in DeAnna's father to get his blessing before he proposed. But in the end, Brad realized he didn't want to be with either of these women.  The backlash was insane.  Ellen DeGeneres called him "a jerk," but later apologized (and recently had him back on the show to discuss why he thinks this time it'll be different).

I saw that Brad is on the cover of multiple magazines this week - the cover quote on one of them is this: "This time, I'll find my wife." Is this going to make us watch again?  Brad is now 37 years old, owns a couple of bars and is still single.  If a good looking guy like that can't find a nice lady on his own, should we be hopeful that he's going to find her through the bright lights of Hollywood? 

What's even more disturbing about the choice of Brad as the next Bachelor is that it sends a frightening message to single women in their mid-late 20s and early 30s everywhere: there are no "amazing," wonderful single guys out there.  ABC has the opportunity and the means to search the entire world for the next Bachelor and the best they can come up with is a recycled Bachelor??  Come on!  We have all seen the advertisements on the show asking people to apply to be the next Bachelor.  Certainly they have received 100s if not 1000s of applications.  Millions of people watch the show, so just on numbers alone there had to be a few 1000 applicants.  Is ABC telling us that there really were no gems among the submissions for single ladies everywhere to dream about?  Or is the thought of being the Bachelor so awful that no sane man wanted to apply?  That's perhaps the reason that Chris Lambton turned it down.  Thankfully ABC had the wits to reject Jake being the next Bachelor (as the rumors speculate).

I've been trying to think of some of the positive attributes to Brad being the next Bachelor, and here is what I came up with:

1. He's still good-looking, which let's be honest - counts for a lot on this show.

2. He's 37, so there's hope that the women selected for him will be a bit older and more mature - ready to settle down themselves instead of the recent 24/25 year old "aspiring model" types we have seen recently on the show.  There's also hope that he may actually want to meet someone at this point in his life to settle down with.

3. He has the experience of being the Bachelor before, which no other contestant has had, so it'll be interesting to see if/how he does things differently this time.

4. It would be kind of awesome if he ends up picking nobody again, although it's probably in his contract that he has to pick someone this time around or there's going to be some serious backlash again. Everybody wants a happy ending, right?

5. Perhaps some of the previous bachelorettes will be asked to come back for this season. I wonder if Brad will have a say in any of that.  What about Peyton or Gwen?  Could be interesting.  Hey, if this season works out, might as well bring back Jillian for another shot at finding love.

Until January, we'll just have to prepare ourselves for what's ahead.  Dancing with the Stars will be interesting to watch once the clearly horrible dancers are gone.  I LOVE watching Jennifer Grey perform despite her plastic surgery.  Far more exciting than whether Brad will find is love is whether Jennifer Grey is going to do the lift from Dirty Dancing in one of her performances.

TGIF!! Have a great weekend!!