COMMENT:
Thank God for The Bachelorette. It dates from a yonder age when life was good and kind. Even now, in this time of the plague creeping upon our houses, it's still with us, a reassuring and familiar presence, content to go about its innocent business of providing the nation with an index of what it means to be a New Zealand man in love.
And yet it's impossible to not see the show as some kind of metaphor for what's going on all around us right now. The premise is that bachelors compete for the affections of two eligible women, who continually narrow the field by sending contestants home. And so on one level what we have is a situation where the two women, Hottie Lesina and Hottie Lily, are employers who sorrowfully have to make most of their staff redundant. The Bachelorette is a study in job loss. It doesn't get more contemporary than that.
READ MORE:
• Premium - Steve Braunias: Adios, los amigos Bachelorette NZ drongos
• Premium - Steve Braunias: Tolstoy's shadow over The Bachelorette
• Steve Braunias: The lord of the bros in the Bachelorette
• Steve Braunias: Episode 19 of The Bachelorette, NZ's longest-running show
But it does get more anxious than that, because on another level it's a study of death. What we have on The Bachelorette is a declining population. The statistics are bad. Eight contestants left, the series three-quarters of the way through – the day is coming when Hottie Lesina and Hottie Lily, those beautiful reapers, will kill off everyone except their chosen mate. Love in the time of Covid-19: it's the survival of the hottest.