‘The Bachelor’: Addressing the Juan Pablo Galavis aftermath following new episode
There are a number of ways that you can choose to handle a backlash; for “The Bachelor,” apparently the way in which they are deciding to do it is by burying their head in the sand, and acting like nothing this weekend ever happened.
It was not interesting or surprising that the show itself chose to not address the comments that Juan Pablo Galavis said this past weekend regarding if we would want to see a gay / bisexual Bachelor someday, especially since the show has already been edited together. Plus, there is a small contingent of people out there who had not heard the comments, and the last thing the show wanted to do was start telling them about it.
But, what was most surprising to us was the complete radio silence from so many other people related to the show. Chris Harrison didn’t do any customary post-show interview this week, and didn’t mention the controversy at all in his blog on Entertainment Weekly afterwards. The same goes for many individual producers, who are typically so quick to post on almost anything and everything else related to the show. It’s clear to us that there has probably been some sort of memo passed around to stand behind a previous statement production made, and to not talk about it any further.
One person who has stood up for Juan Pablo is contestant Chantel Forrest, who, despite already being eliminated, told TMZ that he would never say anything intentionally that would be offensive to any demographic: “I was not offended by his comments at all. They wouldn’t have changed my opinion of him. I wouldn’t change anything.”
In the end, this will all be probably ignored by most; if you watched the show last night, you’ll probably keep watching the rest of the way. The next time that we could see it being an issue is the “Women Tell All” special, where there will probably be a group of women who support him, and then a group that tries to get into it with him over it in an effort to either speak their mind or try to get some airtime.
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Photo: ABC