‘Bachelor in Paradise 3’: Chris Harrison explains ‘After Paradise’ absence
When we first saw earlier this season that Chris Harrison was not the host of the “Bachelor in Paradise” aftershow “After Paradise” our immediate response was shock given that this is a guy who has represented this franchise through better or worse (and there has definitely been plenty of “worse” over the years). Without him, the show loses some of his identity.
Given that we like to envision Harrison as the sort of all-knowing, all-controlling czar of the franchise, our assumption was that he had turned down “After Paradise” due to him hosting “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and a possible schedule conflict. As it turns out, that’s not exactly the case! In a post on Twitter, Harrison confessed that it was “not his call” that he would be missing out on the show this year. This is confirmed further by an E! News source who explained that Harrison was rather disappointed that he was not a part of the show:
“This is the first Bachelor show that he hasn’t been involved with. He’s really upset. Chris had every intention of being involved with the show.”
The explanation as to why the show went in a different direction is because Harrison knows where all the bodies are buried (metaphorically; there’s no actual murderer on Paradise), and the network felt it would be more interesting to have a fan a la Michelle Collins leading the show who doesn’t already know much of the behind-the-scenes details. We do understand where some of this logic is coming from, however, flawed it may be.
Here’s the happy-medium idea that clearly, nobody else over at ABC thought about: Instill Collins as the host, but then make Harrison a panelist. Therefore, you’re getting his insight, while at the same time giving the show a little bit of a separate tone without the all-knowing man behind the curtain at the helm.
Either way, “After Paradise” is still a very flawed show with way too many guests and contrived scenarios. Our feeling is you have Harrison, Sean Lowe, Collins, and then maybe one or two guests over the whole order. There’s a serious “too many cooks” situation going on there, minus the crazy cat-puppet who shows up in that video.
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