The Drunken Bachelorette

For a couple years I worked in post-production of The Bachelorette.  It was as miserable as it sounds.  Watching unedited interviews was tedious and made one lose their faith in humanity.  It was a little interesting hearing other people talk about how it came out in editing.  (I never watched a full episode of the final product,) and to see it parodied on Burning Love, which starred some of the former members of The State.

But one season there was a bit of enjoyment to distract from the tedium; the year the bachelorette was an alcoholic.

The producers always had wine on the set to add to the phony romantic setting.  There were wine glasses often scattered around set, and a glass of wine was always poured for the subject in the interviews, as well as one for the camera person and the producer.  This one bachelorette, I can't remember her name, always had her fill.

She always finished her glass before the interview was over and typically asked for more, which she often got.  However, one day they were slow and bringing her wine, so she reached over and drank from the producer's glass.  She emptied it.  So she reached over and grabbed the camera person's glass.  She emptied that.  All along her voice became slurred and she became more and more belligerent.

Soon she refused to answer any more questions until they gave her more wine.  They said she'd have some after the interview. The producer asked another question and the bachelorette went silent.  They kept trying to get her to answer the question, and she answered back by tapping on her glass.

That was the one season I actually tried to watch some episodes.  It was so amusing.  Most of the time you couldn't tell that the editors re-edited what everyone was saying to match the narrative of the show.  They had even made it look like one woman quit because she had been scorned when the real reason was because the producers were trying to make it look like she needed a man when in actuality she was a very capable mountain climber who was looking for companionship, not someone to take care of her.

But with the drunken bachelorette, it was hard to hide.  She would slip from speaking coherently to slurring her words to back to normal to sloshed.  You could simply watch and see what had been taped later in the evening and what had been earlier.