For One Brief Moment, Reality TV Made Me Believe In Humanity. Then You-Know-What Happened.

I watch a lot of TV for this gig. We're talking a sickening amount. I stayed up for Netflix's bizarro, live Chris Rock special, which you forgot happened this year. I laid my gaze upon all the Star Warses. Damnit, I recapped Hijack. (Yeah, you also forgot that the Idris Elba Isn't Having This Bullshit on a Plane Show happened this year, too.). 1.5 speed on Netflix is often a friend. At the end of it all, especially around this time of the year, I feel... I won't say hopeless, exactly. But when I hit the third hour of a Loki binge, a tablespoon or three of acid disperses into the pit of my stomach, and I start pondering the humanity we've lost in the streaming wars.

And yet! A few times a year, my deteriorating Roku flashes something that makes me feel a little bit better about the state of storytelling, and maybe even about the world. I don't mean all the usual torchbearers of quality control—The Bear, HBO Sunday nights, Kate Winslet. It has to land as somewhat of a surprise, a la Jury Duty's rigorous, televised test of the unproblematic Ronald Gladden.

Aside from the Sonic the Hedgehog-loving Mr. Gladden, one other tall individual swept me off my feet this year: Gerry Turner. When ABC announced The Golden Bachelor—an elderly spin on its (overly) long-running dating series—it felt like the latest mass weapon of destruction in the war Love Is Blind started. Then we met Gerry, a preternaturally and charismatic kind, man, who truly did say the right thing at the right time, every time. When the series debuted earlier this fall, he imbued—what's this?—humanity into an incredibly inhumane series. The Golden Bachelor's depiction of love, grief, and partnership in old age inspired praise for everyone involved—especially Turner.

Then, it turned out that he might be a dick.

On Wednesday, just a day before The Golden Bachelor's finale, The Hollywood Reporter published an occasionally disturbing and more often hilarious story alleging that Turner has presented an untrue version of himself. The reported misdeeds include: chasing a new relationship a month after his wife's death, chiding a girlfriend for gaining weight and promptly dumping her, and reusing some of his sweet nothings between dates. And, uh, an ex also alleged that Turner had a habit of Venmo-requesting half of the bill before the date, just so he could make a show of paying for the check at the end of the night. Diabolical!

By now there's no strangeness to the feeling learning that a favorite famous person turns out to be slightly (or very) problematic, but something about these Gerry revelations felt different.

I hardly had time to think about why. Later that night, I watched my other feel-good-about-the-world series: Squid Game: The Challenge. I'll save you the long spiel for this one, but know this: In the reality competition series, which is basically engineered to breed hate, jealousy, and resentment, the players found out how to rig some of the games so that everyone had a shot. Civil behavior with $4.56 million at stake? Who knew! They hit the glass bridge, which tasks players with trudging through a sky-high passageway where every other step is made of breakable glass. In the game, Ashley Tolbert, AKA Player 278, made a play-to-win choice that led to the (fake) death of the fan-favorite dude who brought his mom along for the ride. That's a lot, I know. But trust that it was the talk of social media that night.

At this point, you're surely gearing up for some retort a la, But reality TV is always fake, dummy!

OK, sure. We watch reality TV to lose ourselves at, say, Malta's Grand Harbour Marina, where a bunch of Below Deck goofballs had a couple-dozen tequila shots. Or see the Selling Sunset people sell—what do they sell? Sunsets? I don't watch that one. But when, in any of these algorithmic spurts, someone dares to display a morsel of human decency, it's all too tempting to believe it's real, because you're ostensibly privy to something that happened in real life. If it happens on your TV—this act of kindness, or even someone on House Hunters loving the heck out of their new three-bedroom ranch—then maybe it could happen in your life, too.

And if something nice and honest and true happened in your life? Well, that'd be pretty nice.

These two relatively minuscule happenings—I can't even call them controversies—which the public will most definitely forget by Monday morning? They bummed me out despite knowing that they shouldn't have. They reminded me of what reality actually is—that when things feel too good to be true, they probably are, and that the biggest smile in the room is probably flashing just one floor below the biggest skeleton. Sad! I know. I feel I was dumped by Gerry, too, seconds after he sent me hurtling through a glass floor.

I have just one more thing to say and then I must get back to recapping The Real Housewives of Burlington, Vermont: Ronald Gladden, if you're reading this, this message is for you: If you do anything that suggests that you are anything other than a simple man with too many flannels and a DraftKings account, I will take your ass to Carbone and Venmo request you all $34 for your spicy rigatoni before you walk in the damn door.

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