45 comments

The Bachelor Canada: Will you be watching?

Posted by & filed under Other / Canada.

the-bachelor-canada

As early as this Fall, on CityTV, we will be hear­ing the infa­mous phrase, “Will you accept this maple leaf rose?” as the Cana­dian ver­sion of The Bach­e­lor sets to air!

I’ll admit that, with the excep­tion of a cou­ple of sea­sons, one of the pro­grams that my PVR is set to record is The Bach­e­lor. How­ever, in recent years, espe­cially this cur­rent one with that knob, Ben Fla­jnik, it’s one of those shows that I have on in the back­ground while I do other things. ;)

I’ve just grown tired of the for­mat, fan­tas­ti­cal dates that resem­ble the Travel Chan­nel, the cast of char­ac­ters who are far more con­cerned with screen time, and the list goes on.

YES, I realise that it’s a real­ity show, but there was a time that I was naive enough to believe that one can actu­ally go on tele­vi­sion to find love. Either that or The Bach­e­lor used to be bet­ter, fea­tur­ing more gen­uine peo­ple, who were more believable.

In any event, even though I watch the Amer­i­can ver­sion of The Bach­e­lor, I don’t think I can stick it through a com­plete sea­son of The Bach­e­lor…Canada. I may ini­tially tune in, out of curios­ity, but I just think it would be boring/cheesy/wannabe American!

(If any­thing, 1 pos­i­tive thing about the Cana­dian ver­sion is that there *may* be more vis­i­ble minori­ties rep­re­sented? Then again, I could be wrong!)

And besides, I despise all the Cana­dian ver­sions of Amer­i­can shows like: Do You Think You Can Dance Canada, Cana­dian Idol, Canada’s Next Top Model, etc.

I just think that Cana­di­ans are bet­ter off pro­duc­ing their own, unique shows. And no, I am not talk­ing about Heart­land, Arc­tic Air, or any of those other shows that I can­not relate to as a sub­ur­ban­ite, liv­ing in a big city!

Dis­re­gard­ing my bias, will you give The Bach­e­lor Canada a shot?

45 Responses to “The Bachelor Canada: Will you be watching?”

  1. Sally

    I haven’t watched the USA ver­sion. So will I watch the Cana­dian ver­sion? No. Its just not a show that has any of my inter­est at all.

  2. pettyfan

    as a gen­eral comment…I find it hard to watch ‘sec­ond gen­er­a­tions” TV shows..Originals are always so much better…

    I like to watch Amer­i­can Pick­ers.. Can’t stand Cana­dian pick­ers… Wipe­out was and still is a great show… I didn’t even make through the 1 episode of the CDN version…

    But the US ver­sion of “Worst dri­ver” was a farce.. at least when i watched Canada’s worst driver…I knew I would learn something

  3. test

    To be fair a lot of amer­i­can shows are not orig­i­nals (Big Brother, Sur­vivor) includ­ing one of the shows you men­tioned (Amer­i­can Idol based on the UK show Pop Idol), but i guess since we are exposed to the amer­i­can ver­sions when it does come to canada it is old news. Per­son­ally I’m still inter­ested in see­ing the Under­cover Boss Canada version.

    And to answer your ques­tion i prob­a­bly won’t be watch­ing, not inter­ested in the bach­e­lor (cana­dian or non cana­dian) at all :)

  4. Melanie T

    Might tune in to see where their dates will be located. The travel aspect of the show and the fact that I’ve crossed Canada might make watch­ing the show inter­est­ing, if they go some­where I’ve been.

  5. Kimmie

    Yep! Can’t wait! Love the show in gen­eral and hope that Can­dian con­tes­tants will bring the same amount of drama. :-P

  6. Alyssa

    Nope!

    Also, I don’t see why “sub­ur­ban­ites” can’t relate to shows like Heart­land or Ice Road Truck­ers. I’m sure a good chunk of peo­ple have inter­ests in truck­ing, or a mix of drama and horses.

  7. Jenny

    I agree with pet­ty­fan — cana­dian ver­sions of amer­i­can tv shows just never work.. I don’t think I will be watch­ing. With that said , I do occa­sion­ally watch The Bach­e­lor though

  8. Sally

    I use to love Sex in the city. I don’t live in the city, and I ain’t hav­ing sex (hah to the last part)

    But where you live shouldn’t mat­ter what show you watch, or can watch. Just cause I live in a small town doesn’t mean I even like or watch cor­ner gas.

  9. Stephania

    As per Heart­land, Arc­tic Air, Cor­ner Gas, etc. These shows sorta piss me off ’cause they’re CBC-produced shows, which is sup­ported by our taxes, and I have NO IDEA who these shows appeal to.

    True, I don’t hafta live in the Prairies or up North or even East Coast, but c’mon, what % of the Cana­dian pop­u­la­tion watches these shows?? They just have no appeal to the gen­eral population!

  10. minimusiclover

    What? Why are they bring­ing the bach­e­lor when they know that every­one in Canada has dreamed of being on the Amaz­ing Race? That would be just amaz­ing if I could see Amaz­ing Race here…

  11. test

    for cor­ner gas i was under the impres­sion it was a really pop­u­lar show in canada… i remem­ber hear­ing it got picked up to be showed in the US and there were talks of it turn­ing into a movie too.…

  12. SeriousSally

    No Bach­e­lor Canada for me…don’t mean to offend fans of The Bach­e­lor but I find these shows really cheeeesy. The only cheese I’m inter­ested in, is the ones they’ll be cook­ing up on Top Chef Canada Sea­son 2. Now there’s a U.S. knock­off competitive/reality show I will be look­ing for­ward to this spring.

  13. Natalka

    Never watched the US Bach­e­lor, but I might tune in to the Cana­dian one to see what it was like.

  14. Teresa

    I’ll prob­a­bly watch a cou­ple of episodes out of curios­ity. It might be more fun from a Cana­dian point of view. But I’m so glad to hear some­one else thinks Ben is a knob!! lol Plus I checked out a spoiler site and I know who he pro­poses to, and, it’s just horrible!!

  15. Stephania

    @Teresa — OMG! Who?? I just can’t be both­ered to read the spoiler site ’cause I don’t like how he writes.

  16. Jesi

    Smart Canuck…Will you accept this tose for a per­fectly worded post????? I really hon­estly could have writ­ten this myself!!!!

  17. addismom

    I defi­nately pref­fered CANADAS Ver­sion of COVER ME CANADA over AMERICAN IDOL!! I could never watch Amer­i­can Idol, but enjoyed Cover Me Canada!! It defi­nately didnt suck, not if you heard WHOS ARMY sing, they won the whole thg.. My cousin is the lead singer in this band, and I know first hand that this show was well put together.. It was a blast to be at live!! Sup­port our shows.… After all, the amer­i­can ver­sions are really bad com­pared to the british ver­sion they copy them from!! Of course Canada is the last to copy, so I was glad to see it switched up a fair bit!!

  18. Eric

    I can’t stand “real­ity” shows. Clos­est I’ll ever watch are the faux-reality, like Trailer Park Boys.

  19. MoTaffy

    The Bach­e­lor — Canada prob­a­bly will not be on my radar at all.

    re: Post 14 You’ll be happy to know Cor­ner Gas was a CTV show. None of the tax dol­lars that went to CBC should have been involved there. ;)

    I don’t watch Heart­land or Arc­tic Air but don’t mind that they’re pro­duced. ANYONE who watched EVERYTHING filmed would never sleep or get out­doors. Ya need some non-compelling stuff so you can get around to the dust­ing and laun­dry. ;)

  20. Cigale

    Love your article!

    PST! Some of these Amer­i­can shows are actu­ally British Shows.

    I love Quebec’s ver­sion of the British “Come Dine with me” where 5 peo­ple take turn cook­ing for the oth­ers. They each get a sum of money to buy what is needed for their sup­per and the one with the high­est score (the 4 guests can each allot a max­i­mum of 10 points, but rarely do) pock­ets $2000. Now I can’t wait for “Un souper presque par­fait” to go beyond the bor­ders of Que­bec and have us dis­cover peo­ple from dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties. So what do peo­ple from Canada cook when they want to impress?

  21. onshopper

    Mur­doch Mys­ter­ies, Repub­lic of Doyle and Lit­tle Mosque on the Prairie — love them all and I’m not a Mus­lim, liv­ing in early 20th c. Newfoundland!

  22. Theresa

    Nope, I work with enough catty des­per­ate women, don’t need to watch more on tv.

  23. Mia

    I will def. be tun­ing in to The Bach­e­lor Canada! The Bach­e­lor right now is one of my favorite shows, and I ded­i­cate 2 hours every Mon­day to watch it! How­ever, I am not get­ting my hopes up about the Cana­dian ver­sion, since Cana­dian ver­sions are always much more “lower end”… but, I will still tune in :)

  24. Jen

    I really wish they’d keep these shows in their orig­i­nal coun­tries and stop pol­lut­ing Cana­dian airwaves…

    So no, I won’t be watch­ing. I don’t have TV any­way. Save a lot of money that way.

  25. Roy

    Oh yeah, eh! Every­one will be watch­ing this, eh. I hope the women will be much more whole­some and less plas­tic looking.

  26. Dawn Marie

    Nope, no interest.

    We love watch­ing Mur­doch Mys­ter­ies which is a uniquely Cana­dian show which is extremely pop­u­lar in Europe. I can’t relate to that show…1800’s mys­tery tak­ing place in Toronto…uh, no…but I LOVE that it’s Cana­dian and not an Amer­i­can drama that was picked up by CTV or City.…BTW, after this spring run on City, Mur­doch Mys­ter­ies has been picked up by CBC for next fall…

  27. Ralph

    Jesi, thanks but no thanks for your “tose.” Hope­fully this is a mis­spelling of “rose” rather than the alter­na­tive. I, for one, would only ask that as a poster, you refrain from sub­mit­ting details of your sex life (or lack thereof) on the site. Per­haps it’s time to power down the com­puter and put the coupon-cutting scis­sors back in the drawer.

  28. Jenn

    No, will not be watch­ing. Do not like real­ity shows in gen­eral. The Bach­e­lor, no mat­ter how they spin it, is one of the worst.

  29. joline

    I just heard about this last night.…I hate this show to begin with and would never even con­tem­plate watch­ing the Cana­dian ver­sion of it. What a waste of time, IMHO.

  30. test

    Sally can you explain the mod­er­a­tion thing on SC.. both my posts were “awati­ing mod­er­a­tion” all i said was that cor­ner gas was pop­u­lar, noth­ing i could think of was ques­tion­able about the post so not sure why it is await­ing mod­er­a­tion. Is the mod­er­a­tion added to ran­dom posts, cer­tain posters, cer­tain key­words, etc?

    Thanks.

  31. luv deals

    I’d like to see a Cana­dian Ver­sion of Amaz­ing Race!!! I’d be all over apply­ing for that! Or watch­ing it!

  32. onshopper

    I’m look­ing for­ward to ‘Canada’s Got Tal­ent” but hope that the judges take heed from the bad judg­ing on So you think yu can dance Canada and give good, solid advice. Mar­tin Short back in Canada — now that’s a good thing!

  33. Heather

    I want to watch it but with­out pay­ing cable TV, I can not see how I can watch it, can some­one out there tell me how…?

  34. kit

    really? get a life peo­ple… go out­side, go vol­un­teer, go read a book, go spend time with your kids or par­ents..
    prob­a­bly about a mil­lion things you could do that stim­u­late your brain, get you in shape or learn some­thing mean­ing­ful ! :)

  35. Linda

    I agree with you but Top Chef Canada was so fun to watch! At least the com­peti­tors were inter­est­ing to watch.

  36. Funkymunky

    @kit what hap­pened with bal­anc­ing watch­ing TV and doing other things?

  37. Roy

    Bal­ance would be fine, but is that what we have achieved? Is the time spent exer­cis­ing bal­anced with the time spent watch­ing tele­vi­sion? Are our healthy food choices bal­anced with the sugar– and fat-laden snacks we con­sume on a reg­u­lar basis? Maybe not you specif­i­cally, but as a soci­ety, our oppor­tu­ni­ties for self-gratification seem to be ful­filled with no abate­ment. I think “kit” is sug­gest­ing we could do bet­ter. I agree. I will not defend tele­vi­sion against crit­i­cism when I could be sid­ing with read­ing a book, vol­un­teer­ing, or spend­ing time with my kids.

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