After years of planning, ABC has finally unleashed the power of The Golden Bachelor, which takes the already-weird-if-you-think-about-it-for-five-seconds premise of The Bachelor (i.e., please marry someone you know only in the context of your shared time on a reality television show) and applies it to the 60-plus set. Much has already been written about the show’s main star, 72-year-old Indiana restaurateur Gerry Turner, and his affable, widower-looking-for-love nature. Now, though, we’ve had a chance to see Turner in action—including finding out that he can get really embarrassed if you say “fuck” at him a bunch of times.
Amazingly, this happened, not in the context of the internet, but in the show itself, in an early moment with contestant Sandra Mason (“Retired Executive Assistant,” 75). In one of the more memorable moments from the show’s premiere this week, Sandra, who honestly seems like a pretty fun hang, suggests that Turner join her for a “zen chant”—and then proceeds to slowly chant “fuck” at him, repeatedly. Turner, whose dedication to being game for anything is one of the show’s better assets, plays along, eventually tossing in a chant of his own.
But he was not thrilled about it, apparently. That’s per a post-mortem interview Turner gave to THR today, in which he ran through some of his Night One decisions. (As well as a reminder that shows like this end up filming “evenings” until 7:30 a.m., explaining some of the derangement that tends to end up on the screen.) When asked about the chant, Turner noted that, “I was embarrassed by that. I kept hoping that she was going to say a different word, and it repeated and repeated. So yeah, enough said.”
That being said, while Sandra’s calming potty-mouth didn’t win her the vaunted first impressions rose—that went to Faith Martin (“High School Teacher,” 61) and her cool motorcycle —it doesn’t appear to have been a dealbreaker, either: She lived to chant another night, getting a rose, while six other women were sent home.
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