Well, here's the Golden Bachelor

The aged-up version of ABC's hit franchise has cast 71-year-old widower Gerry Turner as its first ever silver fox

By Emma Keates  |  July 17, 2023 | 5:10pm
Aux News Gary
Well, here's the Golden Bachelor
Gerry Turner Photo: ABC/Brian Bowen Smith

Without writers or actors, television’s future looks very bleak. And by “future,” we actually mean exactly what it looks like right now, namely a wasteland of “strike-proof” (per The Hollywood Reporter) reality programming that’s starting to sound a little more like a Rick And Morty interdimensional cable bit or fake 30 Rock slate than anything that should actually be on our screens.

Like: what if The Bachelor, but old? Can non-20-something Revolve models actually be manipulated to tears by producers find love? Will the prospective bachelorettes in the house be able to bring reading material other than the bible or, like, call their families? Forget about your Severance predictions and Yellowjackets theories, because these are the types of questions we get to look forward to in a Hollywood devoid of the creatives that actually make it worthwhile in the first place.

(We know the concept of The Golden Bachelor has been around for a while—the franchise first started posting casting calls all the way back in 2020. Still, especially considering this long gestation period, the timing sure does feel convenient, doesn’t it?)

Anyway, it’s some guy named Gerry Turner. The newest/oldest bachelor is a 71-year-old widower and father of two from Indiana, who believes it’s “never too late to fall in love again.” He was announced today in a segment on Good Morning America, where he revealed that his two daughters, Angie and Jenny, encouraged him to apply for the show. Gerry had previously been married to his high school sweetheart, Toni, who fell ill and died in 2017 after the couple had been married for 43 years.

“For a while it was like, I was having a hard time figuring out if she would be okay. But we always told each other when one of us goes, we want the other to be happy,” Gerry said of his late wife. “She’s up there rooting [for me]. She’s saying, ‘Yeah, Gary. Do this.’”

While an actually thoughtful and conscientious show about situations like Gerry’s and the general senior dating pool would be a welcome and refreshing bit of representation, we can’t say we’re holding out too much hope for the franchise whose producers once famously asked a contestant if she missed her family to get her to cry on camera, and then played off her waterworks as woe over losing the love of her life. But we’d certainly be happy to be proven wrong.

 
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