Chris Harrison Compares Peter Weber’s ‘Bachelor’ Season to ‘The Jerry Springer Show’
Chris Harrison wasn’t kidding when he said that Peter Weber’s Bachelor season was the most dramatic season ever. But, according to fans, not in a good way.
The drama of Peter Weber’s season of ‘The Bachelor’
Weber was criticized heavily for how he navigated his season. Fans called him indecisive and immature. Some said it was clear that he wasn’t at all ready to get engaged. But the pilot forgives himself for his behavior on the show. He says, until you’re the bachelor, no one could ever know the kind of pressure and stress that comes with the gig.
“I can understand being indecisive, because dating 30 women is not easy and that will never be easy and no one is prepared for that,” he told Entertainment Tonight on February 5. “So, I totally give myself grace for being indecisive in a moment that’s so confusing and so tough and it’s kind of rushed. You have deadlines, you have to let go of people, and that I’m OK with.”
That, and Weber pointed out that he wasn’t seeing everything that Bachelor Nation was seeing. All he knew were his interactions with contestants.
“I’m not gonna say I feel like it was hidden from me, but I will fully accept and own that, yeah, there were a lot of moments where I was indecisive,” he said. “But again, I give myself all the grace in the world ’cause it’s a tough situation to be in.”
In addition to Weber’s actions in the leading role, The Bachelor audience also didn’t care for the pilot’s contestants, calling them too young and mean. Some fans suggested that there wasn’t a clear villain in the season because all of the contestants were villains.
One woman in particular, Victoria Fuller, was the face of a lot of the season’s drama. She lost a group date prize because it was discovered that she’d modeled for a brand that uses White Lives Matter symbolism and phrasing. She was accused of bullying her classmates in school. And she was accused of breaking up her friends’ marriages by sleeping with their husbands.
Peter Weber’s season of ‘The Bachelor’ was like one long episode of ‘The Jerry Springer Show’
So when Chris Harrison likens Weber’s season to The Jerry Springer Show, it’s not difficult to see why.
The host did a video for BuzzFeed where he read “thirst tweets” about himself to promote The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart. One of them read: “Chris Harrison is really just sexy Jerry Springer.”
“Yeah. You know, this last season with Peter I felt like I was just a chair throw away from Jerry Springer so that might be more on point than I hope,” he replied.
It’s clear that The Bachelor franchise took the audience’s concerns to heart because they cast 39-year-old Clare Crawley as the next bachelorette. While many of her contestants were over 10 years younger than her, the network is currently doing some recasting to ensure a more mature cast for Crawley. Hopefully, with an older set of leads and contestants, much of the mind-numbing drama will fall by the wayside.
