Andi Dorfman's Bachelorette season started off on a high note (yay, she's not Juan Pablo!) but last night ratings for The Bachelorette dipped to a series low. That's right, not a season low, but an all-time lowest-low. As host Chris Harrison might put it, "It brought in the most dramatically low ratings in the history of The Bachelorette." The numbers for the reality love show came in at just 1.4 or about 5.6 million viewers, which was down 30% from the season premiere.
That's pretty rough considering last night's episode was one of the season's more dramatic ones. When we saw the promo for the season, about half of the crazy antics shown were used up in this episode by Craig's drunken escapade. Next week's sneak peek shows us more of the promo drama being used up, so where is the show to go from here? It's a known fact that as the show goes on and more of the "not there for the right reasons" people are booted, the show calms down and gets more about cute lovey-dovey cliches and less about wild & crazy times. So if the crazy drunk contestant debacle can't attract viewers, how will any of the future less-dramatic shows get people to watch?
Even former Bachelor Juan Pablo, at the height of his homophobic comments scandal, brought in more viewers than sweet Andi could. The episode right after he said having a gay Bachelor would be too perverted for TV brought in a rating of 2.3 which is 7.9 million viewers. Is that because Juan Pablo's season was more "dramatic" or was it because people tend to tune in to further critique what they already hate?
Either way it's bad news for Andi and for ABC if ratings continue to decline as the show burns through its dramatic moments. Will this be the season that makes ABC pull the plug on reality dating? I actually hope not, because they were just finally starting to get good at picking interesting Bachelorettes. It would be a shame for a strong, decisive, and feisty woman like Andi to be the one they fault for getting the show cancelled when we had to suffer through boring seasons at the hands of Bachelorettes like Emily Maynard and Desiree Hartsock (who still racked up higher ratings than Andi).
But maybe next week's two-night Sunday and Monday drama fest will be enough to bring some viewers back to the program.
We'll just have to wait and see.
Image: gurl
