Sure, Alex showed up with an engagement ring, but pretty much all he proposed was that he and Amanda hang out more often. “Before we walk down the aisle together,” he said, “I want to make sure we feel the same way about each other outside the fancy world of mansions and limousines.”
So was this all a big scam? Not exactly. From the very start, the show’s producers carefully avoided saying whether or not there would be a wedding on the final episode. The Harvard-educated heartthrob was under no contractual obligation to ask one of the women to marry him, which was ABC’s insurance against a “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire”-style disaster. Still, viewers tuned in week after week to watch Alex whittle down his prospects on the road to picking a perfect life partner. The most dramatic moment came on Monday night’s episode, when the bachelor dismissed moral Shannon, who wouldn’t leave the mansion without hearing from Alex why he had dumped her.
Last night, Alex took the two remaining women (Amanda and Trista) home to meet his parents and then-seemingly still torn-had one more date with each of them. Prickly Trista, who’d played hard-to-get the entire time, finally told Alex she had feelings for him and was willing to fight for him. Warm Amanda, who wore her emotions on her sleeve, told the bachelor that she was falling in love with him. Would Alex choose the standoffish or the sweet one? Millions of single women across America took bets. Then in the final moments of the show, Amanda got the guy. Alex kneeled and asked her to … continue dating him.
Did it really matter that there wasn’t a wedding? In the end, everyone got what they wanted. Alex got a girlfriend, but without serious strings. Amanda nabbed a guy for whom she’d developed feelings-plus plenty of free publicity. And viewers got yet another well-produced night of drama involving human beings humiliating themselves on TV. But perhaps the network was luckiest of all. ABC lured in 18 million sets of eyeballs, and should Alex and Amanda learn they actually can’t stand each other “outside the fancy world of mansions and limousines” and blow off the wedding, the network won’t look quite as bad. After all, “The Bachelor 2: The Annulment” doesn’t have a very nice ring to it.
