One could argue that The Bachelor, the ABC reality juggernaut that has reified Christian-lite dating norms for 27 seasons, should be considered scripted content. The connections can be genuine, and the feelings often real, but the situations are contrived and manipulated, a pioneering brand of deliberately saccharine, hokey and ridiculous in the name of love and for the sake of entertainment. Watching The Bachelor and its spinoffs, as I occasionally have over its two-plus-decade run, is to be baffled, frustrated, annoyed and ultimately hooked. The show, with its in-group rituals and shocking sincerity, casts a strange spell over its contestants and its viewers; if you stick through one episode, you’re liable to start caring about what happens.
No such spell exists for The Wrong Paris, Netflix’s latest attempt to build an in-house Hallmark Channel, in which Miranda Cosgrove plays a single woman who goes on a reality dating show for what Bachelor Nation would call “the wrong reasons”. No offense to the Hallmark Channel, which at its best can be laughably unserious fun. But The Wrong Paris, written by Nicole Henrich and directed by Janeen Damian, somehow serves the synthetic sugar of both The Bachelor and the Hallmark movie without any sweetness. The formula is there, but not the flavor, nor the drop of derangement – like, say, a hot snowman brought to life – required to beat the Netflix allegations of low-quality, lowest-common-denominator stuff.
