Re: Nick Viall Bachelorette 10 - Fan Forum - Updates - Discussion - Thread #11

[Norcalgal]

Can you post a picture Chloe?

[Guest]

12 SEPTEMBER 2014
The Villain Edit
By Kelly Bedard // TV

"...But all those other people at least flirted with bad behaviour on the show- their edits seemed far less artificial. Nick didn’t in a million years deserve what happened to him on The Bachelorette. I don’t mean getting his heart smashed to a million pieces- no one deserves that but any Bachelorette contestant has to anticipate the possibility- I mean the fact that Nick happened to be in a season of The Bachelorette where almost nothing happened, so the producers threw him under the bus. There were the two minor skirmishes surrounding Andrew (one actually minor and one made minor because Marquel doesn’t do drama) and the Eric confrontation that the producers were forced to play down, but otherwise Andi’s path towards the proposal platform was the smoothest ride I’ve seen maybe ever.

The closest comparison I can think of would be to Emily’s season (one of my least favourites). The whole season seemed to point towards an Emily-Arie happy ending: they hit it off instantly and had chemistry that far outstripped every other relationship on the show; when she was in crisis, she immediately looked for him to comfort her. A dramatic last minute turn sent her into the arms of rich hipster Jef and left her hunky racecar driver heartbroken and confused. In the time between the finale and After the Final Rose, downtrodden Arie went so far as to fly to North Carolina and show up at Emily’s house unannounced. I’d say that’s pretty much the same story as poor Nick, except that Nick and Andi’s connection (at least what we saw of it) was more emotional and intellectual than Emily and Arie’s (the line on Emily’s season was that her head wanted Sean, her heart wanted Jef, and her body wanted Arie though I would argue that her heart wanted Arie at least a little bit too). I think Nick lost a stronger relationship than Arie, and I think he was led on a lot more, but the story was largely the same. Except for two things. 1) Emily chose a guy who got along with Arie and was able to talk to him man-to-man when he showed up in NC; 2) the producers wanted to keep their Bachelor options open so they could choose between Sean and Arie when the time came.

That last thing is the key. Nick is far too reserved and definitely too skeptical to be the new Bachelor, and the producers knew that right away. He’s also not for all markets like Arie or Sean, meaning that to love Nick is a highly specific thing and not a universal reaction that would transfer well through the screen (Chris was the guy like that this season, though I’m still a little disappointed that they didn’t choose Marquel). Even Andi had trouble vocalizing why she was so drawn to Nick (which I loved- it was so intrinsic and personal). And in the rarest ofBachelorette feats, I can recall only one shot wherein Nick was treated by the show like a piece of meat (that slow pan up his torso at the start of the finale; you could feel shortsighted girls all over the country starting to change their minds about him, briefly). And all Bachelors are treated like a piece of meat; it’s in the job description. So Nick had no shot at being the next Bachelor (nor do I think he would ever want to be) and that meant he was fair game for destruction (you’d think his final 2 status would have saved him but Courtney and Vienna both won their seasons as the resident villain).

So even though Arie had done the Exact same thing, when Nick tried to contact Andi after the season, it was spun as stalkerish (from what I can tell, he merely called Chris Harrison to ask if he could speak to Andi and she happened to be on vacation at the time; the way it was presented and repeated during the live finale it seemed as though he had followed her to Mexico!); when the other guys (notably guys Twitter reveals to be his pretty close friends) got drunk and picked an incoherent fight with him, it was given a disproportionate amount of promotion and screentime. If Nick wasn’t getting a Villain’s Edit, that awkward scene would have likely been a negative spin on one of the other guys for being drunk and belligerent, or it would have been played for laughs.

I fully acknowledge my bias; Nick is my kind of person. I find his soft-spoken intellectual thing engaging. I like his intensity and don’t mind that he’s occasionally “salty” (at least he doesn’t randomly start yelling when someone tries to give him a lie detector test, Josh!). I actually like his scarves. I’m more than willing to throw a little extra empathy his way because he often chooses the wrong words or struggles fitting in. But I honestly believe that I could have seen through the shady edit even if he wasn’t my kind of person. And I honestly think it would have bothered me just as much (Evidence: I’m inclined to believe JJ but I’m still uncomfortable with Andrew being indicted for racism on shifty evidence. Though I actually think Andrew was given a fairly generous edit, especially considering how much time he was given to explain himself during Men Tell All, a courtesy JJ did not receive). I find it genuinely troubling how willing most people seem to be to take the cues of careful editing and ominous music. Editors can remove endearing comments and place ambiguous comments into incriminating contexts and include awkward shots of someone standing off by themselves, but they can’t fabricate chemistry and they can’t put words in people’s mouths and they can’t change the look in someone’s eye. I wonder how the people who think Nick is creepy were watching the same show as I was.

Over the course of the full season (and, yes, even that painful After the Final Rose), Nick didn’t say or do a single thing that I didn’t completely understand. He did and said some things that were unadvisable, but nothing that didn’t come from a clearly well-intentioned place. That “make love with me” comment, for example- you know, the one that everyone is using as the final nail in the poor guy’s coffin- I have so many feelings about that, and none of them are outrage. I don’t give a flying fig that he talked about their sex life on national TV (can we please all just get over the fact that we know Exactly what goes on in the fantasy suite? He didn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know) and the reason I don’t care comes down to the simple fact that Andi refused to talk to him before After the Final Rose. He kept trying and she kept putting it off. Chris Harrison seemed to imply that Andi felt the live special would be a more “appropriate time”. Okay, sure, I understand wanting Harrison there to mediate (seems a little extreme but whatever) but Nick just wanted to talk to this girl he thought loved him (don’t you dare try to tell me he didn’t have fair reason to believe that) and the only chance he was given was on live TV. Explain to me, then, why we’re supposed to be so offended that he aired their dirty laundry on live TV; it was live or never, and he clearly couldn’t live with never.

Nick Viall came into The Bachelorette more skeptical than anyone I’ve ever seen on the show. He didn’t want to open up, he didn’t want to fall in love, he didn’t want to be embarrassed or exposed or hurt. But at a certain point in his clearly very real relationship with Andi, he had to either jump in or get out. In Jillian’s season of The Bachelorette, my favourite contestant Reid reached the exact same point- expose himself to heartbreak or let his self-preservational instincts do their job. Reid chose the latter and, instantly regretting it, came back to propose in the finale only to find that he’d lost Jillian forever. Jillian ended up getting her heart broken by the man who got her final rose (the aforementioned Ed) and you get the sense that if Reid had just given in, declared his love when she needed him to, she would have chosen him and they might have been happy. No one wants to be Reid. Nobody wants to be that guy who wasn’t brave enough to let love in, even if it might go badly (or embarrass him on national TV). So Nick let down his guard (the guard that’s likely been built up in response to being a little bit different all his life) and Nick got smashed. The editors slaughtered him when he didn’t even give them all that much material with which to do it (until After the Final Rose, at least). What’s worse is that it was completely unnecessary. Bachelorette fans don’t need crazy amounts of drama, they just want to watch someone fall in love. At least when the editors made the impossibly cruel decision to stage Clare’s Bachelor in Paradise meltdown as if it was directed at a racoon (instead of the producer she was clearly talking to), it was funny. Mean, but funny. But what they did to Nick was just plain mean. They knew the outcome before they even started editing; they knew he was about to get his heart broken even after he’d done all he could to protect it. And they slaughtered him anyway, seemingly for the fun of it.

After the season ended, Nick took to his twitter account and addressed the finale with this: “Congratulations to@AndiDorfman and @jmurbulldog on their engagement. Wishing you both incredible happiness.#TheBachelorette #Bachelorette“. In interviews he’s talked about how Josh is a good guy who will treat Andi well. In interviews, Josh has called Nick classless then stated that he “never really cared for him” and “couldn’t care less about him”. Nick has stayed friends with his fellow contestants and gone back to his real life in Chicago, hopefully never to return to the unwelcoming hell that is reality TV unless it’s to air his wedding to soulmate Sharleen Joynt (the amazing contestant from Juan Pablo’s season who was similarly polarizing and thus remained Nick’s only really visible staunch supporter throughout the entire season. Thank god for Sharleen). The treatment of Nick by the Bachelorette producers was so off-putting that it has me reexamining the reality TV landscape and what it does to its human “characters”. The fact that I am apparently alone in this backlash might be the most upsetting thing."

http://www.myentertainmentworld.ca/2014/09/villain-edit/


I have copied a major portion of the article in the post.  The entire article is worth reading so pls do check out the link. I decided to not copy the beginning section due to length - the author does feel Eric Hill would have been villianized as well as she states in an early section.
 
" The treatment of Nick by the Bachelorette producers was so off-putting that it has me reexamining the reality TV landscape and what it does to its human “characters".    exceptionally well thought out  humanistic article.

I'm a bit late in reading this, but wow!  This author speaks for me very well.  I even agree with her assessment of my all time favorite guy Reid.  

T4P NR~

may i just pop up to do this :alltens: for the author?... . I absolutely agree with everything she said, including the Sharleen's stuff... . Yeah, i know, my Sharnick Operation Pandas obsession should be put into rest for now. ..but hey....like James Bond said...Never say Never..right? . Anyhow...seriously..IA that Nick seems happy and doing more than fine post-show..That is all i could have asked for!... . (btw, D-5 countdown to the Sam Smith's concert...yay! )

[notarose]

Taken last Friday

@chosenmodelmanagement

Our very own @elabobak with @nick_viall28 from #abc #thebachelorette after our #chosen10 party at@celestechicago #chicago
http://instagram.com/p/tDcwZNuGbq/

[beader]

Cute girl/lady who looks like she's a lot of fun. Love her smile.

[Cecilia]

Darnit! That blog post gets me thinking about this whole season all over again, the terrible and ridiculous choice Andi made, and how she went from what could have been my favorite bachelorette to the worst. Also reminds me that I probably don't really want to see Nick on BIP. I just want to see him during my lunch break!!!!!!

[stuckinsc]

Darnit! That blog post gets me thinking about this whole season all over again, the terrible and ridiculous choice Andi made, and how she went from what could have been my favorite bachelorette to the worst.  Also reminds me that I probably don't really want to see Nick on BIP.  I just want to see him during my lunch break!!!!!!

And we want to see pictures of you seeing him on your lunch break!

[SueSt]

Taken last Friday

@chosenmodelmanagement

Our very own @elabobak with @nick_viall28 from #abc #thebachelorette after our #chosen10 party at@celestechicago #chicago
http://instagram.com/p/tDcwZNuGbq/

Great Pic, thanks for posting NR. Looking especially sexy!!

[Cecilia]

After that blog post I rewatched parts of the finale. I must delete this sh*t. I am still as shocked as ever and as obsessed as ever. xo nick chicks

[stuckinsc]

I must admit, I don't rewatch. I can't do it. I want better for Nick than Andi, he deserves someone who loves and appreciates his quirks.

Good for Sharleen is she found her fellow Panda. She was still very found of Nick throughout the season, so you never know...

[SueSt]

After that blog post I rewatched parts of the finale. I must delete this sh*t. I am still as shocked as ever and as obsessed as ever. xo nick chicks

Hi Cecilia, I was surprised by your note.
Although a hard core Nick supporter, throughout the season, your posts generally came down on the side of being sure that Andi was not going to choose Nick...
Did I get that wrong? What did you find shocking?
Thanks, Sue

[Longhornfan]

I must admit, I don't rewatch.  I can't do it.  I want better for Nick than Andi, he deserves someone who loves and appreciates his quirks.  

Good for Sharleen is she found her fellow Panda.  She was still very found of Nick throughout the season, so you never know...

Hey there Fellow Longhorn, can you direct me to the place where I can see Sharleen's boyfriend?  Is a picture of him posted, since I am not a member on Instagram?

[Norcalgal]

go to Sharleen Joynt instagram and you'll see a photo of him. Guess he's mid to late 30s.

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