As a longtime fan of “The Bachelor” franchise, I anxiously awaited the announcement for who would be named the next “Bachelorette” in the Season 28 finale. Of course, it’s exciting to see how the season ends and who the bachelor ends up with, but it’s also equally exciting to see who the next Bachelorette will be, which is one of the season’s stand-out contestants. Season 28 of “The Bachelor” featured Joey Graziadei, a 28-year-old tennis pro from Pennsylvania, as the lead. Graziadei  was looking for his future wife among 32 contestants. 

Graziadei’s season was one of the most popular with the season finale bringing in 6.31 million viewers, which is the most watched Season Finale in the history of “The Bachelor” franchise. The fan favorite contestant was Maria Georgas, who I was also hoping would be selected since her unfiltered and authentic personality shone through in Graziadei’s season. However, Jenn Tran was announced as the lead for “The Bachelorette” Season 21. Tran is a 26-year-old physician assistant and was loved by the fans during Graziadei’s season due to her compassionate and sweet personality.

Jenn Tran is Vietnamese American, making her the first Asian Bachelorette, and first Asian lead of any “Bachelor” franchise season. 

“Growing up, I’ve always wanted to see Asian representation on TV,” said Tran, in response to this historic moment, “And I feel like it was really sparse. Any time Asians were in the media, it was to fill a supporting character role, to fulfill some sort of stereotype, and I always felt boxed in by that. And now to be here today, standing in this position being like, I am going to lead my own love story. I am going to be the main character in my story, I just can’t help but think about how many people I’m inspiring and how many lives I am changing.” 

“The Bachelor” franchise has faced controversy in the past and criticism due to its lack of diversity and racism scandals. In the 21 years the show has been on air, there have only been two other leads of color, Matt James and Charity Lawson. During James’ season, there was controversy that the show had perpetuated racial stereotypes in James’ storyline after he spoke out about how his father, who is Black, was presented as an absent father. The former host, Chris Harrison, exited the show after he defended Rachel Kirkconnell, a contestant on James’ season, who had attended a party at a plantation and liked social media posts with the Confederate flag in them. 

For many years, the cast of “The Bachelor” has been overwhelmingly white and homogenous. I can remember watching prior seasons with majority white and stereotypically beautiful contestants, many of whom were former pageant contestants or NFL cheerleaders. Of course, the contestants themselves did nothing wrong. The fault lies with the casting and production. The lack of racial, body type and socioeconomic diversity in the shows remains exceedingly obvious. Over the past few seasons, there has been greater racial diversity, but often these contestants have been given unequal storytime editing and screen time. Jokingly, I’ve often mentioned to my friends that it seems like they only keep the Asian contestants on long enough to be tokenized before the white lead chooses another white contestant at the end. 

Not only are there issues with a lack of diversity in “The Bachelor,” but there are also issues of cyberbullying and harassment that contestants of color experience from fans and online users. Social media following can be viewed as a proxy for fans’ support for certain contestants, and white contestants see a greater growth in following after being on the show than contestants of other races, according to Bachelor Data. In addition to unequal support from fans, many contestants have faced online hate and racism. Rachel Nance, a contestant on Graziadei’s season who finished in the top three and is African and Filipino American, spoke out about the racially motivated hate she’s received from fans. Nance said, “I was nervous to talk about it because I know some people feel uncomfortable when they hear that racism is still going on in 2024. But I think people need to sit in feeling uncomfortable because, how do you think I feel getting those messages?”

It’s easy to write off the show’s casting and historic decision as trivial since, after all, it’s just a reality show. However, as an Asian woman, I believe that this moment is important and that more people should take notice of it. As Jenn Tran pointed out, Asians are overlooked in almost all forms of media, and when they are portrayed, they’re often stereotypical or relegated to supporting roles. I think it’s important for an Asian-American woman to finally be a star in her own story rather than a token who is overshadowed by white voices. I’m excited to see how her journey plays out and am hopeful that her season will be a turning point for reality TV to showcase more Asian contestants. 

You can catch the new season of “The Bachelorette” on ABC airing on Jun. 1, 2024. 

A study conducted by the Sports Business Journal found that sports events dominated the top 100 telecasts of 2022. Of these sports events, the majority were games by the National Football League (NFL), as they  occupied 82 spots of the top 100 telecasts.

Starting with 2012, major US cable TV and satellite TV providers have lost a total of 25 million subscribers. The majority of these lost customers switched to streaming services. The domination of sports events on television – particularly the NFL – points to cable’s increasing reliance on sports telecasts in order to keep customers. 

Though streaming is certainly the hot-topic of the day, a 2021 Nielsen report indicated that streaming services like Youtube and Netflix account for just about a quarter of total US TV viewing times. In contrast, broadcast and cable accounted for 64% of viewing times. It is still the case that what is primarily propping up cable TV is sports. 

Should the NFL undertake new avenues in terms of media and media rights, this could spell a significant amount of lost revenue for cable companies. In fact, there have already been some signs of trouble for cable companies. For example, Amazon Prime has become the exclusive home of “Thursday Night Football” for a price tag of a billion a year for 11 years. Previously through May of 2022, nearly 37%of Fox’s primetime viewership came from sports viewing, which included “Thursday Night Football.” 

The complete domination of streaming services in the industry seems a ways away. However, cable’s reliance on sports events for its returning viewership and revenue cannot be understated. 

Photo by Riley McCullough on Unsplash.

“God expected too much of me. Now, I need to find my own path.”

Netflix recently released a four-part series based on Deborah Feldman’s debut memoir “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots.” The series follows Esther or “Esty” Shapiro – played by Shira Haas – as she leaves her home in the Satmar community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for Berlin, Germany.

When the viewers are first introduced to Shapiro she is 19, pregnant and attempting to leave her husband, Yakov “Yanky” Shapiro – played by Amit Rahav – and the community in which she grew up. Shapiro has citizenship in Germany due to her estranged mother, Leah Mandelbaum – played by Alex Reid – a somewhat elusive and unknown figure in the beginning. 

While Shapiro encounters an unknown world and meets a group of musicians who befriend her, Shapiro’s disappearance creates a scandal in the Williamsburg community. When Shapiro’s family discovers where she has fled to, the bewildered Yanky is accompanied by his cousin MoisheLefkovitch – played by Jeff Wilbusch – to search and bring her back.

 While Shapiro’s escape and pilgrimage of self-discovery is a fascinating narrative all on its own, the slow answer to why Shapiro fled and what she left behind is intensely captivating and impossible to look away from. Through flashbacks to Shapiro’s past, the viewer learns of her challenging childhood, arranged engagement, her jubilant wedding celebration and the difficult and confining expectations she faces in married life.

The story of her previous life is a compellingly intimate look into the world of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and their strict observance of the Torah. This series has been praised by critics for its attentiveness to details of Hasidic Jewish customs. While the viewer is given Shapiro’s perspective and may recognize the series as a critique of the treatment and limited options available for women in the Hasidic culture, there is also clear effort to respect the rituals and show both sides of a story. It is this attention to detail that keeps Shapiro’s Hasidic community away from the one-dimensionality of antagonists. 

The story moves at deliberate and moderate pace, but each of the four portions held my undivided attention, and I couldn’t help but watch the entire show in one sitting. I had been looking for a distraction from the paper I did not want to write and found an excellent one in this show. This series – foundationally – is a story is of self-discovery. “Unorthodox” brings an enrapturing and thought-provoking narrative that somehow manages to find a universality in such an intimate and unknown context.

When I think of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, I do not think of specific policies he supported or news articles about him. The only thing I think about is Kate McKinnon impersonating an opossum.  As a college student with little motivation to read news articles in addition to my homework – and a lot of motivation to watch some YouTube “Saturday Night Live” clips as a form of procrastination – a large amount of my weekly political intake comes from the long-running Saturday sketch comedy show. 

In the case of Jeff Sessions, that means I’ve seen more of Kate McKinnon acting as a weasley, rodent-toothed caricature of the politician than I have of the man himself. I have never watched an interview with Donald Trump Jr. or Eric Trump, yet their bit on “Weekend Update” is one of my favorites. In it, Trump Jr. is portrayed as a smooth-talking, grandiose babysitter for his childlike brother. Do I understand that “SNL” is a satirical comedy program meant solely to entertain, not inform? Of course. Have these skits shaped my perception of political figures? You better believe it. 

When McKinnon portrayed White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway in an “IT” spoof, I went from thinking she was a laughably harmless Trump-worshipper to a dangerous manipulator. These sketches do have the power to shape public opinion, which has caused President Trump to call out “SNL.” 

“Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution?” tweeted Trump Feb. 17. 

While I understand that the impersonations of political figures and events on “SNL” can skew public opinion and should not be taken as fact, Trump got this one completely wrong. Political satire is a key component of our democratic system. We use humor to express opinion, call out real issues in our government and encourage people that dissent is accepted. Endangering the writers’ freedom of speech by threatening retribution for a little comedic teasing is deplorable.

The second thing that Trump got wrong is mentioning “Fake News” NBC. This automatically equates “SNL” with news – which it’s not. It does not claim to be a news program. Yes, sometimes “SNL” is the only news that I get, but that’s my fault. It’s no fault of the show or its writers. We cannot blame SNL for our political apathy. 

The third thing that Trump’s tweet got wrong is saying that it isn’t funny. It’s funny. Even former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who Tina Fey portrayed in a completely unfavorable way, embraced the mocking and appeared on the show in a sketch about herself. Politicians need to be able to make fun of themselves, same as all celebrities who get impersonated on the show in often embarrassing ways. 

Trump appears narcissistic when he criticizes the performances of himself. “SNL” sketches aren’t supposed to be accurate – although the more accurate they become, the more concerning our current political climate becomes. If actual words spoken by the president can be spoken verbatim in a comedy sketch and be outrageously funny, we have a problem. 

The Washington Post did a side-by-side comparison of Trump’s emergency declaration and Alec Baldwin’s impersonation of his declaration on “SNL.” The sketch was a little closer to reality than caricature, which was unsettling. The day we can watch “Saturday Night Live” instead of watching the 6 o’clock news is a day I hope never comes – and I have to remind myself that that day has not come. 

We cannot use “Saturday Night Live” as a substitute for real reporting. It’s a television show, a spoof, a work of fiction. Jeff Sessions is not a rodent. Eric Trump knows how to read. 

We also cannot stifle the show’s writers by forcing them to write stuff that pleases everybody – especially not the politicians they impersonate. We can’t make them treat every person fairly or represent Republicans and Democrats with the same frequency. If they had to be perfectly unbiased, factual and flattering, their creativity would rot away and the show wouldn’t be funny. An “SNL” episode that doesn’t toe the line of what’s acceptable at least once is not a true “SNL” episode. 

Some people believe “Saturday Night Live” has gotten too political, but one or two political sketches per episode doesn’t seem like too much politics to me. While these sketches can’t stand on their own as information, they encourage me to Google the events they are based on to check and see how much is accurate. In this way, I actually – and ashamedly – become more informed by watching “SNL.” 

Maybe you think “SNL” is too political because it doesn’t align with your politics. It might offend you or make you uncomfortable, in which case I’d say good. Getting offended every once in a while is healthy for our political climate. It encourages us to ask why we are offended, to better understand our own views and why we hold those views. What does what we get offended about say about our values? 

For me, “Saturday Night Live’s” value should not be about its ability to inform the public. It should be about its ability to entertain the public and encourage viewers to discuss typically taboo political topics. Most importantly, “SNL” is there to make us laugh and think about why we’re laughing.