In June 2021, Warner Horizon and ABC Entertainment parted ways with Chris Harrison, the longtime host of The Bachelor. Harrison’s exit, following a four-month, will-he-or-won’t-he intrigue, was directly traceable to the veteran TV personality’s failure to condemn sufficiently a contestant who had once attended an Antebellum-themed sorority party. Though Harrison asked merely that the offending young woman not be “thrown to the lions,” his remarks unfit him in an instant to continue as the show’s emcee. The takeaway? The Bachelor is decidedly not the kind of franchise one would expect to place a dead white guy in the lead.

Or an old one, anyway. Starring as the title figure of spinoff series The Golden Bachelor (Thursdays at 8 p.m.), 71-year-old Gerry Turner is precisely the wrong kind of man to please the Very Online liberals of Bachelor Nation. A retired restaurateur and widower from Mike Pence country, Turner has the aw-shucks mien of a corn farmer and the bronze complexion of a man who occasionally goes outside. If, as the Harrison affair suggested, the ideal Bachelor participant knows instinctively which way the online posts are blowing, Turner’s selection is difficult to understand as anything but an affront. If one can’t quite picture him voting for former President Donald Trump, one is nevertheless hard-pressed to imagine the latest Ibram X. Kendi tome on his bedside table.