Dear God, 'The Bachelorette' Is Just Asking for Mess

I do not watch anything in The Bachelor universe, but I may be tempted to make an exception for season 22 of The Bachelorette, not because I expect it to be good, but because it promises to be a trainwreck. The show has tapped Taylor Frankie Paul as its new lead, which isn’t quite as chaotic as casting It’s Always Sunny’s Frank as The Golden Bachelor, but it’s not far off.

For the unfamiliar, Taylor Frankie Paul is one of reality TV’s most notorious disasters. She’s the central figure in Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, a show that exists in large part because of her role in a swinging scandal that originally drew national attention.

At the time, Taylor was married, but the swinging arrangement quickly spiraled — emotions flared, infidelities piled up, and she divorced soon after. She then plunged into a toxic relationship with Dakota Mortensen, heavily chronicled on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. That show’s first season literally opened with Taylor’s arrest for domestic violence against Dakota. Their relationship might have ended there, but Taylor got pregnant. And if Mormon Wives has taught me anything, it’s that the Mormons featured on the series love having babies almost as much as they love divorces.

Taylor and Dakota’s relationship continued in fits and starts. She discovered he’d been sleeping around early on, and while they kept sleeping together, they never fully reconciled. Despite Dakota’s apparent devotion, Taylor couldn’t get past the betrayal, even though her fame originated from a swinging scandal.

In the South, people might call Taylor trailer trash. In Utah, I think they just call her a Mormon (though her actual ties to the church seem pretty thin). Beyond her romantic disasters, she thrives as the chaos agent of Mormon Wives, incapable of going a single episode without feuding with one or all of her “best friends.” In season two, she nearly torched every relationship on the show over a grudge that the other wives hadn’t congratulated her on social media after she presented at the CMAs.

I’m a little embarrassed to know all of this, but I’ve become hooked on Mormon Wives. It reminds me of home in the South, only instead of trailers it’s McMansions.

I have no idea how Taylor will fare as a Bachelorette, but ABC is clearly courting both disaster and ratings. Odds are, they’ll get both. Taylor Frankie Paul is the messiest mess that ever messed. God, the jealousy and resentment that this casting must have elicited in the other Mormon Wives must be off-the-charts.