‘The Golden Bachelor’ Premiere Is Horny and Heartfelt

Spoilers for night one of The Golden Bachelor ahead.

The same song—2022’s “Golden Hour” by indie pop artist JVKE—plays in both promos for The Golden Bachelor and during the final moments of And Just Like That…’s second season. Beyond their shared soundtrack, these shows face a similar challenge when it comes to depicting love after a certain age: How do you retain the freewheeling spirit of Sex and the City or The Bachelor while accurately reflecting the realities of dating as an older person?

During Thursday’s cozy premiere of The Golden Bachelor, which is getting a major marketing push from ABC via retirement-home screenings and senior-inspired discounts, it became clear that this series may have transformed more smoothly than its scripted counterpart. This starts with the slam dunk casting of 72-year-old widower Gerry Turner as the first Golden Bachelor. He’s a retired restaurateur, father, and grandfather who spends his days at a lake house in Indiana that was meant to be shared with his late wife, Toni. Gerry and Toni were high school sweethearts, married for 43 years before she became ill and died suddenly in 2017.

Tears arrive early as Cat Stevens’s “The Wind” plays over photos of Gerry and Toni’s life together. He gazes at a framed photo of his wife while dressing for the evening, putting on his hearing aid before adjusting his tuxedo jacket. Later in the evening, Nancy, a 60-year-old interior designer, will show off her own hearing aids: “I, too, wear a little ear candy.” The start of Gerry’s journey to find love is sentimental, but for the first time in a long time for this franchise, that feeling is earned—a result of our lead’s actual life experiences rather than a cloying device.

A woman shuffles out of the limo and across the driveway using a walker. “Do you need help?” Gerry asks. That’s when Leslie, a 64-year-old fitness instructor, tosses her prop and tears away her muumuu to reveal a strapless minidress. “Do I look like I need help?” quips the woman who in her intro package says she dated Prince and inspired his 1979 hit “Sexy Dancer.”

And so begins a lively series of limo entrances. Sandra, a 75-year-old retired executive assistant, introduces Gerry to her “Zen practice,” which involves repeated chanting of curse words. Faith, a 60-year-old high school teacher, arrives on a motorcycle. “I’m proof you can live fast and not die young,” she says. “If you leave here with me, it will be the ride of your life.” Susan, a 66-year-old wedding officiant, makes note of her stilettos before delivering this dirty disclaimer: “I’m very comfortable with six inches.”

The show can’t resist trotting out a few of its tried-and-true entrance methods. April, a 65-year-old therapist, aligns herself with an animal, doing the chicken dance upon arrival because her “eggs are still fresh.” “Chippy,” Jimmy Kimmel’s 84-year-old aunt, shows up for a celebrity cameo, which results in a stale gimmick about sleeping through the rose ceremony (“Can I at least get a petal?” she asks host Jesse Palmer). And Theresa, who is celebrating her 70th birthday, makes the scantily clad limo exit that usually includes a bikini or lingerie. This time, she opens her silk robe to reveal her “birthday suit,” which turns out to be merely a nude-colored slip. Theresa couldn’t have actually gone naked, she explains, on the account of her six grandsons watching at home.

But grandmothers or not, Gerry’s 22 contestants, who range from age 60 to 75, aren’t afraid to get spicy. Natascha, a 60-year-old pro-aging coach who sits cross-legged from Gerry on a yoga mat in the mansion, observes: “Gerry is in good shape. I’m not going to have to resuscitate him if we have an intimate moment.” Later in the evening, Gerry presents Theresa with a birthday cupcake before offering one of the smoother opening lines uttered by a Bachelor in recent memory: “If I were to take a bite of that and then were to have a whole bunch of icing [on my face], would you help clean it up?” Theresa accepts her birthday present, later earnestly admitting in a confessional, “It’s been forever since I kissed a guy, and it was incredible.”