Does Nick Viall Really Deserve A Fourth Shot At Finding Love On ‘The Bachelor’?

Viall has been a longtime member of Bachelor Nation, to the point that appearing on the shows seems like his full-time job.

By Kirthana Ramisetti

Updated 8 years ago, September 2, 2016

One month after the conclusion of “The Bachelorette,” we finally have a new Bachelor — and he’s not who anyone expected. On August 30, Chris Harrison announced on “Bachelor in Paradise” that Nick Viall would be the next dude to search for love and hand out roses on on the long-running reality show.

Viall has been a longtime member of Bachelor Nation, to the point that appearing on the shows seems like his full-time job. To recap: Besides appearing on the current season of “Bachelor in Paradise,” he was also runner-up on both Andi Dorfman and Kaitlyn Bristowe’s seasons of “Bachelorette.”

After spending so much of his time on reality TV looking for love, he’ll finally do so as the star of the show.

But it’s pretty surprising that fan favorites from JoJo Fletcher’s season — Luke Pell and Chase McNary — were skipped over for someone who, let’s face it, has had a lot more chances to meet someone than most. But that “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” quality is why Harrison claims he was chosen.

“He has just become that perennial, second place guy who wants to find love and is as sincere, if not more sincere, than anybody about finding it,” he told People.

But that over-earnestness also led to one of the most controversial moments in the franchise’s history.

During the 2014 “After the Final Rose” special, he asked Dorfman why she had sex with him in the Fantasy Suite if she didn’t truly love him: “Knowing how in love with you I was, if you weren’t in love with me, I’m just not sure why you made love with me,” he said. Yikes. It was the first time that someone made plain what was obviously happening in those Fantasy Suites, opening up Dorfman to a lot of online vitriol and slut-shaming.

In an interview two years later, Viall said that he didn’t mean to come across as shaming Dorfman, and that “women have the right … to do what guys have been doing for years.” He also noted that he regretted asking, because Dorman got a lot of “flak” from it.

Viall might have been sincere in wanting an answer about an intimate moment between the two of them, but did he really need to ask that on live television?

Dorfman’s new memoir about her time on the show — and Viall’s reaction to it — doesn’t make him look that great either.

In her book “It’s Not Okay: Turning Heartbreak into Happily Ever After,” she wrote about the Fantasy Suite experience, which she described as a “ladyboner-killing, awkward sexual encounter. “As they were having sex, he asked her, “Would you rather make love … or fuck?”

Dorfman was weirded out by the question. She tried to make things less awkward by telling him “make love,” only for him to respond, “Well, if I had four times, I’d like to fuck the first three times and make love the fourth.”

It’s not hard to see why he wasn’t bestowed with the final rose. And when asked to comment on what Dorfman wrote, Viall told E! News that “a lot of the things she wrote about did happen,” yet also that “I don’t know Andi to be the most honest person … she has a tendency of omitting information.”

If Viall hasn’t found love yet on “The Bachelor” franchises, Dorfman’s description of her interaction with him indicates there might be a very good reason why.

Think of Viall’s awkwardness with Dorfman — but now with more than 20 women vying for his affections. We’re likely in for a season of cringeworthy moments that could very well continue the show’s history of slut-shaming.

It’s even more galling when the franchise once again overlooked the opportunity to cast a non-white person, and had a viable contender in Grant and from the most recent season of “The Bachelorette.”

We all know that the producers of the show value drama above all else, evidenced by the most recent season of “The Bachelorette” in which Chad was given free rein to make threats and act violently towards the other suitors, with little concern for his mental state or the welfare of the other contestants. Maybe Harrison and the show’s producers should be less concerned about Viall being the “most deserving” of yet another chance to find love, and consider what the women’s experience will be like with Viall handing out roses this time around.

This article was originally published at Revelist.

After spending so much of his time on reality TV looking for love, he’ll finally do so as the star of the show.

But that over-earnestness also led to one of the most controversial moments in the franchise’s history.

Dorfman’s new memoir about her time on the show — and Viall’s reaction to it — doesn’t make him look that great either.

If Viall hasn’t found love yet on “The Bachelor” franchises, Dorfman’s description of her interaction with him indicates there might be a very good reason why.

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