As we waved Joan Vassos and Chock Chapple off on their journey to the real world at the end of the very first Golden Bachelorette, I was left with an unsettled feeling, and it wasn’t just frustration at Jesse Palmer’s college football sponcon, or because this season’s drama quotient was uncharacteristically low. Like a tradwife mom hawking raw milk on TikTok during an avian flu outbreak, I Just Had Questions: Can we get a better tailor on this show? Why was Guy forced to stand sadly in the rain in the season finale, getting his nice blue shirt all speckled? Are we going to get some more comprehensive background checks next time around? Is Charles L. going to be the next Golden Bachelor? And if not, why not? 

I hoped this season’s PNW representation, Captain Kim Buike of Mountlake Terrace, would be able to answer some of them. But like many a seafaring legend (or a person under contract with ABC—more on that soon!), Captain Kim proved elusive. (Captain Kim: If you are reading this, it’s not too late to reach out! Though we suspect you might be bound by the Bachelor-verse’s notorious, ironclad contracts.) Instead, I’ve enlisted another Northwest Bachelor franchise icon to give us some insight into the machinations of The Golden Bachelorette: Faith Martin.

Martin is a musician, radio host, and equestrian enthusiast who lives over the mountains in Benton City. If you, too, enjoy corroding your brain by watching these shows, you’ll remember Martin as the second runner-up on Gerry’s (pronounced like “Gary’s”) season of The Golden Bachelor. Martin stood out from the beginning for her musical talent (she sang to Gerry with an acoustic guitar; it was the only time an original performance on this show has been enjoyable), her soothing radio voice, and her strong self-identification as an REI person—a true deviation for this show, whose contestants often show up with perfectly Dysoned hair extensions (how), a suitcase of eveningwear I wouldn’t break out even for the ballet (the only time I dress up), and that thing where they put an entire new face of makeup on top of their original face. Good for them, but I don’t have the skill for that, so it was refreshing to see someone on the show who I know would never judge me for my Blundstones and Patagonia puffy. Faith Martin is one of us!

Like Kim, Martin was outspoken about her Northwest way of life while on the show. On a show that requires full glam contestants have to do themselves (an act of cruelty if there ever was one), “I kept saying ‘I’m more REI than Nordstrom,’” said Martin, “because all those gals were like Neiman Marcus, not that I haven’t ever shopped at those big department stores. But living in the Pacific Northwest, REI and outdoor clothing, that’s what we’re all about here.” It is!

Unlike some other horror stories I’ve encountered, Martin’s experience with the franchise was largely positive, she said. But it also imbued her with certain insights into the show’s most recent season. Why does no one eat their food? Are they starving? How long do the rose ceremonies actually take to film? And does it get tiring wearing stilettos for hours?

I asked, and Martin answered.

Never-Ending Rose Ceremonies

Rose ceremonies, which are always shot after dark, take “forever” to film, she said, possibly because the camera operators need to get footage of specific contestants’ facial reactions depending on who’s being sent home. “They can’t be whipping cameras back and forth, so I think that’s probably why it takes so long,” she said. “That was grueling, for sure. We’re all standing there in our high heels going ‘Please!’”

On her season, Martin said contestants lobbied the producers to let them be seated during the rose ceremony—a reasonable request on the Golden shows, with cast members in their sixties and seventies. But this attempt at commonsense policy change was denied. “We gave them a pretty hard time about it,” Martin recalled.

She sees it as one of many elements the show, which has been airing since 2002, is particularly attached to and unlikely to change. The same goes for the bunk beds in the mansion, which I’d argue no one over age 30 should have to sleep on ever, much less people old enough to be the 30-year-olds’ parents. “I remember when they showed us to our room, the first thing I did was run over to the bed that I wanted so I didn’t have to have a bunk bed,” said Martin. “And I noticed that on The Golden Bachelorette, too.”

The bunk beds do save space in a crowded mansion, she said, and the disruption they cause also seems to serve a practical purpose. “Just my own intuitive sense is that they liked us to feel a little bit off our kilter, so that we were more sensitive, we were more in touch with our feelings,” she said. “I think that probably makes good TV.”

My Kingdom for a Dinner Date

As for the many full dinner plates abandoned on one-on-one dates? “We don’t eat,” said Martin. On a date on her season with Gerry (pronounced like “Gary”), she remembered actually eating a particularly impressive charcuterie spread after taking a helicopter to a yacht (see also: Facing Your Fear of Heights™). “But generally speaking, that’s always kind of an inside joke on the show: They bring out these fabulous things, and nobody eats,” she said. “They never said ‘Don’t eat.’ It’s just this unspoken thing.”

But don’t worry! Martin assured me that everyone is well fed when not filming, and while Pascal’s enjoyment of the other men’s cooking on The Golden Bachelorette was played for laughs in the show’s edit, Martin said it’s normal for the contestants to cook for each other. On The Golden Bachelor, she said, Edith and Susan were known for their cooking, and runner-up Leslie Fima for her baking. Honestly, under these circumstances, I would probably be a “gazer and grazer,” too, after a few insincere offers to help. Justice pour Pascal!

While I complained bitterly about the lack of drama at the end of this season, Martin sees it from a more reasonable perspective. She found it thoughtful that Joan chose to break up with Guy before the final rose ceremony. “I was so glad that Joan handled it that way,” said Martin. Not all leads operate with such grace, and plenty of rose ceremonies resemble endurance tests for the heartbroken.. “I had seen other shows where it was really awkward for the people that were going home, myself included,” said Martin. 

Miracles of Modern Chemistry

She sees Chock as “a good match” for Joan, she said, “So, you know, crossed fingers. I know that they’re not jumping into marriage. They’re waiting so that they are really sure. And I think that's a smart thing to do.”

It’s especially smart given that despite its compulsory heterosexuality and obsession with lasting romantic partnerships, the Bachelor franchise has a very underwhelming success rate: Only four Bachelors are still in relationships with women they met on the show, and again, it’s been airing for over twenty years. The franchise is much better at producing deep friendships like the ones between the men on The Golden Bachelorette, something not lost on Martin.

“With The Golden Bachelorette, it seemed like the men just got along fabulously well,” she said. “And with The Golden Bachelor, the women, all of us on the show have a camaraderie … we will always have shared experiences that are unlike any other.”

For Martin, being on the show was a way to commit to being open to love during a phase of life when that can be difficult to prioritize. “I think, like a lot of people my age, we get in kind of a rut,” she said. “We’re working really hard. I happened to be working really hard. I had a lot of forks in a lot of fires.” She was hosting three radio shows, teaching radio broadcasting, and performing with her band. “I was working 16-hour days for a long time, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll never date anybody if I’m going to just work all the time.’”

In the mansion, Martin said, contestants have no access to their phones, TV, or radio. For the men on The Golden Bachelorette, this fostered a warm, very Fellowship of the Ring vibe: a community of men being kind to each other in a way that’s not often modeled on TV, whether it took of the form of Charles and Guy processing Charles’ grief over the death of his wife, Gregg gamely doing Pascal’s laundry, Kim fixing appliances in the mansion’s kitchen, or Charles and Gary buying melatonin for their insomniac housemates. As a person, I’m glad there wasn’t much interpersonal drama throughout the season. But as a recapper, there wasn’t much to write about. The kindness the Mansion Men showed each other made it worth watching anyway.

“I think that it was probably really good for those men to be able to emotionally connect like that, because women have a little easier time doing that than men,” said Martin of this dynamic. It’s true! Men need more socially acceptable ways to make new friends! Especially when they are old enough to be on The Golden Bachelorette! A friend-meeting app for men! Immediately!

The lack of access to the outside world is one of many ways the show tries to get contestants and leads to open up. Another approach is more obvious and infamous: There’s an open bar the whole time, Martin said, although the Golden contestants get less messy than their younger counterparts. Also, not all of that champagne is cold. “There was a lot of warm champagne,” she said. “So when you did get an ice cold one, it was like, ‘Woo-hoo. I’m gonna drink this!’”