Is the bachelor's program actually an English program? Throughout Season 28, the terminology used to express affection between Joey Graziardi and his fellow contestants appears in every relationship. Specific words, especially how and when they are used, play a huge role in the progression of pairings — something Joey revealed to Bustle he received a crash course in during Week 6 in Montreal.
“Most of the women said they were in love with me,” he recalled. "I think I said to a producer or someone, 'I can't believe all these women are saying they're in love with me.'" They were like, 'Hold on, hold on.' They don't say falling in love ... there are layers to that. "
The mistake helped Joey understand what he calls " Bachelor lingo," which is nothing new to the team. Anyone who's watched a season knows that feelings are often distilled into a series of proven statements: You can "fall in love" with a main character, for example, but you probably shouldn't say you're "in love" with them until later in the season. (Chad Kultgen and Lizzy Pace codify these terms into "love levels" in their book How to Win the Bachelor .)
Fine-tune the code
The semantics make sense for The Bachelor's fast-paced format, where contestants only have a limited amount of time (and only so many words) to express their feelings. Knowing this helped Joey adjust his “code” for how he expressed himself this season.
"To me, falling means you finally feel something and you start to really see the future," he said.
As for what Joey said about "falling in love" to Kelsey Anderson and Daisy Kent on the March 11 episode of Fantasy Suite? Joy said it was "getting to the point where not only could I see the future, but I think I was actually starting to feel what love felt like and I could really see it all getting to this point."
Joey hasn't said he's "in love" yet. With any luck, this may happen later. "It's important for a person to maintain a sense of being special and most important." (Given the recent history of The Bachelor , this was a good decision.)
A season full of bachelorism
While fans will have to wait to see if Joey can take that final step, this season has leaned heavily on the franchise vocabulary. For example, during their first one-on-one conversation in Spain, Kelsey carefully told Joey that she "didn't fall, you know, but... started stumbling," which left her in the fantasy suite confession becomes more meaningful.
Later, on Hometown, Maria Georgas made the difficult decision to admit that she was in love with Joey. She didn't do that, only using the word "love" before her hometown rose ceremony. Unfortunately, this didn't save her from elimination.
