The season has officially begun and Nick Viall has embarked on his search for “The One!” There were camels, wiener jokes, tears, and …dolphin-sharks? While the first cocktail party of season 21 was a little more tame than those in the past there will surely be no shortage of drama in the season to come.
Going into episode 1, I expected to see lots from the women previously featured on the “Countdown to Nick Special” however, this was not entirely the case. The women featured on the Sunday night special episode included: Christen, Corrine, Liz, Hailey, Jasmine G., Kristina, Rachel, and Raven. While Liz, Raven, Rachel, and Corrine were featured again we were also introduced to six additional women: Alexis, Taylor, Vanessa, Danielle M., Danielle L., and Josephine. The majority of these introductions were given a positive edit, especially Vanessa and Danielle L., in which their careers as a special needs teacher and neonatal nurse respectively, were emphasized. In fact, Danielle L.’s introduction reminded me a lot of Whitney Bischoff from two seasons ago. Considering Whitney eventually received the Final Rose and a proposal from Chris Soules, Danielle L. should be someone we can predict will make it far in the season.
Additionally, since there were four characters which were introduced twice, Rachel (who received the First Impression Rose), Raven, Liz, and Corrine, I suspect these are women on which we should keep a close eye on throughout the coming weeks (in fact two of which are in my final four prediction)! Additionally, the only two women to receive a negative or mixed tone in their introductions in Episode 1 were Liz and Corrine which makes me think (especially if the previews are to be believed) these are going to be two characters in this season to create a fair amount of drama.
After reading Josie’s analysis on the contestant bios and the correlation to the amount each of these women were featured throughout the episode, I thought taking another closer look at the episode was warranted. First of all, Josie’s definition of Significant Interactions is very important when it comes to the application of edgic to The Bachelor compared to Survivor. Since the formats of the two shows are so different it becomes necessary to create our own criteria for assigning a visibility and rating score for the contestants. According to Josie’s post, a Significant Interaction includes an introduction segment, a featured (in-depth) conversation with Nick, or a confessional conversational. (I would also argue that a one-on-one date and an extended conversation between contestants would also be considered significant interactions, even though neither of these were featured in this episode).
In terms of the use of the confessional, it is important to distinguish between the two uses of confessional footage. In one instance a confessional can be used by the editors to provide explanation or exposition regarding a situation or the events of the night. For example, Alexis’ insistence that her shark costume was in fact a dolphin sparked quite the debate among the other women and Susannah, Raven, and Corrine were all featured talking about the dolphin-shark costume. Additionally, this type of confessional footage can be used to provide important information for the viewers. For example, after Chris Harrison delivered the First Impression Rose, Lauren is featured explaining what the First Impression Rose is for viewers who may never have seen the show before. In both of these examples the women were featured individually from the group, thus increasing their visibility rating, but the content of their confessional was purely used as exposition and didn’t provide any character development for these women. The second type of confessional footage used throughout the show is centered around providing insight into a character’s thought process or emotions and therefore adds to her character development. According to the “Inside Survivor” article which we found our definition of the edgic terms, a complex personality is defined as one that is “well-rounded and well-developed” meaning that the audience is able to witness their “strengths and weaknesses and their choices are presented to the audience so that we get an insight into their thinking.” In a show like The Bachelor where the ability of the women to display “appropriate amounts” of emotion is so crucial for the women’s progression in the season, the confessional becomes an important tool for editors to show how the women are feeling. For example, Vanessa was featured throughout the episode and received a fairly high visibility score with eight significant interactions, she was also given a confessional in which she discusses her conversation with Nick. She talks about how the chemistry between them was undeniable and how while she normally doesn’t kiss on first dates, she found herself wishing for Nick to kiss her. This confessional was significant for Vanessa because it took her from a MORP edit to a CPP edit as it provided her with enough insight into her thinking and emotions for her to emerge as a viable contender.
While this experiment is just beginning and the process of assigning edgic scores to each of the contestants has been quite the learning curve, there have been some early patterns that have already started to develop. Of the eight women who were eliminated at the end of the episode, three received an Invisible edit. The remaining five had either a UTR1 or UTR2 edit, meaning that they were shown slightly more throughout the episode but we received no background on them or insight into their thought process. The three women who received a slightly higher visibility score, Olivia, Angela, and Lauren, were shown slightly more in their arrival (Olivia), their conversation with Nick (Angela), or in an exit interview (Lauren). Susannah who received a UTR1 ranking was only given such a score because of her unique approach of giving Nick a beard massage upon their first meeting. Apart from this, her only other on-screen appearance was one of the many comments about Alexis’ dolphin-shark costume.
It will be interesting to see if the patterns continue to develop throughout the coming weeks or if they will change significantly. But without further ado, here are the edgic scores from week 1. What did you all get? If your rankings differed please coment and let us know hoe you read the episode!
Bachelor Edgic 