Savage Love sexpert and TV producer Dan Savage makes a great point about the upcoming Logo Bachelor clone, Finding Prince Charming, set to premiere this week.
The “scarcity formula” used by ABC for its competition among heterosexuals (“an imbalance between supply of pussy/cock and demand for pussy/cock,” as Savage, puts it) makes no sense in a gay context in which men would be likely to run off with each other instead of the bachelor (and just might).
As Savage notes, Funny or Die diagnosed the problem in 2013, but offered no solution:
Logo appears to just be trying to clone the hetero version with no vision of how much more interesting the show could be.
Savage puts forth some excellent new scarcity formulas the show could use to help it work in a gay context:
Just cast one exclusive gay top as your bachelor and thirteen gay power bottoms as your suitors. Or vice-versa. That’s all it would take.
But if you really wanted to have some fun with the intricacies and subcultures of gay male desire…
Cast a hunky older bear as the bachelor and thirteen skinny twinks who are exclusively attracted to hunky older bears as his suitors. Or vice-versa. Or cast a hot leather/BDSM Master as the bachelor and thirteen leather/BDSM slaves as his suitors. Or vice-versa. (No switches!) Or cast one skinny guy into big guys as the bachelor and thirteen big guys into skinny guys as his suitors. Or vice-versa.
Added bonus: Gay people know these complications exist, straight people are fascinated by them, and including/mining them would make for a crazier, more informed, and interesting show.
Without some other form of scarcity, without creating a different supply and demand problem, there’s nothing to prevent the suitors on Finding Prince Charming from running off with each other or (more likely) winding up in a writhing heap on the lawn. Unless the suitors are all sexually incompatible in a fundamental and insurmountable way and the “star” gay bachelor is their only sexual/romantic counterpart—the gay suitors are all pots, the gay bachelor is the only lid.
What are some other scarcity formulas that would work?
