The Golden Bachelor takes over Grey's Anatomy's ancestral timeslot
ABC Thursdays used to be dedicated to Shondaland, but now it's three hours of The Bachelor, baby!
For years, Thursday nights on ABC have been synonymous with one of the major houses of television: Shondaland. In her Thank God It’s Thursday (TGIT) peak, Rhimes contributed three back-to-back shows to fill out the network’s programming: How To Get Away With Murder at 10 p.m. ET, Scandal at 9 p.m. ET, and, of course, crown jewel Grey’s Anatomy at 8 p.m. ET.
But Shonda’s epic reign has come to an end, at least for now. While Grey’s has already been renewed for a landmark 20th season, it won’t premiere until 2024 at the earliest. In its stead and in a move indicative of basic cable’s current drive to “strike proof” their fall schedules by stuffing everything full of as much reality programming as possible, ABC has welcomed a new TGIT overlord to town: the Bachelor franchise.
Bachelor Mondays are dead; long live Bachelor Thursdays. The network announced today that their newest spin-off The Golden Bachelor—which follows 72-year-old widower Gerry Turner’s journey to find love among a group of 65+-year-old-women—will be airing in the usual Grey’s Anatomy slot Thursday at 8 p.m., starting September 28 (per Entertainment Weekly). “Dating on this show is going to be an altogether new experience,” Turner said in a new promo video released today, in which his granddaughter also schools him on the proper way to text a potential fling (“Don’t start with ‘Dear [her name]’”). “What I hope is that I can look at one of those women and know that I’ve found the right person.”
And if your hunger for wine and/or drama isn’t satisfied after all that, never fear! Two more hours of The Bachelor will begin at 9 p.m.—in the form of tropical mess-fest Bachelor In Paradise. At least the local rose sellers will be well paid, if no one else.