Reality dating show coming to USU

During fall semester, a group of roommates gathered, searching desperately for something to watch. That was when they stumbled upon “The Golden Bachelor.”

What started as a binge-watching obsession became a campus romance revolution when the roommates realized they could produce their own Utah State University version of the hit reality show — starring their friends.

One of the show’s producers, Luke Lehnhof, described the apartment’s obsession with the show.

“We started watching ‘The Bachelor’ in our apartment, and we just got super into it,” Lehnhof said.

Another one of the show’s producers, Scott Holmstead, told the story of how a roommate bonding show quickly turned into a full-scale production.

“As an apartment full of dudes, none of us had really watched ‘The Bachelor” before,” Holmstead said. “But we saw an ad for ‘The Golden Bachelor’ and just thought, ‘How hard could that be to do here?’”

That was when Lehnhof and Holmstead got to work, printing out fliers with two of their friends’ faces on them, prompting women interested in meeting their friends to text them. Lehnhof said they put the fliers anywhere they could.

“We put them everywhere: all over campus, in our apartment, other apartments, anywhere we could find,” Lehnhof said.

The fliers advertised the faces of two bachelors, Aiden Horrocks and Dallin Anderson. The fliers plastered with their faces described Horrocks as “a charismatic gentleman looking for love” and Anderson as “a flirtatious gentleman looking for love.”

Unlike the reality TV show, where a group of women compete for the heart of one bachelor, the group plans to have two bachelors.

Horrocks said he thinks having two bachelors is fun, even though they may fall for the same girl.

“If I was a viewer just watching and I saw that these two guys are obviously into the same girl, that is hilarious,” Horrocks said. “Honestly, that would be phenomenal. I think it thickens the plot.”

Anderson said he wouldn’t consider doing a show like ‘The Bachelor” on his own. He said being one of two bachelors has helped ease the awkwardness.

“Since you know, there’s both of us doing it, it’s like, ‘Oh OK, so whatever happens, happens, like we’re both in this together,’” Anderson said. “As far as making our dating life public, I’m not too uncomfortable with that. I just think it’s mostly fun, and it’s exciting.”

Pretty soon, the show had a cast of 28 women. As of Dec. 12, Lehnhof and Holmstead had finished filming one episode and plan to film more. Lehnhof said filming has been postponed till after Christmas break.

“Starting in the spring is when we’ll get episodes coming out more,” Lehnhof said.

Holmstead said viewers can expect a good time when watching the show.

“There won’t be any shortage of drama or laughs or anything of that nature,” Holmstead said. “Everybody’s pretty on board with the whole idea of it, so it should be a pretty fun time.”

Typically, the prize for winning the show is an engagement ring and a promise of spending forever together. Though the two bachelors aren’t ruling out that possibility, the producers of the show said they have a different prize in mind.

“On our fliers, we said we would give you a $20 gift card, and that was a big deal,” Lehnhof said. “After we put that on there, people were like, ‘Yeah, of course we want that.’”

Lehnhof said though he was aware of other college parodies of the reality show like “Provo’s Most Eligible,” a Brigham Young University spinoff, he isn’t trying to model USU’s show after it.

“Watching the Provo’s one, I feel like we can do it better. I think we can make it funnier,” Lehnhof said.

Holmstead agreed, stating viewers can expect USU’s show to be better than BYU’s.

“If some other college kids at BYU of all places can do that, we can do it 10 times better,” Holmstead said. “We can do something more funny and put a little more effort and make it our own.”

The producers said viewers can expect more updates soon and can follow their Instagram, @USUbachelor_2023, to get the latest updates on the show’s release.