Every Monday around the country, around 7.5 million viewers turn on their TV to ABC and watch “The Bachelor.” “The Bachelor” is currently in it’s 24th season, and this year’s bachelor is 28-year-old Peter Weber, a Delta Air Lines pilot from Westlake Village, California. Many Parker students have heated conversations about who they think is going to win “The Bachelor,” which starts in January and runs up until March.

This year at Parker, “The Bachelor” became competitive when senior Alex Ori sent out an email inviting members of the Parker community to join her online Bachelor Bracket. Ori’s Bachelor Bracket was open to all highschoolers and twelve participants signed up.

It is five dollars to enter the bracket. The winner receives the whole pot. Ori was inspired to create a bracket by March Madness brackets and many conversations that the girl’s soccer team has had about “The Bachelorette,” another show in the Bachelor franchise.  “I decided to create the Bachelor bracket this year because I know a lot of people are excited for “The Bachelor,” Ori said. “I might as well do something fun.”

Although the bracket originally received some pushback from the administration because it is a form of a gambling (which is prohibited in the handbook), it received positive feedback from students at Parker once Ori moved it to an out-of-school activity. “I think the Bachelor bracket is a really fun way to make it more involved with the rest of Parker,” junior Julia Marks said. “It gets competitive and there are a lot of people at Parker who I did not know watch ‘The Bachelor,’ so it is really fun to see them on the bracket.” 

Wilson Cedillo, a senior at Parker, has also been watching the show for a couple of seasons. “It was very different from the traditional March Madness bracket,” Cedillo said. “I really like the show, so it’s a fun thing to do.”

“The Bachelor” is a reality TV show, so the show is fully recorded and a winner has already been picked before fans see it on TV. Ori and Marks used that to their advantage when creating their brackets. “When you make ‘The Bachelor’ bracket, you can look at the show’s editing critically, and say that the editing is favorable to one person,” said Ori. According to Ori, the producers want viewers to fall in love with the person that the Bachelor ends up falling in love with because: “it would be no fun if Peter fell in love with someone everybody hated,” Ori said. 

For Cedillo, the show helps him cope with stress. “It’s a very easy and pleasurable show to watch,” Cedillo said. “Whenever I get a college application done or finish my work, I use it to help calm down and relax.” For Marks, the show is a guilty pleasure that requires very little brain activity. 

Ori believes that creating the bracket added another layer to the show. “You feel connected to the contestants, you root for one person and hate another person,” Ori said. “Now there is something at stake.”