‘The Golden Bachelor’ Gerry Turner Is a Big Phony

The Golden Bachelor star Gerry Turner has won over the hearts of millions on his quest to find true love. The ABC series premiered September 28, showcasing Turner, a widower looking for love out of 22 women aged between 60 and 75. He seemingly has audiences eating out of the palm of his hands thanks to his stand-up guy portrayal and “mature” outlook on love. Even Sherri Shepherd knighted him as an official sex symbol.

But what if Turner isn’t as altruistic as he’s letting on? What if he very well knows the position he’s in and is taking advantage? What if he’s a 72-year-old Scott Pilgrim?

Two weeks ago, Gerry revealed that he was in love with both Leslie, a 64-year-old fitness instructor from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Faith, a 60-year-old high school teacher, before eliminating the latter Thursday night during the live “Women Tell All” episode.

In last week’s penultimate episode, viewers saw Gerry arrive in Costa Rica for his fantasy suite dates with the two finalists, Leslie and Theresa, a 70-year-old financial services professional who lives in Shrewsbury, New Jersey.

He doubled down, telling Leslie that she was the only one, and then presumably spent the night with both of them in their respective suites.

Then we learn he presumably also told Theresa, “I love you,” at some point during their “alone time,”  before most likely sealing the deal (if there was even a deal to be sealed).

The next morning, he said in an interview confession that it’s “nobody’s f***ing business” what goes on in the suites when the cameras stop rolling.

He told Sherri that his suite would be different from the other Bachelor shows, where “they’ll get to share stuff about their kids and grandkids,” but instead, we saw him all up on Leslie’s booty one night, saying she’s the one, and waking up with Theresa playing footsies the next morning.

If that’s not player behavior, I don’t know what is.

Gerry and Leslie on Golden Bachelor (ABC)

During the fourth episode of the reality series, during a hot tub date with Leslie, it was revealed that Turner has a large lion’s head tattoo on his shoulder.

When he appeared on Live with Kelly and Mark, he talked about the inking and said, “There was a point in time where I was thinking about taking on more responsibility in business and so forth,” referring to his time working as a restaurateur. “There’s this saying about every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up [and] it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or a gazelle wakes up, and it must run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be eaten… It doesn’t matter if you’re a lion or a gazelle; when the sun comes up, you better be running. And so that was something that I really believed in at the time, and when I saw that poster, I thought, ‘That’s the perfect tattoo.'”

That’s a pretty macho outlook on a tattoo coming from someone as soft-spoken as he is. As a matter of fact, what kind of guy even gets a lion tattoo if they don’t have a little dog in them?

“I just fell in love with Gerry,” co-host Mark Consuelos joked. “I’m in love with you!” he then assured his wife and co-host on Live. “I’m in love with you, but I’m in love with Gerry!”

At that moment, it was as if Consuelos saw himself in Turner. Consuelos, a former All My Children soap star heartthrob and sex symbol, heard the same flowery nonsense he would have spewed if he were in his shoes when he was in his shoes.

When Kelly Ripa took him to task about the subject of falling in love with more than one person, Turner confirmed he did fall in love with several women but said the journey is finding the one “you can’t live without,” much to the audible delight of the studio audience.

“With each of those women, they had such wonderful personalities; they were each different and unique in their own way,” he told Ripa. “And to love them, I can openly admit to that, but I also know that there was only one by the end of it; clearly, that is the one I couldn’t live without.”

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What a perfectly packaged response queued to get the appropriate response from the viewers.

All we’re saying is there have been cracks in the seemingly media-trained facade that is Gerry Turner. We’re not even saying that taking full advantage of his position is wrong. It may be even more righteous than we’d usually see from a reality dating show, purely based on his age and marriage of 43 years.

But we also wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see or hear more playboy antics once the season ends and the couple breaks up in six months like most of the couples on this kind of show, and he has all this fame at his disposal.

The Golden Bachelor, Season Finale, Thursday, November 30, 8/7c, ABC