Earlier than the overall expose of any Bachelor season, the franchise in short halts its frenetic march towards matrimony. All over the reveal’s ordinary “The Ladies Inform All” particular, the eradicated contestants accumulate to dish in regards to the drama that advanced as they jointly dated one guy. In most cases, the ladies revisit moments each heartfelt and salacious, rehashing their intra-group fights and reflecting at the ache of romantic rejection. They have a tendency to stay on their previous slights, incessantly to the purpose of utter absurdity; once in a while, they don’t appear able to transport on, whether or not from the person himself or from their time within the Bachelor Country highlight.

The Golden Bachelor, the franchise’s first-ever season led by means of a person over 40, flips this script. In this season’s installment of “The Ladies Inform All,” the solid of ladies—all of whom are 60 to 75 years previous—speak about their time courting Gerry Turner, a 72-year-old widower from Indiana. Like contestants from earlier seasons, they gamely reminisce at the moments of battle, hilarity, and connection that emerged all through their trips. However in contrast to the 20- and 30-somethings of Bachelor historical past, the ladies of The Golden Bachelor glance towards the following bankruptcy in their very own (off-screen) love tales. “Having met you, I now understand that discovering a gentleman in our technology—it’s now not simply conceivable, it’s possible,” one girl, a 75-year-old retired govt assistant, tells Gerry. “I’m extra motivated now than I used to be even ahead of to seek out my man.”

When The Golden Bachelor concludes later this month, Gerry will probably apply franchise custom by means of proposing to some of the two ultimate girls. Even supposing he does tread that acquainted territory, this season’s departure from The Bachelor’s different inflexible conventions has already made it a outstanding addition to the reality-dating panorama, and to broader developments within the romance style. The Golden Bachelor is one in every of a number of contemporary works that discover the method of discovering love after 50, all of which deliver intensity, humor, and eroticism to a pursuit that the majority popular culture frames because the unique area of younger folks. In conjunction with the romantic comedy What Occurs Later (which Meg Ryan wrote, directed, and stars in), and Season 2 of the Intercourse and the Town reboot, And Simply Like That, this new Bachelor complicates the speculation of romance as a neat, linear tale that starts with younger intrigue and ends with late-in-life grief.

That’s to not say The Golden Bachelor is with out mourning—the ubiquity of grief is likely one of the reveal’s maximum putting parts. However the love tale between Gerry and his spouse, Toni, which started once they have been high-school scholars, didn’t conclude along with her unexpected loss of life in 2017. The feel of the lifestyles they lived in combination—the adolescent infatuation, the a long time spent as spouses after which oldsters—shapes all of Gerry’s interactions with the 22 girls he meets on digicam. A ways from being an setting apart issue, the transparency of Gerry’s affection for his overdue spouse endears most of the girls to him as it invitations truthful discussions of the loves they’ve misplaced too.

Learn: “I didn’t understand how a lot of a gadget it’s”

On an trip with one competitor, Gerry describes his failed strive thus far after his spouse’s loss of life, prompting the lady to percentage how tricky the period of time after she misplaced her personal husband have been: “I beloved being married, so I attempted to begin courting, after like, a yr,” she says. “And I think like possibly I attempted to seek out it possibly somewhat too quickly.” In any other scene, a lady bursts into tears after hanging on a marriage get dressed all through a gaggle photograph shoot—on the other hand lighthearted the task used to be meant to be, the reminiscence of her wedding ceremony day moves a nerve. In a while, when she opens as much as Gerry in regards to the surprising emotional toll, she reveals each connection and catharsis whilst talking about her overdue husband.

On And Simply Like That, grief is a in a similar way knotty romantic motivator. After the loss of life of her swaggering financier husband, Mr. Giant (performed by means of Chris Noth), within the sequence premiere, 55-year-old Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) spent maximum of that season coping with the aftermath: organizing an accurately elegant funeral, promoting their huge house, and struggling one ultimate disaster of lack of confidence after finding that Giant’s will allotted $1 million to an ex-wife. Season 2, which aired previous this yr, reveals Carrie in a much less eating segment of her mourning. Greater than a yr after shedding Giant, her ache hasn’t pale, however the prospect of entertaining a brand new paramour now not feels as daunting.

When she’s able thus far once more, it’s the promise of rekindling an previous flame that lighting Carrie up: She reaches out to her ex-fiancé, Aidan (John Corbett), beginning a reunion that feels each like a continuation in their courting in Intercourse and the Town’s unique run and prefer an entirely new romantic enterprise. Carrie’s grief opens up now not simplest the potential for their reconnection but additionally a catalytic reorientation of her point of view on love. Not tethered to the person whose consideration she spent her 30s chasing, Carrie overtly wonders whether or not craving for Mr. Giant had blinded her to the gentler, deeper love presented by means of Aidan. That’s a large realization for any individual of any age. In Carrie’s case, that reconsideration additionally demanding situations her two foundational Intercourse and the Town relationships, as returning to Aidan in her 50s upends the sooner answer of what had felt like a extra typical boy-meets-girl story.

Learn: And Simply Like That addresses its Che Diaz downside

A part of what makes Carrie and Aidan so interesting to look at after their prolonged hiatus is the entire lifestyles that’s came about in the meanwhile. Romance, regardless of how acquainted or pleasing, doesn’t supersede the tasks of parenthood. And fortunately, And Simply Like That doesn’t shy clear of appearing how Carrie and Aidan’s separate commitments impact their skill to begin over—a realism that still manages to retroactively easy over probably the most abnormal immaturity that the Intercourse and the Town characters exhibited within the two motion pictures, which came about all through their 40s.

Those works emphasize the stumbling blocks that rise up when two folks attempt to percentage now not simply emotions, but additionally tasks and losses. In What Occurs Later, Meg Ryan performs Willa, the free-spirited former female friend of Invoice (David Duchovny), a suit-and-tie industry sort who swiftly reunites with Willa whilst stranded in a regional airport. The movie, which used to be launched in theaters previous this month, slowly finds that their surface-level variations weren’t the loss of life knell for his or her courting; slightly, it used to be the pair’s starkly other attitudes about parenthood. Any contemplation of what may had been—or what may nonetheless be—should be filtered thru Invoice’s fears about his fractured courting with the daughter he had after splitting up with Willa. The strain between prioritizing kids’s wishes over romantic bonds displays up right through The Golden Bachelor too: One girl leaves halfway throughout the sequence taping to give a boost to her daughter, who’s suffering with a critical case of postpartum despair.

Those are weighty problems to cope with whilst seeking to win over a possible spouse, made the entire extra intense when magnified by means of the grief of getting misplaced a partner. And naturally, now not everyone seems to be thinking about in search of love anew; quite a lot of divorced and widowed older girls say they don’t wish to remarry or cohabitate with a person ever once more. However regardless of the traditional-seeming values that those contemporary works espouse, they nonetheless mark a notable shift in depictions of growing old. The on-screen relationships are as whimsical, funny, and lusty as they’re solemn. Those works provide real-world limitations to romance, however they don’t lose sight of ways growing old too can assist domesticate the equipment had to triumph over the hurdles that lifestyles gifts. With out the teachings Carrie realized whilst doggedly pursuing Giant, the loss Willa suffered all through her school courting with Invoice, or the intensity of Gerry’s devotion to his overdue spouse, those characters—genuine or fictional—may now not have discovered the decision to nurture love on their very own phrases.

If that sounds just a little sanguine, so be it. As one former Golden Bachelor hopeful described the contest, in a pointy pivot from the standard “now not right here to make buddies” reality-show speech, “It’s about love, nevertheless it’s additionally such a lot about hope, and friendship, and what lifestyles provides all people.”