Jon Stewart hopes you’ve had a nice weekend…
“because the dizzying, chaotic carnival ride that is Donald Trump‘s America continues to careen down shitshow hill. It’s fucking madness out there: TSA lines longer than your actual trip; escalating threats in the Middle East; planes driving into trucks.”
In fact, “the only thing giving me joy is looking forward to this season of The Bachelorette,” he ironically quipped. “I mean, they’ve got a strong Mormon woman. She seems lovely. I hope that she finds love—hold on a second, I’m getting a call. Nooo!”
Stewart’s joke comes after scandal has rocked both Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and ABC’s The Bachelorette, following allegations that star Taylor Frankie Paul and her ex Dakota Mortensen were embroiled in a domestic assault incident. As fallout began mounting, filming was suspended on the fifth season of Mormon Wives.
Further turmoil followed when a horrific video from 2023, of an aggressive incident between the couple where a child is present, dropped on TMZ. As such, Disney subsidiary ABC pulled the plug on Season 22 of the reality dating series, days before its scheduled premiere. “In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of The Bachelorette at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family,” the company noted in a statement.
Now, Disney is figuring out whether it will ever air the Paul-fronted season of the long-running dating show, whether the pause has any longer-term implications for the franchise, if and when it will restart production on Season 5 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (Season 6 has also already been greenlit) and how to help Paul and Mortensen over the next few weeks and months.
