Should You Continue On A Journey Of Love With Ben And Lauren: Happily Ever After??

What Is This Thing?

Remember how Ben was The Bachelor and eventually proposed to Lauren B.? Since America got to watch their entire courtship, they apparently have no problem letting us see their engagement too.

When Is It On?

Tuesdays at 8 PM ET on Freeform, starting October 11.

Why Was It Made Now?

Not content locking up your evenings in the winter (The Bachelor) and summer (The Bachelorette, Bachelor In Paradise), the evil geniuses behind Bachelor/ette franchise are now making a play for your autumn. I assume Ben and Lauren were chosen because, of all the recent matches, they seem the most boring/least likely to break up before producers can get a whole season in the can. (You KNOW JoJo and Jordan are probably in the process of splitting even as you read this.)

What's Its Pedigree?

I assume they've cobbled together a crew from the Bachelor B-team.

...And?

Can I get real (embarrassing) with you for a second? Because I have to watch all the television, I barely read books. But in the past two months, I've read the biographies of both Courtney Robertson (the winner of Ben Flajnik's season of The Bachelor) and Andi Dorfman (a contestant on Juan Pablo's Bachelor season and subsequently The Bachelorette herself). They're mostly boring, but those moments when the truth about the shows sneaks in make the slog worth it. After suffering through the official version of "love stories" that almost all fall apart, there's nothing more appealing than a (mostly) unmediated look at what went wrong once filming ended (and, sometimes, what went wrong when it was still going on).

However, when Ben And Lauren: Happily Ever After? was announced, I didn't get too excited. The question mark in the title struck me as Freeform's attempt at reverse psychology: if they're trying to make the viewer think we're going to see cracks forming between ABC's First Couple, then there's no way any of that will actually make it on screen.

I AM DELIGHTED TO REPORT THAT I WAS WRONG. Cracks all over the place!

In fact, we open on a fight: Ben and Lauren backstage at the live finale of JoJo's season of The Bachelorette. Ben, kind of distractedly, asks Lauren if she's ready to go out; Lauren replies that she never really wanted to be part of this taping, but that Ben had already accepted for both of then and she couldn't really go against plans he'd already made. Ben's making decisions without Lauren's input? Lauren's passive-aggressive as hell? Lauren still hates JoJo's guts? It's all so much more than I hoped!

It's actually kind of hilarious how much my predictions for the season line up with reality. Ben and Lauren celebrate the 4th of July -- though not with a cookout for their families -- just sitting on the side of a river or something, watching fireworks and getting eaten by mosquitoes. Ben and Lauren talk about décor -- though primarily about Ben's terrible taste (he made the garage door of his childhood home into a headboard and Lauren can't stand it). But, more than any other topic, Ben and Lauren talk about JoJo. It's extremely evident that having "won" the season has done nothing at all for Lauren's sense of security in their relationship: Ben, that fucking dog, told both JoJo and Lauren that he loved them, and Lauren still isn't over it. She also may never get over it as long as she remains an active citizen of Bachelor Nation, trotted out at premiere or finale events as living proof that the system works -- but, if this show is to be believed, it's not just when she's in TV studios that she's required to comment on her fiancé's most recent ex; even nosy strangers in supermarkets don't scruple to ask them about it.

Basically, The Bachelor is all schmooping and no conflict. Ben And Lauren: Happily Ever After? flips the ratio. It's exactly what you want.

...But?

You can't fill a whole TV hour with fights and testy silences (...apparently), so we also have to suffer through extremely staged reality show baloney. As if we needed more proof of Lauren's terrible judgment than that she went on The Bachelor, and stayed on it to the end, and then agreed to a follow-up show, we also learn that Haley and Emily, the twin contestants with whom she vied for Ben's affections, are still her very close friends, so we have to watch the three of them blonding around Denver pretending they think they can replace Ben's toilet when I'm pretty sure at least two of the three of them won't be able to follow instructions that include "lefty loosey" if they don't know which hand is which. (If you watched Bachelor In Paradise, you know: those twins are fucking DUMB.)

There's also a scene in which Ben sits in a generic cubicle in a featureless office and vents to a "co-worker" about how hard it is to integrate Lauren into his household, but are we seriously supposed to believe Ben -- now on his third reality show starring gig -- still has a job? When he's so much a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company that it shut down his plans to run for public office literally the day after he announced them? Please.

...So?

I hate that I'm going to watch every episode of this. But I definitely, definitely will.