Spoiler alert! If you haven’t seen It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s August 20 episode “The Golden Bachelor Live,” you can stream it with your Hulu subscription.
After a season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia that paid tribute to series like Is It Cake? and The Rehearsal — and gave us that wild Janine curse in the Abbott Elementary crossover — Season 17 ended on a high note with “The Golden Bachelor Live.” The finale, which both made me cry and provided an awesome classic TV reunion, featured Frank going on The Golden Bachelor, with a plot that felt shockingly similar to the controversy the ABC dating show is actually currently facing with Mel Owens. Did the Gang predict this?
Former NFL linebacker Mel Owens, the 66-year-old lead of the Golden Bachelor Season 2, came under fire this summer for saying he preferred to date women ages 45 to 60 and that he planned on “cutting” any contestants older than that. Knowing this as a Bachelor Nation fan, my whole body cringed into itself during the Always Sunny finale when Frank — standing with Jesse Palmer in front of Bachelor Mansion — started immediately dismissing the women in their 60s who exited the limos, ultimately exclaiming:
No, no, no. Pass! Pass! Are all these whores gonna be this old?
My jaw was on the ground. Not because I couldn’t believe Frank would say such a thing — Danny DeVito is always pushing the envelope with his character — but because it hit a little too close to home, given the conversation that has surrounded the upcoming season of The Golden Bachelor.
Of course, Mel Owens’ comments don’t rise even close to the crude level of Frank’s exaggerated reality on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but to me, the sentiment of instantly eliminating women because they were in their 60s felt uncomfortably similar.
What the ex-NFL player said (in part) was:
They asked me, like, ‘What’s your preferences?’ So I just said 45 to 60, just being honest, right? And then the process went and I was selected. And then we had lunch with the executive producer. I said, ‘If they’re 60 or over, I’m cutting them.’ … They gotta be fit, because I stay in shape, work out and stuff. And I told him, ‘Try to stay away from the artificial hips and the wigs,’ you know, that kind of stuff.
The Golden Bachelor Season 2 cast has yet to be confirmed by ABC, but the list of potential contestants included just one woman under 60. Mel Owens has since said he apologized to the women on his season on the first night of filming.
So is this like The Simpsons being able to predict future events? Season 17 of Always Sunny wrapped filming in December 2024, months before Mel Owens’ June 2025 appearance on the In the Trenches podcast. With “The Golden Bachelor Live” episode airing on the 2025 TV schedule on August 20, there’s really no way one could have inspired the other.
Maybe we’ll find out Mel Owens has been working with Rob Mac and Charlie Day this whole time, and it’s a big elaborate prank that won’t be revealed until The Golden Bachelor premieres at 8 p.m. ET Wednesday, September 24, on ABC. I’d almost believe it at this point.
