TV Talk: Pittsburgher heads to ‘Bachelor in Paradise,’ Ken Burns introduces ‘American Buffalo’
Share this post:
Following his reality TV turn in ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” and as predicted by spoiler sites, Pittsburgher Tanner Courtad will indeed be among the stars of ABC’s “Bachelor in Paradise” beginning with the Oct. 12 episode (9-11 p.m., WTAE-TV).
In an interview after his run on “The Bachelorette,” Courtad said a lot of what he did on “The Bachelorette” wasn’t shown on TV but he was happy with the edit he got on the show.
“How I was portrayed on TV is actually how I was feeling in those certain moments,” he said. “The first couple of weeks, I was just super-excited. The group dates were fun. But as weeks and weeks went on, and Charity continued to build connections with these other guys, I just feel like I’m still sitting on the sidelines waiting to get called in.”
His arrival on “Bachelor in Paradise” seems designed to create conflict as he asks Kat Izzo, who had been dating Brayden Bowers, out on a date, much to Brayden’s chagrin.
Courtad, a South Fayette native who played outside linebacker and wide receiver for South Fayette High School’s football team (class of 2011), said his family has been supportive of his “Bachelor” franchise participation.
“My dad, I don’t think he’s ever been more proud of me since high school football,” said Courtad, who graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2015 and now works as a mortgage lender to real estate investors through Kiavi and has his own fitness program. “And obviously, all my friends were super-excited for me to do it. … The only person that was on the fence was my mom just because she was nervous about how TV can portray you a different way but it all worked out. And at this point, everyone’s super-happy I did it because it was kind of fun. And it was a ton of fun this summer just watching the show.”
Courtad he said when he went on “The Bachelorette” he was “hoping to find someone to tackle life with.
“I’m a pretty ambitious person that would like to meet my ambition, my energy,” he said. “Someone that likes to have fun and doesn’t take life too seriously, but also has big goals.”
Even after that didn’t happen on “The Bachelorette,” Courtad said he still believed in the process of the reality dating franchise prior to the official announcement that he’d be on “Bachelor in Paradise.”.
“It’s one of those things where you dive into this world and you eliminate all outside distractions so you can really focus on that connection and focus on the relationship,” Courtad said. “The only concern is is that connection and relationship strong enough to last outside of the show? At the end of the day, you just won’t know that until you try it. People are meeting in such unconventional ways these days with dating apps and everything, so it’s not that ridiculous of a thing anymore in my eyes.”
‘The American Buffalo’
For his latest PBS documentary series, filmmaker Ken Burns explores the history of “The American Buffalo” (8-10 p.m. Oct. 16 and 17, WQED-TV), a journey that goes through 10,000 years of North American history and traces the animal’s relationship to the continent’s Indigenous People.
In a September Zoom press conference, Burns acknowledged the story is largely one of tragedy at the outset where a species that perhaps numbered 50 million dwindled to fewer than 1,000 in the mid-1980s with many buffalo in zoos or private herds.
“The fact that we have brought the bison back from extinction is itself an accomplishment,” Burns said. “We’ve begun to see, as we were finishing the film, that the film we were making was really the first two acts of the three-act play, if you will, because at the end of the day to save a species as a zoo animal or as an exhibition animal in a corral isn’t the same as saving them as wild and free, and that’s now going on. And, in some way, the last minutes of the film suggest what that third act will be, which is a wonderful unison of private citizens, the federal government who controls upwards of 20,000 head right now in national parks and various wildlife refuges, Native peoples, who have well more than 20,000 distributed among more than 80 tribes coordinated by the Intertribal Buffalo Council. … We’re able to celebrate that we’ve emerged from extinction. We’re headed in the right direction, and we haven’t yet gotten where we should be where we can take what is the relatively silent Great Plains, that used to be our American Serengeti, and repopulate it.”
WQED national show slotted
One-hour documentary “Reparations: The Cost of Inheritance,” executive produced by former WQED executive Darryl Ford Williams and presented by WQED-TV and World Channel’s “American Reframed” series, will debut at 10 p.m. Jan. 8 on PBS stations nationwide.
The documentary will put real people and their family histories into the reparations debate while exploring the divergent wealth trajectories that were the result of enslavement.
Canceled
Fox canceled “Welcome to Flatch” after two seasons.
Paramount+ canceled its “iCarly” sequel series after three seasons.
Channel surfing
Both “The Drew Barrymore Show” (2 p.m. weekdays, WPXI-TV) and “The Kelly Clarkson Show” (3 p.m. weekdays, WTAE-TV) will return for new seasons on Oct. 16. … TCM will air an early 1980s filmed production of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd” starring Angela Lansbury at 12 p.m. Oct. 28. … WQED’s third season of children’s videos “TEAMology, now streaming at wqed.org/teamology, features puppet characters who offer examples of how to cope with stress, how to ask for help and big problems vs. small problems.