From the first night of the season, the producers keep the alcohol flowing, and the contestants stay awake until it’s nearly sunrise, working hard to get the attention of one person. One person who has generally been pretty lackluster. With every new season, people complain that “The Bachelor” has proved to be a terrible model for building lasting relationships, which is like complaining that politicians are just trying to win votes. The show could improve its track record only by setting out to make matches between S.-and-M. partners.

I’ve always believed that if you’re truly in love with someone, you shouldn’t be able to answer the question “What do you love about him?” with any kind of real satisfaction. The things you’re able to articulate should leave you at least a little hollow. Contestants on “The Bachelor” will usually have to answer this question for his family, and there will be the usual adjectives like “kind” and “generous” and “funny.” It’s not that I think anyone is intentionally lying, but that they’re describing traits that belong to the set of circumstances more than the person. “The Bachelor” is kind because he has no reason not to be; if he becomes disillusioned with you, he can just send you home. He’s generous because he has a production team purchasing intense, expensive experiences for your dates. He’s funny because you’ve both been flown to a charming village in Switzerland and a funny little cow wandered up behind your picnic. If you want to insist that the show is about falling in love, then it’s more accurate to say it’s about falling in love with being on vacation.

I became especially fascinated with the 13th season of the show, when Jason Mesnick first proposed to Melissa in the finale, then decided that he was really in love with the runner-up, Molly, by the time of the update special. What happened with Melissa during those six weeks of engagement? “The conversations, which were so great on the show, were completely different,” Jason tried to explain. What I think he was really saying was, So we went to a movie in a normal theater. With other people around us. With bad popcorn. Walking out of the theater, she said, “That’s my new favorite movie!” I thought to myself, Really? That movie? And in that moment, I realized that was going to be our whole lives.

3. “Say Yes to the Dress”

If you were more interested in watching a show about people who have become too familiar with one another, then I would point you toward TLC’S “Say Yes to the Dress.” It doesn’t really matter if you go with the original in New York or the spinoff in Atlanta unless you have a strong regional-accent preference.

At first my boyfriend — who’s actually my fiancé, except I can’t stomach that word — asked, “How can you sit through marathons of a show about trying on barely different white dresses?” but then he watched a couple of episodes, and he saw that “Dress” isn’t about dresses. The wedding gowns function pretty much like the ocean views on “Survivor”; they’re a fancy background. The show is about the trouble with family (and here I’m including more symbolic families like groups of friends and sorority sisters), which is that psychological entanglement can keep loved ones from being able to separate their desires from your own.

The bride’s companions will say they’ve come because they want to ensure she ends up in a dress that makes her happy. That’s the idealized notion the families have about the purpose they serve. But then the bride will come out beaming in a gown that differs from a mental image her support system had of what she should be, and practice diverges from theory. On an episode of the Atlanta series, the bride, Allison, emerged in a bedazzled gown she described as being “everything I’ve always envisioned.” She was truly happy. Stone-faced, her mom said, “What [Allison] thinks she might want and ends up getting can be very different.” Allison’s aunt, sister and bridesmaids pulled faces as if she were modeling a sheath made of squirrel hides. Her mom told her, “This is not a flattering dress,” when what she really meant was, “This is not the traditional dress I had in my head.” I didn’t even know Allison, and I could easily see how crushed she was by their responses. She left the store without buying a gown, but the defeat was bigger than just a gown. It was a collapse of self-actualization under the guise of familial concern, protection and love.

My favorite part of the show, and also the part of the show that makes me the most nuts, is the “jacking up” of the bride. If a family can’t get onboard with the dress that makes the bride cry, then the consultants give her a veil or, if things are really dire, a veil with crystals. The bride will put back on the same dress that the whole group loathed five dresses ago. But now she has on a bedazzled veil. I mean, it’s shiny. But this is the exact item that’s needed for her entourage to finally start crying, too. Ten minutes ago they were telling her she looked dumpy and would regret her decision for a lifetime, and now this dress is the one, the only one. They can’t stop seeing the girl they’ve always known until she has been put into a full-blown costume. And in these moments I am presented with a metaphor for familial relationships so powerful I always end up yelling at the TV as if it holds all my relatives.