So it was a matter of thinkpiece-friendly controversy, then, when, in August, The Bachelor announced that Nick, for all this aggregated awfulness, would get rewarded with a prize that is even more valuable than a telegenically red rose: He would be the next Bachelor. Come January, Nick would have 30 women—not just beautiful women, but also “accomplished” ones, the show goes out of its way to insist—vying for his heart. It was a casting decision that presented a challenge for a show that, for all its glitter and fluff, revolves around its own implied moralities: about marriage and the path that should lead to it, about sex, about the things that make one, in one of the show’s recurring phrases, “deserving of love.” With Nick, who snagged the bachelorship over the expected candidate, the sensitive cowboy Luke, The Bachelor’s producers needed to find a way to have it both ways: to benefit from the ratings-grabbing drama of a controversial Bachelor while also maintaining the moralism of a televised mating routine that demands that its participants, all of them, be “there for the right reasons.”

Their solution, it seems: The Bachelor is insisting that its star, while still “controversial,” has changed. Nick is a villain no longer, it claims, but a man whose prior mistakes have now made him more intent than ever to Find Love. “This is the season of redemption,” Kathy Griffin—yep, that Kathy Griffin—announced in a special leading up to Monday’s season 21 premiere. And during the premiere itself, The Bachelor’s host, Chris Harrison, laid things out yet again: “From bad boy to Bachelor,” Harrison said, with ceremonial solemnity, “we’ve all seen Nick grow.” With Nick’s season, the show that perfected the villain edit, and more recently the crazy edit, is giving its viewers a new one: the redemption edit.

The groundwork for Nick’s comeback story was established this summer, when he made his third appearance on the franchise’s shows as a contestant on Bachelor in Paradise. That season’s villain spots being already occupied by Chad and Lace and Ashley, the show found another role for Nick: as a straight-talking adviser to Ashley, as a good boyfriend to Jen, as an affable friend to all. Nick’s willingness to participate in three rounds of Bachelor-hood established him as the best thing the show can imagine a person to be: as someone who believes in Love, and who is willing to undertake whatever ritual humiliations Journey might be necessary to find it.

That narrative spilled over into the new season of the show. Nick, The Bachelor’s Season 21 made clear on Monday, would redeem himself from his previous villainy not just by abandoning the antics of the past, but also by searching, with earnestness of heart and purity of purpose, for “a woman to spend his life with.” Monday’s premiere began with Nick receiving adorable dating advice (be open-minded, be honest, “don’t mumble”) from his young sister. It continued with the typical stuff of Bachelor scene-setting: with shots of Nick joking with his large family (he’s one of 11 kids) and running, pensive and shirtless, and looking, longingly, into the middle distance.