The potential for a sexual-misconduct scandal was already at play.

"Bachelor in Paradise" can get heated. ABC

Before we go into the events of the current scandal, we have to acknowledge that all the elements for it have been cooking for years. It's almost a wonder that it took 15 years of "The Bachelor" and multiple spin-offs for a sexual-misconduct scandal to happen.

Just look at the mix: an attractive young man or woman vying for the attention of equally attractive people, competition, hunger for celebrity, and, in many cases, a real desire to fall in love. Throw alcohol into the mix, and you have a recipe for possible disaster and legal trouble.

That said, the current "Bachelor in Paradise" scandal — in which a female cast member was sexually assaulted while too drunk to consent, according to reports of allegations from those working on the show — stepped over the boundaries set for reality TV.

A veteran reality-TV producer, who has never worked on the "Bachelor" franchise but has worked on similar shows, told Variety that they found this situation "unusual."

"My concern about this situation is that if the person was beyond a point of making her choices and was still being shot and being put into this scenario, it's a very weird situation," the producer said. "When you talk about sexual assault, it's almost always just two people alone and it becomes a he-said-she-said situation; this is the most unusual situation because not only is there a third party, but there are cameras that watched everything that happened and everything that led up to what happened. That, to me, is the smoking gun as to why a franchise worth hundreds of millions of dollars was shut down."