Fred Bruning: 'The Golden Bachelor' and the importance of never giving up

Gerry Turner.

Name ring a bell?

If not, you must have been re-reading Dickens or playing Wordle or carving wooden ducks or maybe just pondering the universe while everyone else was watching this hunk with a hearing aid being pursued by women of a certain age on the trailblazing ABC show “The Golden Bachelor.”

All right, “trailblazing” may be going too far, but it’s true that in the bachelor and bachelorette reality TV world, contestants with the creases and crumples of senior citizenship are not ordinarily in starring roles. With one-third of the United States over 65 and life expectancy more than 76 years, this could be big.

ABC’s elder experiment “showcases a whole new kind of love story — one for the golden years,” says a lively network blurb surely written by someone who has not yet peered absently into the refrigerator hoping for an epiphany or taken three or four tries to get up from the couch. (Your turn is coming, is all I have to say.)

Part of the clever “showcasing” mentioned above has involved getting Gerry Turner’s name into publications from Glamour to Harper’s Bazaar and flashing his supersized image on a jumbotron in Los Angeles.

“He’s hot. He’s sexy. He’s 72,” says attendant ad copy, quoting a headline in — perfect — AARP magazine.

And, look, absolutely nothing wrong with a little over-the-hill hoopla.

Gerry seems like a nice guy, a polite Midwesterner, originally from Iowa and now Indiana.

He speaks adoringly of his wife, Toni, who died unexpectedly in 2017, and his two daughters and grandchildren. He has a great smile — the Golden Bachelor ladies really, really like Gerry’s smile — and is courteous and respectful.

Every hopeful earns his undivided attention and a few kind words. “Oh, Ellen, you’re great,” he says to one, while assuring another, “You’re making me feel very special,” when she serenades him while strumming a guitar.

Also, Gerry cries easily. This is another winning characteristic — sensitivity. The women, in their 60s and 70s, appreciate his softer side. “I’m pretty quick to tears,” Gerry says.

Can I pause here for a moment to say that I, likewise, am quick to tears.

Pavarotti singing “Nessun Dorma,” newsreels of Jackie Robinson stealing home, ’50s doo-wop numbers, it doesn’t take much. Play “Earth Angel” by the Penguins or “Close Your Eyes,” by the Five Keys, or “A Thousand Miles Away,” by the Heartbeats and I am momentarily incapacitated.

So far as I can tell, however, the only effect this weepy side has had on women is to make them wonder if maybe I need a therapist. Once I made a few heartfelt remarks at Thanksgiving and was so moved by my own words that I could not continue and had to take a seat.

“Mom,” I heard one of our daughters whisper to her mother, my wife, Wink. “This happen often?”

But, no doubt, Gerry’s got it all going — handsome, decent, funny, sweet.

When it came time for him to announce the first cut — divulge the 16 women who would receive a rose and continue, and the six eliminated after Episode 1 — Gerry was a class act. “This is something that I’ve dreaded doing,” he said, fighting for composure.

Sure, it’s only television, and everyone knew what to expect, but looking at the women who were left behind —the hope-filled romantics still searching for love late in life — you got the idea that, contrived or not, the moment hurt. The earlier excitement, the flirty jokes, the toasts to the evening ahead, collapsed like the Mets at mid-season.

Oh, come on, you might say, toughen up.

That’s what I say in pep talks to myself. Not the time of life for timidity. You try, you flop, you give it another go.

Don’t go soft on yourself.

It’s never too late — that’s the idea of “The Golden Bachelor.” And so, good luck to Gerry and the remaining ladies. National TV is an odd place to look for love but, hey, it’s worth a try.

As for the rest of us, I say everyone who greets the day with courage and conviction — with a promise of kindness — gets invited back for the next episode. No elimination rounds and to every contestant, a rose.