Spoilers ahead for The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Season 5, which can be streamed with a Hulu subscription. This also contains spoilers for Taylor Frankie Paul’s unaired season of The Bachelorette.
It’s been six months since Taylor Frankie Paul’s season of The Bachelorette was canceled — yanked unceremoniously from the 2026 TV schedule following the leak of a video from her 2023 arrest for domestic violence. In that half-year, I’ve gone through a spectrum of different emotions — disappointment, frustration, concern, hope that the season will air, exhaustion over the whole thing and, finally, acceptance. However, the release of the truncated fifth season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has reignited my rage.
Actually, I’d say I’m even angrier about the whole situation now than I was in March, because it’s one thing to hear rumors and watch vague TikToks about Taylor Frankie Paul’s actions post-Bachelorette, but it’s quite another to actually see her flagrantly disregarding everything about the longtime dating series. Let’s talk this out.
Taylor Frankie Paul Didn’t Even Want To Get Married
I first want to clarify that I have nothing against Taylor Frankie Paul at all. I have been captivated by her since my super-binge of the first three seasons in preparation for The Bachelorette. But she should never have been The Bachelorette. This is not a new sentiment, but after watching The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Season 5, it feels like we can objectively say this now.
There’s been a lot of debate about whether or not ABC should have chosen “the bad-idea Bachelorette,” particularly because of her arrest and tumultuous history with Dakota Mortensen, but I’m not here to litigate that. I’m saying Taylor Frankie Paul shouldn’t have gone on the show because she had no interest in dating anyone exclusively, much less getting engaged and/or married.
We know this because when she snuck Ben Lambert to New York on SLOMW, he said he was dating to marry TFP, but she balked at the idea of him being her boyfriend and even told Jen Affleck and her mom later in the season that the idea of marriage bored her.
Why did she go on The Bachelorette then? To me, it just proves that she never took The Bachelorette seriously. Another pretty obvious sign of this was how she ran back to Dakota Mortensen so quickly after filming ended.
Taylor Frankie Paul Immediately Cheated On Her Season’s Winner
Many of us had heard the rumors — I believe TFP even confirmed it on social media — that she immediately slept with Dakota Mortensen after returning to Utah from The Bachelorette. That was addressed in The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Season 5 premiere, but when the other MomTok women called her out for cheating on Doug Mason — her winner from the ABC dating show — she questioned if it even counted as cheating.
That just further proves that she didn’t see The Bachelorette as a legitimate opportunity to find a partner. Why else would she not think it’s cheating? Was there something performative about Taylor Frankie Paul and Doug Mason’s relationship that we could have gleaned if we’d seen The Bachelorette? Maybe, but either way, she seemed thoroughly over her experience by the time she returned to filming Mormon Wives.
The SLOMW Cast Talked About The Bachelorette As If We’d Seen It
Another aspect of Season 5 that confused me about Season 5 was how the timing worked out in terms of the production pause. When the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives cast talked about The Bachelorette — including how some of them attended a group date and met the final three guys — it seemed like they assumed viewers had seen the season.
Were we expected to read up on spoilers before watching Season 5? Were we supposed to already know that Doug Mason and Dakota Mortensen had so many similarities? Were we supposed to know Ben Lambert was still in the picture?
The way MomTok and TFP’s mom all bashed Doug Mason — basically accusing him of using Taylor to try to kick-start his music career — it felt like we were already supposed to have a negative impression of him. I have to wonder if this was a way of discrediting her entire Bachelorette experience.
I Think The Secret Lives Of Mormon Wives Is Trying To Move Past The Bachelorette As Fast As Possible
Between the cast giving absolutely no validation to Taylor Frankie Paul’s engagement to Doug Mason and the way Paul had barely landed in Utah before moving on with her life, it feels like The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives may be trying to move on from this debacle as quickly as possible.
Everything was business as usual for Taylor Frankie Paul. She didn’t talk about the dating show experience at all, except for the occasional mention of not wanting to break her NDA. But if the assumption is that we’d all seen her season by the time SLOMW Season 5 aired, why would that matter?
Either way, she didn’t seem to be affected or changed at all by her experience dating so many men and getting engaged. She practically laughed at the idea of how mad Bachelor Nation was going to be at her — and that was before the season was stripped from the schedule.
Maybe it’s true that The Bachelorette was just a business decision for Taylor Frankie Paul. It was an opportunity to star on another TV show, make more money, expand her audience and have a good bit of fun in the process. In that respect, she’s not any different from practically every other person who’s ever applied to be on a Bachelor show.
After 25 years, most of Bachelor Nation knows that people don’t typically go on those shows actually expecting to find love. Some do find a partner, and that’s great, but love isn’t usually the primary motivator. However, the show encourages us to suspend our disbelief, and we go along for the ride anyway.
SLOMW Season 5 Stripped Away The Fantasy Of The Bachelor Franchise
I think that’s what upsets me the most about watching this season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Seeing Taylor Frankie Paul so blatantly discard her Bachelorette experience rips away the fantasy that we tune into The Bachelor shows for.
A lot of questions remain, including how much (if at all) The Bachelorette will come up in SLOMW Season 6. Also, how will the scrapped season debacle affect The Bachelor franchise going forward?
In the grand scheme of things, The Bachelorette and Taylor Frankie Paul’s effect on it are not the most pressing issues. Her mental health, her safety and her children all come first. Even MomTok and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives probably come first. I acknowledge that, but as a longtime Bachelor fan, I can’t help but feel frustrated about the whole situation all over again.
