Meet the New Bachelor

In case you missed him at the end of Lorenzo and Jenn's finale episode, the new Bachelor is U.S. Navy Lieutenant Andy Baldwin, M.D., who is 30 years old. He is "an undersea medical officer for a special operations dive unit stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii" and a world-class triathlete.

Baldwin is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and after that, his bio takes on a definite
"too good to be true" feeling: valedictorian in high school, an All-American competitive swimmer, ESPN National Scholar Athlete of the Year in 1995, paper boy, lifeguard, and lawn mower. He was the first doctor and first military officer in his family and he went to Duke University on a Navy ROTC scholarship. He went to med school at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine, then he was a surgical intern at Naval Hospital San Diego. The guy established a fund to raise money for pancreatic cancer research in honor of his Uncle Tom and he has raised over $20,000 to date.

ABC also says he has a "good-natured personality, stunning good looks and self-deprecating sense of humor. He's an unabashed romantic, has watched the series and believes that the show can help find him the woman who could become his wife." I was glad to hear that Chris Harrison will be back to host the new season, which will begin in the Spring of 2007.

Popwatch's Michael Slezak wrote a hilarious open letter to the new Bachelor. Here's one of my favorites parts, but if you're a Bachelor fan, reading the whole thing is a must:

3. As long as there's alcohol in the room, keep drinking it. I know, it's not the respectable thing to do as an officer and a gentleman, but chugging the hooch is a crucial part of your tour of duty. As we learned from erstwhile Bachelor Charlie O'Connell, it's not the memories of stilted dinner-date chatter, but rather, hazy images of body shots and dirty dancing that last once love fades.