• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, September 28, 2023

The 22 golden girls vying for the love of 71-year-old Gerry Turner on “The Golden Bachelor” each bring their own spin to the occasion when they meet him for the first time on the show’s premiere episode Thursday night on ABC.

One of them leaps out of the show’s trademark limousine flourishing pom-poms and then performs a cheer she wrote in his honor.

Another quacks like a duck and then launches into a chicken dance, complete with clucking. 

“My name is April and I grew up on a chicken farm and my eggs are still very fresh!” declares “April,” a 65-year-old therapist from Port St. Lucie, Florida, brandishing a basket of eggs.

Sandra, 75, a retired executive assistant from Doraville, Georgia, demonstrates how she deals with nervousness -- by closing her eyes, pausing, taking a deep breath and then reciting a personal mantra, which basically consists of uttering the f-word every couple of seconds.

The word was not bleeped or otherwise censored in the version of the show ABC provided for preview, although it is reasonable to assume it will be excised in the version airing Thursday.

Still another contestant -- Theresa, 70, a financial services professional from Shrewsbury, New Jersey -- threatens to strip naked right then and there.

“I have a birthday tonight,” she tells Gerry (pronounced like “Gary”). “So, I thought, why not come in my birthday suit!” 

She then undoes the front of her dress and -- voila! -- this “birthday suit” turns out to be some sort of undergarment.

When another bachelorette meets Gerry for the first time, she swoons like she just met Paul McCartney. 

“When I first saw you on ‘Good Morning America’,” she tells him, “I could not breathe for two hours!” 

Turner, a retired restaurateur from Indiana, was first announced in July as the man at the center of ABC’s first-ever spin-off of “The Bachelor” featuring an eligible older gentleman seeking a love match for his golden years from a bevy of bachelorettes aged 60 to 75.

He is a widower whose one and only wife of 43 years died suddenly in 2017. Now, with the blessing of his two grown daughters, he is positioned on the show as ready to embark on a mission in pursuit of a new, second love of his life.

Who will it be? It is anybody’s guess in Episode One as Gerry reacts like a kid in a candy store to the women arriving by stretch limo in the driveway of the “Bachelor” house just for him.

“Every door that opened was like the best Christmas ever!” he says, evidently dizzy with delight.

Why wouldn’t he be, when the candidates include sassy Susan, 66, described as a wedding officiant from Aston, Pennsylvania?

Sashaying up to Gerry in a shimmering silver gown adorned with feathers, she invites Gerry to look at her shoes. 

“You see these heels?” she asks him as she coquettishly hikes up the hem of her dress above one ankle. “I’m very comfortable with six inches!”

Or what about bubbly Leslie, 64, a self-described fitness instructor and dancer from Minneapolis who says she once dated Prince, and claims she was the inspiration for his 1979 song, “Sexy Dancer”?

“The women are amazing, everybody looks really, really good,” observes Leslie. “And we’re all breaking the stereotypical view of what a senior looks like or acts like.”

What is she referring to? Where “The Golden Bachelor” is concerned, maybe she’s talking about how these mature women react like high school seniors after they first lay eyes on Gerry.

“Oh, my God! I want to pinch myself. He is just so handsome!” exclaims one of them. 

“I got to give him a kiss! I just wanted to drink him in!” another smitten bachelorette tells the group.

Well, Gerry, with an ex-cheerleader, Prince’s muse and a 65-year-old therapist from Florida whose eggs are still fresh, how can you lose?

“The Golden Bachelor” premieres Thursday (September 28) at 8 p.m. Eastern on ABC.