By Briggs Briar, Wonderwall

It started with a rose, or at least with a television executive walking into the office one day and saying, "Let's bring back the idea of a harem!" Either way, both "The Bachelor" and its sister program, "The Bachelorette," have become cultural phenomena.

Depending on which show it is, one eligible man, or woman, wades through a pool of over two dozen suitors in the hope of finding true and lasting love, and they do so on dates, sometimes undressed, in hot tubs, on romantic moments atop skyscrapers, or simply visiting someone's parents at a mushroom farm. It is not conventional dating, but rather the great mess of dating en masse that people love to watch.

For the nineteenth permutation of "The Bachelor," and as we await the eleventh season of "The Bachelorette", Wonderwall takes a look back at some of our favorite Bachelors and Bachelorettes to find out where that final rose left them, thorns and all.