Again, what’s love got to do with it?

ON TV, love is boring; it’s the undoing of affection that’s hard to turn away from. Given that, the resilience of “The Bachelor,” in its 10th season on ABC (9:30 p.m. Mondays), is truly remarkable.

For the better part of the last five years, the show has been unflinchingly sincere in its commitment to shoehorn couples into everlasting bliss. That it almost never works isn’t nearly relevant; season in and season out, skepticism is tossed to the wind as 25 women simultaneously fall for one man and are picked off one by one.

Its format has been relentlessly copied and parodied -- once you’ve seen the over-the-top chain ceremonies on “I Love New York,” the straight faces maintained during the “Bachelor’s” rose ceremonies are to be admired, or feared. Yet even in the face of innovation, “The Bachelor” remains static. The men who are the show’s prizes have had plenty in common over the years -- they’re bright and handsome (but not so much that it’s threatening), a notch cheesy and, most crucially, absolutely irony-free. (Between this show and “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” ABC is an easy contender for America’s most earnest network.)

This season’s specimen, Lt. Andy Baldwin, is a Navy doctor (educated at UC San Francisco), competes in Ironman triathlons and drives an extremely rare, and wildly expensive, Saleen S7 Twin Turbo. Yet somehow he’s single. Imagine that -- a motivated overachiever who hasn’t found room for someone else in his life. The horror.

Maybe skepticism is in order. “Are you pumped?” Andy asked one of the women during the first episode before politely shoving her along to make way for the next. (As they have been during most seasons, his would-be partners are overwhelmingly white and largely from the South and Midwest.) When he discovers one of the women shares his birthday, he wonders, “Out of the 25 women, how ironic is it that one of them has the same birthday?” No statistician, he. (There’s a better than 50% chance in a group of 26 that two people will share a birthday.)

Instead, “The Bachelor” hits its stride when feelings are crushed or when one of the main players becomes a dissenter, veering from the script of bliss. The best seasons have featured memorable skeptics about the process -- Moana from Season 8, who always appeared to be about to flee the show, or Shannon from Season 1, who basically recused herself by being unwilling to play to the cameras, or to kiss in front of them.

Best, maybe, was the Bachelor from the show’s seventh season, amiable and appealingly directionless actor Charlie O’Connell (brother of Jerry), who not only seemed surprised that the women continued to show up each day but is also one of the show’s two success stories: He and winner Sarah have been together for two years.

This season, a sense of humor is sometimes invading the show, perhaps despite everyone’s best intentions. On one of last week’s group outings, Andy subjected seven of his dates to a mock mini-triathlon. This week’s episode features a drill sergeant determining to whom one of the coveted roses will go.

Generally, though, the Bachelor plays the straight man -- his courtship has all the sizzle of an eHarmony commercial. And his lack of guile makes him a willing mark for manipulative suitors who aren’t subject to the same genteel expectations the Bachelor needs to uphold.

This season, there are two promising gamers. First there’s Tina, a med student from California, who steadily reminds Andy how out of place she feels as a way of encouraging him to emotionally overcompensate. (She also earnestly, and shakily, sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” for him in the season premiere, one of the more grueling moments recently captured on TV.)

Then there’s Stephanie from South Carolina (as opposed to Stephanie from Kansas). She plays coy, flirting heavily, then withdrawing. She eavesdrops on the girls talking about her but doesn’t interject herself into the conversation.

Thus far, she’s got everyone playing her chess game: “I plan on getting rose after rose after rose until I get a ring on the finger.” Last week, when she and Andy had a one-on-one date, she took the wheel of their yacht and proclaimed, “I love driving.” For the sake of the show, let’s hope so.