We open on a—no, screw that. Your Honor, permission to get real? Thank you. May it please the court – this episode pissed me the fuck off.
Trust me, I love hating on this godforsaken franchise as much as anyone. It’s trash, it’s dumb, it’s a guilty pleasure. But when you really go past the outer crust of hating on it, there’s a gooey truth in the center—I love The Bachelor, and some of my best memories with family and friends are stuffing ourselves on the couch and devouring this show whole. Whether it’s watching Jason “Caricature of George Bush” Mesnick with my mom and sisters (with our dad secretly watching from the kitchen), or obsessing over Emily Maynard with my college friends in our sophomore-year apartment (that, of course, had a life-size Lil Wayne cardboard cutout)—this show has been a part of my life for over a decade, and I sincerely care about it.
Now, this show is a dumpster fire (the dumpster, of course, being behind a rat-infested pizza buffet). The contestants are not only creeping towards Too Young™ territory, but they’re not even hot or remotely eligible. The talent of this show has taken the steepest of declines, and I promised myself I wouldn’t compare it to the stock market in 1929, so I won’t. I miss when this show featured literal princes and tire heirs, and not girls with Cosmopolitan-mandated highlights whose ultimate aspiration is to sell gummy vitamins for a 10% commission.
Pulling back from the franchise as a whole, this episode was terrible. It was tedious, anticlimactic, and injected with more filler than a Walmart turkey. So, without further old-person ranting, let’s get into it.
We start with—yep, you guessed it—MORE MONTAGES! Of scenes we LITERALLY SAW YESTERDAY! O Holiness Chris Harrison keeps pronouncing “finale” like “fin-AH-lee” like a college freshman who studied abroad in Ibitha for two weeks.
The President of Delt is finally knocking on CBC’s door – she opens, and basically has a giant tattoo on her face that says “lmao is this guy serious.” He continues to read the room perfectly and profess his unwarranted love for her – she is so desperately trying to not crack up in his stupid hot face. The first thing she says in response? “This is crazy! This is… really crazy!” LMAO. That directly translates to “I do not reciprocate this at all.”
The best part here is when CBC gives yet another excuse as to why she ended things—“something told me [the other two girls] were further along than I was… They could give you [commitment], and I couldn’t.” Folks, another lesson from ol’ Auntie Kal—if someone gives you more than one reason as to why they can’t do something, it means there’s actually only one—they straight-up don’t want to. Thinking the other two relationships were further along is now [checks journal] Reason #1,268 that CBC has used. Honey, she straight-up doesn’t want your comically-enlarged jawline.
After what must be Portugal-assisted Stockholm Syndrome, CBC and the President of Delt kiss. She immediately says “I’m so confused,” to which he replies “Don’t say that.” GOOD! HEALTHY! The Bachelor Overlords are playing romantic music, which is so beyond messed up at this point. All season, the President of Delt has been talking about not forcing feelings. This is exactly what he’s doing here by flat-out dismissing her concern, and exactly what the Bachelor Overlords are doing here with this music – hardly the right soundtrack for a fatal, worrying miscommunication. Also, kids, if you’re leaning on “compromise [and] sacrifice” during the earliest stages of your relationship, stop settling and get your ass out of there. You can’t force yourself to be someone’s soulmate—you’re not Lizzie McGuire pretending to like grape soda to impress Ethan Craft. Trust that this isn’t the only person who will like you, and move on.
The President of Delt then invites CBC to Spain to meet his family. CBC instinctively hesitates, then gives in – this is a pattern here, and it’s more toxic than any Britney Spears song. CBC is a hostage in this relationship – and frankly, it’s uncomfortable to watch.
We’re then transported to Spain, and this is all wrong. The Bachelor Overlords are trying to give us the tension, the love of a usual finale episode, but there’s only one person left. I’m not really sure what the story is anymore – are we just waiting to see if she settles for someone she clearly doesn’t want? Is that a resolution we even want at this point?
All of my bitterness and cynicism is thrown out the door – DADDY DELT IS BACK, BABY. Seriously, if Bruce Willis and Jason Statham had a baby, they would give that fugly baby up for adoption and find Daddy Delt to raise him as their own. Ugh. The best interaction here is—
DADDY DELT: Are you in love with her?
PRESIDENT OF DELT: I’m in love with her.
DADDY DELT: Is she in love with you?
PRESIDENT OF DELT: …No.
I mean, that’s really it, folks. As much as I could watch eleven more hours of Daddy Delt scolding his not-as-hot son, we finally bring CBC in the mix. She is, of course, saying that she’s nervous – but there’s a glaring feature about her right now that proves to us that she doesn’t give the smallest fuck about this dude or his family. Members of the jury, look at her nails:
Her nail polish, Your Honor, is CHIPPED. She’s meeting his family for the first time ever, and her nail polish is chipped. Guys, I don’t even know how to say this without sounding like Elle Woods, but girls care about that kind of stuff. (I don’t want to generalize, but I think we can safely assume that CBC puts enough stock in her appearance to care about that stuff.) If you’re going on an important date, you make sure your nail polish looks good – I am literally quoting the Hollister SS19 Branding Guide at this point. If you absolutely don’t have time to fix your nails, that’s fine – but it’s not ideal, and CBC has literally had nothing to do in bumfuck Algarve, Portugal except to sit in her Airbnb and twiddle her un-manicured thumbs. The prosecution rests.
Daddy Delt and Mama Delt respectively notice this overall lack of effort, and are truly not having it. Their stupid son tells them that “She’s the first person I think about when I wake up, and the last person I think about when I go to bed.” Jesus Christ, can this be any more scripted? Your fakeness and love-struck googly eyes aren’t fooling anyone, let alone the hotties that birthed you. Daddy Delt asks him if this is just “wanting what you can’t have,” – Y E S. His not-as-hot son dismisses this, forgetting which man in this conversation has had sex before.
It’s finally time for CBC and the President of Delt’s last date—halle-facking-lujah. The two blondes are driving in an open jeep together—PURSUANT TO THE HOLLISTER SS19 BRANDING GUIDE—and he makes a loaded joke about her leaving again. Okay, obviously I, a Joke Queen, am biased here – but jokes are powerful, especially one like this. We find them funny because they’re rooted in truth, and this being his truth shows that he resents her for leaving in the first place. An example of this is a couple who gets back together after cheating – they can forgive all you want, but if you say you’re heading to CVS and your partner says “Alright! As long as you’re not cheating on me! Haha!” – your relationship hasn’t actually recovered, and likely never will.
We then have some light rock-climbing and a Bachelor Overlord-mandated picnic, and I’m honestly bored at this point – CBC can’t make eye contact, she starts rambling about her college ex, they’re not even eating actual food. She’s literally telling the President of Delt that she does not want to be in a committed relationship right now, yet this whole show is still happening. There’s a brief audience cameo by none other than the queen Blair Waldorf herself, and I suddenly realize why this anticlimactic finale necessitated two parts—ad money, baby.
It’s dinnertime in HostageLand™ and, my God, are these two still talking? Over the course of this fake meal, CBC actually seems to give in to the President of Delt in a way that can only be explained by a fat check sliding under her hotel room door right before this. We finally get to the Fantasy Suite card and the look on her face is just pure annoyance. I love this – you can hype up your first time all you want, but at the end of the day, your v-card—like the rest of us—is also going to someone who wouldn’t care if you died tomorrow.
We get a brief squad interlude with Sydney, Demi, Sweat, Smooth Boy Jason, Ben (who, of course, is actually kind of hot if you look at him from exactly the right angle and imagine him in a totally different context), and my least favorite contestant of all time—Goose. Besides them rambling and Sweat consistently laughing at her own jokes, Demi has the greatest line here—“I hope she jumps on him like a Portuguese fence.” Yes, my queen.
It’s the morning after, and the Bachelor Overlords grace us with another painfully obvious bird and bees shot. The President of Delt has apparently shaved his chest, thereby shaving away any remaining interest I had in him. He insists on being coy about whether they did the deed or not, and I apologize for dog-shitting all over this episode, but c’mon – is he serious? Dude, your virginity was used in the ad campaigns, the trailers, the whole nine yards of the show—you seriously think your virginity is still yours to keep secret and not contractually exchanged for full ownership by the Bachelor Overlords?
We’re back in real time, and the newly-deflowered couple joins O Holiness on stage. She got a cute haircut, but ugh—their PDA is FAH (fake as hell). They are so clearly still not on the same page, and I just realized she looks like a mix of Kristin Cavallari and LC—in other words, BAH (boring as hell). Yes, y’all, this girl is BAH and FAH.
We’re blessed with another montage, except it’s finally footage we haven’t seen just hours earlier. In the montage, CBC and the President of Delt watch a video she recorded for him, and we’re also seeing them watch this from the live studio audience. If you’re following the math here, you’ll see that it’s them, watching a video of them, watching a video of her. Is this Satan’s cut of Inception? I then realize that beyond all of that, WE are watching them watching this video of them watching her video – my brain just shattered.
O Holiness then introduces Air Supply and the studio just turns into this impromptu concert from my worst nightmare. Guys, I’m trying to keep it together here, but what in God’s green earth is happening. A montage of CBC and the President of Delt is playing in the background like a goddamn bar mitzvah, and I’m just truly lost as to what the point of life is.
Guys.
I have tried so hard to keep it together this whole time, but this next part really pushed me over the edge. It’s official – the next Bachelorette is… Hannah. Frickin’. Basic.
There is the most silent non-reaction from the audience during her entire segment, and it’s all I could ever ask for. This girl CANNOT hold a conversation if it meant Alabama would win more sports games or whatever the hell this wannabe cares about. The amount of pauses and filler noises just proves that she literally can’t speak on camera – but we decide to base a whole season off her? In what world? This girl is boring. This girl is not funny. This girl has the vocabulary of someone learning English as a third language. I am beyond infuriated.
We then meet the first few PrettyBoys™ vying for this cardboard box’s attention. The first guy is wearing a blazer and jeans so I don’t even need to spend another second on him. The second guy brings two champagne glasses so she can re-do her toast, which is something we all could’ve predicted from a mile away. The third guy raps and makes me want to stab my eardrums. The fourth guy looks straight outta Hoover High so that’s probably attractive to her. The last guy looks like if you ordered Nick Viall online and he got ruined in transit. By the power vested in her by O Holiness, Hannah Basic gives a rose to the third guy, because nothing makes sense anymore and everything hurts.
And, that’s it.
Guys, we made it. Thank you so much for tuning in with me. It means more to me than you’ll ever know. Don’t forget – always flare your nostrils when you’re angry, keep Chanel in your hearts, and ROLL. DAMN. TIDE.