Good morning Bachelor Bracket!
I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day – I personally took inspiration from the Bachelor and went on a 2on1 date with Ben and Jerry. I ended up eliminating them both by the time the weekend ended, but I’m sure they’ll continue popping up in my future much like Clare and Dale.
This week on the actual Bachelor we did the actual impossible – we had two rose ceremonies. Sure it felt like half of every date was removed as a result and the entire episode was rushed, but we did it! Happy Valentine’s Day to us.
Before we get into the actual show drama, I want to call out the real-life Bachelor drama happening, namely everything behind #FireChrisHarrison. In an EXTRA video with former Bachelorette (not to mention the first Black Bachelorette) Rachel Lindsay, Chris Harrison speaks up in defense of current contestant Rachael Kirkconnell who had a slew of racist things associated with her on social, from questionable likes, a video about her bullying a girl in high school for dating a Black man, and, the straw that broke the camel’s back, her at in Antebellum dress at an “Old South” plantation themed frat party. Chris Harrison said that it wasn’t fair for us to judge her for her actions in 2018 because what we consider racist in 2021 is apparently MUCH different than what was racist in 2018 (???????)
That, combined with the list of other questionable comments Chris Harrison has made over the years, and the fact that all of the contestants essentially unionized against him has resulted in Harrison stepping down for the foreseeable future, aka just After The Final Rose. TBD if he steps down for Bachelor in Paradise / permanently, but in the meantime, we have applications for a new host:
I shall as always faithfully keep you updated, but now onto the actual show!
We start where we left off: Heather from Colton’s season arrives. We get a sped-up version of what happened last time, Heather coming through the revolving door directly to where Matt and Pieper are sitting, Matt and Heather giggling like idiots while Pieper just sits there with a cringe face, and Pieper storming out to the other girls asking who in the world the rando was crashing her alone time.
Heather then talks to Matt about how she heard how what’s in his heart is what she’s looking for and she’s here for the right reasons and NOT because she wasn’t invited to Paradise last year and your girl doesn’t want to get a job when she instead can shill on Instagram instead.
Matt asks Heather for some time to process all his feelings and sends her off to meet all the other women of the house. Also, unrelated, but both he and Heather emphasize that this is the first time they’ve met each other maybe three times each in the span of ten minutes and I didn’t think they met before but now I am convinced they not only briefly met but for sure hooked up because no one denies knowing someone with that much passion that many times unprompted.
Anyways she goes back to the lobby where she meets everyone squished together on a couch much too small for all of the women still left:
Unsurprising to everyone besides Heather, these girls aren’t thrilled another person has entered the chat. They keep talking about Hometowns being so soon and while I respect that by the end of the episode we had only four women remaining, look at the picture above and tell me how in the world that happened. Like they cut MORE THAN HALF of the women in an hour and a half. We’ve only grown and grown this group and somehow in one episode it was like And Then There Were None and everyone had been picked off.
But I’m getting ahead of myself – everyone is mean to Heather, Heather cries, and everyone is mad.
Matt has a short heart to heart with Chris Harrison where he’s like what am I contractually obligated to do, to which Chris says to follow his heart or whatever other garbage we pretend he actually says instead of KICK HER OFFFFFFFF. So Matt takes Heather aside and tells her that if they met under different circumstances they could have maybe had a beautiful love or something weirdly intense for a “stranger” but they didn’t so she has to go. Heather cries way too much for someone who has spent “no more than five minutes” with this fool and says she also wishes their stars had aligned in a different way. If Matt is single at the end of this you can’t convince me he and Heather aren’t going out again. Heather drives off into the sunset in her minivan.
^turns out he’s not with that blonde girl who always made them doubt
We then move on to the actual elimination where Serena C. and Chelsea get sent home. Abigail is the final one saved and you know production has been psychologically scarring her because she breaks down for the seventh time this season about not getting time with Matt.
Now that we are back to the start of a new week, a date card arrives. Even though Abigail and Jessenia are the only people to have not gotten a one on one, rather than either of them getting the date card we get ANOTHER date with Serena P., aka Ms. Were You Weird Because You Owned a Turtle.
Truthfully I think Abigail might have been breathing a sigh of relief when it turned out the date activity was going to be tantric yoga. Tantric yoga has a rich history of focusing on you connecting with your energy and establishing deeper connections, but because this is the Bachelor it’s chosen solely because the poses can be very NSFW and nothing screams intimacy like pretending to be intimate on camera.
My favorite part of this date was that despite the fact Serena is apparently incredible at yoga (I don’t buy her ‘oh it’s been so long since I’ve done this’ when she’s bending her back enough to have her toes touch her hairline) she was open about how much she hated the date. So much so that when they did the staring into each other’s eyes while sitting on each other portion of tantric yoga Matt went in for a make-out and she SWERVED him (which points to Matt he was very chill with even though that’s such a low bar it shouldn’t need to be said). She was awkward and twitchy and just SO not about it.
During their dinner time they talked a bit about it with Matt taking the ‘so why don’t you like me approach’ and Serena was way more honest than I expected at this point in the show. She was like hey, I’m not super into PDA, I don’t want to pantomime sex on national television even if you gave me the second one-on-one, so I’m actually just not going to. And Matt to his credit was like oh this is fantastic thank you for being open and not just pretending to like things you don’t and Serena gave him a big ‘why would I literally ever do that look’ and I have so much more respect for Serena now. Even if she’s talking about how she likes to take it slow but also plans to be ready to accept a proposal in a few weeks. Serena gets the rose regardless.
Back at the house, we get a group date card and everyone besides Jessenia is on it, meaning she gets the one-on-one and Abigail will not. We don’t get to see the day portion of the date for reasons unknown. But we do get to see an absolute disaster of an evening! And truly a disaster only based on my judgments because the women are far too young and are making TERRIBLE decisions in their quest for this frankly average man’s heart.
Matt gives a speech about Hometowns being next week so everyone needs to say their piece before he ruthlessly eliminates them. First at risk is Bri, who immediately starts to tear up. Matt asks her what is wrong and she says that the other day she had to make a hard choice, which was to quit her job. She goes on to say how it was her dream job and it meant a lot to her, especially since it made her single mother so proud.
There are so many things wrong with this, so I shall make a list of questions I have:
1. WTF?
2. Did she even ask Matt what his thoughts were? Like maybe he could have been like hmmm actually maybe don’t?
3. In what world did she think she could not show up to work for 2-3 months?
4. Does she go by a different name professionally? Because after an embarrassing amount of time I could not find her LinkedIn page.
5. I am like 85% sure she works at Facebook based on forums I fell into, as it’s a ‘high-profile social media company’ in San Francisco and no offense to Twitter but I don’t think it’s that – but girl, why would you give up being a Communications Manager at 24 at Facebook (or even Twitter!)?????? According to Glassdoor the average salary for that is $170,079. And No offense to Matt but is he worth ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR?? Even if you managed to cash in on your Instagram following and make like $30K/mo, while yes that’s more than double, at some point that’s going to run out – what are you going to do when you’re 45?? NOT BE A FACEBOOK COMMUNICATIONS VICE PRESIDENT MAKING $227K A YEAR THAT’S FOR SURE!
6. If that’s your dream job WHY WOULD YOU GIVE IT UP?? I obviously also have my dream job too Bri (excuse me while I CC my boss on this week’s email) but you don’t see me giving it up to be an influencer. Don’t get me wrong I also like lie to myself and say I could be a travel influencer but then I remember I have little money, no photography skills, and have actual interests that are better applied doing my actual job – chances are once I quit to live my #everygirltravel or #budgettravelbabes life it turns out I would HATE IT and then I’m stuck because now I have no job.
7. Did you even consider your retirement Bri?
8. What about your 401K? WHAT ABOUT THE COMPANY MATCH BRI??
9. Have you even considered how confusing buying health care is when you are an independent contractor Bri?
10. DO YOU REALIZE HOW DISAPPOINTED I AM RIGHT NOW BRI????
BUT WHATEVER LET’S MOVE ON.
Moving on to Kit, who definitely doesn’t worry about a 401K match.
She sits down with Matt and tries to freak him out with her five-year plan:
Just kidding. First on her list of to-dos is to finish college.
Then she wants to travel. Figure out what she wants to do as a job. And because of this, things like getting married “will probably be pushed a little longer than other women.” She wouldn’t want to have kids until much later in life. And here at home I’m nodding with my roommates being like yes, I too Kit don’t want to have kids young (lol as if that was even an option for me at this point) and Kit goes like yeah I’m down to have kids much later in life MAYBE WHEN I’M 25 OR 26.
That is not much later in life Kit. That, as some would say, is rather early in life. Going on nothing but my own opinion, I feel like pre-26 is early, 27-32 is average, and 33+ is later. Welcome to facts by Katherine.
I just looked it up because I felt bad spreading fake news, and an article from MarketWatch says that the average age woman in 2018 had her first child was 28 SO I WAS RIGHT.
Also, I just learned Meghan Markle is having a second child with her husband, how exciting.
Anyways, back to Matt. Matt and Abigail have a talk since Abigail is slowly spiraling out of control. She’s like ‘hey, you gave me the first impression rose but then ghosted me for six weeks what gives’ and Matt gets his almost now patented Imma break your heart face:
And says this doozy of a quote: I got so comfortable in my relationship with you that I was able to explore other relationships and now they’re further along.
EXCUSE YOU? How absolutely insulting. Like that’s how cause and effect works? The least you could have done was keep Magi her bestie around if you were going to be such an idiot.
So Matt decides to do the noble thing and kick a girl when she’s down eliminate her then and there.
Abigail ends up sobbing in the back of the van and says something along the lines of I’m the girl that helps guys figure out what they want but it turns out what they want isn’t me and it’s truly gut-wrenching and while I know spoilers said Katie was going to be Bachelorette I am thinking Abigail might steal it from her. This has Ben Higgins “why am I so unlovable” written allllll over it.
Despite doing the bare minimum, Rachael ends up getting the group date rose and moves onto Hometowns.
I am so glad Hometowns happen onsite and not in these girls’ actual hometowns this year because the last thing we need to do is put Matt in a situation where he visits Rachael’s actual hometown, rated one of the racist towns in all of America. And there is a LOT of competition out there for that title people.
Unlike every other group date I’ve ever seen, where the lead goes home after giving out the rose, Matt and Rachael go to a private concert and have a weird one-on-one date. And normally while these concerts have randos on the show, I actually know who Aloe Blacc is! He does the vocals for a bunch of DJ songs, most notably Wake Me Up by Avicci.
Before we can move on to the group date Kit realizes she is WAAAAAY too young for this nonsense and goes to Matt to dump him. She’s like listen I’m not there yet and he pretends he was ever there yet and she leaves.
Also for anyone who is like ‘Kit isn’t THAT young’ here is a pic of her when Twilight was big:
She’s like what, in the second grade here?? I digress.
We get to our final date of the day which has Jessenia and Matt drifting expensive cars. To be entirely honest I got distracted by a story my friend was telling me for the majority of the day portion of this date but it looked like ABC meets Fast & the Furious and like they probably could have lent Heather something nicer than a minivan.
For the evening part of the date we get Matt and Jessenia having dinner in this gorgeous fairy light setup but all I can focus on is the fact that Matt James is wearing A HOODIE to the date. I don’t, for the record, want to hate on hoodies. I myself am wearing one now. But the difference is I haven’t gone outside in two days and am giving off more ‘real life Rapunzel trapped in my tiny apartment during a pandemic’ vibes and Matt is giving ‘I couldn’t care LITERALLY AT ALLLLLL if I’m on TV I’m so done with this girl’ vibes. This is like if Richard Gere sent Julia Roberts that beautiful red gown and showed up himself in a tracksuit.
Jessenia pretends to be chill with the fact he is putting zero effort in (you can do better Jessenia!) and talks about how excited she would be to have him meet her parents because she is falling in love with him. Matt proceeds to look thrilled by her declaration.
Shocking no one after showing up to the date looking dead-faced in a hoodie, Matt sends Jessenia home.
I’m not sure at this point in the episode if we are just cutting things out because we had to catch up before Hometowns or if they actually skipped the cocktail party in favor of a rose ceremony, but with less than ten minutes on the clock, we rush to the rose ceremony. With two women already having roses, Serena and Rachael, we round out our top four with Michelle and Bri receiving roses.
In a beautiful yet understated moment, Matt walks Pieper out and she doesn’t even dignify his nonsense with a goodbye or by letting him open the door for her. She has realized both too soon and too late that she is above this process (sorry, journey) and says as such during her car ride goodbye interview. While not getting a Bachelorette edit, Pieper is one of my favorites for actually expecting something – not a lot, just something – from this man and not pretending to be into his bullshit when he can’t even do that.
I look forward to catching up with everyone next week during Hometowns where we can judge not only the remaining women, but also their sure to be interesting families.
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