And like that, the most boring season of The Bachelor ended just as quickly as Nick Viall’s post-Dancing With The Stars career. It’s so sad. Almost.
RAVEN MEETS THE FAM
We begin the episode with Raven, who has no idea that despite the fact that the other woman in the equation has spent literally every second of every one of her dates fighting with Nick, she is not the frontrunner and the entire audience knows it.
Raven: I think Nick really likes me! This is going well.
Narrator/The Universe: It was not, in fact, going well.
Raven gets to meet Nick’s family for the second time, and does all the things one normally does when meeting someone’s family on a reality dating show. She toasts “to family” and tells everybody who can listen that she’s in love with Nick.
Raven: I feel really great about mine and Nick’s relationship. I am in love with him. I’ve never felt this way about someone before.
Nick’s Dad: How do you think Nick feels?
Raven: ……………..
Most importantly, she gets in good with Nick’s little sister Bella, who will now learn the hard way that nobody gives a fuck what a 12-year-old girl has to say about anything.
Nick’s Mom: After meeting Raven, she just seems like such an honest, true person. I just can’t imagine her hurting anybody.
Me, Three Champagnes Deep: Lol yeah except that dude she stabbed with a shoe.
VANESSA MEETS THE FAM
Then Raven fucks off pretty fast so that the audience can be treated to 30 full minutes of Vanessa’s bullshit as she meets Nick’s family and somehow manages to turn a delightful dinner into a full-on Viall family cry-fest, so at least we finally understand why Nick cries so fucking much. It’s a genetic thing.
Vanessa starts out strong by telling Nick’s family about the time that she puked on him, which she is able to Kellyanne Conway-style spin into a beautiful love story.
Vanessa: And then, I vomited on him.
Nick’s Dad: Wow, I’m crying.
Nick’s Mom: I am also crying.
Nick: I have been crying for three weeks straight.
Bella: Where is Raven?
Vanessa, who has repeatedly said she’s never watched a full season of The Bachelor, then reveals to each parent that she’s not sure if she wants to get engaged and give up her weekly Sunday spaghetti festival with the fam, which would be cool if “getting engaged” wasn’t kind of the entire fucking point of the show. Like, did Vanessa not know that she lived in Canada before applying to be on The Bachelor? She seems to be genuinely confused about the whole immigrating to the U.S. thing. Though, in her defense, that whole process is a bit more complicated these days.
Also, did anybody else know that Nick and his dad have the same crying face? Because they totally do.
NICK & VANESSA’S DATE
We then segue right into Nick and Vanessa’s date, where Nick manages to do the impossible yet again: pick a date that’s somehow EVEN WORSE than the last one (which, if you’ll recall, was the Ice Bucket Challenge). Because after a segment of Vanessa and Nick crying, the audience was obviously hungry for more.
And by “more,” of course, I mean “Santa,” because that’s what Nick and Vanessa’s date is. Meeting Santa.
Why Santa? Why now? Why does this Santa live in such a tiny house with no reindeer, elves, or Mrs. Clause to be found? Why does this Santa have such a deep, sultry voice? Why is Vanessa sitting so close to Santa? She’s kind of all over him? Now she’s all over Nick? Are Nick and Vanessa going to have a 3-way with this Santa? Is Nick going to CHOOSE SANTA?!?
Sadly, none of these questions are answered—I maintain that the three of them did hookup off camera—but the Santa does bestow upon them his blessing and the gift of a wood carving.
Santa: Here is a wood carving. It says “Niko and Venla” and it will bring you happiness and fertility.
Vanessa: Umm…I specifically asked you for an iPhone?
NICK & RAVEN’S DATE
Okay, thank God, Raven is back. And oh look, they’re going on a normal date for normal individuals, aka ice skating. A little bit high school but, hey, at least there isn’t a random sexually charged Santa involved. Also, given the amount of snow and ice everywhere, both of them need at least three more layers, a hundred scarves, and to zip their fucking coats up. The mom in me was losing my shit watching these two slowly develop pneumonia.
Raven and Nick have what looks to be a legitimately fun time ice skating. Nobody cries. Not even Raven when Nick tries to recreate their mud makeout sesh by plopping her ass down on the cold AF ice and attacking her face.
Sidebar to Raven: In the future, you can totally tell dudes you don’t want to make out on top of a pile of ice. You are a strong 25-year-old woman who has had (maybe) one orgasm in her life and you deserve to make out at a reasonable temperature. #Feminism.
Nick then does something that literally every girl has dreamed of seeing on a date and reveals that there have been puppies here the whole time. Why Raven didn’t just take the puppies and bolt at that moment I’ll seriously never know, but instead she spends her final moments letting Nick know that she, unlike Vanessa, is a U.S. citizen with no outstanding Sunday commitments and is totally DTGE—Down To Get Engaged.
THE FINAL ROSE CEREMONY
As soon as we see the end of Raven’s sparkly-ass I-think-I’m-at-the-Met-gala dress coming out of the limo, all our suspicions are confirmed: Nick is a messy bitch who lives for drama, and for that reason he has chosen a life of fighting with Vanessa over an eternity with Raven in (possibly faked) orgasmic bliss.
Raven handles her rejection like a boss, doing something that very few Bachelor contestants have ever managed to do and just shutting the fuck up for the entirety of her rejection. Unlike her now-ex boyfriend, Raven doesn’t even fucking cry. She just stares at him with a look that says “I would beat the shit out of you with my stiletto if there weren’t so many cameras on me rn.”
Then Nick shoves Raven into a limo without her coat, so that she can get her cold ass out of Finland and start getting ready for BiP where she belongs.
Cue Vanessa, who also opted for sparkles paired with a fur coat. Wonder if she’ll get to keep hers.
Vanessa arrives and tells Nick how, despite her thinking he’d “never notice her,” he actually “noticed every part” of her, which I consider a confirmation of the whole Santa-threeway theory.
Nick finally proposes to Vanessa who, after a very long and drawn-out voice over where she describes not wanting to accept Nick’s proposal if he’s “only doing it to put a ring on her finger”, immediately accepts his proposal and allows him to put a ring on her finger.
So what is the lesson that we learned here, betches? It is totally okay to be annoying AF and constantly pick fights with your boyfriend, you can even throw up in his face on your first date, just so long as you back that shit up by looking amazing in a high-cut blue onepiece. How fucking sweet.
Continue on to our After The Final Rose recap here!
