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Well friends, as if it wasn’t torture enough that last week was NOT the finale, ABC has decided to drag out 19 minutes of new footage into three hours tonight. THREE HOURS! As if I have not sacrificed enough for this show already! Free time, relationships, sanity, sleep, and giant chunks of my hair, all gone, in the name of “love.” I hope they know what I do for them. Shall we get on with it so we can finally find out which couple will get pretend married next season?
As a refresher, last week on Bachelor in Paradise, some couples waved goodbye to one another, some couples left in a van, and some couples met up in an air conditioned hotel room in a plot that was definitely not contrived by producers. We’re left with the motley crew of Dylan & Hannah, Katie & Chris, Nicole & Clay, and Demi & Kristian.
THE PROPOSALS
We start out on stage with Chris Harrison. He tells us that we’re finally going to see the end of these dramatic love stories. Is it too much to hope that they all end like Fatal Attraction?
We jump right back into Paradise with the fantasy suite dates. Katie starts her sex date by immediately saying “so what are we,” so she seems fun. Chris tells her tits that he is in love with them, and looking forward to spending the future and also this evening with them.
They agree to go to the fantasy suite and is this not a colossal waste of time? If they weren’t going to the fantasy suite, wouldn’t they have already gone home? This part could have been cut. I just got this episode down to 2 hours, 55 minutes.
Cut to Dylan and Hannah. They agree they want to spend forever with each other, or, rather, Dylan says he wants to spend forever together and Hannah agrees, at least until she launches her next Paradise-themed presets. How sweet.
Demi and Kristian love each other. Great, I’ve written that in every single recap this season. THIS IS NOT NEWS PEOPLE, CUT IT. 2 hours, 50 minutes.
Now we’re at Nicole and Clay. Nicole is so excited. Clay tells his lap that this is so real now. He tells his lap there are things he still needs to talk about. He tells his lap he still has reservations.
Clay opens the fantasy suite card AND TURNS IT DOWN. He wants to think on it. Nicole is pissed and kicks him out of the room. Hopefully Dean’s van is still idling outside, Clay!
Nicole looks sadly into the distance, as the resort sets off fireworks. Are they spelling out the words “he’s just not into you” or am I beginning to see things?
It’s the morning. Nicole wakes up alone and enraged, aka me everyday. She meets up with Chris Harrison back at the beach. She’s wearing a white dress. I don’t think you’re going to need one of those any time soon, sweetie.
They meet down on the engagement floor. Nicole confesses her feelings for Clay. He sweats. She asks him if he loves her. He sweats. He says he’s starting to fall in love with her, but he’s not ready to move in or anything serious, god no, but maybe they could carpool out of there together? Again, he sweats.
Nicole, about herself:
She leaves alone, but with her dignity. You go, girl! And at least you have that lifetime supply of Halo Top they gave you at The Women Tell All to binge on when you get home.
Clay pretends he is upset, but we all know he’s relieved, right? He wants to stop at the pub for a celebratory beer? I don’t think they call them pubs though, it’s f*cking Mexico, bro. Can’t you get anything right?
Chris and Katie wake up together. They’re doing a great job of pretending they’re happy together. They meet down on the engagement floor. All this wakeup time is unnecessary. Take this filler out of the episode and now I’ve made it 2 hours, 30 minutes.
Chris says he isn’t sure what he’s going to do, but he’s just going to go with his gut and how he feels in the moment. Exsqueeze me? He’s going to make a game time decision on A PROPOSAL?! I make a game time decision on whether to get an order of the mozzarella sticks or to get two orders of the mozzarella sticks, but I don’t really think it’s cool to do that on a decision that includes merging bank accounts. Where do they find these idiots?
Chris tells Katie he sees her in his forever, AND HE GETS DOWN ON ONE KNEE. So I guess he’s going with the proposal, then. Surely this is a mistake. I think your gut was actually saying mozzarella sticks, Chris.
We’ve made it to the Dylan and Hannah portion of the evening. He knows he is going to propose. They meet on the engagement floor.
Dylan starts off the convo by confessing his feelings – isn’t she supposed to start? Don’t you want to know how she feels before you get down on one knee and shove a haphazardly-chosen diamond ring that she’ll replace later in her face?
Oh wait, he’s letting her talk. Hannah tells him she is ready to make him her priority, but she’s also terrified because a fame hungry virgin hurt her feelings a few months ago. It seems to me like she is saying she doesn’t want to get proposed to. Dylan does it anyways, using her middle name in a desperate attempt to prove to me that he knows the bare minimum about this woman. I don’t believe it. She says yes. This is how divorces start, folks.
Oh, Hannah. That’s not a smile. That’s sheer terror manifesting itself on a face.
Now it’s Demi and Kristian’s turn. They meet on the engagement floor, blinding each other with the whiteness of their teeth. They confess their love for one another. Demi gets down on one knee and asks Kristian to marry her. She says yes! Now can we get a producer over here to help Demi get up? Those are some HIGH heels.
Kristian: You have to get a ring, too
Neil Lane:
Okay, we have finished hour one and now we have TWO MORE HOURS OF AFTER THE FINAL ROSE!! Why do these people deserve to find love, and I deserve to watch mind-numbing reality tv for an exorbitant amount of hours? Where did I go wrong?
AFTER THE FINAL ROSE
Chris Harrison introduces us to the Paradise cast, all of whom are now on stage ready to fight for their right to appear on another spinoff.
Oh good, they’re showing us clips from the season we literally just watched. This could be cut. We’re down to 2 hours, 15 minutes.
Chris Harrison wants to talk about Jordan, “Christian,” and their fight over the piñata. Jordan claims he acted in self-defense. Mike disputes the claim, and then Jordan acts like he would ever have the balls to fight Mike. Mike could literally give a sh*t.
Chris asks Hannah and Blake about the time he flew to Birmingham to see her before the taping. She says he went there to talk and explain his Stagecoach behavior. LOL Sydney’s not buying that he flew all the way to Birmingham to “talk.” Finally, Sydney! A little personality! You can sit with us.
Jordan then calls out the huge f*cking problem this show had all season, which is the fact that everyone knew each other before they came on, and it made for sh*tty TV. Cam concurs, and Onyeka immediately jumps down his throat saying he would have met the girls if he could have. Cam is the new piñata of Paradise.
I’d like to go back to that point for a minute, though. Despite my constant threats of homicide and arson, Bachelor in Paradise was my favorite Bachelor franchise show, and this season just sucked. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that they all came on to the show having already talked to each other, or already banged each other, and it was more about that drama than people meeting each other and getting together. If they’re going to keep this up, just send me screenshots of everyone’s DMs and save me 30 hours of my summer and all of my sanity, thanks.
Oh how cute, Connor tried to grow some facial hair! If he did it to appear more manly, I think it backfired because my grandma can grow a thicker mustache than that. But I’ll be sure to give you an A for effort on this semester’s report card, Connor!
Chris Harrison calls Blake to the hot seat. Blake went a little heavy on the bronzer for tonight—did he trust Kristina to teach him how to contour or something? Because this was clearly sabotage.
Blake tells Chris he was most surprised by the anger the women had toward him. GOD FORBID A WOMAN BE ANGRY. Should we all just smile and giggle when a man sleeps with us and then all our friends, Blake? Would that make you happy? Because we’re here to make you happy!
Chris: How did it feel when everyone started to really hate you??
Blake:
^^I’ll take any excuse to use that one again, sorry
Blake brings up the text messages that he released and I think for his safety he probably should have avoided this conversation, but this is not a smart man. Caelynn says she has never felt more violated in her life. Apparently Blake called Caelynn and told her he was going to release the texts, and she told him that she would get a lot of heat online if he did it, and he did it anyways.
Blake will literally not apologize. “No one would ever know she made mistakes if I hadn’t exposed her embarrassing drunk, horny text messages the way I did. Aren’t I noble?!” Eventually he manages to choke out an, “I’m sorry you felt that way” apology which everyone knows is the cop-out of apologies.
At this point, my brother texted me to tell me he thinks Blake “handled that well.” I thought he was joking, tried to have a good laugh, sent a Dr. Evil gif, the usual. He was not joking. MEN! They are literally unfit for society. I say we corral them up in a dungeon underground and only let them out to open jars or to fight in a pen for our entertainment purposes.
And with that, we are finally finished with Blake. If I ever hear the word “Stagecoach” again, I will personally sue ABC.
PARADISE ALUM UPDATES
Oh good, they’ve decided to waste my time with people that I can’t even be bothered to follow on Instagram.
Carly’s baby shrieking “no!” is my mood right now.
Jade tells us about having her baby in the closet. Because that was something I needed to see in my nightmares.
Chris and Krystal are also there, and something is up with his face. The freshly-shaved look does not work for him.
And The Bachelor gods are blessing us with a gender reveal! Because it wasn’t horrifying enough when someone you love nailed you in the face with a baseball that exploded into pink powder, now we must attend a gender reveal for a couple whose pepper-filled saliva has a Guinness World Record. Wells jumps out of a cake in a blue onesie! So I assume that means they’re having a boy, and not a fully-grown fame whore who continues to degrade himself in various ways so he can eventually pay off his fiancé’s ring?
This whole section was unnecessary filler, used to torture the audience only because waterboarding us would be illegal. They should have cut this whole thing. That gets us down to 1 hour, 55 minutes.
UPDATE ON THE COUPLES
Chris calls Tayshia up to the hot seat to talk about JPJ.
Tayshia says they had a whirlwind romance. She says she is the last one to casually throw around the idea of engagement or marriage but if my memory serves (and it does, my memory is freaking amazing—ask anyone who has ever wronged me), she was married before. So don’t you throw it around casually at least a little, T? At least that one expensive time?
Tayshia also tells us that after Paradise she regretted her decision, so she flew out to Maryland. JPJ’s face is twitching. Didn’t someone say in the comments one week that he majored in acting? (yes, I read the comments, yes, I cry about them too). That makes me sad because this man literally can not keep a straight face to save his life. Even my friend that believes all the girls on The Bachelor have real boobs texted me hours ago saying, “I think they’re back together because JPJ keeps making weird faces.” Can someone take this man’s degree back?
Of course they sent cameras to Maryland. She tells him, or more accurately, yells at his face, that she wants to explore things with him. Does it seem to anyone else like they don’t really talk to each other they just look at each other and scream nonsensical things? And now they are apparently boyfriend and girlfriend. Good for them. I hope they get all the Instagram sponsorships their hearts desire.
Chris B & Katie
Katie heads up to the hot seat. She is clearly in distress. She says that she and Chris have their ups and downs, and communication has been hard, and she is exhausted. Cool, but are you together or not?
She says they are still engaged (even though she is not wearing her ring). She also says something about how he is not filling her gas tank. Come to New Jersey, Katie! Someone else will do it for you!
“I fell in love with potential that may never come to fruition, but I’m just praying it does.” This is also something I say about my chocolate chip cookies right before I bake them, in hopes I won’t burn them yet again. Advice to Katie: they never turn out.
They bring Chris out, and he says they are taking it day by day. Katie repeats exactly what she just said to us, to Chris. I don’t need to hear those pathetic metaphors again, cut it and we’re down to 1 hour, 45 minutes.
Katie keeps saying that she is exhausted but how do you think I feel, Katie? Listening to you say that over and over again in our third hour of television, tonight? WHAT ABOUT MY EXHAUSTION?!
Chris Harrison: are you capable of being the man Katie needs?
Chris B: Yes
Audience:
They both decide they’re in this, and resolve to live unhappily ever after. Cute!
We also get a scene of Chris and Katie talking in the parking lot. They’re arguing over the same old sh*t. I think. At this point I was listening from the bathroom while washing my face. Take it out of here. We’re down to 1 hour, 39 minutes.
Hannah & Dylan
Hannah and Dylan approach the hot seat together. They say they are great, love each other, yada, yada, yada. There was no mention of the cropped sweatshirts, so I can only assume Hannah has managed to fend that off for now
Their only update is that Hannah is moving to California. They continue to be as boring on this after show as they were on Paradise.
Demi & Kristian
Demi tells us she just moved to LA to be closer to Kristian. Do all these people moving to California expect me to believe they moved there for love and not to advance their career in the short timeframe that reality TV stardom affords them?
Demi says it was hard coming out on TV, but it’s liberating. I’m happy that she was able to be who she is.
Kristian pulls Demi up from the couch to confess her feelings, and she proposes to Demi with a ring! Would it be an After The Final Rose if Neil Lane wasn’t profiting off of the already-crumbling relationships between virtual strangers?
Okay, where were Clay and Nicole? I would gladly have given up one of the times Katie compared herself to a tank of gas to hear Clay mumble to his lap about his commitment issues.
THE NEW BACHELOR
And it’s Pilot Peter! With a new haircut! It’s bad!
He is grateful and emotional about being chosen, and I am grateful and emotional we only have six more minutes of this left. I wish Peter the best on his season, may he find lots of love and lots of women willing to join the mile-high club.
The episode’s final run time: 3 hours. My final run time: 1 hour, 39 minutes. Call me, ABC!
And that’s all, folks! Now that this is over I will be putting the pieces of my life back together, and actively avoiding any Bachelor talk for the next four months. See you betches next year.
Images: ABC; Giphy (4); bachelorinparadise, wellsadams / Instagram
