The Bachelorette S15 E12: A Visceral Reaction
Is it just me, or has this season of The Bachelorette been going on for literally fucking ever? How are we only at part one of this trainwreck of a finale? It feels like I was birthed, went through adolescence, hit maturity, graduated high school and college, got married, got divorced, and swore off men forever, and yet only 15 minutes of the season had passed.
The only scenes that flew by were, of course, the only moments of joy with Tyler and Mike. Every other moment of this steaming pile of gaslighting has seemingly stretched on for eons. Time is no longer relevant. Given that all common sense and reason are also no longer relevant, I feel as though I’ve been shot into space and left to float aimlessly through inky blackness for all eternity.
There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only cold, darkness, and confusion.
Welcome to The Bachelorette finale, kids.
Let’s dive in.
The Rose Ceremony
Okay fine, so we start with something good—Peter the Pilot getting sent the fuck home. Yeah, yeah, yeah, plenty of you still think Peter’s a swell chum, even with his utter lack of personality and his tendency to squirrel away condoms in his car’s armrest, but let me remind you that this schlub dumped his serious girlfriend to come on the show.
Her story has remained the same for weeks now: they were seriously dating and discussing moving in together, then he up and dumped her the minute he got word he was on the show—meaning this douche canoe was applying for a fucking dating show while he was exchanging sweet nothings about a future with the woman that trusted him.
Honestly, I’m not surprised. All of these men, with the possible exceptions of Tyler and Mike, are fucking awful. They’re awful. Whether they’re so boring they cause figurative pain, or they’re so horrifically abusive they’ll cause literal physical pain, our brood of mindless boners have firmly reinforced the notion that dating is actual hell.
These are the men He’s Just Not That Into You warned us about. These are the men that text “wyd” at 2am on a Tuesday. These are the men that continuously watch your Instagram story while leaving your texts on read. These are the men that plan your wedding, and then tell you they never wanted to get married, where on earth did you get that crazy idea from?
Of all of them, Tyler has been the one that shines the brightest—he’s like a sexy Mr. Rogers, for fuck’s sake. Every single person that knows him IRL gushes about him. I want to believe he’s that perfect. I NEED to believe he’s that perfect. After giving in and opening my bitter, jaded, callous heart to Blake—only to find out that Blake’s a fucking dickwad on Paradise—I can’t take another heartbreak. But I’m worried we’re doomed yet again.
Anyway, where the fuck was I.
So we finally finish the Rose Ceremony, which we started approximately 17 years ago. First call-out goes to Jed, because of fucking course it does. Tyler waits in the following silence with cool stoicism. Peter, dreaming of windmills, looks confident.
Hannah, looking like she’s about to have a nervous breakdown, picks up the final rose.
“Tyler.”
Bachelor Nation collectively cheers, knowing just how close we were to a Final 2 that had literally both dumped their girlfriends to come on this fucking show.
Peter, appropriately, is gobsmacked. They fucked in a windmill! Twice! How could he be getting sent home?
When you’re sad cause you lost your chance to hawk FitTea on Insta (ABC)
And that is a curious question. At the end of the day, Hannah does seem to have stronger feelings for both Jed and Tyler. But I really wonder how much the pre-martial sex plays into this.
Hannah, given her deeply religious background, is an endless case study in what a strictly patriarchal, guilt-driven, sex-shaming, purity-obsessed religious upbringing does to someone. Especially in the South.
All season long—nay, since Colton’s season—Hannah has been deeply, deeply torn about her own sexuality. She told Colton she still struggles with guilt and shame and remorse over not “saving herself” for her future husband by having pre-martial sex. This guilt is pervasive all season, especially when being exploited by Luke, so the interspersed scenes championing sex-positive booty having seem particularly jarring.
Here is a woman that confidently has sex with a man in a windmill, and then admits it on national TV. Here is a woman who tells a man slut-shaming her that she willingly, proudly, and confidently had sex outside of marriage just the other day, and that that is her right. Here is a woman who says her future husband needs to accept her, sex-having or not.
But here is also a woman that has seriously struggled with the idea that she had pre-marital sex for years. Here is also a woman who admitted she feels deep shame and regret and guilt for not waiting. Here is also a woman who believes her virginity—and even potentially now her sex life—is a gift for a man she doesn’t yet know. Here is also a woman that crumbled under Luke’s gaslighting, and seemed willing to give up pre-martial sex if she decided to pick him as her fiancé.
This isn’t uncommon. When we teach women that their sexuality is a purity gift for a nameless, faceless man in their future, we teach them that their sexuality is something that is not actually theirs. We teach them that their sexuality is shameful and must be kept secret. We teach them that their sexuality is only for the marriage bed, in an institution historically built to control and manipulate them. We teach them that their sexual urges are shameful and wrong.
And yet at the same time, even in a religious setting, we see these women watching men be told the opposite. Yeah, sure, the fathers of the bunch wax poetic about how their daughters’ virginity should be saved (gross), but the young men? What does it matter if they lose their virginity out of marriage, really? They don’t face the same shame, stigma, and guilting. Realistically, these men are championed—sowing their wild oats is an act of pride! Who care if a man has multiple sexual partners before marriage, really? At the end of the day, it doesn’t impact his ability to be the “man of the house” or his ability to shame his wife for not remaining pure. But a woman having multiple sexual partners before marriage in this situation? Whore. Super whore.
So how much of Peter’s ejection from the show is based on the insidious guilt that Hannah deals with around her own sexuality? Would she have sent him home if they hadn’t banged in a windmill? Did she go so over the top with ensuring she and Tyler didn’t have sex in their Fantasy Suite because somewhere, deep down inside, she knew that would tarnish things between them?
The world may never know.
Hannah especially doesn’t know (ABC)
Anyway, Peter is fucking gobsmacked. Just like his girlfriend back at home, that he dated while applying for this show, and that he dumped to go on this show.
Next!
Peter the Pilot’s Mom Has a Breakdown
You know, I expected a lot of things during this finale: tears, aggressive clapping, audience overreactions, raucous approval of windmill sex, squeals of joy. What I didn’t expect was that all of these things would come directly from Peter’s Mom.
In one of the weirdest live segments of all time, Peter’s parents are shoved into the audience spotlight to watch the aftermath of their son getting dumped on national TV.
Back in Greece, we watch Peter and Hannah’s hilariously stunted, awkward post-breakup conversation. Now this isn’t stunted or awkward because they’re both so heartbroken—this is stunted and awkward because neither Hannah nor Peter actually give two flying shits about each other.
You’d think, given all of the collective tears, that the two would gush about how great the other is, and how hard this is, and give concrete reasons for A) why they were so wonderful that they made it this long, and B) why the relationship still utterly failed.
None of this happens.
Hannah tries to tell Peter that he’s perfect, but literally the only reasoning she can give for this assessment is because he “reminds her of the Ken doll she used to play with when she was a child.” Now I don’t want to dive too deeply into this Freudian wet dream, but I do want to scratch the surface and say that she just compared him to a plastic eunuch that she deeply associates with her childhood.
Peter, being Peter, also has literally nothing of substance to add.
Back in the studio, the camera keeps cutting to Peter’s mom, who is literally sobbing uncontrollably, whisper-screaming “I love you,” to Peter whenever she can, and wildly blowing kisses. ALL BECAUSE HER ADULT SON, WHO DUMPED HIS GIRLFRIEND FOR A FLEETING CHANCE AT FAME, GOT DUMPED ON A FUCKING DATING SHOW.
“MY SON FUCKED IN A WINDMILL, EVERYONE!” (ABC)
Pull. It. Together. Woman.
Jesus, no wonder Peter’s a stunted fuck that stacks his cars with condoms.
In between Mama Peter’s sob-filled testaments of love to her son, Zaddy Chris Harrison finds a moment to interject.
“Your Hometown Date was amazing,” he says solemnly, as though they had the most incredible, romantic, connecting date of all time. In case you forgot, let me remind you that Peter’s Hometown Date consisted solely of German yodeling, Peter stashing condoms in his car, and Peter being entirely unable to tell Hannah that he loved her.
Zaddy hones in on Peter’s inability to express himself, which is just what every other woman Peter will ever date is going to do.
Peter admits that he did, in fact, love Hannah. Zaddy asks if he still does. Peter takes about 15 seconds too long to answer.
Kids, if you say you love someone, but then you even consider saying you don’t love them two months later, you never loved them. You never fucking loved them. This is why love is so fucking painful—you can’t turn it off, even if you desperately want to. This is why people torture themselves over still loving someone that broke their damn heart, or broke the damn law. We wish we could just fall out of love at the drop of a hat, but alas, the real world doesn’t work that way. So watching Peter try to decide if he still “loves” Hannah a mere two months after this extremely emotional experience went down shows that he never really loved her at all.
“I’ll always feel love for her?” He tries, probably thinking about the new girl he’s dating at home that he’s about to leave for someone else.
I’d really like to know what Peter’s overly emotional mother feels about the fact that he left his girlfriend to come on the show. We don’t get that insight, but we do learn how they feel about Peter fucking someone he barely knows on national TV.
Hannah, ricocheting between her own feelings of self-loathing and self-confidence over her sexuality, gleefully blurts out that they actually fucked four times in the windmill.
Peter’s mother? She starts clapping and hooting so hysterically that I really thought she was going to have a heart attack. She’s sobbing with joy and fist-pumping over the fact that her son got ass in a fucking windmill. What the actual fuck is wrong with this family?
Family Court: This is Tyler, Y’all
Blessedly, we leave Peter’s frantic mother behind and jetset back to Greece, where Hannah is fretting over her Final Two squaring off with her Family. That’s right, it’s time for the bros to meet the brood!
But before we get into it, we spend some 1:1 time with Hannah and however many cameramen there are lurking in the wings.
“Jed has been such a stable guy for me!” She exclaims in her confessional.
This is true! Jed has continuously told her he only came on the show to further his music career, and has literally only done things to further his music career over the course of the entire season. When you look at it that way, Jed is the most stable fucking thing to ever happen to this show.
Our Jed reverie is broken when Tyler, our one true Lord and Savior, appears on the screen to wipe our brains clean. The man is literally so attractive that he makes my brain short-circuit.
“This is Tyler, y’al!” Hannah exclaims, while her family is busy picking their jaws up off the floor.
After meeting Hannah’s family, who are immediately as besotted as the rest of Bachelor Nation, Tyler warmly tells them that he want Hannah to “be my wife. I want to be her best friend. I want to be her biggest cheerleader.”
Now, if Jed said this he’d say it robotically, or he’d sing it while bashing away at his guitar, and it would be immediately obvious how little he means it. But when Tyler says it? Angels sing. The world gets brighter. Hope and faith are restored to the masses.
The foray into the family goes swimmingly. It’s so perfect it’s almost unbelievable (just like Tyler) yet so warm, genuine, and wonderful (just like Tyler) that it’s clear it’s the real deal (just like Tyler). Her parents are all in. Hannah is all in, at least for the moment.
At the end of the date, Tyler tells Hannah he loves her multiple times, gives her a huge hug, and sweetly kisses her. While watching this, I chugged my third glass of chenin blanc and sobbed.
Family Court: Jed Writes Dog Food Jingles
And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the beginning of the end.
After a day of pure bliss with our one true Lord and Savior, Hannah is immediately back on her bullshit, doing everything in her power to utterly destroy her chances at happiness. Hello darkness, Hannah’s old friend.
“Jed is such a good person,” she basically vomits, panicking as she tries to convince herself that the other worth she can muster up is being worthy of a fucknut like Jed.
Here’s where I really have to wonder: does Hannah actually think Jed is a good person? She can’t, right? I mean, she’s met him, for fuck’s sake. He told her he only came on the show—the show that solely revolves around her finding love—to further his music career. This is just self-sabotage, right?
When Jed meets Hannah ahead of family time, he spots her looking admittedly gorgeous in a blue dress.
“Hoo hoo hoo, all in blue!” He warbles, looking inordinately proud of himself. Like, really? That’s the best this fuck can do? This “musician” can’t come up with anything better than hoo hoo hoo, all in blue??
Things don’t get any better once Jed is unleashed on her family. Literally the first thing out of his fucking mouth is that he’s a musician and song-writer. Because that’s Jed in a nutshell. His first instinct isn’t to tell Hannah’s family that he loves her and wants to be with her, because neither of those things are true. His first instinct is to brag about being a musician and a song-writer, because he’s only on the show to further his music career, just like he fucking told Hannah.
Have I told you yet that I’m a song-writer and musician?? (ABC)
You can see the immediate look of horror on both her parents’ faces. They know that this looks-like-he-was-beaten-with-a-tree-branch bastard is only here to self-promote his shitty ass “abilities.” He doesn’t care about their daughter, he doesn’t care about this show, he literally doesn’t care about anything other than his 8348637657655th attempt to get the producers of American Idol to let him on the show, goddamnit.
When Hannah’s dad gets some 1:1 time with Jed, he immediately starts grilling him. Papa Brown wants to know how Jed is going to support Hannah, what with being an unemployed musician and all. He wants to know how Jed is going to be able to be a proper husband and partner and supporter.
Now, usually this would bother me more than it does. Women don’t need a fucking man to take care of them. Women don’t need a fucking man to support them. I know this may blow your mind, but there are single women every day that buy their own houses, and buy their own dinners, and entertain themselves, and emotionally support themselves, and enjoy hobbies without men that bring them self-fulfillment. I know, I know, it sounds CRAZY, but I swear, it’s happening.
But in this instance, I think Papa Brown is very, very right to drill Jed about his bullshit. Forget bringing money into the equation—Jed is clearly unable to be any kind of champion, partner, or emotional support to anyone other than himself. It’s clear as day. It wouldn’t be clearer even if he wore a gigantic sandwich board that read “I’m unable to be any kind of champion, partner, or emotional support to anyone other than myself” in 700-point font. In all caps. In black. On a neon green background.
Papa Brown took one look at Jed and knew he’d be an absolutely horrible life partner to his daughter.
Jed, oblivious, thinks that this entire conversation is—of course—focused on the joys of his music career.
“I was just hired to write a jingle for a dog food company,” he says smugly.
HE SAYS SMUGLY.
Jesus fucking Christ in a shower, this delusional kumquat actually thinks this is brag-worthy, especially in this situation.
A FUCKING DOG FOOD COMPANY JINGLE.
My god. (ABC)
The look of gobsmacked-horror on Papa Brown’s face would be pure comedy, if the situation wasn’t so dire.
When Jed finally wanders off into the night, very pleased that he was able to brag about his talents and further his music career on national TV some more, Hannah’s family immediately tackles her, binds her arms, and marches her off to an asylum.
Okay, so maybe not literally, but still. They nearly all sprint to her in desperation, telling her how worried they are about Jed, and how much better Tyler is, and how they just can’t see Jed providing anything for her that she wants or needs.
And Hannah?
She basically shrugs it off and tells them that Jed is just great and everything is just great and they just don’t get it. “See,” she seems to say, “I can self-sabotage like a BIG GIRL.”
To her credit, Hannah does then go on the offense, saying that she can provide for herself and that she doesn’t need a man to provide for her. Now, in theory, I love this. I LOVE this. This is so true, and so necessary to say.
But.
I HATE that she’s saying this just because she’s trying to justify picking Jed. On some level, she’s fully aware that she’s self-sabotaging and picking a vacuous idiot because she doesn’t think she deserves Tyler. It’s so clear to everyone, even her, at least to some degree. Her parents see it, just as clearly as they see that Jed is a gigantic, gigantic, gigantic douche.
Look, if there’s anything that can be salvaged from this mess, it’s this nugget of wisdom to young women:
You deserve a Tyler. YOU DESERVE HIM. The one that's kind and good to you. The one that adores you. The one that puts you first. The one that champions you and believes in you. We're conditioned to believe we deserve Jeds, but ladies, we deserve Tylers.
The Final Dates: Tyler Goes Horseback Riding (Again)
Because the Producers are just giving up entirely, Tyler and Hannah are forced once more to jump on a poor pair of horses and awkwardly clomp around while the cameras struggle to follow them. Even though they just fucking did this in Amsterdam. And even though Tyler gets hilariously nervous around horses.
Anyway, Tyler lovingly calls Hannah “my girl” as the date gets started, and that’s all I need to calm down. For a moment or two.
Nothing else really happens this date. They ride horses and Tyler waxes poetic about his love for our self-sabotaging leading lady. It’s really pretty goddamn boring, minus all of the sweet nothings streaming out of Tyler. I’d write them out, but then it reminds me that I’m not dating Tyler, and my recent string of men have made Jed look pretty charming, so I’ll spare myself the horror.
At the end of the day, two things are crystal clear:
Tyler genuinely adores Hannah. I don’t say love, because no one actually falls in love in 6 weeks, but if there’s anyone close to it it’s Tyler. He seems to really adore her, and really want to be with her, and really want to support and encourage and champion her.
Because of this, Hannah is totally going to choose Jed.
The Final Dates: Jed’s On a Boat
Have I reminded you yet that I fucking hate Jed and his stupid fucking face? Well, just in case I haven’t: I fucking hate Jed and his stupid fucking face.
Now that that’s out of the way, we tune in to watch Hannah and her cheating, lying, manipulative, jingle-boasting bastard hop on a boat and hit the high seas. Hannah seems all giddy at first, although declines to do a Titanic moment because she’s afraid she’ll fall overboard.
Jed doesn’t seem to mind, because this gives him the opportunity to do one of his two favorite things: complain.
When you look at the final dates over the last two episodes, one thing becomes immediately apparent: Jed spends his final dates complaining about other people and how he’s inconvenienced, while Tyler spends his final dates delighting in being around Hannah.
After just watching Tyler’s wonderfully loving date, and his pure joy over being around Hannah, it’s especially jarring and rage-inducing to watch Jed be Jed. Last week he whined all date long about Luke, and while everyone on the planet gets it, it was a fucking waste of time. The Luke situation was coming to a head—it was time to just let it go and enjoy what little time he had left with Hannah, but why would Jed focus on spending time with Hannah when he could make the situation all about himself?
This week Jed instead complains about Papa Brown, and how he wasn’t proud of Jed for signing on to write a dog food commercial jingle. He was all butt-hurt because Hannah’s dad wasn’t proud of him for writing a goddamn motherfucking dog food commercial jingle.
Jesus fucking Christ, Jed, you stupid, stupid fuck. Jed is so narcissistic, and so self-obsessed, and so fucking vain that his entire focus the entire date is how Papa Brown did him dirty by not pulling a Mama Peter and losing his fucking mind over the jingle news. How dare Papa Brown not be proud of Jed! How dare the world not be proud of Jed! What with his mediocre musical abilities and his cheating and his narcissism and his utter terribleness!
Jed is the kind of guy that would sing a song at his own wedding. Jed is the kind of guy that would sing a song without permission at someone else’s wedding. Jed is the kind of guy that would sing his own song when he orgasms.
I can’t find any pics of the date, so here’s Jed needlessly singing on camera, just to further his music career, as promised (ABC)
Even the sea seems fucking sick of Jed, as evidenced by the fact that the water starts getting really, really rocky. So rocky, in fact, that Hannah gets physically sick and hurls off the stern of the boat.
But there’s something curious here. Hannah started feeling sick before the waters really even started getting choppy. Once her brief excitement over possibly pulling a Titanic pose had passed, she started to get really anxious and started to feel sick. And after she’s done puking, she actually admits that she’s feeling really anxious and really panicky.
Huh.
It’s almost—almost—like she knows she’s making a major, major mistake with Jed, yet knows she’s going to pick him anyway. Because she doesn’t think she deserves Tyler.
After the date, a fretting Hannah anxiously tells the cameras that she “knows she’ll break someone’s heart tomorrow.”
Oh, honey. Only if you dump Tyler. Jed doesn’t love you. He never did, and he never will. He’s incapable of it.
Anyway, her final sign off is hinting about the “rumors” over the past few months, and that she “doesn’t know what will happen tomorrow.”
Oh, but we do. We do.
Until tomorrow!
