Last Night's Bachelor Finale Was One Of The Most Intense Things I've Ever Seen On TV
"Intense" is truly the best way to describe it. Awkward, uncomfortable and shocking also apply, but "intense" really rounds out the overall feeling of the night.
We started off having Matt's mom meet both girls. She loved them both, cried the whole time they were there. She also sweetly told Matt that "love isn't everything," which probably derailed the entire season. We then cut to Matt propelling down the side of the resort with Michelle, and sending her home shortly after. Not, of course, until she gave him a gift - matching basketball jerseys that say "Mr James" and "Mrs James." Nothing like getting dumped after you over-confidently personalize a jersey with someone else's last name.
Don't worry, they announced in the last 30 seconds of the show that Michelle will be getting her own Bachelorette season in the fall, so she will find love eventually.
Moving on to Rachael, the girl with all the drama. Matt chooses her, but chooses not to get engaged. Not that that would stop Neil Lane from making a sale.
Matt finally decides he's ready to talk to Rachael, and tells her to "meet him by the lake." At this point FYI, we are still "in the show" and Matt has no idea about the Antebellum party drama to come.
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They end up heading to this cool outdoor living room set up, Matt tells her how he feels about waiting on an engagement, but asks her to leave the Nemacolin with him and begin their lives, together (as boyfriend and girlfriend.) Rachael says yes, it's all very cute.
Finally, we head to the After The Final Rose, where the real torture begins. Emmanuel Acho is filling in for Chris Harrison as expected, but weirdly Chris Harrison was still doing the voiceovers for the show? So Chris introduced Emmanuel, himself. Lol.
Emmanuel begins an hour of interrogations, starting with Michelle, who told us that Matt refused to talk to her once he broke up with her. Matt then came out to the stage for Michelle to confront him, and she just roasted the shit out of him, telling him he needs new catch phrases and he acted like a dick to her.
Then we move onto a serious conversation with Emmanuel and Matt about the race issues within The Bachelor franchise. Matt goes on to talk about how much pressure he felt as a black man, to represent all black men. He says "anyone else would've just been told to find love, I had to represent a lot more." It was extremely sad.
Finally, Emmanuel tells us "as promised, Rachael comes out next for one of the most uncomfortable discussions ever!" (I'm not really exaggerating with that quote by the way. He said almost exactly those words. 'As promised' and everything.)
Rachael first comes out alone. Emmanuel has her address the photos of her past, and asks her to try and pinpoint where her ignorance came from. She talks about how she had no idea of the history behind the party she was attending, and that she's been working to educate herself. She doesn't blame her upbringing or her hometown ignorance for her behavior, which I thought was surprising because I feel like she can definitely blame those things. But, she wore it on her chest, and made it through what felt like a parent having a kid explain what they had done wrong in front of all the other adults. It was so, so uncomfortable. I'm going to leave it at that with Rachael, you can watch if you want and draw your own conclusions.
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Matt finally joins them on the couch for final words, and he and Rachael are not together anymore. Matt is hurt, he clearly wants to get the fuck out of there, and we all sat watching 100% dead air for a full 2 minutes after Emmanuel asked them if they wanted to share "one final embrace." Brutal.
That was pretty much it. Oh, except like I said before, the last thirty seconds after ripping our hearts apart for an hour, they announced both Michelle AND Katie as The Bachelorettes. Katie's season will be first in the spring, and Michelle's in the fall.
Christ almighty. It's hard to understand the magnitude of what happened on the show if you haven't been following along, but I think my skin is going to be crawling for the rest of my life. Yikes yikes yikes. Thrilled to be done with this.
Check out the replay of our live Finale Show on Cutting Stems, we all dressed up and tried to have some fun with it on our last night.
See you all in a few months for Katie's season of The Bachelorette!