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(jk, please don't sue me) The Bachelor's 2-night extravaganza
Perhaps it hasn’t escaped your notice that my Bachelor recaps have quickly devolved into me dissecting whatever morsel of an episode I find interesting like I’m a middle schooler whose parents are going through a divorce and The Bachelor is an unfortunate, formaldehyde-riddled frog carcass in my second period biology class. That’s because recapping an episode is boring and there are plenty of podcasts and Reddit threads doing just that in case watching it with your own two eyes is too painful1.
I don’t want to describe the painful amount of denim maxi skirts present on these group dates, or describe yet another totally unscripted interaction with a local who says the Joey and [Insert Woman Here] are a beautiful couple and will make beautiful babies any day now.
No, like the women on this season of The Bachelor, I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to talk shit. I want to engage in the discourse. The people on my TV screen are zoo animals in captivity and I am Jane Goodall. Whatever, you get it. I’m studying them. They’re fascinating and also terrible. I was definitely born in the right generation because I love reality TV. I should have gotten a useful BA in the Anthropology instead of my impractical English degree. Anyway, let’s get into it.
Insecurity Loves Company
I cannot escape this week’s four-hour seemingly endless extravaganza without touching on the subject of Sydney’s band of minions. And ya know what? As a former victim of the Panhellenic Council, I have a lot to say. I’m all too familiar with the group dynamics that arise among a group of young women with deep-seated insecurities, and it can be brutal. Look, to some extent, I think most of us have been both parties in this situation. There’s always going to be someone, especially in a group of thirty, who sees your belief in yourself as an affront to them and wants to cut you down to size. And sometimes you’re going to let a group dynamic, or a little shit talking session, get to your head. And you’re going to regret it. It turns out, taking your own shit out on someone else has a 100% success rate of making you feel worse about yourself. But it’s a lesson we all learn.
Maria, for all of her grace and confidence, is definitely the type of person who could rub someone the wrong way. Her first act that put a target on her back was when she changed into something more comfortable on the group date and came out in a fun, slutty dress. Joey loved it! She was serving c*nt like she’s a Colonel in the C*nt Military. But she didn’t stop to think about how the other women might respond to that act– she’s right that it’s not her problem if they’re insecure or jealous, but it was a bold move that was bound to inspire resentment. In general, Maria’s abrasive and a little rough around the edges. She refuses to engage in passive aggression– and doesn’t even seem to be starting these arguments intentionally. Someone says something passive aggressive to her, she recognizes that there’s an issue, and attempts to address it on the spot. Can this kind of person be unpleasant to interact with when you’ve been taught to engage in passive aggressive tactics and social niceties? Sure. Does that make her a bully? Not at all.
But I don’t think any member of her gaggle of haters is a necessarily evil person. They’re in a high stress situation designed to bring out the worst in everyone, and the insecurity, the low self-esteem, the petty jealousies they’ve stuffed down and haven’t unpacked are now bubbling to the surface. With Sydney’s untimely demise, Maria is up against Lea (23) and Jess (24), two women fresh out of college. They haven’t had enough years outside of a classroom to confront the ugliest parts of their souls. They haven’t even had their Saturn Return2! There is no capacity for self-reflection between the two of them– only a desperate need for male validation. And maybe a particularly shitty edit. This is a chance for them to learn about themselves and grow as people. But I think producers should have just let Joey send them home instead of subjecting Maria to more vitriol. Let them reflect and grow on their own time, without giving them an outlet to cause more harm to someone on national TV.
In the preview for episode 6, we see a clip in which Jess tearfully asks Joey if she did something wrong. This really hammers it home: everything she does comes from a place of insecurity– call it fear of rejection, call it an anxious attachment style, call it whatever you want. She’s not lashing out with any real intent to cause harm, but because Maria’s confidence is a threat to her own. And that’s the case with most insecure people, isn’t it? Their confidence is a rickety fishing boat and someone with unshakable self esteem is a really big, catastrophic wave. Maria’s confidence has completely capsized Jess because Jess’s confidence is conditional. For her to feel good, she either needs constant validation or, if she can’t get that, she needs to tear someone else down.
“Jess is just a little jealous of Maria. It just seems like she’s an easy target. Her and Joey have a really strong connection. I think that can be threatening to girls that haven’t had as much time.”
This whole storyline has centered on a group of insecure women banding together, creating an echo chamber of “Maria sucks, she just sucks,” and organizing their efforts to tear Maria down. These women should be working for a green energy lobby. They should be unionizing a Trader Joe’s somewhere. Like Aaron, Bachelor Nation’s resident teamster, (season 17, The Bachelorette) their organizing talents are wasted on this franchise. And now we’re just watching them dissolve, picking fights with a woman almost ten years their senior because she was too nice to Maria, an accusation to which Madina calmly responds, “Maria knows Sydney and I are close. I don’t have to be mean to Maria because Sydney was my friend.” If I do say so myself, she gagged Lea with that one.
I agree with Lexi’s astute take on the situation: “Jess is just a little jealous of Maria. It just seems like she’s an easy target. Her and Joey have a really strong connection. I think that can be threatening to girls that haven’t had as much time.” Maria’s easy confidence and sexiness is intimidating, especially when it’s obvious Joey is into her.
And another thing. My hottest take on the whole debacle is that I think (and hope) that Maria did tell Lea to shut the fuck up. And who cares? I saw a clip from Hannah B.’s season of The Bachelorette, where someone takes a handful of chicken nuggets, chucks them at someone else and tells him to go fuck himself. I mean, talk about inspired television. And we did not dedicate four episodes of this interaction to a bullying PSA. Let women be mean to each other sometimes. Whatever! Let us say shut the fuck up instead of bottling up every bad feeling and leaking it out via passive aggressive comments because we’re ashamed to address anything head-on.
Is trauma the price of entry to be loved?
This was a big week for A-Team one-on-one dates. Lexi, Kelsey A., and Rachel are all women I pegged as frontrunners from the jump. But more than previous one-on-ones from this season, these ones were weighty. There’s an expectation, part of the formula, that the night portion of a one-on-one date is for serious conversation.
Lexi and Joey’s date in Malta culminates in a romantic evening, during which she opens up to him about her endometriosis diagnosis, how she’s had to grapple with the possibility that she can’t have biological children, and that her previous partner left her because he didn’t want to be with someone who couldn’t give him kids in the future. Joey’s response is incredibly kind and lovely, of course: “I can understand from any type of past experience when something like that comes out, you think there’s something wrong with you. There isn’t. That shouldn’t ever make someone run away or be afraid of being in a relationship with [you].” I won’t get into the loaded language Lexi uses, alluding to being a vessel for Joey’s children, rather than an active participant in a pregnancy she would have agency over– it’s her journey and her body, and she can talk about it in whatever terms are comfortable for her, even if I would phrase things differently.
But I will dive into two scenes that loosely bookend this one. The first, in which, on their romantic excursion through Malta, Lexi and Joey walk into a church. They have a chat with the priest, who flat out tells them to make sure to have lots of babies once they’re married. Besides the damaging rhetoric that a marriage isn’t complete without the addition of children, this was clearly a scene coordinated around Lexi’s traumatic backstory. But Lexi is a real person, and they are subjecting her to more trauma and sadness. It’s cruel. During the night portion of the next day’s group date, we see Joey and Daisy sit down for some quality time, and they’re joking about baby names, and if they want to have a boy or a girl or twins. I can’t imagine the gut punch to any of these three people watching the episode live. Pain for Lexi. Guilt for Daisy. Maybe both for Joey. Lexi didn’t have to be there for that conversation, thankfully, but was that painful for Joey in the moment? While he was having that light, casual conversation with Daisy, was Lexi in the back of his mind, the way his hypothetical future was forking in front of him?
Kelsey A.’s conversation with Joey didn’t include any producer-orchestrated psychological torture, thankfully, but she shared some really sad, vulnerable stuff about her mom’s death. I’m not sure if that’s a conversation many people would be having with a guy they’ve been casually seeing for four weeks, who they’ve been on three group dates with previously. Intimacy is fast-tracked and I think contestants are eager to deliver because they think it’s strengthening their relationship with the lead. I shared this scary thing with him, they think, and he responded so gently, so it must be because he’s falling in love with me.
Because the alternative is the end of the road. If you can’t cough up your tragic backstory, then how will the man you’re competing for know that you’re taking this seriously? I’m thinking specifically of Caitlin, who got eliminated during a group date by Colton (Season 23). He was fishing for something juicy, for her to open up and share something with him and when she failed to deliver, he said he wasn’t feeling a spark and sent her home on the spot. If anything, the message is: if you’ve had an easy life and can’t produce some damage, then you aren’t worthy of love. Of course, people have found alternative things to open up about. Rachel just discussed how it was difficult being a nurse, working long hours and witnessing other people’s trauma. But past contestants have divulged awful, traumatic stories ranging from sexual assault (Caelynn, Season 23, The Bachelor) to the death of a romantic partner (Danielle M., Season 21, The Bachelor), details that aren’t being shared within the safe, intimate bubble of a romantic partnership, but with a casual situationship, a camera crew, and an unseen audience.
It’s a lot…for everyone. It must be overwhelming for Joey to constantly be on the receiving end of everyone’s trauma, and to be required to hold space for all of it at once– in addition to whatever shit he has going on, in addition to pursuing multiple relationships. We don’t know what shit he’s dealing with of his own, because the contestants’ vulnerability is not reciprocated. There’s no give and take. They get nothing back from Joey, and Joey is expected to just take and take and take.
TL;DR:
It is week four. It’s a two night special. I am regretting my foray back into Bachelorland. I want to go home. I don’t even know where Malta is! And neither does Joey! Someone, please get this man a map.
Or you’re not willing to invest in Hulu, which is understandable now that they’ve moved Love Island (UK) to Peacock.