overnights

The Bachelor Season Finale Recap: All Out of Love

The Bachelor

Season Finale Part 2
Season 23 Episode 12
Editor’s Rating 2 stars

The Bachelor

Season Finale Part 2
Season 23 Episode 12
Editor’s Rating 2 stars
Photo: John Fleenor/ABC via Getty Images

Once upon a time, there was a blonde girl who loved to appear on reality-TV shows. Until one day, she decided to try her hand at the biggest and most amazing reality show of them all. She didn’t think she would win. She didn’t think she’d make it all the way to the end. She just wanted to get a few new Instagram followers and maybe join Raya. But then, the Bachelor went and did the stupidest thing of all — his dumb ass fell in love. The beautiful blonde girl didn’t know what to do. So suddenly, her father appeared and told her to what to do.

O! What was the beautiful blonde aspiring Instagram model to do? She would have to decide on her own. She might have to listen to her gut instead of the series of men trying to tell her what to do. So she actually made a decision. She decided to leave, but the Bachelor decided her decision wasn’t the decision he wanted, so he chased after her. He fought for her. Because the truest words of romance are chase and fight. How would this fairy tale end? Would the beautiful blonde potential E! News host end up in the arms of the Bachelor?

Yes.

Oh. I guess that’s how this all ends. I thought there would be a little more to this. Is there? No? Okay. Well, then. The End.

Let’s be honest here: They don’t have nearly enough footage to turn this into a complete episode. If the extended repelling down a mountain sequence didn’t tip you off, maybe it was the full-ass performance from Air Supply that literally zero people asked for. When we had a full 20 minutes left to introduce Hannah B. as the next Bachelorette and they found the time to allow her a full-ass rose ceremony? This was bad, y’all. Also, do you think Caelynn is shitting a brick?

Did anyone expect an ending that wasn’t this one, though? Do you think the Bachelor–industrial complex would let Colton walk out of there with anything less than the exact blonde woman that he wanted? Chris Harrison was going to ask no fewer than 34 times about Colton’s virginity and he was getting an answer, damn it.

Let’s get to it.

The episode starts with Colton going through the streets of Algarve to find Cassie at her hotel room where she is blissfully packing to go back to America. Colton says she hopes she’s not at peace with her decision because he’s not. She is just in her hotel room alone, mic’ed up singing “la dee da, my sweaters!” I think she’s fine. Also, fuck you, dude. Colton takes her outside to chat and tells her that he’s in love with her and he broke up with Hannah and Tayshia. Cassie gasps and puts her hand to her mouth. She says, “Sorry, what?” This is 100 percent not what she wants to happen. She keeps saying “Oh my God, what?” and doing her best impression of a person affected by this news. Cassie can’t string together a coherent response and just keeps saying, “I’m so nervous right now. WHAT? This is crazy. This is really crazy.” She tells him she’s not ready to ask him to give up so many things that he wants, like an engagement and a family. That could cause him to resent her. Colton says that’s just a relationship. Um … what bitch? That’s just compromise.

What’s she compromising, Colton? What is Cassie giving up? How is setting the stage for resentment a real relationship?

We gotta say this: COLTON HAS NEVER BEEN IN AN ADULT RELATIONSHIP. He has no idea what it takes to create or sustain much of a relationship. Nothing about what he’s saying happens in a relationship sounds like … reality? He tells her about when he was so upset and angry about her leaving that he jumped a fence like it was a fun, cute story. The second someone tells me my actions made them swiftly jump over an eight-foot fence, I’m also running toward that fence and hoisting my entire body over. Colton’s family is waiting in Spain for him, and he wants Cassie to go with him. Oh, sweetie. Nooo.

I was cringing my face off this entire episode. Colton staring deeply into Cassie’s eyes and smiling like a buffoon while she grew red in the face and randomly burst into tears because of nerves felt like a bizarre, Warhol-esque pop-art installation. Things only got worse when he went to meet his family.

Colton and Cassie arrive in Mallorca, and the first awkward thing that happens, which caused my boyfriend to leap out my window to get away from the awkwardness, is Colton greeting his family by shouting, “MY FAMILY.” Yeah, dude. They know.

Colton sits down with his family and announces that he’s not a virgin anymore and they all celebrate. Everyone starts yelling “TOLD YA!” and “CALLED IT!” Then Colton says, “Just kidding,” and his brother says, “I’m disappointed.” Just so we’re all clear: Colton’s brother is disappointed he didn’t get his dick wet yet. That’s what he’s talking about. Colton explains that he went from 30 women to 0 to 1. You’re at about two-thirds of a woman right now. Colton’s mom asks if he’s in love with Cassie. OF COURSE HE IS. WHEN HE LOOKS AT HER BIRDS SING, FLOWERS BLOOM. Is Cassie in love with him? Hard no.

He sits down with Cassie outside, where she’s wearing some sort of denim bandage dress and combat boots. She says that she’s nervous and feels weird, and he says, “Why?” Um … because she broke up with you, you told her you jumped a fence, and now she’s meeting your parents. On a television program. She doesn’t want to let them down. Well, you let their son down, like, 36 hours ago, so let’s relax. Colton thinks she should tell him that she’s crying and freaking out because they’re gonna love her. Colton is delusional.

While Colton is calming Cassie down, his parents are asking, “Why did she leave? Why is our son doing this? Can we get off this ride?”

Colton’s stepdad asks if they’re “boyfriend-girlfriend.” That’s a good-ass question. Colton says, “We’re gonna take it where we left off on the bench.” That’s not an answer. They don’t know what the bench is. All they know is you’re two blond essential-oil diffusers who should not be together. Colton’s mom can tell that Cassie has a bit of self-doubt, since Cassie admitted the reason she left was because commitment existed. Cassie sits down with his mom and she asks what his mom wants to know. His mom phrases it as “your decision to bail.” Cassie is fucking toast. Let’s all start the countdown clock on this relationship. Colton’s dad asks him if he’s ready to go all-in with Cassie, and Colton says he’s already past that. Colton continues to ignore every single signal the people closest to him are sending him about this relationship, and he says that he’s ready to give this woman his heart.

Colton and Cassie head out for their date in Mallorca, and Cassie gets in the car with him to drive around the island, and she asks him what song he could play if he could hear anything right now. She doesn’t know ANYTHING about him. These are two people who don’t know each other. She asks him to sing it, and instead of saying that ABC won’t pay for the rights, he says that she’ll leave him again if he sings. HA HA HA. WHAT A FUNNY JOKE. WE ARE ALL LAUGHING WITH YOU, COLTON.

Once they repel down a mountain as some sort of metaphor, they sit down for a picnic. Colton asks her what’s keeping her from being in a relationship with him. She says it’s not a relationship with him, it’s a relationship or commitment in general. EVERYONE OWES KATIE A FUCKING APOLOGY.

Cassie’s reasoning here is actually really eye-opening about her decision-making process, and I wish we had heard this from her earlier. Cassie was in a relationship in college where the guy tried to control her and the relationship became very stifling, so she doesn’t have a model for a functioning relationship where she felt comfortable. To her, a relationship is something where you have to change everything about you. Coupled with her religious upbringing, her anxiety about losing her virginity and it being public knowledge, and her father’s continued influence in her life, it seems like she’s never really had any space in her life to be her Goddamned self. There are a lot of forces and people making decisions for her, and Colton’s continued pressure and sustained eye contact isn’t fucking helping. Colton’s response? “I want you to have hobbies.” Bruh. She’s not worried about not being able to pick up glassblowing or take a trip with her girlfriends. She’s worried about fundamentally losing her identity in a relationship, which is an important conversation to have when she’s about to become “The Bachelor Winner,” another identity with a ton of expectations forced on her.

It’s time for the evening portion of the date and she says she feels more confident in herself so she’s able to see what a good relationship can look like. She says that when they leave Mallorca, she wants to be all-in. Colton presents her with the fantasy-suite card and she says YES before he finishes asking her. Good for them, I guess. They usher the crew out of the suite so fast they forget to get their mics taken off. The sound guy tells them “good luck” and they shut the door. In the morning, there are clothes everywhere. These two fucked.

Chris Harrison brings three of Colton’s ladytestants and Oatmeal, Jason, and Goose to speculate if Colton lost his virginity. They don’t have ANYTHING to fill these two hours. Demi says she hopes “Cassie jumps Colton like a Portuguese fence.” Wait … who is the fence in this situation? Onyeka says that she hopes Colton doesn’t come up short. Can we just stop talking about this man’s penis for like nine seconds. I’m over it. I’m over Colton’s penis and I’ve never even seen it.

The final shots of Cassie and Colton in Spain are them eating breakfast in bed and saying that they’re going to give the relationship their best shot. What a passionate commitment.

There is no final rose ceremony. There is no proposal or visit from Neil Lane, and somehow there’s still 40 minutes left in this episode. Colton and Cassie come out, and Colton gushes about how much he loves Cassie, and there’s nothing standing in their way except Cassie’s dad. We get treated to a montage of their happy couple visits, and Cassie shows Colton a video of her reading from her diary where she said she loved him during week four. Instead of reading her journal to him in person, she set up a GoPro and read it on video. Because that’s a completely natural way to share a heartfelt memory with your boyfriend or future husband, as Colton says. We wrap up the night with a performance from Air Supply doing a song that came out, like, 16 years before Cassie was born.

Real quick: Let’s talk about Hannah B. as the Bachelorette. At least she’s a real-seeming person with a sense of humor about herself and the whole process, but this woman’s strong suit is not putting together a sentence or speaking extemporaneously. She’s not good at the whole talking and leading the show part of the show, which, as the Bachelorette, is about 85 percent of the job. Also, she’s way too easily impressed. One of her five guys delivers a completely okay toast (that he fucks up more than once) and she’s just bowled over! “My goodness-dilly-gracious! I can’t believe you were so good at putting them ding-dang-dong sentence ingredients together! Wow-ee!” Damn girl, act like you’re supposed to be here. She jokingly says that she wants to give one of them a rose, and because they have nothing but time, host Chris arranges for a makeshift rose ceremony.

Hannah has absolutely no idea how to do it and forgets to ask the guy if he accepts the rose and gets the words wrong. “Will you accept this rose?” She’s like one of those knockoff movies that get made to confuse you in the pay-per-view menu so you order them by mistake. She’s Transmorphers. She’s The Dunwich Horror. She’s The Bachelor Girl.

See you in May!  

The Bachelor Season Finale Recap: All Out of Love