The Bachelorette: Week 8

July 18, 2017 7:15 AM - Season 1, Episode 1

Hometown dates with the final four, and twitter is in meltdown mode over everything that happened to Dean.

Strange episode, with lots of feels, not all of them good. Peter's date was nice (he is so beautiful....) and Eric's family was the absolute highlight. Eric himself is so meh though.

Dean being forced into doing the hometown was not ok. I was so uncomfortable watching him work through his pain, and his sad family dynamics and intimate moments being shown for our viewing pleasure. And Rachel telling him she was falling in love with him too, and then sending him home. Last night there was a trending #deanforbachelor tag and he is definitely a fan favorite. As will be Peter if he is sent packing.

I cannot even with Bryan and his mother. Any "normal"? parent wants their child to be happy. Her attitude is the most selfish thing I've ever seen and he is enabling it by indulging her. Such a bizarre family dynamic. The mom saying over and over that her son is her life. And Bryan is full of shit...way too rehearsed, way too smooth, much like his botoxed forehead.

Anyone else feel super uncomfortable about the whole Dean thing? I recall in the past, at least one person chose to forego the family interaction and instead took their date to various places in their towns, meeting only friends, no family. I wish Dean had been given that option. On the plus side, he will never, ever again be lacking for dates.

posted by the webmistress (13 comments total)

So im not a regular watcher (like I think I had seen about 20 mins of bachelor/ette before last night) AND I missed the first half of the episode but I turned it on in time to watch Dean's hometown which I was alerted to by Simran Singh's twitter. I had been appreciating reading about this seasons complicated dealings w race and was curious about this additional twist in the representation of a not-often seen religious minority.

Dean's dad sure seemed to be a huge dick. As someone who has lost a parent, and had to deal with the emotional aftermath of negotiating an ongoing relationship with my surviving parent, it was pretty deeply painful to watch his dad both decry any responsibility for dropping the ball all those years ago AND refuse to really engage in any honest conversation about it in the present. The fact that he used his religious views as part of that deflection (in my faith we see the other as the self, so if youre mad at me youre really upset with yourself? like did he REALLY say that?) was all the more disappointing.

As far as whether dean or his family were coerced into doing this - they may have been reluctant but if any of them had refused they could have been excluded, no? im hardly trying to argue that the entire enterprise isn't more-than-a-little exploitative, but it seems like everyone involved is an autonomously functioning adult who chose to put themselves in incredibly awkward and public situations.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 9:16 AM on July 18, 2017

The Dean thing was super upsetting. This is obviously a family that is still dealing with a lot of grief, and putting it all out there on TV benefited no one. I wish Dean would have been able to bow out of putting that whole part of his life out there. FWIW, I think Rachel had no idea what she doing and had a lot of really bad advice for him. Examine your happy family privilege, Rachel! How unfair that Dean had to listen to her try to pin all the work of fixing his family back on him. Dean was 100% right that he doesn't have to reach out to his father if his father isn't reaching out to him. Rachel trying to have a sit down with his father was also really bizarre and I was honestly glad that he shut it all down.

Bryan is a player and it's obvious he's Rachel #1 and my opinion on her has totally shifted. Yeah, you're "smart", you're beautiful, but you have TERRIBLE taste in men and zero bullshit detector. Should she pick him for her final guy, I think the fans will go absolutely nuts. Hope they're ready!

Eric's family seems nice but I don't believe he's actually in love with Rachel, I think he just feels like he's "ready" and she's there. I honestly can't remember a thing that happened on the Peter date other than his stonewalling. I'd say #PeterForBachelor but if he's not ready for love, let's all save ourselves the heartache of watching Bachelor Nation turn another nice guy into a total jerko player.

The Bryan love plus the weird scheduling on this season (felt like there were never two weeks on in a row) has totally killed any momentum I was feeling on being invested in the season.

Metafilter Fantasy League standings - I got 0 points last week after getting every single question wrong, so hopefully I bounced back this week.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:22 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Has any bachelorette has ever had so many red flags waved in their face as Rachel has with Bryan? If she were really to just follow her instincts, he would already be gone. Why is she not listening to her inner voices, which are screaming at her? Every week she says something to him to the effect of "Hmmm you say all the right things" or "Hmmm.....you seem too perfect" and yet she keeps on not trusting her instincts. And honestly, who could hear what he had to say about his last relationship, and then meet his mother, and still think, "This will work, no problem!"??

Bryan and his family live in a place where looks are very, very important. Not that Rachel wouldn't fit right in, she is gorgeous. But he and his parents are obviously regular dabblers in all sorts of cosmetic surgery. Bryan has cheek fillers and is no stranger to botox. They are very very focused on looks and appearances, and it makes me sad for Rachel if she chooses him. I saw no depth from any of them. Neither Bryan or his mother had any kind of "yes I heard what you just said and here, I am responding to that" kind of response to anything Rachel said. Bryan's answer every time any conversation starts to get deep is to start kissing her. I called him Rico Suave and Don Juan DeMarco in the first week post here and I have not changed my mind. She will regret choosing him unless that is what she wants too? That sort of glam beach lifestyle? Maybe it is, I do not know her.

Also frustrating is the fact that she is too focused on getting proposed to (walking away engaged) to choose the one who might possibly be a much better match in the long run. Namely, Peter. She is currently way too swayed by the fact that Bryan has declared love already.
posted by the webmistress at 9:55 AM on July 18, 2017

oh my GOD last night's episode! Dean!!! I felt sick to my stomach after watching last night's episode. Having watched unReal I felt like I could imagine everything happening behind the curtains and it made me feel SO GROSS and complicit. The whole thing felt really coercive and exploitive--whether on the production end, or on Rachel's end, shaming him into feeling like the mature thing would be to talk about it. I would NEVER tell my partner (and I mean partner, not someone I've been on three dates with) that he needed to reconcile with his estranged father. At MOST, maybe a "you sound really conflicted lately, what are your thoughts about reaching out? No? Cool, I'll drop it forever". Like, Dean actually did a really good job being pretty transparent about his feelings and his rationale and his desired outcome. Him telling you over and over with his words that he doesn't want to do this--why isn't anyone listening to him? Because trauma and grief is 'good tv'? Other people have been able to not meet contestants' families (Luke with JoJo, right?), why not this time? Ugh. My partner said that if Rachel hadn't cut Dean, I wouldn't feel so gross. Which I think is true--if he had stayed, it might have felt more organic, if still overly exploitive; the fact that he got cut (and she said she was falling in love with him!!) made me wonder why he had to go through with it at all, and for who's benefit. The whole thing felt very 'man behind the curtain' in a way that previous episodes haven't so far, or at least haven't as transparently.

Between this and Bachelor in Paradise I'm seriously considering not watching the finale, or any future seasons, because I really just can't with the constant leveling up of drama that ends with real people getting hurt. Ugh. So much for my one remaining vice :/
posted by stellaluna at 1:03 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also, this pretty much sums up how I feel about Dean's interaction with his dad: "Knowing now that he converted to Sikhism, I’m not going to entertain cheap shots about his turban or his appearance. What I will do, however, is read his old ass for conveniently finding a religion that allows him to say, “I’m rubber, you’re glue” whenever his actual son, the fruit of his loins, comes to him and says, “You abandoned me after my mother died.”"
posted by stellaluna at 1:07 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

That recap is awesome, thank you for sharing! Yes, I absolutely yelled at the TV when Dad started with that shit. Unbelievably cruel.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 2:47 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Ali Barthwell, the recapper, is consistently awesome--her take on Eric as being someone who grew up idolizing Nick Cannon was spot on and I love her analysis of Brian being stuck in perma third-date land!
posted by stellaluna at 3:40 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

What stellaluna said. It really really felt like Dean was emotionally blackmailed somehow. I've heard horror stories about the lengths that the producers go to to get the desired results and how they manipulate emotionally weak people. Yeah, I've also seen UnReal ;)

It was very obvious that he was really unhappy, and the way he stood outside and kept repeating that he did not want to go in made me feel terribly bad for him. There is still a lot of raw pain he hasn't dealt with yet, and it does not help that his father still seems to think he never had any responsibility for his children's emotional well-being, and refuses to hear otherwise. Poor Dean.
posted by the webmistress at 4:39 PM on July 18, 2017

People: The Bachelorette's Rachel Lindsay on Her Fiancé: 'He's More of a Hopeless Romantic Than I Am!' As for how long the newly engaged pair will wait to actually walk down the aisle, Lindsay isn’t in any rush. “In this world, because we’re getting to know each other in a different way, I want to wait at least a year from the time that we got engaged,” she explained. “So ideally, I’d like to get married next year, but who knows? We’ll see what happens.”

Oh so now you aren't in any rush to get married? Ugh, girl bye.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:19 AM on July 19, 2017

Ugh. So it's Bryan then. No one else is "a hopeless romantic", certainly not Eric. He's too grounded for her. I've done a 180 on Rachel.

Peter is very obviously going to be the next bachelor then, if she does pick Bryan and his hellacious mother.
posted by the webmistress at 6:55 AM on July 19, 2017

Both Dean's father and Bryan's mother were the definitions of toxic. I kept trying to armchair diagnose them. Painful to watch.

If I could talk to Rachel, I would caution her that Bryan is lovebombing her, and from his perspective there is no real emotion nor substance there. He's the kind of dude who will narcissistically triangulate constantly between his girlfriend and his mom, before devaluing and eventually discarding the girlfriend. This is Bryan's fate unless he disengages from his mom.

Peter or Eric? It's going to be close. I wonder what Judge Lindsay's take on these two will be. I think her father's opinion is going to be extremely persuasive to her.
posted by edithkeeler at 8:20 AM on July 21, 2017

Now that we're barreling towards a nearly-certain Bryan win, I don't think I care enough to keep watching, even though I still really like Rachel -- haven't we all fallen for someone who everyone knows is bad/meh? Still hard to watch though. I was rooting for a Peter win, as was probably most of America after the tooth gap conversation, but he seems tailormade to be the Bachelor. Shrug.

You guys, I really want to say that I will not watch Bachelor in Paradise because it's such a clear example of the franchise going way overboard into unethical. Did y'all see the commercial where they spin the real-life sexual assault/lawsuit happenings as in-show drama, complete with shots of paradise during the rain? Super distasteful. But I am attracted to trash as a moth to a flame so I know I will end up watching it anyway.
posted by likeatoaster at 7:16 AM on July 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yep I will probably watch BiP too, and hate myself for it. I do hope that if they pick Peter, he has the chops to pull it off. He is one of my favorite contestants ever. I didn't even watch Bach when it was Chris S or Juan P or that creepy guy, I forget his name, he was a pilot. Gah he was sooooo fake and creepy. But I will absolutely watch if it's Peter ;)
posted by the webmistress at 9:34 AM on July 22, 2017