The romance on “The Bachelor” is about as real as a telenovela (ABC/Francisco Roman)

This week we were subject to 5 hours of “The Bachelor” where just about nothing happened. We’ve hit the mid point seasonal lull that is so typical of this show and it’s time to take inventory of how successful this season is doing against previous ones. Spoilers ahead.



Peter Sucks

Now if Peter were being held to the standard of a normal single hetero man, and not one who has twice tried to try to find “true love” on a television show, he might get more of a pass. Some his terribleness comes from the storyline manipulation by the editors and producers (bless them for their service) but at the end of the day his most dramatic moments just revolve around a lot of apologizing, a lot of flip flopping, and one of the most desperate verbalized lines I’ve heard in a long time: “I want someone to badly to want me as much as I want them.” Also I beg of the show to stop trying to position him as “ethnic” just because he speaks Spanish. The show itself has a serious diversity problem and just because you have a white somewhat Latinx person starring does not mean you solved that problem.

Tears are NOT Emotions



Peter seems to think that women only have one way of displaying emotions, and that’s crying. In his one on one with Kelley, he questioned their connection, simply because she was being a realist about the depth of emotions one can actually experience during a month and change of knowing someone. In any other situation a woman would be considered clingy or a psycho for professing their love after a month. In almost any other situation if a woman broke down sobbing half as often as they do on “The Bachelor” they’d be called a psycho. Yet not only is it expected of these women, Peter in particular seems to thrive off of it. While part of me dislikes Kelley, part of me is growing to root for her as she seems less willing to play the game but is succeeding anyways. She’s the only one who seems to have any sort of grounding when it comes to this whole process, and you can see Peter working harder to chase HER. Now that being said I lost almost any feelings of warmth towards her when she put on a probably racist accent during the Telenovela challenge (and tried to make incest sexy?). Then there’s the one on one date with Hannah Ann in the second episode. She too commits the crime of maintaining composure during their one on one date. Peter immediately begins to question their relationship too. It’s not until she has a mini “meltdown” (which felt SO scripted and prompted) that Peter feels reassured. Once the tears start flowing he delivers the following line: “This is what I want to see” – even with accounting for show production influence, those are actual lines delivered out of his mouth. This simplistic understanding of how he thinks the “right” way for emotions to be displayed isn’t limited to Peter, but it’s certainly being exemplified by him. ​

The Waterfall



This is how herpes spreads. Also all of these women are in decent to good shape, how did all of the bathing suits make them look so unattractive.



Forget Girl Code



Much of these two episodes centered around the infighting amongst the women. Tammy somehow was the center of the storm.



Tammy served an interesting purpose on the show this season, as one of the few Asian contestants to make it this far EVER, I was sort of rooting for her. However from the start I knew she had 0 chance. My biggest hope for her was she’d come out of this unscathed. Boy was I let down. I can’t tell if it’s good or bad that the producers gave her as much time as she did. She was certainly used as a pot stirrer, and in some cases as a representative for us the audience.



Much of her fighting centered around Kelsey – who seems unbalanced – and Mykenna. Both of these contestants have job titles that scream “HERE FOR THE INSTAGRAM FAME” and you almost have to salute their boldness. Almost.



Tammy singlehandedly decided to take on this duo of “here for the wrong reasons” and was left with 0 backup. We were presented with another of these awkward pow wows where one woman calls out something that was said about her, and all the women stay silent.



Tammy also broke one of the cardinal rules of time with the main contestant: don’t use it to talk about someone else. That never pans out, but Tammy and the producers, probably knew she wasn’t going much further and so encouraged that ending to the storyline.



The confrontation with Sydney, Kelsey, and Victoria (and someone who I later found out was named Lexi) was peak stereotypical girl fight. Tammy clearly hit a nerve with Sydney though, because she was only able to retort “you’re psycho” instead of logically debunking her arguments.



Written by Code?



Let’s take a moment to talk about Mykenna, who centers in the other half of the controversy with Tammy. I swear to god Mykenna is actually a fem-bot who was written by an AI that studied previous episodes of the franchise and built a script of what they thought a human woman on this show would sound like.



Her performative waterworks and speeches to no one are so transparent. She kept calling herself a strong woman but I don’t think anyone actually asserted otherwise. The greatest gift she gave us was her dramatic sign off which was out of the Stuart Smalley playbook in that she’s “more madly in love with who I am than anything.”



Watch out Roombas, Robot Mykenna is coming for your job. (ABC/Francisco Roman)

The Scar



Truly the most disappointing story, he gets the scar cause he (was probably drunk) and ran into a golf cart with glass in hand)? LAME.



So Who’s Left?



Let’s take inventory of the remaining contenders. Kelsey and her duplicitousness seems here to stay for a bit. Hannah Ann and Madison are probably also going to make hometowns. Kelley will coast through a few more episodes but seems too realist to make it to the end. There are a few more disposable girls who will drop off in the next episode.



Then there’s Victoria F. Clearly Peter is very invested in her, but her “I’m so innocent” act is likely to crack soon. We saw a few signs of it in her interview moments. Also her reaction to turning 26 (“I’m 26, it’s depressing”) made me want to throw something at the TV. I know there’s some real world news that circulated about her but I resisted clicking on it as I want to see if the show addresses it/experience it in realtime.

