By now, we all know that The Bachelor is sort of an evil show. This is never more evident than during one of the franchise’s season finales: Even if all goes perfectly according to plan and ends in a starry-eyed engagement, viewers can expect to be treated to one absolutely brutal breakup along the way. Humiliation is a feature, not a bug. All of that being said, Tuesday night’s finale and “After the Final Rose” special for this season of The Bachelorette managed to be even more evil than usual.
Season 21’s Bachelorette was 26-year-old physician assistant student Jenn Tran, who was chosen as the franchise’s first Asian American lead after appearing as a contestant on the previous season of The Bachelor. Coming into the finale, she had shrunk her dating pool from 25 men down to two: Marcus, a military veteran, and Devin, a freight company owner who immediately prompted comparisons to Pete Davidson. All three were at a resort in Hawaii. Jenn told both men she loved them, but Marcus’ struggle to say it back seemed to lead directly to the couple’s demise, and the path was cleared for Devin, a cocky guy who nonetheless appeared to genuinely like Jenn, to be the last man standing. Jenn declared her intention to break with the show’s tradition and propose to Devin herself, rather than simply accept his proposal. If things had gone differently, that would have been the news coming out of the night.
Instead, the show’s host, Jesse Palmer, taping the finale in front of a live studio audience in Los Angeles, suddenly cut into the Hawaii footage. “I know exactly what you’re thinking right now,” he said onstage. “Why is Jesse interrupting this beautiful moment?” Weren’t we going to get to watch Jenn’s historic—feminist, even—proposal? Nope, Palmer explained. “You won’t be seeing that proposal. Because of what transpired since that day in Hawaii, we decided it wouldn’t be appropriate for anyone to see it until we heard from Jenn.” He brought out Jenn, who tearfully shared that she and Devin had broken up. In her telling, she had tried to make it work, but Devin’s attitude had changed shortly after the engagement, and he didn’t seem to want to fight for them.
Devin came out, too, so the two could see each other for the first time since their breakup, and Jenn made further accusations: She was particularly hurt that he had broken up with her in a phone call and that, shortly after the breakup, he had followed some women on Instagram, in particular her former Bachelor castmate Maria (who, before Jenn was named this season’s Bachelorette, was presumably in the mix of possible candidates). It was uncomfortable, and looked wrenching for Jenn especially, but it was also exactly the kind of finale or late-season confrontation one expects from the Bachelor-verse.
What really made this season different is what happened next. Palmer announced that they would now proceed with airing the proposal, the very footage that the show had, in a rare display of restraint minutes earlier, decided that it would be inappropriate to broadcast. (Now that I review the transcripts, I guess he had said “until we heard from Jenn” earlier, but still.) He even attempted to frame getting to see the proposal as a kind of tribute to Jenn’s beautiful spirit: “I know that your love story did not unfold the way that you hoped it would or expected it to, and for that, Jenn, I am truly, truly sorry,” Palmer started, trying to strike a careful balance of representing an entity that was responsible for emotionally annihilating Jenn while still insisting that it was a very big fan of Jenn. “But I can also confidently say that even though you may not have found the love and that great love that you were looking for yet, you also showed all of us what a strong and powerful woman is. Jenn, you weren’t afraid to speak your mind, and you also weren’t afraid to go after what it is you want. You did that all through this entire journey, including making history with a beautiful proposal, the likes of which we have never seen. And, Jenn, nobody can ever take that away from you. I know you haven’t seen it yet. What do you think—should we all watch it together?”
Jenn nodded sadly, the nod of a woman who has signed a contract. “Do I have a choice?” she asked. No, not really, and she knew that. And so, as Jenn sat there on the couch next to the man who had broken her heart just a few weeks ago, they pulled up the tape of her being the first Bachelorette ever to propose to her winner. During some of it, producers included a small square of Jenn’s devastated live reaction in the corner, crying and drying her eyes with tissues. When this square disappeared from the screen, I wondered if it was because Jenn had stormed offstage, which would have been a completely reasonable reaction to having to endure all that.
Showing the proposal struck viewers as strange, and the decision has already received a lot of backlash on social media. It’s easy to see why: The show initially acted as if it were going to skip that footage, so returning to it seemed like an unnecessary twist of the knife, done for no narrative purpose other than to make Jenn squirm. Still, I don’t think this is the worst thing the franchise has ever done. Longtime viewers may remember the finale of Season 22 of The Bachelor, which featured lead Arie ambushing the woman he’d gotten engaged to on the show, Becca, with an on-camera breakup during what she thought was supposed to be a standard little reunion visit for the two of them. Remember how Jenn specifically called out Devin for not breaking up with her in person? Be careful what you wish for—that phone call may have sucked, but considering the alternative of an in-person breakup complete with a surprise camera crew, maybe it was for the best. Given that The Bachelorette didn’t manage to secure that footage, whether through a show of conscience or bad luck, it makes total sense to me that producers felt they needed something else to show for themselves, some other cruel ordeal to put Jenn through. The real mistake the show made was not telling the story linearly. I doubt anyone would have balked if it had aired the proposal, then brought out Jenn to talk about the breakup, but by switching the order, the franchise made its bloodthirstiness too overt. Viewers know deep down that this is a heartless show, but they’d rather not be hit in the face with it.
