THE BACHELORETTE FINALE FULL

On a season full of anonymous male duds, he completed the rare reality arc that can only be referred to as a glow-up, somehow coming out better than he came in. And we never did find out what happened to Copper the dog.īut at least we had Eric. In the process, she burned off most of the excess good will she had earned across two seasons as a seemingly sane human in the twisted universe of this show. The season finale of “The Bachelorette” proved to be a dispiriting and genuinely unsettling affair as Rachel cried off her substantial false eyelashes over Peter’s stubbornness and then dived headlong - but ultimately unconvincingly - into the chiropractor from Miami. We didn’t know what we had until he was gone - and then back again on the live reunion, more graceful than before, with a fuller beard and better suit.

JOE COSCARELLI Thank the reality television gods for Eric. A fantasy or a nightmare, depending on how you look at it. She unconvincingly called it “the happiest day of my life!” and they both marveled at how they’d just decided to spend the rest of their lives together. Instead he anchored that rock on her finger. A violent wind whipped around them (Hurricane Peter?), and I desperately wished for the wind to pick up Bryan and blow him away. Didn’t all the white girls get to choose for themselves? When, the day after Rachel’s tearful parting with Peter, she stood in front of Bryan at the show’s Designated Engagement Spot, I felt dread for her. Maybe because there wasn’t enough flattering material?) But even if I wasn’t Team Just Not Bryan, I would feel sad to see it all go down this way. (You have to wonder why our winner didn’t seem to get a very flattering edit. I happen to be one of the correct “Bachelorette” viewers who is repulsed by Bryan. And in the end, her final choice was made for her: Ugh, Bryan. Then, the finale reduced her to a girl desperate for a ring. And she did it all as a black woman navigating one of TV’s whitest worlds. Rachel was maybe the best Bachelorette ever - super smart, mature, gorgeous, game, emotionally expressive.

But it also had her confidently commanding a house of 31 men and taking ultimate control over her romantic future. Her arc on “The Bachelorette” was supposed to show her following her heart, not her head, sure. She was so analytical, always in her head, just a little bit too guarded to open up and tell Nick that she loved him - so he had to let her go. When Rachel was introduced to “Bachelor” viewers, as a contestant on Nick’s season, her story presented her as an independent woman. It was all hard to buy, but it’s easy to understand why Rachel would try to sell it. Onstage, she told Peter that it wasn’t just the engagement stuff that had given her pause she had noted other signs, earlier, that tipped her off that he wasn’t the one, she insisted. She spent her time onstage with Peter trying to revise the finale narrative that was playing out before her eyes: It was a story that ended with Rachel so desperate to be engaged that she appeared willing to do it with Peter or, whatever - the other guy, I guess. They cried, they snogged, they traded “I love yous,” and then they never saw each other again - until last night, when the show trotted Peter out onstage to submit to its ritualistic relationship post-mortem.Īs she spoke out against Peter, Rachel seemed to be lashing out at the franchise, too. Peter implored Rachel to choose a reasonably paced dating relationship with him over a “mediocre life” with Bryan. She reiterated to him that she needed to be engaged at the end of the show. But the night before the final act, Peter reiterated to Rachel that he was not ready to propose. The finale of “The Bachelorette” is supposed to go like this: The final two contestants each pick out engagement rings and bow down before our Bachelorette, and she chooses one of them to be her fiancé. She kept hoping for one final redemptive twist, like a Hillary voter on election night waiting for those last precincts to roll in.

So real that when the breakup between these two gaptoothed beauties played out, one member of our little New York Times Bachelorette Recappers and Enthusiasts group refused to believe that Peter was actually gone. So real that after she left Peter behind in his candlelit rent-a-suite for the last time, he kept finding those little lashes scattered across the floor, the only part of herself she left behind. So real that Rachel cried her false eyelashes off. Can we steal you for a sec?ĪMANDA HESS For all the “reality” served up over the course of this season, the finale gave us a few precious moments that felt truly real. Our resident obsessives have been following Rachel Lindsay’s love journey all season, right through the tear-streaked three-hour finale on Monday night. Another season of “The Bachelorette” has ended, and The New York Times was here for the right reasons.

The bachelorette finale