The Bachelorette
July 30, 2019
So, the second half of our never-ending finale:
As Hannah gets dressed for her proposal, she muses about her experience on this dumb show, and how much she has changed, that she’s no longer the sad girl looking for validation from other people. She doesn’t need a man, she wants you to know, but she will take one since one is being offered.
While Footloose and Guitar Guy look at engagement rings from a disinterested Neil Lane who is just there for the free trip to Greece, Hannah yammers on about each of their … as her mother would call it … “qualities.” Footloose puts her first, makes her feel strong and will do whatever it takes to make sure they have a happy life together. And Guitar Guy, he’s what she wants from a life partner — a naked opportunist. It’s a hard decision!
So hard, in fact, that on the way to the engagement platform, Hannah asks the driver to pull over, and she proceeds to teeter down the road in her sparkly heels before tumbling to the ground and rolling around down there for a second or two.
DON’T LAUGH. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT LAUGH AT THIS.
Hannah eventually arrives at the engagement platform, finds the one space not occupied by a giant vase, and voice-overs that while she’s excited about the day, she has to do something heartbreaking first.
And that person who’s about to get his heart broken: Footloose.
She fucked it up.
Footloose begins his whole proposal spiel about how she captivated him from the moment they met and that he as grown as a man because of her and he started falling in love with her on … and she stops him — this isn’t it. “This isn’t it,” he says as she begins her own spiel about how she was falling in love with him, but you know, she would just rather be with someone who only came on the show in the hopes of being discovered.
Footloose assures her that he will be her biggest fan and wishes her and Guitar Guy nothing but success.
Oh, Hannah, you dumb idiot.
She walks Footloose out to the Κάνετε ένα λάθος εσείς ηλίθιο Van, and Footloose, stunned, talks about how he really believed Hannah was the one.
Hannah returns to the official engagement platform to wait for Guitar Guy, who is busily burbling in the van that he’s nervous and excited about what is about to happen.
He arrives and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, HE BROUGHT THE GUITAR WITH HIM.
He opens talking about how he wanted to see “inside of [her]” — gross — and wanted to know the “deepest part of [her]” — GROSS — before explaining that sometimes talking is hard for him, and that’s why he’s going to sing her another goddamned song.
When he’s done with his stupid song, Hannah tells him that she has prayed for her future husband since she was a little girl and something about how the heartbreak she has experienced along the way brought her to this point. She’s been praying for this and for him for a long time now.
He proposes, she accepts; she offers him the final rose, he accepts and then they start singing that dumb “Mr. Right” song from the first group date.
IS IT OVER? ARE WE DONE HERE YET?
And the answer to those questions is NOPE. NOT BY A LONG SHOT. Because, as you know since I’ve been yelling about it for weeks now, it turns out this jackass not only used the show as an attempt to jumpstart his flailing music career — he also had a girlfriend back at home whom he left to be on the show, with the reassurance that they would get back together when he was done. It’s just about the music, baby.
“He told me [early on] that he had applied,” Stevens says. “He said, ‘It’s probably not going to happen, but it’s a huge opportunity. I’m only doing this for my music.’ He only did it for his career.”
“He wanted a platform,” she continues. “He kept telling me, ‘I don’t want my dad to have to help me pay rent anymore.’ He said he only wanted to be top five … to be a major player so that it would be beneficial.”
“He told me [the show] was just an obstacle and we’d be stronger on the other side because of it,” she says. “We spent the night together the night before he headed to L.A. He called me when he landed. He said, ‘I love you, and I’ll call you when I get back.’ ”
The article, which was published in June, goes on to say that the girlfriend was ghosted by Guitar Guy when he returned to Nashville and she doesn’t know how he did on the show:
“He said, ‘Hey how have you been?’ and I said, ‘How do you think I’ve been?’ ” she says. “I asked him, ‘You didn’t think I deserved a phone call?’ And he said, ‘I didn’t know what to say.’ “
YEAH, I JUST BET HE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY, SEEING AS, YOU KNOW, HE WAS ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED.
MEANWHILE:
They had one job #TheBachelorette #TheBachloretteFinale pic.twitter.com/WXGn62mj87
— Garrett (@GarrettStezen) July 31, 2019
Hannah explains this whole mess to us while she waits for Guitar Guy’s ass to show up and EXPLAIN HIMSELF in some Air BNB in California. He arrives, sheepishly, and she’s like, YEAH I KNOW THAT’S RIGHT.
I’m not going to do a play-by-play of their boring conversation. Basically, Hannah demands to know why the hell he let her find this out this way, and his excuse is that his story, it’s different from the one Haley told People Magazine. According to him, he didn’t realize he was in a relationship with Haley — despite going on vacations with her, and DESPITE TELLING HER HE LOVED HER — he didn’t see a reason to mention it to Hannah. They just hung out a few times! (Like on his birthday! In the Bahamas!)
Hannah explains that all of this is BULLSHIT humiliating and selfish and then there’s a bunch of him trying to claim that he didn’t realize how he’d feel about Hannah — he was just using the show as a professional platform, which he told her (and why she didn’t send him home at that moment, I will never know) — but HE REALLY LOVES HER NOW FOR SERIOUS. Blahblahblah, the point is Hannah removes the engagement ring … but puts it back on while talking about how THIS IS NOT WHAT SHE WANTED and he reassures her that she has a right to be mad about this …
OH THANKS FOR PERMISSION, SHITBIRD.
… and we go to commercial break not knowing what Hannah ultimately decided about Guitar Guy, but it should come as no surprise that she dumped his ass. In the studio, Hannah explains that while she didn’t expect the men on the show to have been celibate for 6 months before shooting, TELLING SOMEONE YOU LOVE THEM THE NIGHT BEFORE YOU GO ON THE SHOW IS NOTTTTTT ACCCCEPTABLE. HONESTY, IT KINDA FUCKING MATTERS.
Guitar Guy is then brought out for his lashings. He apologizes to Hannah again and tries to explain that he never expected to find real love on a reality show because he was just using the whole thing for self-promotion. And then, once he did find himself in love with her, he didn’t tell her the truth because he was afraid of losing her.
Chris Harrison asks Hannah what she thinks of the apology and she’s like: “1. the apology was fine or whatever and 2. I don’t need the angry mobs on the internet coming after you, SO EVERYONE STAND DOWN, but 3. good luck, asshole, because this ship has sailed. I hope for the sake of whichever person you end up with you grow the fuck up.”
Guitar Guy tells Hannah that he’ll always love her, but she just rolls her eyes and is like, “Yeah, I don’t feel for you like that anymore.” When the crowd starts applauding, she scolds them that this is VERY SAD, AND NOT SOMETHING TO CLAP ABOUT but yes, this? This relationship? The one built entirely on a lie ON TOP OF ANOTHER LIE? It is dead dead.
With that, Guitar Guy is shooed off to an obscurity of writing jingles for cat litter or whatever, while Hannah talks about how she’s strong and doesn’t need a husband (but how she wants a husband).
But we’re not done, because Hannah still needs to explain herself to the guy she should have chosen in the first place: Footloose. Footloose comes out to a VERY excited audience, and we spend more time waiting for the screaming to stop than we do talking to Footloose.
But in the time we have him, he talks about how hard the breakup was — he really was prepared to get down on one knee and propose — but that watching how Hannah handled herself, he couldn’t be more proud of her.
As for Hannah, she thanks Footloose for always being so supportive of her before noting that feelings don’t just go away. And on that note, she’s a single girl now — how about he join her for a drink and hang out sometime?
The audience, who was already barely holding it together:
And that’s it. That’s how we end it — with Hannah going on a normal, real person, untelevised date with the guy she should have chosen in the first damn place. And on these dumb shows, that’s about the happiest of endings we could hope for.
Say goodbye to the men who have been eliminated:
And here are the men along with their dumb nicknames who are still “dating” The Beast:
The Bachelorette airs Mondays on ABC at 7/8 p.m.
Lovely. No less than everything I expect from St. Theresa, the Patron Saint of The Television of the Absurd and Wacky. Modern TV reviewing at its best. We are not worthy, sister gurl! Still howling.