As any anthropologist will tell you, “The Women Tell All†is a folk practice of great importance. The ritual must be completed every season so that we may worship as our reality-TV ancestors worshipped before us. It’s also not totally unlike that part of Midsommar when all the women cling together and collectively wail … if Midsommar were also a clip show.
We’ll get to the conclusion of the cliffhanger that was last week’s rose ceremony (oh boy, will we), but first let’s go through the highlights of the contestants’ onstage reunion:
- Everyone looks great. Edith remains the undefeated fit queen of the group in a hot-pink gown — This Barbie Is on The Golden Bachelor — but I would be remiss not to acknowledge Marina (gone too soon!) in a delicious lime-green dress. Kathy has opted for a Hillary Accepting the Nomination–esque white pantsuit that, while objectively flattering, is nevertheless too 2016-triggering for me.
- Kathy, afforded an opportunity for some damage control, says she could’ve been “more delicate†with Theresa in the moment. Perhaps they both should’ve zipped it.
- April — who greets the crowd by standing up and pointing You, you, you! à la Oprah — says that her grandkids wanted her to “pull it in a little bit.†But maybe, she says, she pulled it in “too much.†If this was buttoned-up April, she of the sexy chicken dance and the selfie calendar, there is little I wouldn’t give to see the undiluted version. Release the April cut.
- Weepy and statuesque as always, Joan — who decided to leave the show early to be with her daughter, who was experiencing severe postpartum depression after a difficult birth — feels guilty that she hurt Gerry, which, what? His incredibly gracious reaction to her departure only made it harder to leave because it proved what a good father he was. Joan thinks that, had she stayed, they would have “had a good chance.†She even found herself daydreaming that one day she might come home to find him waiting for her on her front porch — which is heartbreakingly plausible given The Bachelor has pulled weirder stunts in its history.
- My (and your) TV mother, Ellen, the people’s princess, gets at least some of her flowers. She “had everybody’s heart,†Jesse Palmer acknowledges — there’s no denying how fun she was, how sweet, how genuine. Yes, she thought Gerry was the one, but now she knows she deserves to enjoy her life and “can’t wait to get started.†She tearfully recounts saying good-bye to Roberta, her friend of 60 years and fellow Bachelor superfan, who cheered Ellen on to compete on the show but passed away before the season premiere (which was dedicated to her memory). The camera keeps cutting to this one woman crying in the audience, and I’m like, Damn, okay, she’s particularly touched by this. Good for her for being in sync with her feelings, I guess. And then it’s revealed that she is in fact Roberta’s daughter, flown in to surprise Ellen. Emotions!
- One of the functions of these “Women/Men/Humans Tell All†episodes is to soft-launch, or at least circumspectly focus-group, candidates to lead the next series. And based on airtime alone, I’d have to speculate that Susan, a.k.a. Kirkland Signature Jenner, our collective Miss Congeniality, is among the production’s top choices for the first Golden Bachelorette. (I get it; she’s a delight!) Kris Jenner sent in a video to gas up the women generally and Susan specifically. “You nailed it, doll,†she says, and Susan is so happy she cries. My favorite Susan moment is a previously unseen (I think?) clip of her sitting down with Gerry to share something “really, really serious,†only to flawlessly deadpan, “I had the worst gas.†I hereby pronounce Susan WTA MVP (this is pronounced wha-tam-vip, FYI).
- Digestive distress emerges as an unexpectedly central theme of the episode. There is a debate as to which of the cast’s homemade dishes caused Susan’s “deadly†flatulence: Was it Edith’s guacamole or Susan’s own meatballs? There are multiple clips of contestants burping and then footage of Sandra, citing “lower-GI seriousness,†either emitting what is one of the longer continuous farts in human history or having a possible legal case against The Golden Bachelor’s sound editors.
- If, for some reason, you felt compelled to make a word cloud of a transcript of this episode, hope would loom largest in the center (to be fair, so would however you choose to phonetically transcribe a fart noise). The contestants echo that the show has made them much more optimistic about finding love, feeling less “invisible,†and living a full life. It’s never too late. I believe that all reality-TV participant agreements should come with a surgeon general’s warning plastered on them, and yet I genuinely think this was a positive experience for these women. It probably helps that, unlike the typical Bachelor hopeful, their prefrontal cortices have finished developing.
- I talk shit about Jesse Palmer like it’s my job (and, to be fair, it kind of is), but credit where credit is due: I think he did a good job! Susan may be wha-tam-vip, but the single, perfect focus-pulling glycerine tear that rolls down his cheek when Ellen talks about Roberta takes second place.
- Everybody still likes Gerry. Of course they do. He is not just a “gentleman†but a “gentle man,†Sandra observes, and I see what she did there. Joan only wishes the best for him! Ellen thanks him for making her feel like a princess! Gerry misses them all every day, he says, and I believe it.
But now the fun and games are over and it’s time for our marquee event: the much anticipated post-hometowns rejection.
We pick up with Gerry where we left off last week — namely, with him doubled over and crying. Leslie already has a rose, and there’s only one remaining. Will it go to Faith, to whom Gerry directly proclaimed his love, or to Theresa, whom Gerry told only the camera he’s in love with?
I actually gasped out loud at my computer screen when he called Theresa’s name. In fact, I am so surprised that I momentarily think, Wow, it’s weird that he said the name of the person he’s not giving a rose to for once. For their part, the in-studio audience members and the women alike all look equally aghast (tag yourself — I’m the guy with glasses mouthing Wow).
Gerry, my brother in Christ. You straight up told Faith — a woman who has confided in you about her history of romantic trauma, no less — in front of her entire family (and probably the ghost of at least one of her expired horses) that you were in love with her, at no one’s urging, like 36 hours ago. All along, it was really you who should have zipped his lip.
(Discussion question for the class: Do we think the hometowns were necessarily filmed in the order we were shown them? All we know for sure, textually, is that Faith didn’t come last because someone references him having to leave for the next one.)
She handles this blindsiding with grace and dignity, if only because she is “numb.†Was this all in her head? After putting up walls for 30 years, she was ready to marry this guy. How did they go from where they were to “literally nothing,†as if they were strangers?
Cut to Faith, crying onstage, obviously and understandably devastated. The Gatch soon joins her, appropriately contrite. He tells her that his love is genuine but that one of the other women is just more “right†for him.
To Gerry’s credit, it’s clear that he truly feels terrible and that he had no malicious intent. Nevertheless, I think it is correct for him to feel at least a little terrible. They agree they are better people for having met each other and embrace, incomprehensibly sob-mumbling into each other’s shoulders for a while.
But there’s no time to waste: Gerry is off with Leslie and Theresa to Costa Rica to canoodle (to whatever degree of canoodling) in the Fantasy Suites and — at least in Gerry’s case, based on the preview — sob over various picturesque balconies. ¡Hasta luego!