What a title, man. I truly am a genius. The Bachelor’s 19th season ended tonight, three months after it began. This has been a really interesting experience for me, as I’ve never watched reality television before. I came into this with lowest, most basic expectations, and they were exceeded by the end of the first episode. I won’t say this was a perfect experience, because no show that lasts two hours every time it airs (AND THREE HOURS TONIGHT WTF) can adequately fill that amount of time. But I really did enjoy my time watching the show. I said this in the first episode, and I’ll close the circle here: the community around a show is just as important to the enjoyment of it as the quality.
The Bachelor community has been a ton of fun. God, it has been so much fun. There’s a lot of criticism about how empty and vapid the show is, how it somehow demeans the concept of love and sanctity and marriage and Oh My Martha, Did You See What The Kids Are Doing These Days? But that’s crap. Whether it’s real or not is immaterial. I’ve been lucky that the Bachelor that I first got to watch was Chris Soules, who at worst came off as awkward and at best came off as truly decent. So to experience this “journey” was to see it from a much more genuine perspective. This was actually about someone who wanted to find something more (or deserved an Oscar for pretending he did).
I’ve been on a few different #Teams since this thing started; I honestly thought up until the moment he proposed that he made a mistake by not picking Jade. But it became clear very quickly that he had made the right choice. Chris and Whitney fit together better than Chris and Anyone Else; and looking back on it that’s been true for a long time. We should’ve known on their one-on-one during Kimmel’s episode that she was going to be there for the long haul; the way she handled herself by crashing that wedding and the energy that she had was incredible. There was a real person with real interest and real feelings inside of her, and Chris saw that from the beginning. I missed it at the time, of course, because I was making heart-eyes at Ashley I and Britt. Chris made the right choice picking Whitney, 150%.
As much as I enjoyed the episode, though, I will say that the three-hour run time was beyond ridiculous. I understand they were trying to turn the finale into an event, but that’s a lot of time to fill for a movie, let alone a television show. And they did not have enough material to fill. Commercial breaks came so frequently that I openly wondered if the last hour of the show was just going to be commercials. There was a lot of really entertaining moments, of course; the editing and sound work were particularly on point this episode and really elevated the material. But three hours?
The last hour was an “After The Rose” special! An hour of them sitting in the studio and talking. That’s not to say that hour didn’t have some entertaining moments, of course; the cow being named Juan Pablo was one of the funniest moments of all time. But come on, now. We’ve got places to be! An hour of y’all just chilling???
You know, I had planned on making this final review a really big thing; the copious notes and outline sitting in front of me can attest to that. But as I write this, and stop writing this, and think about what comes next, it becomes exceedingly clear that what I want to say doesn’t require much more than what I’ve done here. I wanted to convey the enjoyment I’ve gotten from the community and the show itself; I wanted to convey my own specific feelings on Whitney and Chris; I even got to complain about the length of the show! I’m satisfied, that’s what I’m saying.
I’m satisfied. I had fun. I’m glad I did this. I hope I get to do it again. I hope y’all enjoyed these reviews as much as I did writing them. I hope y’all had as much fun as I did.
Till next time, everyone.
Stray Thoughts
– The Bachelorette is gonna have two contestants for the upcoming season! Isn’t that interesting. Britt and Kaitlyn will go head-to-head for the first episode, and the guys in the house will choose who they want to stay. That’ll be fun.
– Becca was stone-cold this episode. She was really not into Chris, which makes it weird that she stuck around for so long. She should’ve gone home and let someone be there who wanted to be there.
– Chris Harrison is a master of his work. I am unsettled and jealous.
– Juan Pablo has been put out to pasture. Thank the lord.
[Photo via ABC]
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