A ‘toxic’ Bachelor season? Not according to ‘Women Tell All’

Oh the irony. There was erstwhile “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison Monday night talking about how there’s been more “explosive drama than any of us were prepared for” this season. Little did he know when that “Women Tell All” episode was taped, just five days before that fateful “Extra” interview with Rachel Lindsay (a fact noted with a disclaimer at the start of the program), that he’d be at the centre of the most explosive drama the franchise has ever seen.

As I write this, there’s still no word on how long Harrison’s hiatus from “The Bachelor” will last or whether it will be permanent (if you’re not sure what’s going on, go google Harrison and Extra and/or Rachel Lindsay and/or Rachael Kirkconnell). We now know that author and TV host Emmanuel Acho will replace Harrison on “After the Final Rose.”

Here’s another thing I know: it was maddening to watch Harrison soft-pedal the drama that did occur this season — the name-calling, the bullying, the gaslighting, the overall meanness — by not calling out the women behind the worst of it and basically just sitting and nodding along while some of them talked more crap.

I mean, come on, we’ve all seen Harrison ask tough questions in these types of situations before, but they were MIA here.

So we had Victoria, the Queen of Mean, suggesting that the fact that contestant Ryan was upset about being called a “ho” and an idiot and a “shady bitch” on TV was down to Ryan being overly emotional.

“It’s hard to hear yourself being called a ho on national television,” Ryan said.

“Do you think you’re a super sensitive person?” asked Victoria. And then, noting that she herself had been subject to social media backlash, Victoria added, “I’m a little bit puzzled as to why you’re holding on to this emotional anger right now.”

At least Kit and Chelsea defended Ryan’s right to be angry over being called “horrible things” on TV.

And Victoria did apologize to Katie for calling her disgusting. But then several contestants piled on Katie for having the nerve to bring up the unpleasantness in the house to Bachelor Matt James.

Chelsea actually said, and I quote, “The house wasn’t toxic until you made it toxic by bringing it up to Matt and then causing the domino effect that led to every single drama in the house that you were involved in.” Hello, shoot the messenger much? It’s complete bullshit. Personally, I was writing about how nasty women like Victoria and Serena C and Anna were being several weeks before we saw Katie talk to Matt about it. She didn’t cause the drama; she just brought it to Matt’s attention.

After Serena C recycled her BS about how Katie “wanted to do it to light a flame and start a fire,” I was the one feeling “emotional anger.”

Katie did a great job of keeping her cool and later got to sit in the “hot seat” with Harrison, saying all the right things for a prospective future Bachelorette, for instance that she’s “embraced exactly who I am” in the past year, that she’s hopeful her “person’s still out there,” that she’s “the most confident I’ve ever been.”

But, as much as I like Katie, the women who brought the most grace and class to an otherwise disappointing episode were Brittany and Abigail.

Brittany was invited up to talk about the rumour that Anna spread about her (and that “Bachelor” producers chose to broadcast) that Brittany was a high-end escort.

“When you google my name now, the first 20 results say ‘Bachelor contestant Brittany Galvin accused of being an escort,'” Brittany told Harrison, adding that there’s nothing wrong with escort work, “but that’s not me.”

“I didn’t sign up to get bullied, I didn’t sign up to get slandered.”

Brittany added that Anna had not reached out to apologize to her despite having had weeks to do so. But gee, Anna was “so, so sorry” at “Women Tell All.” Yet, despite how “awful” Anna said she felt about letting her anger and insecurity get the better of her, she kind of doubled down by telling Brittany she’d heard the rumours about her from people who knew her ex-boyfriend and went to school with her, noting that “Chicago is a small town.”

Brittany very graciously accepted Anna’s apology, saying, “I don’t want people to destroy your life as well.” And if we’re talking about potential Bachelorettes, we could do way worse than someone with that kind of maturity and generosity of spirit.

And then there was Abigail. If anyone had a right to be bitter about how the season turned out it was her. Since when does a first impression rose winner not get a one-on-one date? Has that ever happened before? I’d have to do a little research to find out, but it certainly seems odd. Frankly, it seems like Matt led her on. Abigail said merely that she had “a big what if,” as in could she have been a frontrunner if she’d had a whole day with Matt.

She also focused on the positive feedback she’d had from the deaf community about the fact that a deaf person was shown in a romantic light, since “disability isn’t always romanticized.”

And she mentioned that she was now “a much better version of myself, to share with whoever wants to share that with me.”

Pieper, another hot seat occupant, had a similar sentiment about her time on the show, saying she’d grown as a person. Serena P was invited onstage as well, where she confirmed that, no, she wasn’t having second thoughts about dumping Matt, even though “I care about him still so much.”

(As an aside, I don’t think Serena P is in the running for Bachelorette, but perhaps she’ll pop up on the newly announced “Bachelor in Paradise Canada” coming to Citytv. You never know.)

Finally, I hate to end on a negative note, but Matt’s time in the hot seat was aggravating for me.

Given the chance to comment on the toxicity among the women, all Matt could say was that he was “a little surprised.”

“I just tried to be empathetic to the women and what they were going through because I hadn’t gone through it, so I couldn’t say I (would) have acted differently in their position. There’s a million different factors you have to take into account, so I try not to hold them to an unrealistic standard.”

So not calling other women sluts and ho’s is an unrealistic standard? Good to know.

Matt basically apologized to MJ for sending her home on the two-on-one and then Serena C piped up, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, about how she hoped Matt wouldn’t think the women were bad people or mean ones.

“I’ll be the first one to say I am not a perfect person so I’m no one to sit up here and judge how any of you all decided to handle yourselves and deal with that emotion in real time.”

I guess you could say Matt was being a good Christian, but just know, Serena C, that I am judging you and, yeah, definitely mean.

The distasteful icing on the cake was that Victoria, who up until then had maintained her sangfroid, got all weepy about her dramatic exit — you know, the one in which she loudly called Ryan “the shadiest bitch” and said she, Victoria, was the only one with “a brain” in the room — and blamed it on her “fear of rejection.”

And Matt actually apologized to Victoria if she felt offended. And he also said he “dropped the ball” on their relationship. Their relationship? They had a relationship?

I’m just going to leave it there.

Next week, it’s fantasy suite dates and, yes, more drama, but we’re in the home stretch, just two more episodes to go.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo