Proposals for Rachel and Gabby look iffy on ‘The Bachelorette’

Did ABC just get lucky or did they stack the cast of “The Bachelorette” with men who have no idea how the show works?

As the first of two interminable parts of the season finale ended, Rachel had broken up with both Zach and Aven, and there appeared to be trouble ahead with Tino, at least if the promo of Rachel saying, “You’re lying straight to my face” is anything to go by.

And Gabby’s last man standing, Erich, had just told her he was looking forward to “dating” her after the show was over.

It’s not like this is an unreasonable position to take in the real world, but “The Bachelorette” is not the real world. The expectation is that it ends in an engagement, which is why Rachel dumped Aven’s ass and why Gabby was in tears after Erich said he wasn’t ready to propose.

There is a valid debate to be had about whether the show’s format — and the ridiculous expectations it places on its participants — needs to be blown up, a topic I’ll leave for another post.

But Gabby and Rachel weren’t the only ones feeling like they’d been led on. We were promised a finale “so emotional, so dramatic and so controversial that it will have all of America stunned” and we have yet to see anything that justifies that hyperbole. Just because Jesse Palmer kept using the words “shocking” and “emotional” during the frequent — too frequent — segments with the live studio audience doesn’t make it so.

So here’s what did happen during the parts of the episode that were actually about the show and not Jesse asking Rachel and Gabby all kinds of time-wasting, obvious questions.

We rejoined Rachel’s rose ceremony from last week, where Zach had just asked her to step outside.

Zach reiterated what he’d already told Jesse about something being “off” with Rachel in the fantasy suite. And yes, something was off because Rachel wasn’t in love with Zach, although she didn’t use those exact words.

I gather Rachel got a lot of Twitter backlash over the situation on Tuesday night and I don’t intend to pile on. But I am a tad confused: Rachel had already told Gabby she wasn’t “there” with Zach but took him to fantasy suites anyway because she was “trying to find that missing piece.”

But if you’ve got two other men hanging around that you already know you’re more into, how is one overnight conversation going to change anything with the third guy?

In the SUV that carried him away from the Vidanta resort in the Maya Riviera, Zach tearfully questioned if Rachel’s feelings for him had been an act all along.

He was more conciliatory when he and Rachel reunited onstage with Jesse, apologizing for making her feel like he was calling out her character. And she apologized to him, assuring him she really did care about him and it wasn’t an act.

Bottom line: we’re never going to know what was said between the two of them in that fantasy suite. Zach and Rachel hugged and made up, and wished each other well and we’ll have to settle for that.

Next up, we saw Rachel take Aven to meet her dad, Big Tony, her mom, Mary Anne, and her best friends Nate and Sam. And it seemed to be going great.

Rachel was glowing, in her mom’s words. Even Big Tony seemed mollified. And then Nate and Sam asked Aven the million-dollar question: Are you ready to get engaged? Not so much, it turned out.

I am not going to rehash the long painful conversations that Rachel and Aven had, first right after they left her family and then in his suite on their final date.

Once again, it was kind of confusing. Aven said he was ready to get engaged; he just wasn’t ready to do it in five days or whenever Proposal Day was. So then, you’re not really ready?

“I just want to make sure it’s 100 per cent right for both of us right now and at this moment in time,” Aven told Rachel.

Makes perfect sense in the real world. At that point, Aven wasn’t even “in” love with Rachel, just falling in love. The rub was that he apparently told Rachel in the fantasy suite that he was ready to get on one knee. Aven didn’t deny that, explaining that he “might have been caught up a little bit in some of it.”

What does that mean, Rachel asked and we wanted to know? Was it a case of telling the woman you’re about to have sex with what she wants to hear?

We still didn’t get a real answer when Jesse asked Aven during his live sitdown with Rachel what had changed. But Aven apologized and said he wished he’d told Rachel where he was at before sharing it with her friends. And what else can be said?

Yes, the breakup was emotional. Stunningly, controversially emotional? Nah, we’ve seen worse.

And besides, Rachel still had Tino, right? Right?

She didn’t exactly seem thrilled as she prepared to introduce Tino to her family, but she pasted a smile on her face and Tino, though obviously nervous as hell, was the epitome of the earnest suitor, assuring Big Tony, “I’m gonna make your daughter happy forever.”

If Tino got grilled by Sam and Nate we didn’t see it. But there are still several disconnects here. We went from Rachel’s restrained enthusiasm for Tino after the family visit to hearing her call him the man of her dreams in the promo for next week’s real finale — played over music that sounded like a leftover from the score for “The Exorcist” — to the two of them arguing, with Rachel calling him a liar and Tino exclaiming, “There’s no way this works out.”

How do we get from that to Rachel and Gabby in their proposal dresses on their proposal platforms waiting for Tino and Erich to, uh, propose?

Yes, about Erich, we saw him meet Gabby’s family, although the only thing worth noting about that encounter is that sweet, sweet Grandpa John, who called Erich “a keeper,” had another one of those heartfelt emotional encounters with Gabby that give us life as we slog our way to the end.

The trouble didn’t emerge until Erich’s final date with Gabby when, despite affirming that he loved Gabby and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, he also told her: “I want to date you in the real world. Having an engagement before that happens is not how things usually go.”

Well, no, of course not, but as I’ve already pointed out we’re not in the real world. You’d think that however many weeks of being stuck on a cruise ship with a bunch of other dudes who were all dating the same woman and having cameras recording his every interaction with Gabby would have impressed that on Erich.

Whatever Erich or Tino might think, Gabby and Rachel came into this mess with the lure of engagements at the end of it and, no matter how unrealistic that might seem to the men, that’s what they want and what the franchise demands.

There’s a reason some of the “Bachelorette” couples who have made it to matrimony were engaged for years after they left the show — six years for JoJo Fletcher and Jordan Rodgers. Sure they were technically engaged, but they took the time they needed to jell as couples before following up.

So fellas, suck it up, put a Neil Lane ring on it and work the rest of it out when the cameras are off.

We’ll find out next week whether that happens and whether the ending will indeed “leave all of Bachelor Nation speechless.” Colour me skeptical.

You can watch next Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Citytv and then, thankfully, this frustrating season will be over. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo