Tag: Bachelorette (Page 1 of 4)

Bloated ‘Bachelorette’ finale ends with just one engagement

September 21, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Gabby Windey, Erich Schwer, Tino Franco and Rachel Recchia on the “Bachelorette” finale.
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC via Getty Images

Tuesday’s “Bachelorette” finale was supposed to be the most dramatic ever, but it reminded me of a sitcom.

It’s not that I think there was anything funny about Rachel’s breakup with Tino, or the way he kept trying to make his cheating her fault, but tell me you didn’t watch his tortured attempts to explain away his transgression and think of the “We were on a break” plot line from “Friends.” (If you never watched the show, one character slept with someone else and tried to justify it to his girlfriend by saying repeatedly, “We were on a break.”)

As for Jesse Palmer’s claim that this would be the most shocking finale ever? Give me a break. The dirt on Tino kissing another woman and splitting with Rachel was on social media days ago, as was the intel about Erich’s texts to a woman he’d dated just before he came on “The Bachelorette.”

But, at this point, I don’t feel like I can take anything about this franchise seriously.

We endured more than five hours of a finale — two and a bit last week, three on Tuesday — that could easily have wrapped in the usual two hours, plus a one-hour “After the Final Rose,” all so ABC could sell as many ads as possible. And we were sold a bill of goods about how unprecedented it was going to be to make the boring filler easier to swallow. But I’m still choking on it, personally.

“Bachelorette” and “Bachelor” alum Kaitlyn Bristowe, Catherine Giudici, Sean Lowe, Becca Kufrin
and Michelle Young were in the audience to help pad out the live “Bachelorette” finale.

What did we get for our extra time on Tuesday? Endless, obvious questions from Jesse to Gabby and, especially, Rachel; commentary and advice from the three past Bachelorettes and one Bachelor (and wife) in the audience; the introduction of the next Bachelor (ho hum, it’s Zach Shallcross), followed by Zach “starting his journey” live onstage with awkward introductions to five (mostly blond) contestants; a ridiculous interactive stunt in which viewers voted on Twitter to award one of the women a rose; an extended “Bachelor in Paradise” promo.

I suppose we can take a couple of wins from the night: Gabby’s and Rachel’s friendship is as tight as ever, and Gabby got engaged to Erich and was still with him as of Tuesday night.

As for all that nonsense about how we’d never seen anything on a finale before like Tino’s and Rachel’s breakup? Well, we have, even though the circumstances were different, if you count Arie Luyendyk Jr. dumping Becca on camera post-proposal. And that was worse because Becca was blindsided for the purpose of making “good” TV.

On Tuesday, we were more than nine minutes into the “live” finale before we got a glimpse of the actual finale — you know, the stuff that happened in Mexico — picking up from last week with Gabby upset that Erich didn’t seem ready to propose. But then she went back to his suite, and they kissed and made up, and agreed that they wanted to work things out.

Next up was Rachel’s last evening in Mexico with Tino, when she spilled the beans that Tino had won, essentially — to which he had a curious non-reaction — but who even cares? Even if you hadn’t read last week’s tabloid gossip you could tell from the expressions on Rachel’s and Big Tony’s faces in the insets at the bottom of the screen that it wasn’t going to end well.

After yet more time-wasting filler we got to Proposal Day.

Tino proposed to Rachel, blah blah blah, although I guess you can find some grim humour in Rachel telling Tino how “selfless and gentle and supportive” he was. Vowing to love Rachel forever, Tino put a Neil Lane ring on it and they trotted off on a horse as the studio audience applauded.

Rachel and Tino in Mexico before it all went to hell.

So what happened then?

Rachel told Jesse that she and Tino had been having “difficulties” in their post-show relationship and then Tino “cheated” on her, by kissing another woman at a bar.

Look, stuff happens. Kissing someone else isn’t necessarily a hill to die on. What did seem shady was that Tino tried to keep Rachel from finding out and then, when he got caught, tried to justify it during their on-camera meet-up by reading a bunch of supposedly incriminating quotes from Rachel he kept in his journal.

Rachel said the quotes were all taken out of context, and they flat out disagreed about whether or not Rachel had said she wanted to give her engagement ring back. Tino claimed he thought they were “pretty much done.”

“Never once did we ever say we are broken up, we are not engaged,” Rachel protested.

The most telling moments came when Tino ducked into the backyard — he did that twice — and complained to a producer that Rachel was throwing him under the bus and making him look bad. These do not seem like the words of a man who’s going to love a woman until the end of time.

Still, Tino claimed he wanted to spend the rest of his life making it up to Rachel, but she took off the ring and that was that.

When Tino finally made it into the hot seat on the live part of the finale, he started out by saying how sorry he was and how he wanted to own his actions, but then he ruined it by alluding to something he and Rachel had discussed in private that she said was “deeply personal.” What it was, we don’t know, but apparently something you don’t want discussed in front of a live studio audience.

Maybe Tino genuinely loved Rachel or at least thought he did, but his way of trying to communicate that was abysmal. In fact, as a couple, their communication skills were dysfunctional AF based on what we saw on Tuesday night.

But the fact that Tino came off as more concerned about how he looked than Rachel’s feelings doesn’t justify the stunt the producers pulled on him.

Aven Jones swoops in after Rachel’s final confrontation with Tino.

After Rachel and Tino wrapped up their confrontation, Jesse announced that someone was demanding to talk to Rachel. Her runner-up, Aven, strolled onstage and invited Rachel to leave with him to “catch up.” “I would love nothing more” Rachel exclaimed before she and Aven walked backstage to chat, leaving Tino to just stand there confused as Jesse broke for commercial, making glib comments about how “awkward” and “weird” the situation was.

Yes, it was awkward as hell and obviously the only ones demanding that Aven speak to Rachel at that very moment were the producers, just so they could have a “gotcha” moment.

Finally it was time for Gabby’s ending. And despite all the drama about whether or not Erich was going to propose he did indeed get down on one knee, telling Gabby, “It’s you and me until the wheels fall off.”

So did they fall off? That was the question.

Gabby and fiancé Erich seemed to be in a good place on the finale.

As Gabby and Erich cuddled on the hot seat, Jesse brought up text messages that Erich sent to a woman he was dating before filming started, saying basically that he didn’t think the show was real, but he was going on it to figure out what else to do with his life.

Erich did a better job than Tino of expressing his regret, saying he hadn’t seen a long-term future with the other woman, had led her on and had taken the cowardly way out by using the show as an excuse to end the relationship.

Gabby said he’d told her about the text messages long before they came out on social media, that they had “hard” conversations about them, but it helped improve their communication. And even though “you were kind of an asshole to her,” Gabby was standing by her man.

And that’s good enough for me. They seemed genuinely happy on Tuesday night; I liked the playful, humorous way they related to each other; and Grandpa John is “tickled pink” about the match. So let’s just leave them the hell alone and let them get on with their lives.

And that’s it. I don’t have anything that I feel like writing about Zach, beyond that he was the boring, predictable choice for the next Bachelor. I was Team Ethan or Team Aven — well, I was before I knew Aven was going to try to rekindle things with Rachel. Although he might not really be trying to rekindle things with Rachel. That might just be producer nonsense. And we do know that she’s on “Bachelor in Paradise” because we saw her in the promo, so maybe she hooked up with someone there?

Speaking of “Bachelor in Paradise,” although I am eager to watch along with you all, I won’t be doing any recaps until mid-October. I am going on my first real vacation since 2019 and will be in a different time zone as of the middle of next week, so I won’t even be tweeting with y’all on show nights.

But if you’re planning to watch, Citytv will have the first episode next Tuesday at 8 p.m. And as always, you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

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

September 14, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Host Jesse Palmer, Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey on Part 1 of “The Bachelorette” finale.
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC

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.

Rachel and Zach Shallcross bury the hatchet with Jesse watching.

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

More pain in the fantasy suites as Bachelorette doom awaits

September 7, 2022 / Debra Yeo

“Bachelorette” stars Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia. The smiles might be deceiving.
PHOTO CREDIT: *Gizelle Hernandez*/ABC

Is this chaos what happens when you give people — well, OK, men — choices?

The men of “The Bachelorette” were given a choice of two women and now some of them are choosing to blow up the order of things.

Oh, trust me, I know how ridiculous it is to expect people to get engaged after mere weeks of acquaintance under the most unnatural of circumstances, but this is what we expect from “The Bachelorette.”

I’m not even going to broach the conditioning involved in being this invested in the heteronormative, gender role-reinforcing spectacle of a man getting down on one knee, but this is what we demand as Bachelorette fans: the catharsis of crying happy tears as people who didn’t even know each other eight weeks before pledge their undying love with a hunk of crystallized carbon. Sure, they’ll probably break up soon, but we’ll always have Mexico or wherever the hell they are.

Except host Jesse Palmer has raised the spectre of Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia being denied their hard-fought happily-ever-afters. So shocking is what we’re supposedly going to see next week that he had to take a few minutes to gird us at the end of the episode while standing in an empty studio.

“You will all bear witness to the crazy controversy that’s about to ensue,” he said. “So take some time, get yourselves ready and prepare yourselves for the most shocking finale of all time.”

Good lord, what is going on?!?

Well, let’s take stock. Monday night, we watched Gabby cut Johnny loose since he wasn’t ready to get engaged and Jason bailed on her Tuesday night. Not only did he not want to propose; he didn’t want Gabby in any capacity. But Erich was still there and, after he and Gabby professed their love for each other, it seemed like one happy ending had come early. But wait, was that Erich in the promo saying he didn’t want to get engaged either?

And what of Rachel’s men? As she went into the rose ceremony Tuesday it seemed that Zach was about to get the heave ho after a troubling fantasy suite date. But Tino was the clear front-runner anyway, except the promo showed Tino saying he wanted out, Rachel arguing with Aven and an unseen somebody being accused of going back on their word.

Maybe it won’t be so shocking after all, especially since it seemed clear from Night 1 that this season was never truly about giving Rachel and Gabby romantic redemption.

Buckle up, I guess.

Tuesday’s episode began with Gabby’s date with Jason. Despite all the fun and games of tennis and splashing around the pool together, we knew that Jason had a bomb to drop at dinner and drop it he did.

Not only was he not ready to get engaged, he wasn’t even sure he could see a future with Gabby outside the “bubble” of the show. But still, Jason dangled the possibility of a “serious relationship” once the cameras were banished from their lives. So Gabby threw caution to the wind and took him to the fantasy suite.

The unslept-in bed told the story. There was no fantasy in the suite, just conversation that went nowhere and Jason deciding there was no chance for him and Gabby. She at least nominally got to send him home and to tell him, “I truly just want you to realize I’ve been led on.”

And she was. It seems mighty suspect, given Jason’s discomfort with the process from the get-go and his ambivalence about getting serious with Gabby during his hometown, that he’d wait until almost the very end to share these doubts. But wait he did.

Jason claimed he finally got “clarity”; Gabby got her heart broken.

“What is it about me that’s so hard to love?” she sobbed.

Speaking of clarity, maybe we’ll get some next week about what went on between Rachel and Zach.

They went from a lovey-dovey day in some Mexican town — hats! mariachi! Day of the Dead figurines! cricket snacks! — to Zach showing up teary-eyed at Jesse’s door the morning after.

According to Zach, he and Rachel were like two strangers once the cameras were off and Rachel seemed to put on a front, stridently suggesting that Zach’s age — he was 25 to her 26, although he seems older to me — meant he wasn’t ready to commit.

It’s tempting to think Rachel was looking for an excuse to push Zach away without actually dumping him. She did tell Gabby, after all, that she wasn’t “there” with Zach despite claiming in her date voice-over that she was falling in love with him.

But we didn’t get Rachel’s side of the story so we don’t really know. Zach had just pulled her away from the rose ceremony to talk when Jesse cut in with his warning about Bachelorette Armageddon.

Meanwhile, Gabby had cancelled her own rose ceremony and gone to Erich’s suite, where he was wondering if he’d blown his chance with her after his freakout about her maybe sleeping with other men.

Naw.

“You have taught me it’s OK to feel safe and wanted and loved in maybe a way that I haven’t and you’re the only one left,” Gabby told Erich. “I do know that I love you.”

Awwwww. The warm, sappy feelings engendered were almost as good as a proposal. Gabby declared Erich “the love of my life,” a love that will apparently be put to the test next week.

You won’t be able to watch it Tuesday on Citytv, but you can tune into ABC at 8 p.m. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

The fantasy becomes a nightmare for Gabby on The Bachelorette

September 6, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey toast to the fantasy suite dates to come.
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos screen grabs

After watching Monday’s fantasy suites episode of “The Bachelorette” — excuse me, the first of two fantasy suites episodes — it’s hard to see how we’ll end up with a “shocking ending nobody is gonna see coming,” as per host Jesse Palmer.

Let’s start with Rachel.

She told Gabby within the first minutes of the episode that she wasn’t “there” with Zach and presumably will share that information with him on tomorrow night’s date. She told Aven she was falling in love with him but was already exchanging “I love you’s” with Tino — his parents’ hostility notwithstanding — so it would take one hell of a twist for her not to end up engaged to Tino.

(Mind you, the conspiracy theorist in me can imagine the producers flying Papa Joe to Mexico to slow Tino’s roll.)

As for Gabby, well, Johnny was clearly there for a good time, not a long time, and left sans fantasy suite. And Jason, who hadn’t had his date yet, told Jesse what he already told his mother during hometowns, that he wasn’t ready to get engaged. That would seem to leave Erich as the last man standing — assuming he gets over his jealousy about Gabby’s other overnight dates. And if Jason tells Gabby sooner rather than later that he’s “not quite” falling for her, there won’t be any other overnights for Erich to obsess over.

But I know, I know: this is “The Bachelorette” we’re talking about, and the editing can make black look white and up seem down, so I suppose anything’s possible.

In the meantime, as we slog our way to the finish, let’s recap.

First off, Gabby and Rachel reunited in the Riviera Maya for some Champagne and girl talk. The main point of this, besides reminding everyone which men were still hanging around, was to allow them to bring up the week on Clayton Echard’s season when “everything went haywire,” in Rachel’s words.

“I never want to make anyone else feel the way that we did,” Gabby said.

“We get to rewrite what this week means and make it into something positive,” Rachel said.

But does anyone ever get to rewrite fantasy suite week? I don’t see how, unless they refuse to play the stupid “I’m falling for three men/women at the same time” game.

Gabby had the first date, with Erich.

Erich Schwer helps Gabby psych up to jump off a “lovers’ leap.” The sign says: “Love gives you wings.”

I can only assume Erich really is (or was) into Gabby since he left his dying father behind to be with her in Mexico.

They certainly seemed very close as they cavorted and smooched at a “lovers’ leap,” so much so that Gabby told Erich, “I wish I could crawl inside you” and what the hell does that even mean?

He told her later over an uneaten charcuterie board that he loved her and she repeated what she said at hometowns, that she was falling in love with him. Then they headed off to the fantasy suite — and can we please stop pretending the fantasy suite cards are a surprise? — to “really feel each other’s love,” in Gabby’s words.

The next morning came one of the longest goodbyes in fantasy suite memory as Erich lingered, conflicted about the idea of Gabby spending the night with other men. Gabby seemed conflicted too, about whether she wanted to be engaged to Erich, although she did say in her voice-over she thought she was in love with him.

Next up was Rachel’s date with Aven and it was a perfectly generic overnight date.

There was a yacht with a hot tub; there was Champagne and smooching; there was talk about how much Rachel and Aven had grown on their journey. And I’m sorry, I like Aven, but it all felt kind of rote to me.

Rachel and Gabby had made much ado about how they didn’t want to carelessly throw around the word “love” like Clayton had. But Rachel told Aven that, knowing how much the word meant to him, she was comfortable telling him she was falling in love with him too.

It was the only overnight on Monday’s episode in which we actually saw the couple in bed together the next morning; clothed, but still.

“It’s definitely really important to explore your physical connection and Aven is the full package — the full package,” Rachel said with a twinkle in her eye, laughing.

Can’t wait for Tino’s parents to watch that.

And speaking of Tino, his date was next up. We already knew how hard he was jonesing to see Rachel since we’d been subjected to footage of sad Tino saying how gut-wrenching it was to have to wait around, knowing his girl might be sleeping with other men.

He even got a special visit from Jesse so he could moan about it some more and also so Jesse could bring up the hometown from hell with Tino’s parents. Since there was so little suspense in Monday’s episode, we had to be led to believe that Tino’s hometown was so scarring for Rachel that she might not be able to get past it.

Rachel on her date with her potential Mr. Forever, Tino Franco.

And listen, it’s not that I’m saying that hometown wasn’t awful. Tino’s folks totally disrespected Rachel, especially his father. But I also expected exactly what happened to happen: which was that after Tino told her that he loved her (once again circumventing conversation about his parents’ rudeness) and she said it back — so much for not throwing the word around — Rachel bought into his assurance that his family would come to love her too.

I’m not personally convinced they will, but perhaps that’s a topic for “After the Final Rose.”

In the meantime, we didn’t even get to see Rachel’s and Tino’s morning after because we had to rush onto a boat ride with Johnny and Gabby.

Gabby clearly thought Johnny was hot, fine, but I was somewhat mystified by her assertion she could see a life with Johnny after the show. I don’t think anyone else could, including Johnny.

Whereas other men were talking about being or falling in love, Johnny said, “Gabby is the dopest girl I think I’ve ever hung with.” That says it all right there.

Johnny DePhillipo gives it to Gabby straight: no engagement for him, not on this show anyway.

When Gabby told Johnny straight up she was ready to get engaged, Johnny replied that was “a hard thing to think about,” even though he claimed he could see himself falling in love with her. But with proposal day just a week or two off, Johnny sensibly told the truth about not being ready and Gabby just as sensibly walked away without taking him to the fantasy suite.

(There are spoilers out there, not that I was looking for them, about Johnny coupling up with someone else on “Bachelor in Paradise.” Apparently ABC even ran a “Paradise” promo with Johnny in it before we’d watched him break up with Gabby. Nice timing that.)

Gabby consoled herself with the thought that Erich and Jason were both ready for an engagement and . . . uh oh.

There was Jesse, like a harbinger of doom, paying a call on Jason.

“Do you feel like you’re falling in love with Gabby?” Jesse asked.

“I would say I’m not quite there just yet. I would say I have strong feelings toward Gabby,” Jason replied.

Sorry, son, but you don’t pass go on this show with mere strong feelings.

Jason Alabaster gives Jesse Palmer the goods about his inability to commit to Gabby.

It probably goes without saying but no, Jason could not see himself at the point of engagement in just two weeks.

But hey, Gabby still had Erich and . . . uh oh.

As Gabby was back in her suite, still brooding about Johnny, there was a knock and a note at her door: “I need to see you, I’ll be waiting on the bridge,” with no signature.

But what was initially an affectionate reunion with Erich ended with Gabby in tears, feeling ambushed.

Referring to the night they had just spent together, Erich said, “I’m now sitting here picturing the girl that I’m in love with doing that with somebody else. That kind of crushes me . . . I’m having a really hard time.”

“We talked about this off camera,” Gabby said tearfully. “Like, I feel like we were able to have an honest conversation about it in fantasy suites. So you brought me here to tell me it again.”

Erich insisted he hadn’t, but it went downhill from there. The episode ended with Gabby walking away from Erich, questioning whether Erich was her guy after all, and the “To be continued” chyron on the screen.

So where will it all end up? Who knows? Since we’ve seen promo footage of both Rachel and Gabby on proposal day, somebody must stick around to put a ring on it . . . or not.

It appears that Rachel will “blindside” Zach on tomorrow’s episode with her lack of fully developed feelings for him; ditto Jason with Gabby and that Gabby might skip the rose ceremony. Beyond that, I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t read spoilers.

You can watch Fantasy Suites Part 2 Tuesday at 8 p.m. on ABC. I don’t know when Citytv will air it. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

Men tell nada on Bachelorette but here’s a free cruise

August 30, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Host Jesse Palmer prepares for a night of nonsense on “The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All.”
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos except screen grab Craig Sjodin/ABC

Monday’s “The Bachelorette: Men Tell All” not only jumped the shark — it climbed on its back and did laps in a pool of man tears and pasta sauce.

What the hell was that?

It’s not that I was expecting fireworks. The men got along too well for that, plus the two contestants who displayed the most misogynistic behaviour — Chris Austin and Hayden Markowitz — were absent.

But I wasn’t expecting the usual inanities to be padded with so much filler, including a promo for Virgin Voyages, complete with free champagne and free cruises for everyone in the audience; an extended promo for “Bachelor in Paradise” with four cast members invited to the hot seat; an even more extended promo for the gay rom-com “Bros” with stars Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane onstage, culminating in Meatball dumping a giant jar of pasta sauce all over himself — because it wasn’t gross enough when he did it earlier in the season.

Meanwhile, poor Aven’s hometown date — “unfinished business,” as host Jesse Palmer called it — got 13 or 14 minutes at the top of the episode before the show moved on to, well, not much of anything.

Aven and Rachel get a love spell in the Crow Haven Corner witch shop.

About Aven’s date with Rachel in Salem, Massachusetts: naturally there had to be something witchcraft-related, so we had a segment involving a “love witch” named Lorelei (with the best accent ever) casting a love spell for Aven and Rachel that ended with the table top and candles sliding to the floor. A bad omen? Not for the meet-the-parents part of the date.

Rachel, still smarting from last week‘s smackdown from Tino’s parents, was nervous that Aven’s folks wouldn’t like her since they hadn’t been keen on his previous two girlfriends. But, unlike Joe and Sandi, A.J. and Dawn managed to ask Rachel tough questions without belittling her and her emotions.

Rachel reassured skeptical A.J. that she and Aven had talked about what real life would look like beyond the show, including raising kids and accommodating each other’s jobs. And when A.J. asked if she was “earnestly, sincerely, wholeheartedly ready to commit to love with Aven,” she answered honestly that she was not, although she did see a future with him.

Both A.J. and Dawn were sold. “Don’t stop fighting for her, man, because she’s a good catch,” A.J. told Aven.

Aven took the advice, telling Rachel he was falling in love with her, which seemed to delight her. She said in her voice-over that she felt like she was falling in love with Aven, too. “This could be my happy ending.”

We know that Aven at least made it to the fantasy suites, since Jesse told us that Rachel and Gabby each kept their remaining three men (Aven, Tino and Zach for Rachel; Erich, Jason and Johnny for Gabby) at the rose ceremony. No surprise there since there are always three fantasy suite dates, hence no need to send anyone home. But surely producers could have taken a couple of minutes away from shilling for Virgin or “Bros” to show us the rose ceremony.

What can I say about what happened after that?

Well, we had newly platinum blond Roby (insert your “Twilight”/”Harry Potter”/”House of the Dragon” reference here) acting like he’d been on the show for weeks instead of hours, chastising Meatball for rejecting Rachel’s rose then deciding he liked her after all. “If you’re more into Rachel, then say that, be that, do that, man up. Have some balls, Meatball!” (Do you think he rehearsed that?)

When Ethan tried to interject and Roby told him to shut the fuck up, Ethan put him in his place: ” You were there at the mansion for four hours for a reason, have some respect for the rest of us who had genuine feelings,” i.e. don’t be a baby back bitch!

Logan Palmer in the luke warm seat on “Men Tell All.”

With neither Chris nor Hayden there to fall on their swords — “cowardly,” Mario said of Hayden’s absence — we had to settle for the other men rehashing what they said and did. But Logan was there, trying to look contrite so we won’t all hate him when we see him on “Paradise.”

Blah, blah, blah, Logan was following his heart. He didn’t intentionally mislead Rachel. He wasn’t sorry he pursued Gabby; he just wished he’d done it in “a more graceful way.”

Not a word was spoken about how he became the only one of the men to get COVID-19 on the cruise ship (allegedly) and why he disappeared without an exit interview.

And then we had the Virgin Voyages plug and the cruise giveaway that Jesse said was “going to change your lives forever.” It’s a vacation, Jesse. At least Oprah gave her audience cars, which could in theory be life-changing.

Jesse gave Nate Mitchell a chance to address social media allegations of being a playa.

Next up, Nate got the “new Bachelor” edit.

Look, I really enjoyed Nate on the show. I was sorry he got sent home. And he was a model of empathetic, emotionally intelligent manhood in his time in the hot seat with Jesse. But is that enough to overcome the taint of a cheating accusation on social media? I’m not convinced.

“Real men hold other men accountable,” Nate said of Chris earlier in the show. Jesse duly asked Nate to address the social media allegations that a) he kept his daughter a secret from a woman he had an 18-month relationship with and b) he dated two women at once.

Nate blamed the trauma of his divorce for him wanting to protect his daughter from “the instability of my dating life” and said he was “deeply sorry for the way I acted” in the case of the two women, adding, “I pray that you forgive the man that I was because I’m not that same person.”

I would have loved a deeper dive into that apology. How unstable was his dating life? What made him change? Did he get therapy? But nah, got to make sure we have enough time for games with the cast of “Bros.”

Next we had the “Bachelor in Paradise” promo, with cast members Serene (Clayton’s season), Genevieve (ditto), Victoria (Peter’s season) and Andrew (Katie’s season) there to assure that it really will be “the most dramatic season” ever. I’m still pissed that Shanae will be there but OK, fine, I’ll be watching.

Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia, still as close-knit as ever.

Finally, Rachel and Gabby made their appearance. Their friendship continues to be the best thing about this season.

Sure, Gabby put Mario in his place when he suggested she did him wrong; Jordan V absolved Rachel of any guilt over sending him home on their first date; Gabby accepted an apology from a choked up Jacob for telling her he would have gone home if she was the only woman there; Rachel got a tepid non-apology from Logan and was assured of the undying admiration of hometown castoff Tyler, who told her she did everything “perfectly”; and Gabby commended Nate for being “a leader for all the men and for how well you treat women.” (Another sign that Nate is likely going to be the next Bachelor.)

But Gabby’s and Rachel’s obvious affection and respect for each other was the real payoff. “You need to know just how proud I am of the two of you,” Jesse told them, which was the most sensible thing he said all night.

Finally, Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane took the stage to promote their movie “Bros.” Billy, of course, is the dude who told Colton Underwood during his season he might be the “first gay Bachelor” a couple of years before Colton came out.

Jesse Palmer demonstrates the correct reaction to Meatball getting doused in pasta sauce . . . again.

Billy’s other moment of Bachelor franchise infamy involved presenting a special gift to Meatball of a giant jar of pasta sauce to pour over himself and then getting tackled by a slimy Meatball.

And if this franchise thinks stupid stunts like that are what the show’s fans want, shark-jumping is going to be a regular occurrence.

We continue to plod toward what Jesse claims is going to be a “shocking ending nobody is gonna see coming.” But first, fantasy suites and more tears.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

The Bachelorette hometown dates go from good to sad to bad

August 23, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Tino Franco’s mother, waiting to shoot down everything Rachel Recchia says on “The Bachelorette.” PHOTO CREDIT: All photos screen grabs

What is real on a reality dating show like “The Bachelorette”?

Was Erich Schwer bringing Gabby Windey home to meet his dying father real?

Was Rachel Recchia crying her eyes out because she sent Tyler Norris home without meeting his family real?

Was Rachel’s discomfort as she got grilled with hostile questions by Tino Franco’s parents real?

All of those moments felt pretty real but, according to Tino’s mom, Sandi, what happens on “The Bachelorette” isn’t real.

Look, I get it: having your son go on a TV show only to come home after six weeks to tell you he’s met the woman he’s going to propose to, it must feel weird and scary.

But asking rude questions, stating your opinions as facts when you don’t really know what the f**k you’re talking about, and being so aggressive you almost make that woman cry . . . well, welcome to the Hometown Hell Hall of Fame, Tino’s parents.

In what’s been a rough season, Monday’s hometowns episode was rough and I don’t just mean around the edges.

It started out encouragingly with lovely dates with Jason (Gabby) and Zach (Rachel), started to slide a little with Johnny (Gabby), who seemed not at all ready to commit, and then just got sad with Tyler and Erich. Then we had the shit show that was Tino’s hometown. We didn’t even get to Aven’s. His gets sandwiched in with “Men Tell All” next week.

But we’re in the home stretch. Just a few more weeks and we’ll know whether the experiment of having two Bachelorettes was a complete failure or whether we’ll even have two Bachelorettes by the end of the season, given the promo. But let’s rewind.

Gabby meets Jason Alabaster’s father on their hometown date.

After a completely unnecessary bit of B-roll of Rachel and Gabby packing on the Good Ship Bachelorette and then telling host Jesse Palmer about their expectations — we’ve got seven dates to get through people, we don’t need this crap! — Gabby got the ball rolling with Jason in New Orleans.

We’ll skip the street musicians on Bourbon Street and throwing beads off a balcony — this isn’t a travelogue — and go straight to Gabby and Jason meeting his dad Michael in a park. He seemed like a warm, decent human being who tearfully described Jason as “a good kid, a good man” and welcomed Gabby with open arms, flowers and beignets. By the time Michael told Jason, “If it’s the real deal I want to be the best man at your wedding,” those beignets were getting a little soggy.

The love-a-palooza and tears-a-palooza continued at Jason’s mom’s house (she and his dad are separated) where sister Kelsey and Gabby got on like a house on fire, and mom Karen said Gabby and Jason were “really, really cute” together.

But Jason confessed to Karen that he wasn’t ready to get engaged and she tearfully warned him not to lose a good thing because “you’re so distracted by everything around you,” i.e. the cameras, the other men, etc.

After the date, Gabby said she was falling in love with Jason.

How long did Rachel and Zach Smallcross have to kiss until that plane crossed the sky?

Next stop: Anaheim, California, where Zach had a surprise for Rachel: a couch set up on a rooftop where they could watch planes take off and land from the airport — a callback to their first date when they talked about going plane-spotting with their dads as kids. It was perfect.

Zach also gets points for being the only hometown with a famous family member, his uncle, actor Patrick Warburton of “Seinfeld,” “NewsRadio,” “The Tick,” “Rules of Engagement,” “Family Guy” and lots more.

We’ll forgive Zach’s dad, Chapman, for saying that “You go to the most romantic places on Earth and you’ll fall in love with a monkey.” By the end of the visit, he and Zach’s mom, Megan, were ready to welcome Rachel into the family.

Zach told Rachel he was in love with her and she said, in voice-over, that she was falling in love with Zach. Forget Tino, honey: snap up Zach!

Johnny DePhillipo with Gabby. Did we mention he’s “super hot”?

Gabby’s next hometown was Palm Beach, Florida, with Johnny, who she said was “super hot” and . . . um . . . well, a good kisser, I guess.

His dad John and mom Elizabeth were all in on Gabby being with Johnny, if that’s what Johnny wanted — but about that. Johnny told his mom he could see himself falling for Gabby, but he wasn’t ready to get engaged, which might come as news to Gabby. As she and Johnny went for a cruise and a smooch, we heard Gabby saying, “It feels so good and so easy being with someone who I know is ready for the next step.” Uh oh.

Rachel shares some hard truths with Tyler on the Jersey Shore.

When you put the Jersey Shore on reality TV, can you expect anything less than turmoil?

Rachel’s date with Tyler in Wildwood, New Jersey, started out with fun carnival games and rides and fried food and smooches on the boardwalk. But by the time Tyler started introducing Rachel to all his friends inside the Hot Spot Restaurant, the wheels were coming off. Next thing you know she was having a breakdown in the time-honoured refuge of the women’s washroom.

Then came the painful breakup. Rachel couldn’t get a word in edgewise because Tyler kept babbling about how great everything was. She started telling Tyler he was “the most incredible person” — and everyone who’s ever watched the show knows the next words will be a variation on “but you’re not my person.” However, Tyler, oblivious, told Rachel he was in love with her and she was “the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” interjected Rachel.

Shaking and crying, Rachel finally managed to tell Tyler that she couldn’t meet his family because she didn’t know if she could “get there” with him.

Tyler, bless him, comforted Rachel, telling her that he still believed that “love that’s forever is real” and she was going to get it.

Then Tyler had to break the news to his excited family that Rachel wasn’t coming. Harsh.

Look, I know this heartbreak is going to put Tyler in the running for next Bachelor. I’d still like to see it go to Ethan, but maybe Tyler can find a nice girl in Paradise.

Let’s be honest: taking a woman home to your family who you’ve known for mere weeks and been sharing with other men does seem absurd. But the fact that Erich took Gabby to meet his sick father, Allan, who died of cancer in July, belies Tino’s mom’s insistence that “The Bachelorette” isn’t real. Why would Erich put his dad and Gabby through that if he didn’t have real feelings for her?

It was a sombre visit to Bedminster, N.J. Allan was very frail and had obviously been through hell with the disease. Mom Donna was as welcome as you can be when your husband of 35 years is dying in front of you.

“We marry for life,” she told Erich. And to Gabby: “We don’t give up on each other, ever.”

Erich vaulted to the front of Gabby’s pack after the emotional day, with them telling each other later that they were falling in love with each other. But a clip of Erich telling Gabby he can’t handle the woman he’s in love with having sex with other guys suggests a rocky road ahead.

Don’t let the smiles on Sandi, Joe and Mateo fool you; Rachel got a rough ride from the Franco family.

Finally, it was time for the main event in Santa Clarita, Calif., as “The Bachelorette” saved the worst for last.

Even before Rachel and Tino walked into the house, his parents were dismissive of the possibility of them having a real relationship.

When Tino said he was going to propose in two weeks, his dad Joe scoffed, “What are you talking about after two months? We’re gonna have to have a talk.”

Rachel told his mom how much she admired Tino’s positive, giving outlook on life, to which Sandi replied, “If you met him outside of this, this isn’t real.”

“Well, it is,” replied Rachel, but Sandi wasn’t having it, calling the experience an “insulated bubble.”

And sure, it is that, but Sandi wasn’t there for any of it, so what the hell would she know? Unless there’s criminality or abuse involved, you should butt the hell out of your adult children’s love lives.

It went downhill from there. Joe, insultingly, referred to Rachel’s “second go-round” — as if the fact she got dumped by Clayton Echard should preclude her from trying to find love with someone else — and suggested she was out to get engaged at all costs.

“I wouldn’t put him in this position just so I could get married, I’m not that type of person,” Rachel said, but she might as well have been talking to the wall.

“I feel like they hated me,” Rachel fretted to a producer after the talk. Nonetheless, Rachel graciously rose above the rudeness of Tino’s parents and thanked them for asking her hard-hitting questions.

Outside the house, Tino told her his family adored her. And when Rachel told him she did not feel adored, he changed the subject and told her he was falling in love with her.

Giant red flag. Run, Rachel, run! Instead, alas, she told Tino she was falling in love with him too.

So here’s where things stand, with one hometown date still to come. Rachel’s falling for Zach and Tino, both of whom appear ready to get engaged although, as Rachel pointed out, “When you marry someone you marry their family.” I would not want to marry Tino’s family.

Gabby’s falling for Jason and Erich, and can see herself falling in love with Johnny, although only Erich seems proposal-ready and fantasy suites might screw that up.

The promo showed both Gabby and Rachel in tears — what else is new? — and Jesse telling Rachel, “Gabby will not be joining you. You’re gonna be the only Bachelorette here.” We’ll have to wait two weeks to find out what that’s about.

In the meantime, you can watch “Men Tell All” Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

Nate gets dumped, Tino’s a big cheese on ‘The Bachelorette’

August 16, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Ethan and Tyler balance wheels of cheese during a group date with Rachel in Amsterdam.
PHOTO CREDIT All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC

That stink you’re detecting isn’t the smell of cheese from Rachel’s group date; it’s the stench of this season of “The Bachelorette” being treated like a zero sum game whereby Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey aren’t allowed to be happy at the same time.

Last week, we got sad Rachel after Logan jumped ship to Gabby’s team. This week, we got sad Gabby after a) she sent Nate home because she wasn’t ready to be a stepmom and b) she had to cancel her group date after-party because Logan . . . wait for it . . . got COVID-19.

Yep, that “there has been a situation with Logan” promo from last week? Manipulative nonsense. And I have so many questions. How did Logan get COVID? How come no one else got it considering we saw him unmasked and less than six feet away from the rest of Gabby’s men in last week’s episode and laying smooches on Gabby? And why did he look so healthy during the day portion of the group date, which involved absolutely ridiculous S&M-tinged shenanigans?

And you’re seriously telling me that after Logan was essentially made the star of last week’s episode he’s just gone with not even so much as an exit interview? Weird.

I missed about the first 10 minutes of this episode due to some technical difficulties with the TV in my B&B (I’m writing this from Stratford, Ontario), but I was able to catch Gabby’s heartrending breakup with Nate.

Obviously this isn’t Nate and Gabby in Amsterdam, but ABC didn’t
provide any photos of them this week and I couldn’t do screen grabs.

And yes, I said heartrending. I read the stuff all over Twitter last week about Nate supposedly dating two women at once and keeping his daughter a secret from one of them, but even if it’s true it doesn’t negate the sadness of his breakup with Gabby.

It seemed obvious from the moment Gabby said she hadn’t figured out yet if she wanted to be a mother that Nate was on the way out. We didn’t need a totally staged conversation between Logan and Johnny back on the Good Ship Bachelorette to hammer the point home.

It’s not exactly rocket science that someone who’s still trying to get over her dysfunctional relationship with her own mother wouldn’t be jonesing to be a parent.

“It’s so cliche, but I’m, like, terrified of not just being a mom but being, like, bad at it,” Gabby told Nate through tears as they sat on a bench in the heart of Amsterdam.

There were tears on both sides and long hugs and kisses goodbye and Nate, despite his frontrunner status, was gone.

Gabby seemed so very sad to lose Nate and Rachel, conversely, seemed so very happy.

She and Zach had a one-on-one, a bucket list date apparently that began with them taking crappy Polaroid photos of each other in a massive field of tulips (sorry, no photos; ABC saw fit to provide photos of Gabby’s S&M date but not Rachel’s picturesque tulip date).

Then she and Zach went bike riding and among the things you can find in the Dutch countryside are cheese, wooden shoes, lemonade and, um, hot tubs.

Also windmills but, unlike Pilot Pete and Hannah Brown, Zach and Rachel didn’t get busy inside one, they just did some smooching in front of it.

There was a lot of smooching on this date.

Zach had some revelations to make at dinner in a gorgeous museum full of old Dutch masters (might have been the Rijksmuseum, but I’m not 100 per cent sure). First, he said he used to be 85 pounds overweight and didn’t love himself so he went to therapy. And Rachel was as thrilled about that as Gabby was upon hearing about Jason’s therapy.

Second, now that Zach felt like a man who deserved love, he knew he was falling in love with Rachel.

Zach’s hometown date rose was never in any doubt, but that revelation sealed the deal.

Cut back to the cruise ship: Gabby was still sad. She tearfully told her remaining men — Johnny, Jason, Erich, Logan and Spencer — about sending Nate home and they all gave her hugs, which was nice of them.

Gabby was still sad about Nate the next morning, but she said her other connections were deepening and she had “a so amazing and so fun” group date planned.

But she didn’t plan it obviously. Nobody but a “Bachelorette” producer would think it would be entertaining — for either the participants or the viewers — to have a leather-clad dominatrix ask the men intrusive sex questions and threaten to whip them if they didn’t answer.

I am not a prude, but it’s nobody’s business but the individual men’s and Gabby’s whether they like giving oral sex (I’m assuming that was the bleeped out bit), how often they masturbate (again, bleeped out, but my assumption) and how many people they’ve had sex with.

Gabby uses a whip on her remaining five men on another stupid group date.

The guys were also forced to strip off their shirts (Johnny at one point stripped to his underwear) so they could be tickled with feathers, whipped, and have whipped cream and even flames applied to their chests.

As Logan said, “I was hoping today would be the deep dive into who we are and what we represent. I’m blindfolded, laying on a shag carpet, waiting for her to rub whipped cream on my nipples.”

And how would any of that help Gabby decide whose hometowns she wanted to visit? It wouldn’t obviously. (Not unless she wanted to analyze why Johnny’s safe word was “pumpkin” and Logan’s was “asbestos.”)

And the fact that Gabby was able to choose three men for hometowns (instead of the usual four) despite not getting to talk to any of them at the cancelled after-party shows the group date was kind of superfluous anyway.

The same applied to Rachel’s group date. Did anybody really think that Ethan was going to get a hometown and that either Tino, Tyler or Aven would not? Of course not, but they went through the motions nonetheless with a trip to a town called “the cheese capital of the world” (no, I did not catch the name).

Eventually, the four guys had to take off their shirts — are you noticing a theme here? — and hold yokes across their shoulders laden with wheels of cheese. They eventually got up to four wheels on each side, which looked really heavy.

Rachel smooches Tino in the “cheese capital of the world.”

Tino won, barely beating out Ethan. Poor Ethan, who had been nibbling cheese despite being lactose intolerant, collapsed on the grass from exhaustion. Tyler had cuts on his hands and wrists, but what hurt the most was having to watch Rachel kiss the victorious Tino.

And let’s be honest, Tino acted like kind of an entitled dick at the after-party. He figured the date rose had his name on it, but Rachel gave it to Tyler, who told her he was falling very, very hard for her.

Tino walked off to complain to a producer that it was “a fucking joke” and was making him second guess everything, which prompted one of the other dudes to call him a “real baby back bitch.”

But at least Tino apologized to Ethan the next day.

Of course, all this talk of Tino feeling blindsided and not knowing if Rachel felt the same as him was bullshit to try to build up suspense for an utterly unsuspenseful rose ceremony. Which is also why Tino’s name was the last to be called for a rose, after Aven’s. But sorry producers, no one seriously thought Rachel was going to dump Tino for Ethan. No offence Ethan.

Likewise, it was obvious that Gabby was giving roses to Erich, Jason and Johnny, and sending Spencer home.

Does that mean Logan would have got a hometown if he had still been around? Guess we’ll never know.

So next week, hometowns and if you believe the promos it looks like rough waters ahead for Rachel and Tino, but you can’t believe everything you see.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

Life on ‘The Bachelorette’ is the (arm)pits for Rachel

August 2, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Rachel Recchia with her men, blissfully unaware that Logan Palmer, right, is about to attempt to defect. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos except screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC

I have somewhat misjudged the “Bachelorette” producers. I said at the start of the season that they were going to shovel shit at both Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey, our dual Bachelorettes, to make them feel rejected. Turns out the storyline is really about making Rachel seem like the odd woman out.

That was certainly the plot in Week 4. After last week‘s embarrassment of having three men reject her roses, things seemed to be off to a good start for Rachel. She had a great one-on-one date with Tino in Paris. But then, when she and her nine dudes crashed Gabby’s group date, Rachel’s men were more interested in watching the boxing than in her, which sent her into yet another tailspin.

By the end of the episode, Rachel had to dump a guy who preferred the company of his dog to her. And the roller-coaster is about to take another plunge with Logan jonesing to switch back to Team Gabby.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the plan all along was to get Rachel to quit.

OK, maybe we can’t blame all of this on the producers. But I have no doubt that the cocktail party getting cancelled — again — was a device to prevent Logan from fessing up to Rachel about his feelings for Gabby so the drama could be dragged out for another week.

Here’s all you really need to know: Gabby’s group date involved her men literally fighting to spend time with her; Rachel got to smell her dates’ armpits. Nuff said.

So let’s back it up to the beginning of the episode.

Before Team Rachel and Team Gabby flew from L.A. to France, “leisure executive” Hayden had a revealing conversation with Meatball and some of the other men. He was complaining about being called out by Rachel and Gabby for telling Gabby she was “rough around the edges.”

Hayden’s excuse was that Gabby had used those words about herself and then she and Rachel threw it back in his face. “Well bitch, maybe you shouldn’t use that fucking word to describe yourself then,” he sniped.

Hayden also appeared to use the word bitch — it was bleeped out — about Rachel or Gabby or both, who he said didn’t “hold a candle” to his ex. “I don’t see how any guy in here could be ‘I’m gonna fucking marry these girls.'”

Hold that thought and let’s switch to some positive stuff.

Rachel and Gabby were in Paris, where they met up with Tino and Jason and went off on separate dates. They did some Paris 101 kinds of things: ate crepes (and pretended to make crepes while kissing, in Rachel’s and Tino’s case); tried on berets (Jason and Gabby, who said she looked like “a bald baby” in hers); tasted Champagne; kissed in the rain.

Yes, Rachel and Tino Franco are having dinner in an actual church.

But, whatever, they had fun and then they all met up at a cafe, and Gabby and Rachel pretended to go the washroom so they could compare notes about their dates, which was cute.

Rachel and Tino had dinner in the Cathedrale Americaine de Paris, which is Anglican, so maybe they’re less uptight about people eating and smooching in their churches than Catholics? I don’t know.

The theme of the dinner chat was whether Tino would object to Rachel’s job as a pilot and flight instructor and . . . we’re seriously still having these sorts of conversations?

And the answer was, as long as Rachel was willing to have kids at some point (she was), Tino was totally cool with their spawn having two working parents. He explained that his folks both worked full-time and “there’s always a way to make it work.”

Test passed, rose given, smooches bestowed.

Jason Alabaster and Gabby compare therapy notes.

Gabby’s test for Jason was whether he could open up to her and it didn’t take long, once they settled in for their non-meal, for him to spill about how he was a sensitive dude who took everything personally, but therapy had helped him “have my power again.”

(Although obviously the power needs recharging since when he got to the Bachelor mansion he couldn’t eat or sleep for three days and had a “breakdown.”)

Jason seems a tad, well — there’s no polite way to put this — boring.

But Gabby, who knows from therapy thanks to her estranged mother, was thrilled about his confession. They talked about “inner child work” for crying out loud!

So yes, Jason got a rose and smooches with a view of the Eiffel Tower.

Host Jesse Palmer shows the men their new temporary home in Le Havre, France.

Next up, Gabby’s group date and I should pause to mention that while Jason and Tino wandered around Paris the other men checked into a freakin’ cruise ship in Le Havre, two hours away. Yes, apparently ABC paid for the Virgin Voyages Valiant Lady, which holds 2,770 people, to ferry two women and a dwindling number of men around Europe. One hopes there were other passengers on the 11 decks that Team Gabby and Team Rachel weren’t using.

So the group date was a French boxing competition, which is a type of kickboxing, although the guys just whaled on each other like in a regular boxing match from what I could see.

But the main event for plot purposes was on the sidelines, where Rachel was sitting with Gabby. Her men were on the opposite side of the ring watching the bouts and Rachel was upset that none of them would make eye contact with her, let alone walk over and talk to her.

Kirk lands a punch on Spencer, whom Gabby declared the champion.

A few thoughts: a hectic, noisy environment like the, ahem, “Bachelorette Battle for Love” isn’t an ideal place for a tete-a-tete. How much of Rachel could the men actually see from where they were standing (Logan had to lean over to gawk at Gabby)? And were they told to stand there by producers, the better to stoke Rachel’s insecurities? (I wouldn’t put anything past them.)

Whatever the circumstances, Rachel was in full-on, tearful “I don’t feel like I deserve to be the Bachelorette” mode afterwards, to the point she claimed she felt more wanted by Clayton Echard than any of her current suitors.

She marched into the men’s suite to tell them how hurt and upset she was and not one guy followed her out to try to make amends so, yeah, slow learners.

Contrast that to frontrunner Nate telling Gabby at the match how he missed all the little things about her, like her “cute little head shake” when she starts to talk. Rachel noticed the difference in devotion and viewers were meant to as well.

Nate didn’t get the date rose. That went to Spencer, declared the winner of the battle and gifted a “special dinner” with Gabby. As far as I can tell, their only connection is that Spencer was in the military and Gabby comes from a military family, but good enough.

Poor Rachel. Still smarting from her “rejection” of the night before, she took her dudes to learn about the “art of romance” and it was one of the cringiest dates in franchise history.

First off, their guides, Flora and Boris, “experts in all things romance,” sat on a settee sucking face for a full 33 seconds while the men looked uncomfortably on. In my experience, over the top PDAs are not uncommon for the French, in Paris at least, but yes, awkward.

I can’t imagine, however, what having the guys take off their shirts so Rachel could smell their armpits, blindfolded, had to do with romance.

Between Zach flirting with Rachel by putting her in a choke hold from behind, Meatball crawling across the floor to her like “Little Miss Sunshine” and Hayden French-kissing his own hand, the less said about this date the better. Just try to wipe it from your mind.

Luckily, Tyler wrote Rachel a poem to make amends for the night before so she picked him for alone time.

Tyler told Rachel how, even though his last serious girlfriend dumped him after he’d bought them a house, he was ready to find “unconditional love” again. “That feeling is 10 times better than the pain.”

Tyler Norris won Rachel over with his talk of suffering for love.

And since Rachel seemed like someone who loves “really, really hard,” Tyler was there for her.

Sounds a little masochistic to me, but fine. He got the date rose and Rachel’s fear was behind her. Or was it?

Of course it wasn’t. As Rachel and Gabby happily prepared to enter the cocktail party hand in hand as usual, we heard Logan plotting to express his feelings for Gabby because “the heart wants what it wants” and his didn’t want Rachel.

But before that bomb could go off, we had Hayden to deal with.

His plan to snare an extra week on the cruise ship was to tell Rachel all about his dying dog, Rambo, who had a brain tumour, sharing a book of photos of the poor animal.

Not only did Hayden put the dog through radiation just so he could get an extra six months with his pet, he left the pooch behind to come on “The Bachelorette” and he brought Rambo’s “cancer duck” stuffie with him to show Rachel. Who the hell does that?

Hayden Markowitz plays show and tell with Rambo’s “cancer duck.”

Then, when Rachel let Tino interrupt Hayden’s tale of woe, Hayden started complaining about her behind her back.

In the meantime, Meatball had dropped a dime on Hayden and, even though Hayden denied everything that Meatball said he said, Rachel was done with him.

I would have liked to see Hayden get lowered into a teeny lifeboat and made to row to shore, but the ship was docked so he got to walk a gangplank instead of the plank.

Hayden made it clear that he wanted Rambo more than Rachel. “I know right now for a fact no one has the amount of love that I have for Rambo and that Rambo has for me,” he said. Here’s a tip: next time stay home and take care of your sick dog.

Cue Rachel’s next meltdown: “This isn’t working for me. I’m a failure.”

Nonetheless, there was a rose ceremony. Gabby gave roses to Nate, Erich, Johnny, Michael and Mario.

Rachel gave roses to Aven, Meatball, Zach, Ethan and, yes, Logan, who accepted just so he’d get another chance to talk to Gabby.

Buckle your seatbelts for the Brouhaha in Bruges next week.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

Rachel and Gabby both taste rejection on ‘The Bachelorette’

July 26, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia on the monster group date with Hayden, Johnny, Jordan and Mario. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos but screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC

The purpose of this two-“Bachelorette” season has been made abundantly clear, if it wasn’t already. It’s not about Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia finding love — although that could still happen — it’s about making them relive the kind of rejection they felt on Clayton Echard’s “Bachelor” season.

Thus, on a Frankenstein’s monster of an episode, we had Gabby being told point blank by several of the men that they preferred Rachel and Rachel having her roses rejected by several more at the rose ceremony.

And if that wasn’t humiliating enough, host Jesse Palmer then took those roses away so that Rachel couldn’t give them to anyone else. Funny how that suddenly became a rule on a season that supposedly had no rules.

When Monday’s episode ended, Gabby had nine suitors left and Rachel eight, along with two bruised egos — although it looks like James, a.k.a. Meatball, will get a second chance with Rachel and even out the numbers again.

The two stars aren’t the only ones enduring a so-called roller-coaster ride. I mean what the hell was that Monday?

The episode started with Rachel having a perfectly sweet one-on-one with tech exec Zach, then veered into train wreck territory with Gabby paying a surprise visit to the mansion and having the men ignore her to play football.

Gabby’s Grandpa John perked up the mood by accompanying her on her one-on-one with Erich — which was odd, but OK, fine — then Gabby had a meltdown during dinner but seemed to recover her equilibrium at the group date, only to crash again when three men told her she wasn’t their type.

Rachel and Gabby wanted to control their journey, as if producers would let that happen.

So Gabby and Rachel tried to take back control of their “journey” by dividing up the men at the rose ceremony and we know how well that turned out for Rachel.

Earlier in the episode, Rachel seemed like the belle of the ball.

She and Zach got to play dress-up with Karamo Brown from “Queer Eye” on an “old Hollywood” date that he allegedly planned.

Zach Shallcross and Rachel Recchia, ready for their close-ups.

Karamo sent them off to an “exclusive movie premiere” at the gorgeous El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard where they walked a teeny red carpet with faux paparazzi, only to discover that the movie, “Me & You,” was actually a collection of photos and videos from their childhoods and inspirational messages from their moms, all tastefully scored by piano player Matt White.

The walk down memory lane produced the requisite amount of tears on both Rachel’s and Zach’s parts, and they bonded over the fact they both spent time with their dads in airport parking lots watching planes take off and land.

So it only took two one-on-ones for Rachel to achieve liftoff — no hard feelings Jordan V. And Tino, watch your back: there’s a new frontrunner in town.

While Rachel was playing starlet, Gabby went to the mansion, in theory to see which men would make the effort to get to know her better. None, nada, zilch, that’s how many made the effort.

The dudes were more interested in tossing a football and complimenting each other’s shirts than chatting up Gabby. That went over about as well as you think it would for someone with abandonment issues because her mother withheld love when she was growing up.

“I don’t want to play anymore,” Gabby said as the ball was tossed back and forth, and she could have been talking about the show as well as the game.

But chin up, the next day she had a date with real estate analyst Erich and Grandpa John came along, supposedly so Gabby could see how Erich interacted with her family, but it’s way too early for that. This was just a sop to Bachelor Nation since Grandpa John is so beloved.

First stop was one of those woo woo activities the franchise likes to use from time to time: a sound ceremony to release negative energies. And it might have had meaning for Gabby, but I don’t blame Grandpa John for falling asleep.

Grandpa John, Julie, Gabby and Erich enjoy a beer ceremony.

Everybody stayed awake for the next activity — bowling — at which Gabby recruited a plant, er, lady named Julie to be a date for Grandpa.

So far so good: Erich was chill about having Grandpa along, Erich and Gabby got in a little smooching time and they got to be alone on the evening portion of the date.

But the wheels came off after Erich talked about his “soul-mate” parents, which prompted Gabby to talk about her estranged mother.

“I’ll maybe never know what it’s like to have a mother’s love,” Gabby said tearfully and Erich . . . just looked at her, not even a pat on the shoulder, for crying out loud. Maybe that’s just the way it was edited, but with that reaction it’s no wonder Gabby left him alone at the table to go cry on producers’ shoulders.

“Am I too broken for anyone to love?” she lamented.

No sweetie, you’re not, but this nasty franchise is going to make sure you keep feeling that way.

For a moment, it looked like Erich might go the way of Jordan V — just imagine how freaked out the other men would have been to see another dude not survive a one-on-one — but Gabby returned to the table, apologetic for not being a “polished” Bachelorette.

Erich made the right noises about Gabby’s experiences making her a “really unique person” and being “open and honest,” and really liking Gabby and wanting to “see where this goes.”

Where it went for the moment was a rose for Erich and lots of smooching.

“I’m the imperfect Bachelorette. I think in some people’s eyes it will mean perfect,” Gabby said.

A useful thought to take into the next day’s mob scene, the largest group date in Bachelorette history at 19 men. I didn’t count them, but one of the guys said there were 19 of them, so I’m going with it and don’t expect me to name names.

Gabby, Rachel and Franco Lacosta with a big-ass group of men.

And guess who was there? Alleged “Bachelor legend” Franco Lacosta to do a photo shoot.

Given that Gabby and Rachel made their entrances in wedding gowns, you might have thought it was going to be one of those faux wedding shoots with the men in tuxes and suits. But no, they were mostly given ridiculous costumes to wear: plaid shirts and Daisy Dukes for a car wash tableau; a diaper for Meatball, who was, ahem, birthed by Aven; a fig leaf/black box for Jacob for an Adam and Eve shoot with Gabby.

“I’ve seen Jacob’s situation multiple times today and excuse me, because I just can’t help looking,” Rachel said.

It was all ridiculous, the only interaction of note coming when Nate, in a suit thankfully, faux proposed to Gabby.

Nate poses with Gabby, Quincey and Kirk but got a more interesting solo shoot with Gabby.

“Your smile melts my heart, it really does. Whenever you enter a room the world melts away,” he said. “The second I laid eyes on you I felt like I was meeting my best friend and forever could never be long enough to realize how beautiful you are inside and out.”

Followed by a smooch chaser, it sounded like a rehearsal for the real thing, which would have been a good thought for Gabby to hold onto as the after-party commenced at SoFi Stadium.

Now, obviously, this was heavily edited. We saw Rachel kissing Aven, Jordan H and Tino, followed by Tyler, Hayden and Jacob telling Gabby they weren’t interested in her. Hayden damned Gabby with faint praise for her “bubbly” and “goofy aspect,” adding that she was rough around the edges.

And then Jacob cheerfully told Gabby she was “smokin’,” but “if you were the only person here I don’t think I could have the heart to continue.”

Ouch!

Show me a woman who wouldn’t have her insecurities stirred up after hearing something like that.

Rachel cheerfully gave her group date rose to Aven; Gabby didn’t give hers to anyone, saying, “Tonight has kind of been hard for me in a way.”

I find it really difficult to believe Gabby didn’t have positive interactions with somebody at that after-party with 19 men swirling around and, even if she didn’t, surely she could have given the rose to Nate for his lovely words from the photo shoot. But OK, let’s pretend this was all her idea.

After Gabby commiserated with Rachel about her lousy experience, the two of them decided that something had to change.

Cue the cancellation of the cocktail party! Jesse told the fellows they’d be moving directly to the rose ceremony and would have to choose which Bachelorette they wanted to date. No more sitting on the fence, Meatball!

“This will be the craziest night in Bachelor Nation history,” Quincey said.

Now, let’s be honest, if the franchise really had Gabby’s and Rachel’s best interests at heart they could have separated the rose ceremonies, with the women going one after the other. That might have eased the humiliation of rejection somewhat.

Gabby and Rachel face the men for the separate but together rose ceremony.

Instead, there were two tables with eight roses apiece, and Rachel and Gabby took turns handing them out.

The pre-ceremony narrative was that Gabby might face rejection because of what happened at the group date after-party. But Nate, Johnny, Spencer, Jason, Mario, Kirk, Quincey and Michael all took her roses.

Rachel gave hers to Tino and Logan and then Termayne balked, saying he had a deeper connection with Gabby and um, really? Can’t even remember seeing them together.

That’s when Jesse walked in to “clarify,” saying Termayne could get back in line but Rachel had forfeited that rose. Yep, the women are taking control of their journey all right.

Alec also said no thanks to Rachel. Thankfully, Tyler, Ethan and Jordan H said yes, but Meatball declined, saying, “I’m here for Gabby.”

Rachel and Gabby took a (producer-mandated) break to kvetch before giving out their final roses. “This was supposed to be us taking the power back. We literally handed it right back to all of them by doing this,” Rachel whispered.

Dealer, i.e. the franchise, always wins, ladies, dealer always wins.

Hayden said yes to Rachel’s final rose then the women repaired to separate rooms for champagne toasts with their groups of guys.

The footage over the credits showed Meatball, who had been booted along with Jacob and Rachel’s other no-men, Alec and Termayne, asking Rachel for another chance because, gee, he did want to get to know her after all. Rachel might not want him back, but the producers surely will to even up the numbers.

Next week the gang goes to Paris as “two separate groups on two separate journeys.” Logan is having second thoughts about throwing in his lot with Rachel — no surprise there — and Rachel gets information about “disturbing” things being said.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

A villain gets the boot, not once but twice, on ‘The Bachelorette’

July 19, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia prepare to judge a man bits pageant on “The Bachelorette.”
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos except screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC

You win some, you lose some and some you have to get rid of twice.

So went the first “date” episode of Gabby Windey’s and Rachel Recchia’s joint “Bachelorette” season.

The episode was a reminder that with two very different women there will be very different outcomes, a reality driven home by the results of their first dates. But on one point they were agreed: any dude who’s already trying to control the outcome of the fantasy suites before he has even had a real conversation with either Bachelorette has got to go.

Chris Austin during eviction No. 1 with Gabby and Rachel.

And thus “mentality coach” Chris Austin was asked to leave not once, but twice: first, for running his mouth about fantasy suites and then for walking right back into the mansion to confront the men who ratted him out to Rachel and Gabby.

I mean come on! Even if production put him up to it, how arrogant do you have to be to be told to vamoose and then waltz back in like you own the joint?

Gabby and Rachel were having none of it and good for them, but Chris’s wasn’t the only non-rose ceremony exit in the episode.

For the first time ever, as far as I can recall, a Bachelorette denied a rose to her first date pick.

The unlucky fellow was Jordan V, the drag racer with whom Rachel was vibing on Night 1 and I am torn. On the one hand, Jordan seemed pleasant and like he was really into Rachel. On the other, we’ve all been there, right? You go out with someone who seems really promising and partway through the conversation you realize there’s no there there.

Rachel and Jordan V in the proverbial “happier times” on their one-on-one.

So good on Rachel for going with her gut even if it was really awkward that Jordan was left on his own at a table in the Los Angeles Theatre and that they had been smooching on a zero gravity plane just hours before, and then Rachel had to listen morosely all by herself to a private concert by Ashley Cooke and Brett Young.

Gabby, on the other hand, picked a winner for her first date. You could practically feel the air vibrating as all of Bachelor Nation swooned over Nate Mitchell.

Even before he got his date card, though, Nate had already ascended to hero status for calling Chris out on his toxic masculinity.

Here’s how it went down. Chris was sitting around with some of the other guys, pontificating about what would happen when — not if — he made it to the final four and what his deal breakers would be.

“We go into fantasy suite and we have this sexual experience, and then the person who I’m most interested in decides she’s gonna have sex with multiple people and feel it out, that would be the situation where I’d go, ‘OK, I’m out,'” Chris said.

When questioned by the other guys about whether he’d drop this bombshell before, during or after fantasy suites, Chris said it would depend on the situation.

Also, he kept calling Rachel and Gabby “females” like they were research subjects in an experiment he was conducting and not living, breathing women whom he allegedly might be interested in.

So many observations! First off, the final four don’t go to fantasy suites, just the final three. Duh. Second, that kind of ultimatum worked so well for Luke Parker. Third, who the hell are you and what gives you the right?

Several of the men were aghast. Words like “presumptuous,” “disrespectful” and “jerky” were used, but nobody called it better than Nate.

“Any time you have a premeditated thought of you won’t do this unless that, that is a form of control and that is manipulative . . . You cannot have preconditions for love. It’s just a form of control that a lot of men don’t realize that they do that damages good women.”

Yes, just yes.

Then Nate and Gabby went on a helicopter/hot tub date with lots of kissing and laughing. And did we mention Nate is 33, has a real job (electrical engineer) and a six-year-old daughter? And if you compare his bio to Chris’s on the ABC website, you’ll see Nate’s talks about doing thoughtful things for the woman he loves, whereas Chris’s says he wants a woman who will love him for being a hard worker and not complain as they “work together toward greatness.”

Sometimes the villains are hiding in plain sight.

Nate Mitchell with Gabby Windey before the rose ceremony.

Anyway, back to Nate. He told Gabby about his daughter at dinner at L.A.’s Union Station and Gabby teared up listening to him talk: “She is my world,” Nate said. “Like, a pocket of my heart just burst open the first time she said ‘Dad,’ the first time she told me she loved me, the first time I felt her hug me.”

And damn, who wouldn’t tear up listening to that? It’s moments like these that keep us watching this godforsaken franchise.

Gabby, reflecting on her close relationship with her own father, told Nate he was the best thing that was ever going to happen to his daughter.

Could Nate be the best thing to happen to Gabby? Well, it’s only Week 2, but there is definitely serious potential there. Nate got the date rose, so all the nervous nellies back at the mansion, freaked out by Jordan V’s disappearance, could relax.

Speaking of the mansion, pretty sure we’ve never had 29 men staying there at once, which is how many men were left after last week’s cancelled rose ceremony. But could the producers not have rolled in some cots? Guys sleeping on outdoor couches, really?

Host Jesse Palmer gives the men the laydown before they stripped down to their Speedos.

In lieu of a supersized group date there was a “pageant” inside the mansion in which the men had to don Speedos (and one banana hammock), and strut and flex for Gabby and Rachel, with the aim of winning time at a private after-party at their place.

Seriously, is anybody more obsessed with the male anatomy than “Bachelorette” producers? The show went through a season’s worth of black bars covering up bulges.

There was also a “talent” segment, although only two efforts are worth mentioning. The good: mortgage broker Jacob, a.k.a. wannabe Fabio, sat backwards on a chair, put on glasses and gave Rachel and Gabby a mortgage pitch, which was very entertaining.

“Jacob is Tarzan dressed like George of the Jungle slash my mortgage broker, ” said Rachel.

The bad and the ugly: James, a.k.a. Meatball, pouring a jar of pasta sauce down his chest. To quote Jesse: “Nooo! Oh!”

Neither man made it into the group of six winners, which included Aven, Logan, Brandan, Jason, Johnny and Colin.

And yeah, I had to look up all their names because I don’t really remember who anybody is at this point. But you only have to focus on two names for the moment: Logan and Johnny.

Logan Palmer with Rachel ahead of the rose ceremony.

I don’t trust videographer Logan as far as I can throw him and I’m still holding a grudge over him trapping two live baby chicks in his sweaty palms on Night 1. But mostly I don’t trust him because he’s clearly playing both Gabby and Rachel.

After getting blown off by Jason, who was there for Gabby, and finding Brandan and Colin not to her taste, Rachel connected with Logan, who blew smoke up her ass about how “incredibly brave” she was to “jump back into this process,” without mentioning Clayton by name. And they smooched.

Next thing you know, Logan was also kissing Gabby after spewing more flattery about how she was “someone who makes people smile and laugh.”

The dude is too smooth by half, but Rachel had to give a rose to somebody. And despite also being interested in Logan, Gabby generously deferred to her friend and gave her rose to Johnny, whom she also kissed.

The double dipping didn’t end there.

Pretty sure this is Mario talking to Rachel, even though the ABC caption didn’t identify him.

Ahead of the rose ceremony, personal trainer Mario — Gabby’s first impression rose winner — chatted up Rachel and then lifted her up and did squats with her, making Rachel squeal, all within earshot and view of Gabby.

But the real drama centred on Chris, because of course it did.

Quincey, Hayden and Jordan H, no doubt encouraged by producers, told Rachel about Chris’s fantasy suite “deal breaker” and she told Gabby, and the two of them confronted Chris.

Chris didn’t deny what he’d said — although he tried the “I wasn’t the only one talking about it” manoeuvre — and he didn’t apologize either.

“If you’ve seen our journey you would know it would be important to us, and would respect our place as women and our position to make our own decisions, which it seems like if we went against something you believed in you would take that time to leave,” Gabby said.

Chris tried to turn it around and make it about them not wanting to have a conversation with him, at which point Rachel told him he was being condescending and they walked his ass out of there.

But that wasn’t the end of it, since Chris walked right back in, gathered Jordan H, Hayden, Quincey, Nate and Tyler (I think), and started grilling them about what they said to Rachel and Gabby.

Rachel and Gabby pushed their way through the knot of producers and camera people filming the scene and gave Chris the boot again, for good this time.

And then, finally, we got a rose ceremony, but only six guys got the heave-ho, leaving a still unwieldy group of 21 whose names we’ll never remember, but for the record: Erich, Zach, Jordan H, Quincey, Michael, Tiny, Jacob, Tyler, Hayden, James, Kirk, Spencer, Alec, Ethan and Mario got roses, in addition to the ones that Nate, Johnny and Logan already had.

Rachel and Gabby alternated the rose-giving and made it clear the roses were from both of them, but looks like that will change next week, with at least one rose rejection and Rachel having a rose ceremony meltdown.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

Edited because I accidentally called Jordan V, Jordan Z in one reference.

Tag: Bachelorette (Page 1 of 4)

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Rachel and Gabby both taste rejection on ‘The Bachelorette’

A villain gets the boot, not once but twice, on ‘The Bachelorette’

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