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Tag: hometown dates

No ‘I love you’ means no rose as the Bachelorette picks her final 3

The “Bachelorette” final four had to recreate their hometowns at La Quinta Resort in Palm Springs, including this New York City backdrop for Zac Clark. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC

If your heart wasn’t melting watching the “hometowns” episode of “The Bachelorette” on Tuesday night it’s possible you don’t have one.

This was one of the sweetest, most emotional hometown episodes we’ve ever seen — without anyone going near an actual hometown.

There were no obnoxious siblings, no overbearing parents, no taxidermy collections, no fake autopsies: just four nice guys with nice families who seemed to really, really love them, which just made it all the more heartwrenching when Tayshia Adams had to send one man home.

The mood was set in the early minutes of the show when host Chris Harrison arrived to tell the finalists which of their family members had made the trip to La Quinta Resort in Palm Springs, Calif., and they got teary-eyed (except Ben, who apparently doesn’t cry) and all hugged each other.

Tayshia has talked about what a great group of guys she has and now that she’s got rid of dead weight like Bennett and Noah I couldn’t agree with her more.

Normally, Tayshia would have travelled to each of the men’s hometowns to meet their families. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the families had to come to her, not just showing up, but quarantining and taking who knows how many COVID tests at the resort.

And the suitors had to create little slices of their hometowns at La Quinta, which to be honest felt kind of refreshing compared to the show and tells we usually get.

Brendan Morais, Tayshia and his niece Aliyah play some carnival games on their “hometown” date.

Brendan started things off with a recreation of a small-town carnival, the kind of thing he’d attend in his hometown of Milford, Mass. And if that idea wasn’t adorable enough he had his niece Aliyah join him and Tayshia to play games like ring toss, win stuffed animals, eat popsicles, dance, ride toy horses, cavort in a bouncy castle and show off their secret handshake.

So the date was already screaming “keeper!” Then Brendan upped the ante with an emotional reunion with his big brother Daniel, whom he told Harrison was “the closet thing I had to a father after my father passed.”

“I feel like I haven’t told you enough, or at least in a long time, how much you mean to me,” Brendan told his bro. I mean, is that heartwarming or what?

The good feelings just kept flowing, with Tayshia getting encouragement from Daniel and his wife Christi that Brendan was ready to get married. At the end of it all, Tayshia declared, “I really am falling in love with him. I truly feel like Brendan could be my husband.”

After that date, us too. But there were three more dates to go.

Tayshia and Zac ride a “cab” on their hometown date.

Zac Clark, whose hometown is listed as Haddonfield, N.J., took Tayshia to “New York,” where they walked around in a cardboard taxi (once Zac had taught Tayshia how to hail one), ate bagels and pizza, then took in a view of the “Hudson River.”

Tayshia later met Zac’s parents, Douglas and Beatrice, and his brother Matt.

“They saved my life,” Zac said. “They believed in me when I had a pretty gnarly drug addiction that could have taken me out at any time.”

Matt was a little skeptical, though. He asked Tayshia point blank how her feelings for Zac compared to the other three guys and she didn’t answer him — which Matt pointed out — although she did say she was falling in love with Zac.

But Douglas and Beatrice were on board.

“I haven’t seen him smile that much in a long time,” Douglas told Tayshia, “and that’s something that’s really making me happy.”

Zac’s smile also came up in an emotional chat with his mom. “I would not be alive if it wasn’t for your strength,” Zac told her. “So nothing means more than for you to see me happy tonight and see me smiling and see me at peace.”

So I think we’re all agreed: another keeper, right?

Ivan and Tayshia do some Filipino cooking on their hometown date.

Next up was Ivan Hall, who instead of taking Tayshia to a hometown, took her to a kitchen where they made Filipino “lumpia,” or spring rolls, coached via video by Ivan’s adorable niece Kehlani.

Ivan and Tayshia were cooking in more ways than one in that kitchen as they laughed and kissed and danced. Then Tayshia met Ivan’s father Clarence and his mother, whose name I don’t think we got.

Mom was skeptical given how fast everything was happening but told Ivan she’d welcome Tayshia with open arms if he chose to be with her. Clarence bonded with Tayshia over the fact they both had marriages that didn’t work out (Ivan’s mom is his second wife) and both married young; Clarence at 24, Tayshia at 25.

 “I’m really impressed with the young lady,” Clarence said. “She and Ivan could be a good match.”

There was one more family member for Tayshia to impress. Ivan’s brother Gabriel, the one he told Tayshia about who’d done time in jail, made a surprise appearance, which had Ivan in tears. Then Gabriel teared up talking to Tayshia about how loyal Ivan had been to him. Like I said, it was an emotional night.

By the time the date was done, Tayshia had passed muster with the fam and Ivan said he was falling in love with Tayshia.

Ben and Tayshia rollerbladed to the “boardwalk” at “Venice Beach” on their date.

Last but not least, Ben took Tayshia to “Venice Beach,” even though he was raised in Indiana. Things seemed to be going great. Tayshia said she was smitten with Ben and he said he’d never been happier. Ben’s parents weren’t able to make it to La Quinta because of the pandemic, but Ben’s sister Madeline, the one he told Tayshia saved his life, was there along with close family friend Antonia, and they both seemed delighted with Tayshia.

Tayshia, who earlier in the episode expressed unease about not knowing how Ben felt about her, asked for and received assurance from Madeline that Ben wasn’t “hiding” anything. It’s too bad Tayshia couldn’t have overheard Ben’s conversation with Antonia because Ben admitted to Antonia that he was in love with Tayshia.

He was all set to tell Tayshia, too, but he clammed up when they were alone together and she asked him how he felt.

When Ben walked into the rose ceremony it was with the idea that it might be too late to tell Tayshia he loved her. But we’ve seen instances where an inability to clearly express feelings was used as a red herring just to make viewers think that person wasn’t getting a rose, so it was hard to tell if Ben had really blown it.

Honestly? I had no idea who Tayshia would send home. She seemed to have strong feelings for all four and had also had deep conversations with all of them about real stuff, whether it was Brendan’s previous marriage, Zac’s former drug addiction, Ivan’s experiences with racism or Ben’s suicide attempts.

This season has certainly had its share of silliness, but it’s also had some of the most meaningful interactions I can recall. Maybe being quarantined during a pandemic was a reminder for at least some of the men of what was really important in their lives.

Unfortunately for Ben, he never got the chance to tell Tayshia how he felt. Would it have made a difference? We might never know. Tayshia did say that she couldn’t keep putting energy into pulling things out of Ben so perhaps a declaration would have been too little too late.

In any event, Ben put his walls right back up after Tayshia rejected him, brushing it off with “I’ll be all right. I’m always all right.”

“He couldn’t give me one ounce of emotion,” said an upset Tayshia after he left.

But Ben clearly wasn’t all right. “I’m still in love with her,” he said, looking stricken in the back of the SUV. “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to fall out of love with her.”

For Ben’s sake I hope he figures it out and that he’s got that therapist who helped him after his suicide attempts on speed dial.

Tayshia is moving on, with fantasy suite dates and maybe a proposal next week.

(Update: it sounds like Ben is going to be back next week to ask Tayshia to give him another chance. I’m skeptical it will work, but it will be good for the drama.)

It airs Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Citytv.

Feel like chatting about “Bachelorette”? You can comment here (no spam please) or come visit my Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter @realityeo

The Bachelorette picks her final 4 and the Men Tell All, all in 1 night

Host Chris Harrison and Bachelorette Tayshia Adams on “The Men Tell All” part of “The Bachelorette.” PHOTO CREDIT: All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC

Fasten your seatbelts, Bachelor Nation. With apologies for borrowing from Bette Davis, it looks like it’s going to be a bumpy ride, not to mention a really speedy one.

“The Bachelorette” crammed what would normally be two episodes worth of material into one on Monday night, including a “Men Tell All.” Hometown dates follow Tuesday. Next week is the two-part season finale, which presumably means fantasy suite dates on Dec. 21 and the proposal on Dec. 22.

It’s not quite Clare getting engaged to Dale fast, but it’s brisk.

Likewise, Tayshia Adams moved from dithering last week, so conflicted she couldn’t even hand out a group date rose, to extra decisive this week.

She let two men go ahead of the rose ceremony and then cancelled the cocktail party, so confident was she in her decisions. The final four are, in fact, no surprise. But let’s back up and recount how we got here.

First, there was Tayshia’s one-on-one date with Canadian wildlife manager Blake Moynes. Bachelor 101 says if you’re just getting your first real date the week before hometowns you’re probably a goner.

Tayshia and Blake meet with “Reiki and crystal master” Geeta.

Indeed, after an awkward and kind of pointless session with a “Reiki and crystal master” — which included the inevitable “tantric breathing exercise,” i.e. crotch meld, not to mention Blake getting visibly, er, “charged” — Tayshia felt that Blake wasn’t her “guy.” He didn’t even get a chance to pretend to eat dinner with her before she told him they should go their separate ways, with Tayshia crying buckets as she handed him into the SUV of Shame despite her certainty she was doing the right thing.

That certainty gave Tayshia “clarity” about someone else, so she headed to the suite where the men were hanging out and asked Riley to step outside.

Tayshia explained that she didn’t want to lead Riley on by meeting his family “if my heart is not 100 per cent matching yours.”

Riley, like the lawyer he is, put up a bit of an argument, asking “Why keep me around so long?”

The real answer is that it’s always about the numbers in “Bachelor” or “Bachelorette.” Guys get strung along week after week because the number of men need to match the number of roses.

Tayshia said that her breakthrough conversations with Riley, the ones in which he showed her who he really was, “started coming a little bit later.” And then Riley stopped resisting.

“I can argue all day, but in the end it doesn’t matter because the end result is the same. So the longer I sit here, the longer I look at you, the longer I hear you talk, see you smile, the more pain I feel.”

He left with grace and class and generosity, and Tayshia cried a lot.

I couldn’t help contrasting her emotional reaction to letting Riley go to her sangfroid when she jettisoned Bennett, and thinking how ridiculous it was that Bennett — after coming back to surprise Tayshia the week before — had been allowed to stay until the rose ceremony.

Tayshia gives Bennett the heave-ho the week before. I don’t see any tears, do you?

It was absolutely preposterous to think that Bennett, despite already being sent home once, would vault past men like Brendan and Zac and Ivan in Tayshia’s affections to claim a rose. Clearly his being allowed to return was nothing more than a stupid producer trick, a way to stir up a little crap among the men.

And indeed, the other men were visibly displeased when Bennett came strolling back in before the rose ceremony, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. “You guys looks like you’ve seen a ghost,” Bennett cheerfully told Ben, Zac, Brendan, Ivan and Noah, before adding that he’d returned so he wouldn’t be written off as a “Harvard D-bag.”

Then, after all the nonsense about Tayshia feeling conflicted because Bennett told her he loved her, he didn’t even get to converse with her again before she gave roses to Zac, Ivan and Brendan (Ben already had one), dispatching Noah and Bennett.

I did feel bad for Riley, who seems like a good guy, but it had to be those four for hometowns given that they’re the men Tayshia had gotten closest to. If it wasn’t, it would have been quite the shocker.

Next it was time for a truncated “Men Tell All.”

The bad blood between Noah and Bennett was rehashed. Nothing new there. Noah accused Bennett of being condescending and conniving; Bennett accused Noah of creating all the drama. Riley sided with Noah, Kenny with Bennett. There was some shouting between Noah and Kenny, and Kenny had to be bleeped, and host Chris Harrison had to whistle to get them to simmer down. Bennett eventually apologized, but Noah told him he was “an ostentatious Harvard D-bag” and they’d never be friends.

That was small potatoes compared to the real D-bag in the room. Yosef Aborady returned to rehash his exit and his berating of first Bachelorette Clare Crawley over what he called the “classless” strip dodgeball date, which saw the losers of the game strip down to their man goodies (thanks Demar).

Yosef claimed he was “sticking up for these guys,” but Blake and Kenny, who’d both been starkers, said no thanks to that. Jason called Yosef out for being disrespectful to Clare and told him to “shut the fuck up” when Yosef tried to talk over Jason the same way he talked over Clare.

Asked by Harrison if he had any regrets, Yosef was adamant he did not.

“Just so we’re clear, when you watch that, you’re like that’s cool, I would never mind anyone talking to my daughter like that,” Harrison said.

“If my daughter did something like that I would hope somebody would call her out,” Yosef replied, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know right there.

I hope we never see that misogynistic creep on any Bachelor show ever again.

What a contrast between Yosef’s bullshit and Riley, who got emotional after watching tape of his breakup with Tayshia, telling her that despite the heartache, “I appreciate everything you did for me. I would not change this experience for anything in the world.”

Tayshia reassured Riley that he hadn’t scared her off by telling her about his past, which he said was “a weight off my chest.”

Tayshia also made Blake feel a little better, telling him she’d subconsciously put up walls to protect herself against him, knowing he’d had feelings for Clare.

“I’m glad now I can look at you with a smile and remember you like this and not like that,” Blake said, referring to their breakup. “That was brutal for the longest time.”

I know Harrison talks about the bloopers being the funniest part of “Men Tell All,” but what really made me laugh was he and Ed reliving their bromance, spawned when Ed went to the wrong suite while looking for Tayshia’s room at the resort.

“We had a good time, man,” Harrison said. “Just a couple of guys hanging out, having a nice bottle of wine.”

“It was pretty epic,” said Ed. “I’m somehow glad I wasn’t at Tayshia’s that night actually.”

Enjoy the laughs while you can. There were an awful lots of tears in the promo for the final three nights of the season.

The next episode airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Citytv.

Feel like chatting about “Bachelorette”? You can comment here (no spam please) or come visit my Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter @realityeo

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