Monday, July 20, 2015

Blogging The Bach'ette: And Then There Were Two



Welcome Rosebuds! It's the dog days of summer and we're getting to the end of Kaitlyn's season. Writer/tweeter Jennifer Weiner sent out these two tweets this morning and I'm posting them here because I agree with her. This has been a very strange season of The Bachelorette and I haven't been completely inspired to blog about it over the last couple of weeks. Or to be more accurate, I've written down some thoughts but never got to the point of feeling they were ready to publish, but with the Men Tell All episode tonight, I decided I better get with it. What you see below is two weeks worth of blogging about The Bach'ette.

We're now down to two ardent suitors for Kaitlyn's hand in marriage, with handsome Ben H having been sent home. He left with class and Twitter exploded with love and pleas for him to be the next Bachelor:
As I'm finishing this post on Thursday there are reports, unconfirmed as yet by ABC, that Ben H has indeed been selected as the next Bachelor.

I admit I'm not feeling a whole lotta love for either Shawn (so needy and what's with that hair?) or Nick (whiny and mean at the ATFR with Andi and almost certainly not there for the right reasons.) Kaitlyn claims to love them both which also isn't ringing true. She has to carry on for the good of the show and we were treated to two strange hometowns that weren't really hometowns, with both families flying to Utah (really, Utah? Yes, really. Utah.) to meet Kaitlyn in hotel rooms. Before I go any further I'll warn you that this post contains what may be a spoiler. Consider yourself warned.

Here it is: based on what I'm reading at various places around the web, and that Snapchat that Kaitlyn accidentally sent out into the universe a couple of weeks ago, I'm convinced that Shawn and his hair are the ultimate winners of the game and are now engaged to Kaitlyn. I bring it up because that belief made it incredibly painful to watch the meeting between Kaitlyn and Nick's family. Remember, they went through this same process last year when Nick was one of Andi's final four. He actually made it it to the final two before being rejected by Andi, and he wasn't particularly gracious in his rejection.

In addition, earlier this week, E! Online reported that Kaitlyn and Nick had a deeper relationship prior to the show than has been previously reported:

"Kaitlyn and Nick initially started talking as friends," a source who knows the couple tells E! News. "They had both been on the show and they bonded over that mutual experience. But it soon took a romantic turn. They never met in person before the show, but they were talking, texting and Facetiming for hours at a time from late February to early March. It would sometimes go on until the middle of the night."

"They were explicit about their feelings," we are told. "And while they didn't sext, intimate photos were exchanged. It was steamy." 

In fact, friends of both Kaitlyn and Nick confirm they discussed Nick joining the cast before Kaitlyn left for filming. Says a Kaitlyn source: "She told him she was hoping he'd surprise her on the show. She said it in a joking way, but I think she was serious. She told her friends she was hoping he'd do it." 

Will Nick go quietly into that good night, if he is indeed rejected by Kaitlyn in the final episode? Almost certainly not. Here's how Our Host Chris Harrison previews the finale:

This is a train wreck the rest of the way. The good news is she narrowed it down to two guys she knows she's in love with and has the best chance at making it with. But to that end, she probably would've done herself [a favor] to bring someone to the Final 2 she knew wasn't the one because she created a huge situation. It's going to be beyond a normal breakup because one of them is not only getting dumped, but he'll be hurt and feel like the loser to the other guy. Kaitlyn knows she's really going to hurt someone on a grand scale. Yikes. Bad enough to lose, but for the second time in two seasons and to the man you hate most in the world? This isn't going to be pretty.  

Once all that is over, Bachelor In Paradise premieres on Sunday, Aug 2 and filming for the show is already complete. I know this because I occasionally check out the blog written by Ashley Iaconetti, or "Kardashley," as she was known when she competed on the Farmer Chris season. She mostly writes about eyelash extensions and Botox injections, but every now and then she slips in a fun tidbit about The Bach and BIP. You can read her blog here.

As the season winds down, I can't help wondering how Kaitlyn is feeling about the whole thing. Her naked activities with Nick, plus the whole Nick v. Shawn dynamic, have pretty much taken over the whole show. Kaitlyn is holding it together, at least publicly, saying she's not ashamed and continually insisting that intimacy is important to her, but still. Does she have any regrets? Did she really understand, when she accepted the job, how she would be portrayed in the media? Almost certainly not.

At this point in the life of the franchise, I watch the show with the assumption that no one is really there to find love. What they want is fame and a job in media, following in the footsteps of Ali, Jillian, Trista, Melissa Rycroft and many others who have leveraged a stint on The Bach and/or The Bach'ette into some kind of career. Kaitlyn almost certainly wants that to happen and with that in mind, is she happy with the state of her "brand" right now? What about Britt? Will we ever see her again? What will happen to Nick? At 34 he's one of the oldest "competitors" and it would seem that at some point he should just give it up and go back to trying to meet a woman the old fashioned way. You know, on eHarmony or Tinder. And if Kaitlyn and Shawn really are engaged, how long will it last? Common sense says not that long. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that they'll be done as a couple before Ben H's season premiers in January. And with that, it's on to Men Tell All. See you soon, Rosebuds!
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