‘The Bachelor’ spoilers have found that in a season fraught with controversy, last night’s episode continued to deliver on showcasing the worst of humanity.
Post-production racism issues aside (that’s a whole other post(s)), on screen we have watched as the women have created an intensely toxic environment, bullying one another mercilessly.
Starting with Victoria Larson, self-appointed Queen (bee) trading jabs with everyone one of the girls, Victoria quickly zeroed in on roommate Marylynn Sienna. Both women complained about each other to lead man, Matt James however, it was Marylynn who did not receive Matt’s rose post skirmish.
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The truly toxic behavior really reared its ugly head, however, when a new group of women joined the bachelorettes in the house. Victoria was joined by 2IC in the mean girls department, Anna Redman to not only outwardly make the new cast members feel very unwelcome, but start vicious rumors about one lady- Brittany Galvin being an escort.
Hero of the season Katie Thurston did her best to curtail the slew of harassment, but though Victoria led the charge, she was by no means alone in spreading hate. There is only so much one (superhero) woman can do so, in a smart move, Katie divulged the ugly behavior to Bachelor Matt who promptly cleaned house.
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Matt addressed the group and explained that he cannot condone bullying of any kind, that a woman who feels the need to push another down in order to thrust herself forth is a woman he does not want in his life. After Victoria tried to explain that her comment of calling Ryan Claytor a “ho” was taken out of context, but could not supply a context that would make the slur okay, Matt sent Victoria as well as rumor-spreader Anna home.
However, it seemed like the spirt of the bullies hung around to infect new hosts.
Both Serena Chew and MJ Snyder stepped forth to display even more deplorable treatment of women. MJ was also sent packing and Matt reiterated that he will not stand for bullying. So of, course Serena C. ignored him and went onto contaminate the house and turn her poison tongue onto season 25 G.O.A.T., Katie. Katie promptly and cuttingly thanked Serena C. “for her feedback”. Did I mention G.O.A.T.?
Unfortunately, when Matt decided he and savior Katie didn’t share a spark Katie went home, leaving the house unprotected for the evil spirits to fester.
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In a “didn’t Chris Bukowski try to hang onto his D-list celebrity by doing this years ago?” move, Heather Martin of Colton Underwood’s season 23 rocked up to Nemacolin, season 25’s version of the Bachelor Mansion, to shoot her shot with Matt.
And the evil spirits awoke, breaking into 9 horcruxes to settle into the pores of each of the women remaining.
Apparently none of these woman have heard a damn thing Matt has said. Their attack on Heather was vicious, unrelenting and genuinely upsetting to watch.
We get it, Heather was moving into their territory. It has been a “whole six weeks”, their feelings for Matt are “deep” but to hear Pieper James accuse Heather of “Bachelor hopping” and to have Jesenia Cruz laugh and agree, “Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.” was uncomfortable to watch.
Without allowing Heather to truly explain why she was making her play for Matt, Jesenia and others continued to needle Heather with snide remarks. Yes, this is the same Jesenia who was instrumental in getting MJ sent home for being on team Mean Girl. Way to redeem the reputation of this batch of contestants, Jesenia.
Kitt Keenan then goaded, “Like, Bitch, what are you doing?” while Heather dissolves into tears. But no, no shred of humanity rises to take back these women who appear to be body-snatched by evil (or Victoria- tomato/tomarto), instead Serena C. snarled “Just talk about it in an interview because I don’t want to hear your tears.” As Heather, distraught by now, backs up another woman pipes up from her place on the couch. “Go home.”
These were just the things said TO HER FACE. After Heather disappeared tearfully to a confessional, Serena C. went on to call her a virus – a little tone deaf in the time of Covid-19.
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Ultimately, Matt decided it was too late in the process for he and Heather to create a real connection and kindly escorted Heather back to her much discussed mini-van. Instead of the ghost of Victoria receding back into the Nemacolin walls, it rattled some more chandeliers with Pieper scoffing: “And your name was?”
Okay, I have lumped all the girls together here, but we should give pause to Abigail Heringer who was not sitting on the couch of hate and Bri Springs and Michelle Young who were in attendance for the roasting but didn’t directly attack Heather. Nonetheless, didn’t try to stop or even temper the other ladies. Matt later thanked the women for dealing with Heathers “unexpected” arrival with grace, a sentence that won’t age well after he sees the footage of the verbal attack.
Of course, The Bachelor is well known to be highly engineered to create drama and give the viewers at home juicy interactions between the competitive contestants. But this time it seems different and if Bachelor Nation’s very strong-worded Twitter comments are anything to go by, no one at home is enjoying the massive amounts of terrible woman vs. woman antagonism this season.
Bachelor alum, Wells Adams spoke to the E! Daily Pop team last week, describing how being cooped up together, the men (including himself) on JoJo’s season 12 of The Bachelorette were all going a little stir-crazy. The only thing that saved them from spiraling, he said, was the international travel, a factor sorely missing from this season.
So, is all this tormenting each other and women tearing down women a symptom of the restlessness (something we’ve all been feeling in quarantine) on ‘roids or is the restlessness the catalyst for the bachelorettes’ true colors shining through? It will be interesting to watch the Women Tell All special, which was filmed halfway through the season airing on television, to see if any of the women show any self-awareness and humility after seeing their actions. It would be great to see, but, after this week’s episode, I’d have to say very surprising to see.
What do you think of how the women are behaving on screen this season? Let us know in the comments below and watch The Bachelor at 8pm ET on ABC as Matt James meets the families and we see how far these apples fell from the trees!
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