The Bachelor Week Ten Point Five aka Sweet Mercies Are In Endings
Here’s What Happened Tuesday
Proposals, breakups, Babs, photobooths, deeply hateful rhetoric, Kelley?
Let’s dive in, finale style.
Peter, a man left with one subpar option, employs a method that men have been employing for centuries of subpar options: willful self-delusion. He gives himself a Hannah Anna pep talk, chooses a ring from Neil Lane’s briefcase of mysteries, and facetimes Father Sluss to ask for his blessing.
Hannah Anna, faced with the knowledge of being potential second best, employs the method that women have been employing for centuries: just napping through it. Eventually she wakes up, now hours late for her proposal, and calls an Uber to drive her into the middle of the bush to meet Peter.
And thus commences the marriage proposal equivalent of someone going in for the handshake while the other goes in for the hug. Peter explains that his heart had been pulled in two different directions, but that Madison already left, he’s scared of his mom, and she’s his only remaining option. Hannah Anna emphatically accepts.
A month later in LA, Hannah Anna sits on Peter’s lap while he tells her that he can’t give her his full heart. Hannah Anna takes off the ring which was never sized for her and gives it back to Peter. Hannah Anna has questions. How dare he take her precious first engagement from her? Why does he have a photobooth in his home? What kind of creepy shit is that?
Fast forward to now. Hannah Anna has spent weeks with her defense attorneys prepping for her After the Final Rose opening statements. Somehow she manages to flip the script of signing up for a reality TV show to not being given the full information of what her proposal acceptance would mean, and even more significantly, she gets Peter’s mother to provide a character testimony for her. Barbara, from the crowd, actively claps as Hannah Anna tells her son to take a long walk off a short pier.
Back in Alabama, Chris Harrison throws pebbles at Madison’s door until she lets him in. He informs her of the pending-to-unpending nuptials, then encourages her to fly to LA and rekindle the spark – a spark that died, I’ll remind you, because these are two completely incompatible people. But this time it miraculously sticks.
If looks could kill, Barb would have Madison lying dead on the live stage floor while Madison confesses that she still loves Peter. Dressed in her best funereal blacks, Barb vocalizes her deep detestation of Madison, a woman who made her wait three hours and didn’t even let her son get it. Madison smiles at her and reminds her that her son’s penis is not her only priority. And, after a season of pain, that’s basically where we leave it.