A TATBT Bachelor recap: Aw hell, the queen
Let’s start from the very beginning, a very good place to start
In true TATBT fashion, I will now begin recapping Matt James’ Bachelor season, ahem, the same week as its “Women Tell All” episode aired.
TECHNICALLY, I wrote the recap below about six weeks ago (that’s 33 weeks in Quaran-time), but couldn’t quite get it out, and have second-guessed its relevance ever since. Maybe I should wait until the very end, and write a 10,000 word ode to the completed season? Perhaps I should just dive in at Hometowns, once Matt has whittled the group down to three nice ladies who’ve probably never cyber-bullied anyone into thinking their grandma hates them, and one lady who probably ALSO hasn’t done that, but DID spend a few years romanticizing the Confederacy on social media before going on a game show to date a Black man.
And really, wouldn’t that still be PLENTY to talk about?
However, the production and certain members of this cast have remained problematic from the tits to the toes of this season (I guess this week’s Women Tell All episode is located somewhere around the “taint” of the season…but I have full faith that The Bachelor’s lack of accountability can last aaaaall the way to the bitter, bearded end). So, it seems only right that I take you back to the very beginning, in the hopes that one day, maybe—just MAYBE—we can make it through to the very end.
Seven episodes. Two recaps. One TATBT Bachelor catch-up week. Leggo…
Here’s a list of things that haven’t happened since 2008:
You haven’t had a hilarious chat over BBM, conducted entirely under your desk since 2008
America hasn’t not had a Black president since 2008
Olympic swimmers haven’t worn those illegal full-body swimsuits since 2008
And since 2008, the lead of The Bachelor hasn’t arrived on the first night, all fresh-faced and full of hope, without having participated in at least one other Bachelor-sanctioned series beforehand…
Before Matt James and his 26-pack arrived on our screens looking like hot-ass Squidward — or an equally hot Frozone…or a slightly less vegetal, but equally biblical Larry the Cucumber…or any number of corny animated characters, a phenomenon I cannot technically explain, but still know is 100 percent correct — the last person to be named the Bachelor(ette) without having first matriculated through some other Bachelor franchise entity was a British man named Matt Grant. Who, even as a credentialed Bachelor historian (credentials: Tumblr, Microsoft Paint), I’m sure that I’ve never seen before.
Basically, this just means that Matt James is the first Bachelor in 13 years who hasn’t come into his season branded as an unlovable loser who got dumped in favor of a man who writes dog food jingles, or what have you. And yet…in the premiere of this Bachelor season, Chris Harrison will lead us to believe that Matt James having never been on any TV show, EVER is an absolutely wild fact about him on a personal, foundational level.
That is false information, as are a number of things notorious liar Chris Harrison says throughout Matt’s premiere. [Ed. note: My longstanding beef with Chris Harrison IS foundational to ME as a person.]
From the steps of the sprawling Nemacolin Resort — which looks like something from the set of Bridgerton, while, as you may recall, Clare and Tayshia fell in love at a place that looked like your family’s second-favorite Tex-Mex restaurant — Chris tells us that Matt James wasn’t on The Bachelorette, and he wasn’t on Bachelor in Paradise; in fact, this guy wasn’t on any television show ever. “But as the saying goes, when you know, you know,” Chris says. “And when we first met Matt, we knew we had to make him the Bachelor.”
To which I say: bitch, wut?
And further: You’re such a fucking liar, Camille!
In hindsight, the audacious confidence with which Chris tells this lie in the first five minutes of Matt’s premiere ultimately sets the precedent for the rest of this season, which is proving to be about as toxic as a seventh grade locker room the Monday after a Homecoming dance.
Chris Harrison’s “when you know, you know” claim is not only one that a quick Google search will disprove, but one that Matt directly refutes a few scenes later when he mentions that he was originally supposed to make his Bachelor Nation debut on Clare’s season of The Bachelorette. Because Matt isn’t the one out here trying to cover anything up—The Bachelor is.
Matt James, best friend of Bachelor Nation sweetheart Tyler Cameron, was originally cast as a contestant on Clare’s season, which ended up having to postpone filming from March 2020 until June 2020 because of Little Miss Rona. During that time in the United States, there was a societal reckoning over racial inequality unlike anything we’ve seen during the 19-year run of The Bachelor, and the glaring omission of not one single Black Bachelor within a 24-man lineup became too much for even this historically ignorant franchise to ignore…
And that is the whole truth of how Matt James got called up from triple A to the majors. It took work, and effort, and groups like the Bachelor Diversity Campaign, and people who hold power within the franchise like Rachel Lindsay demanding it.
It wasn’t because the casting directors saw Matt’s 6’5 frame and his adorable Instagram posts featuring little kids and cookies, and just knew they had to make him the Bachelor, as Chris is suggesting — but because, come game time, ABC needed to name a Black Bachelor or publicly out their franchise as racist and forever unwilling to change. And Matt James was an eligible Black man orbiting around the franchise about whom they would not have to answer sticky questions like, Well why didn’t you make Mike Johnson the Bachelor two years ago? What, PRECISELY, has changed now?
None of that makes Matt James — a hunky man who founded a nonprofit for tiny children, personally runs five triathlons a week, and only loves his Peleton and his mama, he’s sorry — any less deserving of the Bachelor title. It makes The Bachelor undeserving of Matt James.
Because when the show pretends like tapping Matt as the next Bachelor was as simple as “when ya know, ya know, lol,” it puts Matt in the unfair position of having to explain what it means to be the first Black Bachelor to Chris Harrison, instead of Chris Harrison explaining the systemic failures that could have possibly led to Matt being the first Black Bachelor in this, the year of our Bernie Mittens Meme, 2021. [Ed. note: I have left this out-of-date reference as proof of how long ago I originally wrote this.]
For The Bachelor to pretend like their casting of Matt James this season was no more nuanced than him being very tall and appearing to smuggle eight large yams under his torso skin at any given time—just the same as every white Bachelor who came before him—is for the franchise to pretend that even their own positive progression is the result of no reflection whatsoever, let alone a tactical choice. The message they’re trying to convey to the viewers at home is clear: Nothing is changing.
Matt hasn’t been placed in this absurd situation to have to sit down for a chat about race with Chris Harrison because he’s Black; he’s in that situation because he’s Black and the Bachelor. But only Matt is asked to explain his Blackness to Chris Harrison, while Chris Harrison and the show he’s an executive producer on answer for nothing.
That’s nothing new, but it is frustrating.
Whether Matt sincerely requested a moment of Chris Harrison’s time to talk about his anxiety over being the first Black Bachelor in the premiere, or whether the show posed that conversational approach as a good idea to Matt, I have no idea. I do know that Chris Harrison always seems about one harsh retweet away from saying “I don’t see color!” so listening to him try to navigate Matt’s nuanced feelings about being a mixed-race Bachelor who’s afraid of pissing off white people with his choices, and afraid of pissing off Black people with his choices was a tough sell.
And would you believe it if I told you that Chris ultimately advised Matt not to even worry about what people will think of his choices, because “the most important thing is if you come out of this with joy, peace, love, and you have this amazing woman who shares those things.” As if to say that Matt’s choices for a joyful, peaceful, and loving future can and should be completely tangential to race…
And that really is the entirety of what The Bachelor mouthpiece has to say about the pressure and anxiety Matt is feeling. From this conversation, we are supposed to understand that Matt’s season is exactly the same as any other season, with exactly the same pressures, motivations, and end goals — so waiting 24 seasons to cast the first Black Bachelor must have simply been a clerical error!
[Ed. note: While belatedly drafting this recap, I was hesitant about focusing so much on this conversation between Matt and Chris that aired well over a month ago…
Then Chris Harrison went on Extra and ranted at the first Black Bachelorette and recipient of regular online abuse, Rachel Lindsay, about how everyone just needs to have A LITTLE MORE GRACE for this season’s contestant Rachael Kirkconnell, who has been called out for multiple documented instances of cultural appropriation, comingling with Confederate flags, and attending an Old South themed formal in 2018. In the clip, Chris Harrison insists that THREE YEARS AGO, Rachael couldn’t have possibly known she was being racist and offensive by romanticizing the Confederate States that fought for slavery, and therefore shouldn’t be held accountable for it. He is suspiciously defensive of how much compassion Rachael deserves, even though she declined to extend the same compassion to the millions of people she would be disrespecting — who Chris consistently refers to as “the woke police” — while dressing in Antebellum garb for a plantation party that even the Kappa Alpha fraternity banned in 2016 for its racist implications. Chris makes it very clear in the interview that he doesn’t think Rachael should be held accountable for her past actions because he doesn’t see any fault in her past actions — and anyone who does is simply trying to ruin the “great time” everyone (white people) was able to have before racism was invented three years ago.
Both Rachael and Chris have since issued multiple apologies, the implications of which I’ll cover in TATBT’s next belated recap. But for now, I’ll say that my aforementioned hesitation toward bringing the conversation back to race weeks after the show seemed to have already moved on from it, only to then watch Chris Harrison whine about “woke police” to a Black woman for 14 minutes…is pretty solid proof that I was trippin’, and we should absolutely NEVER take our kitten heels off the Bachelor franchise’s veiny neck.
Because this franchise can’t just choose one Black Bachelor, and then squeeze its eyes shut and hope that no one notices how it continues to uphold the exact same white, Christian, patriarchal values it always has. If we want to continue watching this show with sick glee, it’s also our responsibility to keep our eyes open to the behavior it normalizes and promotes.]
Which leads us to Matt’s 33-38 new girlfriends! And I’m so sorry to report that, no, they shan’t be lightening the mood around here — because this season is a bit of a disaster. And not in the self-sabotaging Peter Weber way, but more in the “huge systemic issues that no one with a clip board is even pretending to address” kind of way.
Still, either path leads to the worst Bachelor result imaginable, by which I of course mean — dun, dun, dun — episodes that don’t end with Rose Ceremonies.
THE GIRLS ARE MEAN; THE GUYS ARE MATT
Age doesn’t always directly correlate with emotional maturity…but after an aged-up cast for Clare and Tayshia’s season correlated pretty directly with a cast of men who were both interesting and didn’t spit in each other’s protein powder—it’s starting to feel like aging-up might be a good place to start???
On paper, the young women of Matt’s season seem like they should be able to have a nice time comparing their tie-dye leisure sets, and talking about intermittent fasting in between spending 10 minutes a week with their co-boyfriend. But in action, watching these women interact is a lot like watching a Ja’mie scene from Summer Heights High.
And yes, that is a 2007-era reference, because watching Victoria operate truly makes me feel like I have been transplanted from 2021 into at least a decade ago. I mean, this is a woman who unironically calls other women sluts; this is a woman with a Burn-Book-style hitlist of who she’s going to get eliminated next; this is a woman whose physical state deteriorates over the course of a Cocktail Party in what I can only imagine is some kind of Death-Becomes-Her-esque backfiring of a deal she made with a sexy satan played by Isabella Rossellini.
But what is perhaps most upsetting about Victoria is that her behavior is so noticeably reprehensible, that it seems to make a few of the other women believe that their own nastiness is more acceptable by comparison, and leads the group as a whole to lean into mean girl behavior with a wild abandon. I actually can’t recall the last time a group was this monstrous to one another. And yet, even the season’s greatest adversaries manage to agree on one thing…
The Bachelor is NOT a sorority.
But if that’s true, then can someone please explain why these women are out here making statements that I have only ever before heard said inside a freezing-cold auditorium during the fourth hour of the third round of rush deliberation???
It turns out that I actually love Katie, pictured above, and have a ton to learn from her about conflict resolution. But even she is wrong about what it means to be—or not be—in a sorority.
Both Katie and Victoria seem to think that this mansion full of their co-girlfriends cannot, and should not be a sorority because they’re under the misguided impression that sororities are…large groups of young women who all get along, I guess? But that’s not really the deal. Sororities are comprised of young women who simultaneously choose and are chosen to coexist in a group together, under one common perceived ideology, which mostly presents itself via parties with silly themes, and occasionally more formal functions where you talk to your date for 10 minutes, then get drunk with your friends until someone cries…
Is any of this sounding familiar? Okay, how about the fact that in both sororities, and on The Bachelor, everyone lives in a giant house together, under a mostly self-governed social system, despite the obvious fact that they need ample adult oversight so that no one does a butt-chug or calls one of their beloved sisters a “slore.”
What I’m saying is: ya best start believin’ in sororities, Katie — yer in one!
The only big difference between a sorority and the current Bachelor cast is that if a Kappa Theta cyber bullies a sister on Instagram, she has to go to a standards meeting, and some faculty advisor might eventually get involved and tell her, “No, that’s bad, you can’t come to Semi-Formal now.”
But if Victoria wreaks havoc on the psychological wellbeing of the entire Nemecolin lodge, or Anna spreads a dangerous rumor about her co-girlfriend, it’s actually encouraged by the producers, and they’re most certainly not going to report it to standards (Matt James). This season’s best hope of restoring balance to the sisterhood is that someone like Katie musters up the courage to risk her own place in the group by tattling to Matt that one sister-girlfriend has been spreading a rumor that another sister-girlfriend is one of Chicago’s most prolific escorts.
But before we get into the drama and slut-shaming, I’d love to focus on a few of the members of this season who we’ve barely learned anything about because they haven’t been sprinkling ex-lax in everyone’s overnight oats, so the producers won’t let us get to know them.
Starting out with the Bachelor himself, @MattJames919:
Matt James is allegedly a 28-year-old real estate broker who was born and raised in North Carolina, and now lives in New York City. And honestly—who isn’t? But these are not the kind of details we’re interested in…
Normally, the viewing audience is able to cement a new Bachelor lead’s personality in our minds during the Bachelorette season they first competed on, and then once they go on to take over the Bachelor reins, that impression melts down into a sort of Alex-Mack-like goo that holds their season together, but doesn’t add anymore to our general understanding of them.
But we don’t have that advantage with Matt, who has < Chris Harrison breaks through the wall like the Kool-Aid man > NEVER BEEN ON TELEVISION BEFORE. So, this is what I’ve learned about Matt from ten hours of watching him talk about how nervous he is, even though he has the Dorito-shaped body of a Marvel superhero, so I’m struggling to understand what he could be so nervous about when he is physically prepared to fight Thanos at any given moment:
Matt kisses with his eyes open. But Matt must be afraid of something because our guy stays constantly vigilant. We have seen him kiss exactly one woman with his eyes fully closed, and I just know it made Reality Steve scream, because now every dummy watching this show (me) has found a loophole to figuring out Matt’s winner. Still, watching Matt kiss with two slivers of eyeball visible makes this season’s many make-out sessions even more unnerving than usual. My guess is that Matt’s eyes are just so large, he actually has a broader field of vision than most people, and therefore has the ocular ability to focus on two things at once.
Matt James is very into activities. After Matt runs 20 miles in the Pennsylvania wilderness, he hops onto his Peleton bike to spin 60 more miles, then he moves onto sculpting his body by very slooooowly removing his shirt to reveal that his stomach is actually made out of eight small, wriggling puppies. When there is wood to be chopped for the wood-burning hot tub, Matt chops it; Matt is the trainer, handyman, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, and official Bachelor of Nemecolin Resort.
Matt James has read Brene Brown. Or at the very least, the inside of one of her book jackets has come into his line of vision (maybe even while he was open-eyed kissing someone?!). I know this, because the only thing Matt asks for from his 33 co-girlfriends is #vulnerability. And he asks for it constantly. Well, technically he asks for “vun-erability” constantly, because Matt is just so eager to talk about his desire for said vulnerability that the “L” kind of flies out the enunciation window altogether.
Matt says that vulnerability has always been difficult for him, but he’s going to try really hard to be vulnerable as the Bachelor. In the premiere, the aforementioned contestant Rachael tells Matt that vulnerability has always been difficult for her, but she’s going to try really hard to be vulnerable for him, the Bachelor. And Matt loves it, because sometime around 2016, saying that vulnerability is difficult for you became the new form of being invulnerable as a performance of vulnerability. But no one tell Matt that — he’s already going through enough.
Matt Jams is a nerd trapped in a jock’s body. This is not a smooth man! This is a nice man; this is a man who is not particularly funny but who, I think, appreciates humor; this is a hot man; this is a tall man. But a cool guy, Matt is not.
During his one-on-one date with Serena P, they have one of my favorite exchanges in Bachelor history:
SERENA: Did you have pets growing up?
MATT: I had a turtle.
SERENA: Oh, were you a weird kid?
It is a gorgeous, perfect read on Matt, and I simply can’t believe it came out of sweet Serena P’s mouth. Matt laughs at her response like it came out of left field, but Serena is clearly just a funny, astute person. You can be a weird kid without having a turtle…but you cannot have a turtle without being a weird kid. It’s abundantly clear that Matt was kind of a nerdy child who then developed the body and athletic skill of a mid-level Olympian, so he had to learn how to hang out with other good looking people…
But in his heart, there is turtle, and that is the best thing I’ve learned about him.
So, speaking of Serena P, I’ll quickly tell you about Matt’s other top women, so that you have a nice romance buzz going into truly some of the shittiest behavior I’ve ever seen on this franchise.
Before the one-on-ones even start, Matt forms a bond that can only be described as adorable with Abigail, and he gives her his First Impression Rose. Abigail was born deaf and she got cochlear implants as a child. It is super cool to not only have someone with a disability come on the show and share their experience with us, but also to watch Matt’s big eyeballs spin hearts like a slot machine every time he looks at her. Matt very clearly likes the sweet ones, and Abigail (and the li’l ear-tugging symbol she comes up with to let Matt know she’s thinking about him even when they’re in a big group) is just about as sweet as they come.
Matt’s very first one-on-one is with Bri, who bonds with Matt over being biracial, and raised by a single mom. Bri is half black, half Persian, and knock-you-down pretty. Matt chews on his lips like Kristen Stewart in the Twilight movies every time he talks to her. Bri isn’t not-sweet, but what I like most about her is that she’s very straight-forward. She doesn’t need to talk about having trouble being vulnerable. She just talks. And when Matt almost kills her by trying to do tricks on an ATV, she simply instigates a sexy mud fight. I feel as though Bri has never been in an awkward situation in her life, and has a dresser full of delicate Marie Kondo folded tank tops. She’s just good, gorgeous people.
Speaking of good people, Matt hasn’t been on a one-on-one date with Chelsea yet, but she is a 6-foot-tall runway model who is always in some fabulous, oversized coat and wears her natural hair in a buzzcut. So, having never seen anyone else like her in the history of this franchise, people are clambering to find out what her deal is and how we might grab brunch with her in Brooklyn some time.
In four episodes, we have gotten one significant segment with Chelsea and Matt during a group date where she talks to him about how hair can be a very emotional thing, especially for Black women, and the freedom she felt after finally buzzing her head. During the episode, we heard Matt reply to Chelsea with, “I can’t imagine,” which is kind of his go-to expression to every single story a woman tells him. But on a podcast, Matt said that he talked with Chelsea about his own experience having an afro, and the show just didn’t air it — can you believe it?
We did at least get to hear Matt reference Chelsea’s “bam-bam dress” from night one, which is good, because that dress should be referenced every hour on the hour for the rest of the season.
See, wouldn’t you love to know more about Chelsea, or Bri, or Abigail? Well too fucking bad!
It’s about to be all Victoria all the time, and there is nothing bam-bam about what she’s up to, except the noise my head makes as I beat it against my coffee table while watching her behave like a cartoon villain.
AW HELL, THE QUEEN
In a year of bad news, some of the worst news I’ve ever received is that Christopher B. Harrison writes erotica. I can’t explain to you the jolt that went through my body — yet nowhere near my nether regions — upon receiving this dispatch during a group date promoting Chris Harrisons’ 2016 romance novel, The Perfect Letter. I’m sure it will come as a shock to no one that hearing Chris Harrison’s words about burning loins and writhing bodies read aloud is the impetus for the season’s first nasty brawl.
I mean, technically the nastiness started the moment Victoria arrived on night one, cruising right past “not here to make friends,” territory, and directly into “here to actively make enemies.” With each new episode of The Bachelor, Victoria targets a new woman and attempts to take her down through lying, bullying, and manipulation, and when anyone asks her not to do that, she says that they’re trying to stop her from expressing herself. Apropos of nothing, I would love to know where Victoria was on the afternoon of January 6th.
Victoria refers to herself exclusively as the “queen” upon her arrival, wearing a tiara, and calling all of the other women princesses. Or alternatively, bitches.
When Bri receives the first one-on-one date, and some of the women casually say that they’re happy for her, Victoria scowls that they’re all “fakes ass bitches,” and she’s the only one who’s real for saying she’s not happy for Bri. A soft-spoken woman named Marylynn tries to say that it’s understandable for Victoria to be jealous—
But you guys, she’s not jealous, she just wants what Bri has!
And technically, Victoria is right—that’s envy, not jealousy. Still, Victoria’s negativity doesn’t make her more honest than the rest of the women, it just makes her more desperate for attention and validation. Later, when Bri is actually on the date, and a couple of women mention that they wish they could be on a date, Victoria starts ranting that now they all agree with her, when before they were so rude to her.
Have you ever been less surprised by anything in your life than Victoria trying to blame her bad attitude on being an empath?
Victoria says in her confessional that Marylynn is “psychologically disturbed” while Marylynn literally blinks quietly in a corner. She then tells Matt that Marylynn is “toxic and manipulative” and Matt believes her because this man has no defense mechanisms. He is a turtle without a shell.
Victoria is very clearly insecure in her surroundings, and lashing out with lies and accusations toward anyone she sees as a threat, all while insisting that she’s very secure, and she’s not jealous, EVERYONE ELSE IS JEALOUS!!! This kind of get-them-before-they-get-me behavior is absolutely intolerable to watch, and at first, it seems like the women experiencing it can’t stand Victoria either. So, what does an insecure person desperate for dominance do when no one’s on their side?
They create a different common enemy, whip up a chaotic frenzy around that person, and become the leader of an angry mob.
THE SARAH SHOW
But that’s where Victoria is wrong, yet again. This is a sorority, and episode 3 of season 25 of The Bachelor IS “The Sarah Show.”
You see, Matt’s second one-on-one is with a young woman named Sarah who might easily be described as “a little bit Alexis”:
Sarah is 60K-followers-on-Instagram-even-before-the-show gorgeous, and Matt is very into that fact about her. Matt also continues to be drawn to sweeties, and the main thing we learn about Sarah before her downfall is that she recently quit her job and moved home to contribute to caretaking duties for her father who was diagnosed with ALS.
This is a very private thing for Sarah to share with someone she’s only known for two hours, and when she finally works up the nerve to do so in the nighttime portion of their date, Matt loves it. Not because her family is facing something awful, but because he can’t think of a more selfless act than Sarah taking care of her father, and he’s honored that she’s chosen to come on the show and go on this date with him…
Personally, I feel like if a woman told me she was sacrificing precious moments with her father to date me, when I knew that I’d only be seeing her for about 20 minutes a week from here on out, and that she faces a 29-in-30 chance of me dumping her…I would be a little overwhelmed. But Matt and Sarah bond over this intimate conversation, and by the time they leave the date, Sarah is shocked at how serious her feelings for Matt are already.
The feelings are apparently so serious that when Sarah is brought in as one of the live audience members for the Chris-Harrison-erotica-themed group date that shaved a year off my life, she’s heartbroken to hear the other women reading their own fanfiction about Matt’s loins, and their loins, and the potential joining of said loins.
Sarah says that after the best date of her life, it’s triggering for her to watch other women flirt with Matt, especially considering her own insecurities surrounding jealousy and infidelity.
Now, if Sarah just complained about this in her confessionals, it would be a little eyeroll-worthy that she willfully ignored learning how The Bachelor worked before coming on the show. But Sarah doesn’t stop at her confessionals — no, she gets so worked up that she breaks into the nighttime portion of this group date uninvited, and interrupts Katie moments after she’s sat down with Matt for their first conversation since the premiere.
Katie begrudgingly agrees to give Sarah a moment because she assumes something must be seriously wrong if Sarah has showed up to interrupt their date. But when Sarah starts talking with Matt, she basically just tells him that she doesn’t know why she came to see him [ed. note: if you listen very closely, you can hear the whisper of two producers cackling in the wind], she just knew she needed to get some time with him to let him know how she was feeling.
She says this with, uh, no hint of irony while interrupting a date full of women who have had no time with him, and who would very much like Matt to know how they’re feeling as well (VULNERABLE!!!).
Katie comes back to reclaim her time with Matt, and when Sarah asks for five more minutes, Katie responds: “Two more minutes.” Sarah’s face kind of falls like, Oh, has everyone not found my insecurity as adorable as Matt did? How could I, the protagonist of The Bachelor, have possibly seen this coming?
But even realizing that she’s clearly offended Katie doesn’t make Sarah act any differently— she just proceeds with her own prerogative to further secure Matt’s understanding of how much she needs him, asking to be walked out on Katie’s time, and planning to ask the other women for forgiveness later…
She does not receive it.
Sarah rolls up to this group of women whose date she just stole (Matt ends the date without having spoken to half of the women which is…bullshit?) and says she wants to “be the bigger person” by telling them directly that she snuck into their date and talked to their co-boyfriend
Now, I might’a had’ta tell a girl some facts if she told me that she was being a bigger person than me by informing me that she stole my time; that’s not being a bigger person, that’s trying to control a narrative. And no one controls the narrative in this house except Beelzebulb himself, because these women have been possessed by something.
They’re not actually too hard on Sarah in this moment — probably because they can hear Matt mouth-breathing like that kid from Hey Arnold! somewhere nearby — but once the women are safely back in their quarters, and Sarah spends the entire next day holed away in her room in order to avoid her fellow girlfriends…
Chaos erupts, fire rains down, and Victoria has finally found her foothold for power.
While Sarah cries upstairs about how she might not be cut out for this, Victoria is downstairs whipping up a frenzy downstairs that, should Sarah ever emerge from her room, will absolutely assure her she’s not cut out for this.
Matt doesn’t make the situation better when he arrives to take Sierra P on their one-on-one, starts to apologize about what happened with Sarah the night before, only to notice that Sarah isn’t sitting in the group, and then goes upstairs to check on her — leaving the women waiting because of Sarah yet again, and taking time away from his date with Sierra. It’s…a pretty shitty thing of Matt to do, that he thinks is a nice thing of him to do, and that the other women will blame entirely on Sarah.
They’re all positive that Sarah is manipulating Matt—that she doesn’t really want to leave, she just wants him to tell her to stay. And sure, they’re almost definitely right about that. But the ones who seem most pissed about it are the ones who are seething that they didn’t think of this first. What comes next, after Sarah spends another day locked in her room, giving the other women time to cement that she’s a Siren sent there to destroy their chances with Matt, is very bad…
But I have to admit, the moment when Sarah tries to quietly sneak into the group while the next group date card is being read after she hadn’t come downstairs or spoken to anyone for two days was…
…simply delicious. The entire room comes to a screeching halt. Sarah takes the opportunity to speak up, saying that she wants to apologize to all of the women that she interrupted the day before, specifically Katie. She also apologizes for not coming down to clear the air sooner. “I know the timing was bad, and I sincerely apologize,” Sarah says.
So, anyone who’s been droning on for two days straight about how Sarah just needs to apologize and own up to what she did should be satisfied now, right? Because surely they all know that no amount of berating Sarah in this moment is going to have any impact on the fact that Matt will still see her as a tiny, beautiful woman wearing a tiny, beautiful bomber jacket and being vulnerable with him.
But anyone who really didn’t care about an apology or accountability, or who was just using those things as an excuse to bond with the other women, and really only cares about establishing their dominance by making Sarah feel like shit…
Well, that’s someone who might not accept Sarah’s apology and drag this whole Sarah thing out, while simultaneously complaining about this being the Sarah show.
Some of the other women aren’t easy on Sarah either though. Serena C tells her that she’s burned all her bridges, Anna says Sarah clearly thinks she’s more important than them, and Kit—the 21-year-old daughter of Cynthia Rowley—really comes in with the kicker: “I hope that your connection with Matt is really strong, because the rest of your living situation here is going to be terrible.”
Threats—how fun! Sarah walks away weeping, and no one will let her talk to them. Until finally, one shining beacon of decency arrives…
ACTUAL QUEEN KATIE
The thing that I like most about Katie is that she’s kind, but she’s not particularly nice. Her basic human empathy isn’t for show, or because she’s some overly maternal character. She’s just a decent person, and from what the producers have chosen to show us of this group of women, basic human decency is absolutely the most we can hope for right now.
Katie goes to check on Sarah because she doesn’t like the way Sarah was just treated by the group at large. Sarah tells Katie that she’s made up her mind about leaving the show, and in a surprising twist, Katie tries to convince her to stay.
Again, not because she’s nice, but just because she’s a reasonable person who’s realized that Matt obviously really likes Sarah, and if she leaves, that is going to fuck with Matt’s head, potentially distracting him even more from ever spending that 10 minutes with Katie she’s been trying to grab for three weeks now.
That’s when Sarah tells Katie that a large part of her stress over being there is that her father is dealing with a terminal illness: “And it’s not, like, years or months, it’s maybe weeks.”
Katie’s eyes immediately well up, and she backtracks on everything she’s just said, telling Sarah that she supports her going home 100 percent. Katie’s father passed away in 2012. “If I could get back the minutes I had with him…” Katie says, trailing off.
That’s when Katie and Sarah become too emotional to continue speaking, and also when my vision becomes too impaired by my own tears to continue typing.
“I understand more than I would like to,” I hear but do not see Katie tell Sarah. “I missed out on my goodbye to my dad, and I would never want that for you.” So, Sarah goes to Matt’s house and tells him she has to leave, and Katie goes downstairs and tells everyone else they need to shut the fuck up.
Oh wait, that’s what I would have said. Katie tells the other women—many of whom are still gleeful in their bond over blaming every single negative aspect of this notoriously nightmarish experience on Sarah—that she’s just spoken to Sarah who has decided to go home because she has a family crisis looming over her.
Imagine clapping for someone else’s family misfortune! Imagine thinking Sarah’s departure will make you anymore loved! Google “schadenfreude” to find the above photo of Victoria!
Katie, who insists she’s never been in a sorority, encourages everyone to “stay classy in this process,” so I guess that’s just a phrase that’s built into all women’s DNA. And it’s advice that most of the other women seem to respond to on a biological level, because they recognize that the threat against their time with Matt—Sarah—has been eliminated.
But for some of the women, no longer having Sarah to blame for all of their problems is actually a bad thing…
The next morning, after Sarah has left, Victoria is still trying desperately to hang on to the tie that formerly bonded her to the rest of the women: talking shit about Sarah. So, at this point, Katie does actually tell her to shut the fuck up.
Victoria is visibly shaken, even though her mouth keeps moving with confidence: “No I won’t stop, Katie. I’ll do whatever the fuck I want.” Yes, you have made that very clear, Victoria!
But Vic wants to make it clearer still, so she pulls Katie aside to tell her that it was rude to interrupt her while she was expressing herself earlier. “Are you talking about today, when you were calling Sarah names?” Katie clarifies, gorgeously.
Victoria confirms, yes, she is talking about the time when she was calling Sarah “trash” for leaving a reality show to spend time with her terminally ill father, and Katie asked to her to stop. Victoria quite literally tells Katie that name-calling is a part of her self expression, and she thinks she deserves an apology for Katie interrupting her during said self-expression.
This season has been pretty tough to stomach so far — but being there at the precise moment that Victoria realized Katie was not the one to be trifled with was one singular beautiful moment among the mess.
So why don’t we end this recap on a high note, before I tell you about that time the producers brought in five new women three weeks into this process, letting loose every remaining strand of dignity this season had. Sound fun?! Great. See you there.
