Author: Justin Kirkland / Source: USA TODAY
The former auto racer will be the serial dater for the 22nd season of the show. Wochit
I started watching The Bachelor during Season 17 with Sean Lowe — admittedly pretty late in The Bachelor game. The franchise wasn’t really in my wheelhouse, and I started watching simply to mock it.
I’m a big enough person to admit that by the end of the season, I found something irresistibly charming about the serendipitous chance of love that can happen on national television. Sean is still married to Catherine Giudici, the woman he chose at the end of his season. They’ve since had a baby and remain fan-favorites.
But on the first episode of this season’s two-night finale, the premise of The Bachelor came crashing down a couple stories. Becca Kufrin was proposed to by Season 22 Bachelor Arie Luyendyk Jr., only to have the proposal rescinded a couple weeks later.
Unfortunately, these things happen in life. We are human, forced to decide and err in the most painful of ways. But what made Monday’s episode so incredibly cringeworthy is that the rescinding happened about 50 minutes before the three-hour window of TV came to an end. (There are still two more hours left to air Tuesday night.)
So for the better part of an hour, we watched a dual camera feed project the real-time downfall of a woman who had invested her time and emotion into a process she believed might work. And though it may not be the most sympathetic perspective, we watched a man have to rectify the error of choosing incorrectly in front of millions of viewers.
More: ‘The Bachelor’ recap: Three hours, two devastated women and one worst finale ever
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It conjured, in an unpleasant way, the summer of 2017 when Corinne Olympios and DeMario Jackson became the spotlight of a national scandal in which a “did they or didn’t they” situation arose after an internal report of sexual misconduct was made on the set of Bachelor in Paradise. After a bout of heavy drinking, a crew member came forward with allegations of misconduct and filming was suspended.
Production resumed following an internal investigation that found no…
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