‘The Bachelor’ Recap, Season 21 Episode 10: The Case Of The Sex Rooms And The Women Scorned

I make it a habit not to complain about my job, ever since my ex-wife Dorothy emptied a gravy boat into my lap after I went an entire dinner without asking her how she was, but I think I might need to break my habit for a moment in order to tell you that I��m mad as hell. You can’t just book my detective services for an evening, and then decide in the moment how long you’re gonna need them for. It can’t be one hour one week and three hours the next; I need to be kept on a schedule in order to keep two very important things under control — my paycheck and my night terrors. We’re close to having this case solved, and reuniting Thumb with his missing likeability, so let’s everyone keep acting like rational people, and I can get home to my family by a reasonable hour.

Roll tape.

As this episode of The Bachelor begins, we’re waking up with Raven in Lapland, Finland, and she is a new woman. As she eagerly tells the camera, “Nick is really good at what he does,” and I’ve never heard such an unintentionally cutting way of describing him. The guy doesn’t do much, but he does do sex, and it sounds like he’s good at it, based on this “I Had My First O Last Night” montage that the producers have put together for Raven. She is loved up and feeling good.

Less lucky with her coverage is Bachelorachel, who gets the second date with Thumb, and continues talking about their deep, electric connection while maintaining a healthy distance of at least ten feet at all times. When I tell you to watch what a suspect does in an interview instead of listening to what they say, this is the kind of thing I’m talking about. The activity on their date is cross-country skiing, which is pretty widely understood to be an excuse for two people not to touch each other as they travel through a snow-covered forest. (Dorothy and I are both Olympic gold medalists in cross-country skiing, if that tells you anything.) It’s already been clear for weeks that Bachelorachel has nothing to do with this case, as we’re opening a whole new file on her when The Bachelorette starts up, but it’s still jarring to see Thumb zooming ahead of her on the trail, not even making eye contact as they feed reindeer together, and of course, administering the dreaded leg touch.

This is a perp who wants to confess that he feels nothing for the person opposite him, and it’s reading all over his face. Bachelorachel has decided that this is the day she shares her feelings with Thumb finally, and Thumb has decided that this is the day he’ll go for the record of “Most Times Interrupting A Woman Who Is Much More Interesting Than You.” Every time she gets close to completing a full sentence, this horny little Buddy the Elf is jumping in with a sentence fragment. He might as well be saying, “Me too, but more” in the middle of every revelation she’s attempting to share with him. It is incredibly romantic, and never more so than when he refers to the volleyball date where, “you kind of lost your mind.” Wow, does anyone have a ring? I would like to propose marriage to this overbaked ham right now.

My only consolation is that he definitely won’t sleep with her, since we’ve all known for weeks that Bachelorachel goes home, and there’s no chemistry between her and Thumb, and sorry, did you need me to put another reason in this space? That felt like two pretty good ones. But just when I was certain that Thumb was going to pull a Thumb and eliminate Bachelorachel before the Rose Ceremony, they decided to spend the night together instead, right after Bachelorachel told Thumb she’s falling in love with him, and he tells her he’s falling in love with her back. “I know we’re gonna go so much deeper than we’ve gone before,” Bachelorachel tells the camera, all but winking. Ummmm okay, sure. I don’t want to invalidate your feelings or anything, but the optics on this are insane. You guys are really gonna tell me that you’re falling in love, and then have the next, supposedly post-coital morning shot be Bachelorachel in a set of footie pajamas, wrapping herself around Thumb?

Truly I cannot. Let’s go instead to Vanessa, whose date consists of running back and forth from pools of ice water to a hot sauna while scantily-clad — now there’s a date. This woman is The Clue, and we all know that, so it doesn’t really matter if you like her or not, because she must be picked, but my favorite thing about The Clue is how little she lets Thumb get away with. Every time she scolds him or brings up something about Thumb that she doesn’t, his power boner for her grows stronger, so he is all but at half mast as they sprint back and forth between the two temperatures, with The Clue threatening to murder him every five minutes.

And unlike other women, with whom he normally talks about old dates they had and why their walls are up and what they think about the drama in the house, Thumb and The Clue are actually having important conversations, like the role of family in their future life together, non-negotiables in each of their lives, and their core values as human beings. You know — a date. The Clue is holding firm on the things that are important to her, and Thumb is hedging about uprooting his (unemployed, driftless, unsettled) life to prioritize a relationship, citing fears that the two of them are “too similar,” while The Clue makes this face.

It’s definitely been annoying that The Clue frequently forgets the meaning of the game and the fact that there are still other women involved, but she redeems herself when she gets to pin Thumb down with these tough questions and demands. For example, she only wants to be engaged and married once, and I really appreciate seeing that she’s not just going to go along with whatever future Thumb decides on, but that she has her own vision of what a life together would and should look like. She tells him she loves him, and he tells the camera that he’s worried that this relationship has the potential for more conflict than the others that he’s been pursuing on the show, and they pull out their invitation to spend the night together, and that tiny silver key that you know they recycle for all three women. You think they bought three separate tiny keys? Get real, you’re holding the same key that already unlocked Raven’s door to Pleasure Island two nights before. They decide to spend the night together, but not which country they’ll live in, YOLO.

And now, at long last, it’s time for the Rose Ceremony, and for Thumb to gin up some tears as he says goodbye to Bachelorachel and their explosive chemistry*.

*closed mouth kisses.

He calls Raven first, which I take as a surefire sign that The Clue is the odds-on favorite, followed by The Clue herself. That leaves Bachelorachel out in the cold, of course, and Thumb dutifully sits down to with her to improve both of their edits. Her responses are all, “I tried to put myself out there,” and “this is really hard for me,” and his are all, “you are such a wonderful girl,” and “thirty someones, I mean someone is going to be so lucky to meet you.” Every minute of this woman’s screentime has been a Bachelorette edit, and I’m starting to get pretty annoyed by it, because it meant we never really got to meet the real Rachel. We met Bachelorachel, who was trying all season to make America fall in love with her, and now that we have, I hope they give the poor girl a break for a second. She’s been working very hard to be lovable.

That concludes my surveillance on Thumb and his Sex Rooms, but I do also have some footage of individual interviews on a separate tape, that we might as well go through right now. The tape is labeled “The Women Tell All,” and I’ve been made to understand that anyone on it has already been eliminated as a suspect, but ABC thinks it would be worthwhile for me to watch it, so I guess I’ll clear my schedule and tell my teenage daughter I’m busy. She wanted to see Get Out. Not with me, with her friends, but she wanted me to drive her. Sometimes she sits in the backseat and screams at me like a hotel magnate. I love her so much.

Anyway, let’s catch up with women that Thumb definitely doesn’t end up with, and see if he still remembers their names.

Roll more tape.

For some reason, this time around, we’re only speaking with nineteen of the most compelling women of the case, and I really appreciate someone finally making my job easier for once. Whre was this sort of paring down at the beginning of the season, when I was trying to interview thirty suspects with no resources, and a roving fuckboi continuously gumming up the works. This entire special could essentially be a series of tweets, so I’m going to jot down those notes in a more raw form.

• Right up top, Chris Harrison acknowledges that this surveillance tape would have been nearly unwatchable without My Nanny Raquel, which I appreciate.
• Are The Backstreet Boys also the next Bachelorette? They too are getting a very favorable edit, and being revisited after their time on the show ended.
• Baby Doctor, I’m sorry for the way things went down between us, but I am here for that hair and that jumpsuit.
• Elizabeth has apparently been told she has one last night to make a phrase catch on, and get the curse lifted. Tonight she’s trying “unleash your inner Khaleesi” and “slob kabob.” Nice try, but I think you have to stay trapped in your lamp for another thousand years.
• I’ve made my final ruling in My Nanny Raquel vs. Taylor, and my judgement is in favor of My Nanny Raquel, who’s sitting through an intense critique from pretty much everyone on stage, while Taylor is falling apart at the mere mention that not everyone is on her side.

• Liz is blond now, and slightly more likable. She finally manages to get the right spin on her story — she went on The Bachelor to see if there was still a connection between the two of them, and there wasn’t. She feels she deserves to be fought for, and presumably Thumb feels that he deserves not to be ambushed on his show on national television. Both valid points.
• Taylor feels she should be encouraged and supported just because she’s in a helping profession, and My Nanny Raquel will be ruled by no man, getting up in the middle of the broadcast to get herself some damn champagne.

• Pilates Whitney is the unexpected MVP, with the line, “I feel like you guys are both condescending in your own way,” delivered to My Nanny Raquel and Taylor.
• My Nanny Raquel can’t decide if she wants to own her naps or blame them on an anxiety attack that she claims she was having the night she skipped the Rose Ceremony.
• It comes out that Taylor also naps. Crowd gasps. Some women and children pass out. The men bravely pass them into the lifeboats.
• My Nanny Raquel clarifies her “my nanny Raquel” comments — she was just looking for a word that was more intimate that housekeeper, and settled on nanny, but wants to make sure that isn’t disrespectful, because Raquel has been incredibly present for and supportive of her, and is essentially part of the family.
• We revisit that fateful moment where Kristina killed Thumb’s boner by sharing an intimate, private account of her life and growing up in poverty, when she talks about being so hungry that she ate lipstick, and the smile literally fell off the front of Thumb’s face.

• Kristina cries after watching herself be vulnerable, and has been contacted by some of the other kids who grew up in the same orphanage.
• Liz also cries after watching Kristina be vulnerable, but has a less compelling reason.
• Once Thumb comes out, Lacey wants to know if he friend-zoned her, and if not, why he spent the entirety of their second-to-last alone time talking about Josephine. Thumb and Chris get really indignant together, saying that definitely didn’t happen, but even if it did, it was probably because Thumb just wasn’t all that into Lacy…which is what she said in the first place, ya little shits.
• Alexis announces that she was a proud resident of the Friend Zone, and households all across America pour a little out in her memory. See you in Paradise, girl.
• Someone has told these women that it’s their last chance to take Thumb to task on national television, and they might as well be lined up at the mic to do so — Kristina wants to know what was missing from their interactions, since it was all there on paper, Danielle L. wants to know why he told her that at the beginning, he thought they’d get engaged, and Dominique deserves a trophy for, “Why did you reject the qualities you were looking for?” She pointed out that Thumb would say a relationship lacked depth, and then the woman would tell him she loved him, and his next move would be to eliminate them. She felt a lack of empathy from him, and I want to kiss her full on the mouth for making Thumb deal with the reality of the women he eliminated like Taylor made the Rose Ceremony deal with her stinky fart in one of the bloopers.

• When they bring Rachel out, the women start hooting like animals, falling over themselves and talking over each other to compliment her, raising their voices and asking to take her leftovers.
• Chris Harrison is trying to talk about how groundbreaking it is that Bachelorachel is the first black Bachelorette, as if it isn’t his and ABC’s own damn fault that it took this long. Get out of here, Chris girl, the rest of us have been wanting this for a while.
• Thumb tells Bachelorachel that the guy will be really lucky to meet her, and she gets a gold star for responding with, “They are.”

And with a couple more shots of Thumb and Bachelorachel making nice, we’re finally speeding toward that final round of surveillance, the three-hour finale. My god, I’m never gonna see my kid ever again. But at least we’ll finally be able to close this case, and get Thumb’s likability back to him. If he even still wants it anymore.

Alexis Rhiannon (@mindtheclam) is a freelance writer and comedian who grew up in Portland, Oregon, and is now located in New York City. Her interests include reality television, bar trivia, pop culture conspiracies, and someday cleaning her apartment. She can be seen monthly at the improvised show Live Dubbed Sitcoms at Videology in Williamsburg.

Watch "Episode 10" of The Bachelor Season 21 on Hulu

Watch "The Women Tell All" episode of The Bachelor Season 21 on Hulu