‘The Bachelor’ After the Final Rose Recap: The Lackluster Proposal And The New Bachelorette

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. It’s time for After the Final Rose, the true end of this season of emotional torture porn, and the producers of The Bachelor are going to try to make you feel it all. This room full of people doesn’t know it yet, and are cheering wildly as the lights come up. They have no idea that they’re about to be trotted through their emotional paces as efficiently as a Corgi at the Westminster Dog Show. A proposal you don’t care about? Sure, why not. A Bachelorette you do care about, on a network you just lost all trust in? You know it, baby. The start to a new season with ten minutes left in the broadcast while Chris Harrison repeatedly mugs into the camera about how he’s the true victim of this/last?? season? Please take me out behind the barn and shoot me.

But before we start a new season — because yes, that does literally happen in this episode — we have to finish the old one. And that means revisiting all the paralyzing footage from last night of Arie breaking up with Becca. What a lovely treat, up to and including the sentence, “The more I hung out with you, the more I was losing the possibility of maybe reconciling with Lauren.” There was so much to delve into last night that I didn’t even notice how insane it is that Arie referred to what he and Becca were doing post-show as “hanging out.” I didn’t realize that term was synonymous with “starting a life with the woman to whom I’m engaged,” but you learn something new every day! Like the fact that A WEEK before the breakup, Becca and Arie were still talking about their future plans, and that they had LOOKED AT MOTHERFUCKING HOUSES TOGETHER.

It’s already insane, but it only becomes more insane when you hear more about this timeline. Arie and Becca were only engaged for about a month and a half, and for the final two weeks of that at least, Arie was already checked out, because he’d had a phone conversation with Fouren that indicated that she was still interested in him. And in true shitbird fashion, it sounds like he’d given assurances to Becca throughout that time, so she’s super confused now. Duh. Apparently he told her he couldn’t even have conversations with Fouren, which A) WAS TRUE, and B) she believed right up until the final week of their relationship, before he so gracefully and emotionlessly broke up with her on national television.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First I have to watch all this footage of Becca in Minneapolis, weeping as she looks through her photos and journals of the relationship, and remind myself that I will never forgive ABC for what they’re doing to this woman.

Speaking of tears, we still never see any from Arie, either sad or happy, throughout this episode. The most he’ll offer is a resurgence of “I hate this for her,” about Becca, but he really does not seem to hate this for her. He seems to sit and wait this for her. He is his regular, terrifyingly flat self throughout, with just some vague squinching around the eyes at very times suggesting discomfort or a mild pleasure. Currently, that squinching is taking place outside Fouren’s home in Virginia Beach, and be arranged to suggest “nervousness.” He tells the camera that his old biggest fear was that he’d choose the wrong person — well done, came true! — and that his new one is that he “risked everything for nothing.”

A great soundbite, but as the women pointed out later, complete bullshit. In the moments when he’s having a panic attack outside of Fouren’s house, Arie has actually had assurances for over a month that Fouren is still interested. He first reached out on New Years Eve, broke up with Becca about two weeks later if I’m following everything correctly, and now this is February, about a month after the breakup? Which explains why this is his greeting from Fouren when she opens the door.

Apparently they’d been talking a lot by phone, and at first she was angry, but we missed that part. Which is great, totally great, because that was literally the only reason I was in any way looking forward to tonight’s episode. I assumed that someone would read Arie the riot act; the way I played it in my mind, either Fouren would be pissed, or in my total dream world, her parents would be there next to her, protecting her heart the way they promised to on Hometowns.

But nope, it’s an empty house that bears witness to Arie’s professions of love to Fouren, and her tentative questions to him about his past relationship with Becca. Did they have as much of a relationship as the two of them? Absolutely not. Apparently it was all Becca’s fault for acting too confident. Or else it was Fouren’s fault for not being confident enough. One of those two reasons is what confused Arie enough to make such a devastating series of wrong choices. Do you feel like you’re over Becca? YES, 1000%. Jesus Christ. For me, that’s the biggest red flag ever manufactured in North America, that he can discard an engagement that easily, but Fouren is here. for. it.

Not only does she forgive him right away and agree to give him another shot, but she underlines for him that she’s ready to fucking GET ENGAGED TO HIM PRETTY SOON. Jesus Christ. When future generations ask about this moment of pure romance, let it be said that “it happened with her foundation literally all over his lips.” And this boy trash, so I’m gonna let him walk around like this all day.

Back in the studio, the rest of the women from Season 22 are here to comment on the episode, and to make sure it’s clear that they aren’t mad at Fouren at all, which I appreciate. Everyone feels like Arie is super manipulative, and the girl’s in love with him. And and and, as Bekah points out, Fouren hadn’t even seen the season when they reunited; he was telling each woman different things so they’d feel confident, so of course she took him back. I probably would have, too.

In the same segment, Tia provides information about the timing that totally discredits Arie’s version of events, and accuses him of “bridging the gap” between the two women, which definitely seems like it happened. Bad Car Boy didn’t break it off with his fiancée until he was literally sure Fouren would take him back, no matter what he told the cameras. And throughout, Chris is pimping anyone he can get his hands on into saying that it was okay — nay, good — that ABC televised so much of Becca’s heartbreak for the cameras. Even Becca herself.

Clad in what looks to be one of her show gowns, Becca gets trotted back out and encouraged to let ABC off the hook. The key phrases she’s obviously been drilled on are “watch it all back,” “relive those moments,” and “get closure,” and Chris is trying desperately throughout to get on the right side of history by aligning himself with the wronged woman instead of the wrong man. And while it’s great that ABC is going to match whatever donation to Stand Up to Cancer that this impromptu fund for Becca raises, standing with her is a task that seems like it would be a lot simpler if I believed Chris Harrison thought women in general were for anything other than touching and talking over. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Speaking of touching when you don’t deserve it, we’re about to bring Arie out, so I hope you’re prepared! Becca gets about five sentences of her own to give the audience a sketchy groundwork for what the Arizona native kept secret and for how long, but before she can really clarify, Chris is ready to bring him out. Which is okay, right? You want to see Arie? Or it’s okay? You won’t sue us? IS IT OKAY WE BRING ARIE OUT?!?! HE ALREADY HERE!!!! As if she can say anything but yes.

Literally how dare you reach for a hug when Becca quite plainly put up the two “no thank you” hands in front of her body. First thing out of her mouth, “I know that it’s been really hard for you.” And folks, he never had me, but he still lost me. She’s asking him a lot of good questions, but she can’t pin this little eel down. She asks him, “When did you know?” which somehow he turns into, “There was a lot of guilt and a lot of shame.” He claims he did it the way he did so that the audience would know it was on him and not on Becca, and I had to go knock on my neighbor’s door, because my eyes rolled out of my head and into their apartment. She asks why he wasn’t fully honest, and he says he wanted to be sure. Except that he JUST SAID the moment that he was sure was in the conversation with Fouren. Which he didn’t tell Becca about beforehand, or for the week after.

Literally she just wants to know when he fully gave up on them, which is a very valid question when we’re working with a time frame of 45 days, much of which they were apart during. Arie keeps reminding Becca and the audience that she said she said she SAAIIIIDDDDD it was okay for him to get in touch with Fouren. (Although I highly doubt she said it was okay to fucking slide into her Instagram DMs, which is the humiliating way this happened that makes it all so much worse. And lends a lot of credence to Bekah’s posts about him sliding into her Twitter DMs, which some have insisted is just Arie “being friendly”.) But the one good thing Chris does all night is help Becca clarify that YEAH, she said it was okay, because she thought he was making the phone call to close a door, not to open one up.

Ugh, this dude should go to work in the Trump campaign, this is very hard to watch.

Arie admits that he regrets proposing, and Becca’s like, why did you? He says it was pressure, but she had asked him at the time if he felt pressure, and he kept telling her no, and how he was so sure about them. He says when it all came down to it, he needed more time to make a decision, and he didn’t have any. SO MAKE MORE TIME BISH. Ugh, I’m over it. But Becca’s a better woman than I am — or at least much closer to getting Bachelorette — and even though Arie’s showing zero remorse in his dead little eyes, she forgives him. “Just hold her heart high; have the most respect for her, be committed to her,” she tells him about Fouren. And that, my friends, is the moment that Becca became Bachelorette.

The show also had Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney on, since they went through something similar, and Jason is cancelled for telling everyone that Arie is such a nice guy and that we should be worried about all the other bad stuff happening in the world. Wow, what a brilliant point, thank you so much for being here, you celebrated legal scholar/Seattle realtor/franchise relic.

Molly does share that she doesn’t think that their relationship would exist today if it hadn’t happened the way it did, because they had to lean on each other so hard during the firestorm, which strengthened their foundation. And while I hope for Fouren’s sake that it goes that way for her and Arie, I really don’t see that happening.

EXCEPT I COULD BE WRONG BECAUSE. — and this is the real reveal of the evening — FOUREN HAS NOT WATCHED THE FINALE. ALERT ALERT. In fact, based on her chemistry with Arie and the obliviousness in her eyes, I would posit that she hasn’t seen a single episode all season. Could that be why Arie was so eager to get ahold of her on New Years’ Eve? To reach out to her before she had a chance to watch the ways he manipulated both her and Becca all season? I have no proof, but I believe strongly in this theory.

Either way, the audience is seriously jarred by the way we swung from Becca and Arie’s terse reunion right into Arie and Fouren smiling into each others’ mouths, and they are barely holding it together. “He couldn’t go about it in a more respectful way,” Fouren chirps, and you can hear a barely-stifled revolt in the background. We’ve ceased cutting to the women altogether, because presumably they’re in full battle garb with streaks of blood on their cheeks. They announce they’re leaving the country for a while — ha! ha! ha! they laugh, because everyone hates us here! — and then Fouren is moving to Arizona. Wow. I am. I am just so sad and embarrassed for everything that’s happening right now.

But if you thought.

You were

Uncomfortable before.

You will not believe.

What happened next.

THIS MOTHERFUCKER RIGHT HERE. Can. You. Believe. He just said — he just said — what a mistake it was to propose to Becca after so little time knowing each other. Literally that was moments ago, and it’s the only thing that the dude would cop to. That he shouldn’t have proposed if he wasn’t sure. But yeah, okay, get down on one knee in front of this plainly-hostile crowd and put a ring on it. I don’t care anymore. You are a farce.

She says yes because of course she does. Because she hasn’t seen the finale. He had to get a ring on it before she saw the tapes. And they’ve already promised each other they won’t look at social media. My god, this should be a crime. What I’m watching should be a crime. I may quite honestly be sick.

BUT DON’T GET TOO COMFY IN THAT EMOTION BECAUSE WE HAVE A NEW BACHELORETTE AND WE’RE GONNA BRING HER OUT. Swallow your vomit! Readjust your applause. It’s time for “good things happening for a woman” clapping instead of “the bad man proposing to the other one” clapping. And I don’t have to tell you which is louder. Becca comes back out, Chris Harrison makes a VERY FUNNY joke about having buyer’s remorse because he “can tell this is not a popular vote,” tee-hee ha-ha, just like what just happened to her! And then we set up the set for an episode of The Bachelorette? Please may I go home now? I’m very confused.

But can’t go home until we meet some of the men, like Lincoln, a good looking black dude with a bow-tie, a mohawk, a birthday, and an accent. He seems great, and I’m ready to throw the whole season to him after this moment:

“Airy.” Is. A. Wanker. God bless you, Lincoln. May you find what you’re looking for both on The Bachelorette and in life. The next two dudes are pretty boring white dudes — Chase, a banker-looking guy with a poufy little pompadour and a duck tail in the back, and Ryan in the brocade jacket, who plays the banjo for Becca, as if she hasn’t been through enough. A bald black guy in a bad suit named Darius who apologizes on behalf of his gender — oh we’ve all seen the finale and will bring it up in our intros, don’t worry — and BLAKE WHO BROUGHT A HORSE.

Here it comes, into the studio, Blake and his horse. Its name is Bradley, and I’m actually won over by its purpose here, which is to help Becca get back up on the horse! Okay, I love. Great job Blake Who Brought The Horse.

Bad job ABC, who is pulling a move right out of Arie’s playbook and trying to get us all to say yes to a new season before we know what we’re doing. They’re trying to put a ring on it before we’ve seen the finale, and they’re using Becca to do it. And you know what? It’s gonna work, but I just want to make it crystal clear that I’m coming back on May 28th for her, not for you. Don’t you dare get it twisted.

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.