The Bachelor’ FINALE: Hugo your way, I’ll go mine

• ABC
• Dear diary, America hates me.

How are you feeling today? I ask because there’s a good chance you were up all night staring at the ceiling or, alternately, biting a pillow and/or banging your forehead against a wall until blood trickled into your eyes. You’ve spent the previous two months inviting this ungrateful, beady-eyed, filthy-mouthed Venezuelan into your home for two hours every Monday evening - taking this JOURNEY with him - and the motherfucking least he could do is assure you that he is deeply, disgustingly, hurtfully, stickily in love with Nikki, the one he definitely didn’t like enough to marry but definitely didn’t hate enough to never want to see again.

He owed this to you. HE OWED IT TO US ALL.

Love (LOVE),
Chris “Hardball” Harrison

Hi, but seriously, it’s just me, Gwynedd. Wowee, whatta finale! What an “After the Final Rose!” I give Chris Harrison a hard time for a lot of things, like a.) resembling a bird, b.) being the proud owner of a storage shed filled with the dirty panties he harvests from the show’s contestants, and 3.) being the devil incarnate, but I was worried the guy was gonna have an aneurysm during his “After the Final Rose” interview with Juan Pablo, although “worried” is probably the wrong word. It must’ve been superfun and comfortable for Nikki to sit there while her dumpy baby boyfriend refused to say “I love you” aloud and the orchestrator of everything that’s awful in her life tried to pry the words from his cold dead hands. Ugh, and then you have Sean and fucking Catherine sitting atop their holy high horse and telling you how life and love work. (Des and Chris were also there, I think?)

But here’s the thing - I ended up on Juan Pablo’s side! Don’t get me wrong, Juan Pablo is a total dicksneeze. Even his family thinks so. Even Rodolfo, the most loyal friend and cousin in the world, thinks so! But the people who make this show really went out of their way turn the guy into a fucking villain.

It’s like Juan Pablo is like Hugo Chavez and The Bachelor’s producers are the U.S. military people who supposedly participated in the ‘02 coup that overthrew his government! Juan’s own people have turned against him, no thanks to them!

So Juan’s been deposed (even the yellow M&M doesn’t want to do commercials with him anymore) and then Chris is like, “Hey, keep opening up to us and exposing yourself to us,” and Juan is like, “Hey, how about fuck you.”

But WAIT we have a whole finale’s worth of him being awful before I start sympathizing with a heavy-handed Venezuelan socialist president.

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It starts with Clare meeting Juan’s family, which she’s VERY excited about because she loves families. All of them. OOH and it seriously just dawned on me how weird it is that she doesn’t speak Spanish even though her mom is Mexican. She’s the youngest, so I bet that she was the brat who screamed SPEAK ENGLISH at her poor parents.

During her one on one with Juan’s most important family members - mom, dad, Cousin Rodolfo - each person tells her something awful about him. Mom has to get up the nerve, and starts with, “He’s hyperactive.” And then, once she’s made sure the coast is clear, she says that her son is rude and then she blinks and we see that she has GET OUT written on her eyelids. Rodolfo wants to make sure that Clare is up for the challenge of being the person who holds a relationship together when Juan tries to cheez it at the first sign of trouble. Juan may have commitment issues, but Rodolfo doesn’t (he’s had those braces for 17 years).

Also this gross thing happened: )

Then its Nikki’s turn to learn horrible things about Juan that she can ignore. Like when his mom is like, “How would you spend a weekend with Juan,” and Nikki’s like, “I don’t know, go swimming and do activities,” and mom is like, “No, you’re going to sit on the couch with 15 family members and watch TV for several hours straight - hope that’s your thing!”

Then it’s time for the very romantic final dates. Chris said it would be like none we’d ever seen before and I was ready to call his bluff when Clare and Juan immediately went on a helicopter ride. Oh, how they were enjoying themselves, just floating over ocean like a couple of blissed-out dragonflies and then Juan leans over and whispers in her ear, “I DON’T KNOW YOU, BUT I LIKE FUCKING YOU.” That’s what Clare says he said, anyway, and we have to take her word for it because there were no microphones or cameras around at the moment (which, frankly, seems odd for this show). Another weird thing is that we don’t get to see the rest of the day date, just the part afterward where she’s decided she’s going to confront him about being a gross pig. He wants “besitos” because he’s just the worst, and she plays it real cool and tough for like a second until he turns the situation around by saying sweet things like, “You got me wrong: it’s not that I don’t know you all, it’s that you don’t know me enough” and “There’s many things I don’t like about you.” Then she’s putty in his hands ...

He and Nikki’s date is a lot more boring, YES, because he didn’t say that he “likes to fuck,” but also because oooooh wheeeee these two have nothing to say to one another. Those really awkward, “the weather sure is nice” sorts of dates are a dime a dozen on this show, but when the date is the last one before traveling monkey jeweler Neil Land comes through with his street organ full of rings, that’s probably a bad sign. Alas, Nikki’s like, “We have a great time together! I’m head over heels for this guy!” She gives him a greeting card like a grandma would and then cries for a while for fun.

It’s time for dreams to be shattered!

Clare goes first so you know she’s definitely being sent home. He says some nice things but then he says, “Um” and her face immediately starts to spasm with rage. “I would never want my children to have a father like you,” she says. Rude! Juan waits for her to totter off and says to one of the producers/cameramen/whoever “Oof, glad I didn’t pick her.” Rude! But I also bet that other Bachelors have said shitty things like that and the editors were nice enough to cut them out. Juan doesn’t get that kind of kindness. Then Nikki shows up and he’s like, “I have a ring in my pocket, but you can’t have it because we’ve only been dating for a few weeks, but I like you, wanna hang out?!” That’s reasonable, right? Nikki seems OK with it. Well, until Chris Harrison comes along and tells her repeatedly, in front of all of millions of idiots, that her boyfriend should be saying “I love you.” Better yet, he should have a “surprise” for us. A ring perhapsssssss? Nope.

“I’m sorry the show didn’t end up like you guys wanted it to!” Juan says and he’s not really sorry at all. And that’s fine. THE END.

So listen. Atlanta people need to have an eye out for the crews who are for sure going to be in town filming Andi’s season, like, really soon. It’s on in MAY. That’s so soon.