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Alright folks, we survived. Every season, Chris Harrison promises us “the most dramatic season yet,” and while I don’t know if he delivered on that, he definitely brought us “the biggest cockbag of a Bachelor” ever. After dragging us along for months on this boring ass journey, Chris Harrison and ABC decided to flex their dicks one last time to see if they could trick America into watching a five-hour finale. And you know what? They could, and they did. We watched every last second of that shit. In fact, I did a 28-hour trauma call shift, drove home, and fired up Hulu to catch up on what I missed. Right now I’ve been awake since 4 a.m. on Tuesday, so bear with me. This week’s two episodes bring us Meet the Luyendyks x 2, Arie’s final one-on-one dates with Becca and Lauren Boring, the Final Rose Ceremony, and a whole shitstorm of Arie’s douchebaggery. Let’s break it down:
Meet the Fockers Luyendyks
This week’s saga begins as ABC springs to fly Arie’s entire family to Peru for the finale. Lauren is the first of the final two women to meet them. As Arie greets her, she tells him that she’s very nervous. He acts surprised, as if it’s expected that she should be totally confident when meeting her potential in-laws for the first time after being with Arie for two months.
“I, like, just, like, want them, like, to like me!” Lauren tells him.
“Of course they’ll like you, babe. What’s not to like? Your personality? You don’t have one, so there’s nothing to dislike. You’re totally safe,” Arie reassures her.
Hand-in-hand, Arie leads Lauren to meet his family. She hugs his dad, and immediately after is met by his mother.
“HiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIiiiiiiii,” Arie’s mom says. For a brief moment, Lauren feels a sense of familiarity; however, since she has the short-term memory of a concussed goldfish, that feeling is fleeting. As Lauren moves on to other members of the Luyendyk clan, Arie’s mother breathes a sigh of relief.
Truth be told, Arie’s mother had met Lauren before; while it seemed like many, many years had passed since their introduction, in a more real sense, it was actually quite recent. As with every good story that came out of this spectacularly mediocre season of The Bachelor, it begins with Krystal.
After her rejection on the two-on-one date in Paris, Krystal’s rage slowly simmered on her Trans-Atlantic flight. By the time she touched down in San Diego, she had formulated a plan for her revenge.
“HiiiiiiIIIIIIiiiiii,” she mused, thrilled with herself. “It’s, like, perfect. Just like….me!”
What was this diabolical scheme, you ask? It was simple. It was elegant. It was savage.
Krystal was going to bone Arie’s dad.
After spending some time getting things right and tight after six weeks of boozing on ABC’s dime, Krystal knew that it was time to act. As she was planning her trip to Scottdale to hop on Arie Luyendyk Sr., she passed by a peculiar looking man, muttering to himself as he paced back and forth, running his hands through his snow white hair.
“But how to get back? I must get back!” he whispered, white lab coat billowing out behind him.
“HiiiiiiiIIIIIIIiiiiii,” Krystal said. “I like your car, daddy!” she added, noticing his silver coupe with gull-wing doors open nearby. “If you’re lost, I can give you directions! And maybe you can show me how to find my way into your will…”
The man stops pacing for a moment before making a beeline for the driver’s seat of his car. He motions for Krystal to join him, and before she even has a chance to pull the door closed, he punches the gas pedal to the floor.
“Easy there, tiger!” Krystal purrs, watching the speedometer increase steadily. “Keep the wheels on the road!”
“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!” the mystery driver says, punching on cruise control when the car reached 88 miles per hour. “Now, we just need to find more power!”
Almost as if it were on cue, like this scene were ripped straight from a movie, a bolt of lightening strikes a nearby power line, causing a cascade of sparks to shower the roadway as downed cables swing from their perches to block the path of Krystal and this mad scientist.
“Just what we need!” he exclaimed. “This will be just enough to power us to 1.21 gigawatts!” Without a word to Krystal, he steers the car over the live wires, and in a puff of smoke, they disappear.
Once the smoke clears and the car slows, Krystal realizes that she isn’t in Kansas anymore.
“Excuse me,” she starts. “Where in the fuck are we?”
“If my calculations are correct,” the old man replies, “we’re in 1980.’
“I really should have read the fine print on that tea I’ve been selling on my Insta,” Krystal mutters to herself. “I haven’t been this fucked up since Coachella.”
Undeterred by her perceived hallucination, but what turned out to be bona fide time travel, Krystal sets off to complete her mission. Fortunately for her, Luyendyk isn’t a particularly common name, and she was able to locate Arie Sr. with ease. Seducing him was the easiest thing she had done in ages, and it gave her such a power trip that she ended up sticking around and hate fucking Arie Sr. for several weeks. It also didn’t help that she had no idea how to get back to the present time, since at this point she realized she wasn’t on a bad trip anymore, but instead was living in some Lost-esque alternate reality.
It was all fun and games until she spent the majority of a Tuesday morning hugging the porcelain throne of Arie Sr.’s one bedroom apartment. A quick trip to the drug store and a piss stick later, she confronts Arie Sr. with some unexpected news.
“HiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiii,” she starts. “We have a huge fucking problem. I’m pregnant.”
“Problem?” Arie questions as he springs out of her chair to embrace Krystal. “This isn’t a problem, it’s a wonderful gift! Just think – we’re going to be parents. If it’s a boy, can we name him Arie Jr.?”
“Oh fuck,” Krystal whispers. “What have I done?”
From there, we can fast forward thirty-six years and nine months. After their brief embrace, Lauren continued to introduce herself to Arie’s siblings. Time Travel Krystal sighed a deep breath of relief.
I would go into more detail about Lauren’s time with Arie’s family, but it was stupid and boring. Everything about Lauren is stupid and boring. She pulls the same shit where she pretends to be super demure and shy, but in reality it’s because she just has nothing to say. Somehow, this bullshit works on Arie’s family almost as well as it worked on Arie himself, because when she leaves, they simply glow about what a wonderful person she is. I don’t get it. I just don’t fucking get it. Maybe the Luyendyk idiocy is genetic.
The following day, it’s Becca’s turn the meet the Luyendyks. As Arie prepares them to meet Becca, the entire family is skeptical.
“We all just love Lauren so much! I don’t know how anyone could be better than her.” Arie Sr. says. Are we being serious right now? They don’t know how anyone could be better than Lauren? Literally anyone could be better than Lauren. I could throw on a blonde wig and make a better case for why I could make a better wife for Arie than Lauren.
Even though Becca went into this interaction with the deck stacked against her, she did remarkably well. She was warm and open, and things were going smoothly until her time alone with Arie’s dad.
“Holy shit,” Arie Sr. tells Becca. “He’s going to have a hell of a time choosing between the two of you. You’re both just fantastic. I mean Lauren is definitely hotter than you but you’re much better at talking part and I’d wager you know your way around the kitchen.”
Becca takes a moment to ponder. “I think that’s supposed to be a compliment,” she replies. “But it’s also incredibly offensive. I’m not going to make a big deal out of it because I’m trying to marry your son, but this is super weird.”
“Listen sweetie, I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable. I just want what’s best for Arie Jr., and you seem like a perfectly lovely person. You’re definitely wife material. But hot damn – that little blonde firecracker; I mean, you just can’t pass that up. What do you know about her? What can you tell me about her? Did y’all get into any lingerie pillow fights?”
“Well this took a turn,” back it says. “I wanted to say is that I really love Arie, I think you have a lovely family, and I never want to be in the same room with you ever again.”
Once Becca clawed her leg out of that bear trap, she spent some time talking to the camera. She’s clearly flustered, which is totally understandable since she spent the last 30 minutes with a creepy old man being compared to the only woman remaining in this love triangle. “Does he really not see the difference between me and Lauren by now?” she asks. “It’s like comparing an apple to a starfish!” As soon as she says this, I am dead. Pack your bags, folks. We’re done here.
Once Becca departs, Arie asks for the input of his family. “So now that you’ve met both of the girls, what do you think?” He asked. “Becca is great, but there’s just something about Lauren…”
His sister is the first to pipe up. “Becca. Hands-down. Don’t go for the blonde bimbo.”
Arie looks bewildered. “What do you mean? You guys didn’t like Lauren?”
Time Traveling Krystal chimes in. “It’s not that we didn’t like Lauren. It’s just that Becca will be much easier to defeat. I mean, she’s totally ready to be a wife.”
“So all of you are in agreement that Becca is the right choice?” Arie asks.
Arie Sr. ponders for a moment before speaking up. “Did you already smash the blonde one?” he asks. Arie nods silently, holding up three fingers and winking at Papa Luyendyk. Arie Sr. pauses for a moment longer before issuing his final verdict. “If you already smashed the blonde one then yeah, the brunette is the way to go.”
One-on-One with Lauren
After his conversation with his family, Arie tells the camera that he’s going into his final date with Lauren with a heavy heart.
“I’m super bummed about this date today,” he admits. “I was really excited to see Lauren but now that mommy said I have to marry Becca, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Since they’re already in Peru, for their date, Arie and Lauren travel to Machu Pichu which is incredible. However, I have a few bones to pick with ABC regarding this date. It was my understanding that to see this particular wonder of the world, you had to hop on a train in Cusco, get dropped off in Buttfuck, Peru, and then hike your happy ass like 50 km to the ruins, shitting in holes along the way. Arie and Lauren manage to charter a private train, so instead of working up the worst case of swamp ass this side of the Equator, they gently trade kisses and sip champagne.
You’d think that since is the last chance they have to talk before a potential engagement, they’d have some meaningful conversations, but instead they just keep talking about the fact that they’re in love with each other. It’s nauseating. Eventually I stop paying attention to Arie and Lauren and they scurry around making out at Machu Pichu and instead focus on the real stars of this episode: the alpacas. Arie and Lauren continue their bullshit non-conversation conversation through dinner and during their time in Lauren’s hotel room. It’s baffling. Arie is clearly so into her, but they have approximately zero things to talk about. Mercifully, this date ends with Arie telling the camera that he’s even more confused than ever. Great.
One-on-One Date with Becca
Ever since her first one-on-one date, Becca has been relegated to the shittiest of dates, and Peru is no exception. As she greets Arie in the city center, it’s absolutely pissing rain, and instead of going to see something cool, they literally wander around a Peruvian flea market. They also pet some alpacas, which was pretty stellar, but after that they went back to doing boring shit.
Eventually they end up back in Becca’s suite, and again, she asks him if he has any questions or hesitations about their relationship.
Arie thinks for a moment. “Nope,” he response.
“Nothing at all?” she presses.
“Nope.”
And that was it. Seriously. No other notable events on the eve of a potential engagement. What could possible go wrong?
Final Rose Ceremony
While Lauren and Becca spent the entire day holding coffee mugs and staring contemplatively off of balconies before having their hair and makeup done, Arie met with Neil Lane.
As Neil Lane sits down, he starts asking questions about each of the women, their styles, and what kind of ring Arie thinks would suit his chosen bride.
“Just give me the biggest one. Bitches love shiny shit. Make it real shiny and real big,” Arie says.
“There are a few other facets to consider besides just the brilliance of the stone…” Neil continues.
“Just give me the biggest one you have!” Arie shouts, slamming his fists on the table. Startled, Neil picks out a teardrop shaped diamond and places it in a box. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you back soon enough, my precious,” he whispers before handing it over to Arie.
The next five minutes are devoted to montage of Arie, Becca, and Lauren getting dressed. We see Arie standing in front of a fast-moving, muddy river next to a pedestal supporting a single red rose. The Final Rose, if you will.
We see Becca and Lauren’s limousines drawing nearer to Arie. Historically, the first woman out of the limo is getting eliminated, so as one parks and the door opens, I clutch my wine glass with bated breath. As a single foot emerges, we see a gold dress with a bunch of dangly shit hanging off of it appear below the car door.
It’s Lauren.
Chris Harrison walks her up to Arie, and she is grinning ear to ear. She launches into a monologue about how amazing it’s been to open up to Arie, and how she has never felt a love like she feels for him. It’s heartwarming, except for the part where we know he’s about to kick her to the curb in an absolute blindside. Even Kendall had more warning than this.
Eventually Arie asks Lauren to stop, and with tears in his eyes, he tells her that he has to say goodbye. She immediately reverts back to her statuesque form, unspeaking, unmoving, uninteresting. As he walks her back to the limo he gives her a hug and then tells her that he loves her.
What the actual fuck, Arie? You tell a woman you love her, and then load her up in a limo and propose to someone else? Krystal Your mother must be disappointed in you.
Mere moments later, Arie returns to stand next to his Final Rose. As Becca emerges from the limo, she is beaming radiantly. Arie smiles as well, and as she approaches, they embrace warmly. She also tells Arie about the most important moments in her journey, but before she can finish, Arie drops to on knee, whipping out his Neil Lane monstrosity in the process.
“Becca, I love you. I choose you. I promise to choose you today and every day, for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?”
With a squeal and a kiss, Becca accepts, that Neil Lane rock finding its way on to her finger faster than anything I’ve ever seen before. As Arie picks Becca up to carry her towards their getaway car, for a moment we think that these two may just live happily ever after.
Spoiler alert: They do not.
Arie is an Asshole
After we see Arie’s proposal to Becca, a montage of their first few weeks of engagement plays. They look genuinely happy, relaxed, and authentic. As that draws to a conclusion, we see Becca arriving in a fancy AirBnb in LA, where her and Arie have planned a romantic couple’s weekend. Becca talks to the cameras about how wonderful things have been and how she’s more in love with Arie than ever; to be honest I zoned out a bit because since filming for The Bachelor ended, she got a new wrist tattoo, and it is truly hideous.
By the time I’m done staring at that inked monstrosity, Arie arrives. He sheepishly comes through the door, and immediately Becca can sense something is off. Not having a suitcase was definitely a giveaway, but if that wasn’t enough, him asking her to sit on the couch only to be swarmed by cameras definitely tipped her off.
Arie takes a deep breath and begins to speak. “So, you remember how you told me it was cool if I got in touch with Lauren to get some closure? I ended up sliding into her DMs on Insta on New Year’s Eve like a real fucking asshole and we’ve been talking since then. And it really has brought me a lot of closure. Mostly in the sense that I know that I’m done with our relationship.”
Becca sits there stunned. “Are you fucking kidding me? What are you even saying right now?” she asks him. “Are you saying that you want to get back with Lauren?”
“I’m saying that if there is a chance I want to explore that relationship. Hanging out with you has been great, but I’m afraid if I don’t reconcile with Lauren soon I’m going to miss my opportunity to smash that again.”
“And you pick now, in front of these cameras, to tell me this?” she asks, shocked.
“Well, I figured this was better than on After the Final Rose….” he replied.
There are so many things wrong with this statement that my head nearly explodes. One, why the fuck would you call spending time with your goddamn fiancée “hanging out” – like dude, you were the one that proposed to her. Don’t act like seeing her is some sort of a burden. Second – breaking up with her on camera was your choice, and it was a dick move.
The rest of Monday’s episode consisted of Arie following a sobbing Becca around the house while she begged him to leave. There was a solid ten minutes of nothing but tears. Arie barely even managed to apologize – to be honest it was pretty gut wrenching to watch. I know not much is sacred in Bachelor World, but I wish Becca had gotten to deal with this privately.
After The Final Rose
Alright folks – we’re 60% of the way through this bullshit. I’ll be honest, at this point, I’ve been awake for 38 hours and I am fading fast, plus ATRF was a giant clusterfuck anyway, so we’re just going to hit the highlights.
After getting dumped by Arie, ABC makes sure that Becca gets home safely and tosses her in a middle seat in coach for her cross-country flight. They also have a camera at her house to capture each tear she sheds while looking at photos of her and Arie.
“LEAVE BRITNEY BECCA ALONE!” I scream at my TV. No one listens.
Meanwhile, in Virginia Beach, Arie has a panic attack while standing in Lauren’s driveway. Eventually, he sacks up and opens the door and is immediately greeted by Lauren throwing herself at him in a jumping embrace. Seriously? This dude dumped you on national television, told you he loved you while he was sending you away, got engaged to someone else, and then came back two months later and you’re giving him a hero’s welcome? This shit is fucked up.
They sit down to talk about their relationship. Arie goes first. “I still love you.”
Lauren thinks for a moment. “Are you totally over Becca?” she asks.
“Who?” Arie asks. “Oh, Becca! Yeah, for sure.”
Honestly, this was the hardest part of the whole ordeal to watch. I wonder if Arie is legitimately a sociopath, because to completely disregard the woman he claimed to love and even asked to marry him so easily is some next level shit, and he does it without batting an eye.
“I just want a second chance,” Arie tells Lauren.
“Well of course!” Lauren squeals. “And if you think I want to wait a while for a proposal, you’d be wrong”
I hate this show. I hate everything.
Eventually Becca comes out, sporting new dark hair to match her blackened soul and a killer revenge dress. Homegirl looks real good. She talks abou her grieving process and eventually confronts Arie about his general bitchassness towards her. He eventually apologizes for proposing, and she wishes him well. It’s mega awkward. He’s terrified of her, and she knows it and loves it.
We see Arie and Lauren interact as well, and quite frankly, it’s sickening. They’re so happy, so like good for them, but congrats on all the people you’ve hurt along the way.
The episode ends with the announcement of the next Bachelorette – and in a move that surprised no one after this finale, it’s Becca. She’s the first Bachelor winner to get the lead on her own season, and after the shit ABC has put her through, it’s well earned. Sucks to suck, Tia.
Alright folks – that’s a wrap on this season. Thanks for sticking with me through this shit, and thanks for you patience while I post these on Wednesday evenings. Y’all are the real MVPs. Becca’s season will likely start in May, so see you then!.
What does former Bachelor contestant Jack Stone think about Arie? Checkout our podcast with him on iTunes and SoundCloud.
Image via ABC
Respond
@CrickWatsonMD
Becca got Louboutins, Rachel Zoe clothes, Neil Lane jewelry, 30 dudes to fight over her, the love of everyone in the house, the love of everyone in America,and 6 grand donated to her on Venmo.
Lauren got Arie.
Arie never apologized during the breakup once. He manipulated the conversation to portray himself in positive light, then he stuck around to see her pain and hope she forgives him. I’m not profane enough to think of what to actually call Arie but Lincoln wouldn’t do that.
I’m glad you skipped over the part where Arie proposes because that was truly disgusting and shows that he has no self-awareness. You’re the villain, buddy.
That’s the lowest of low things they could’ve done, which is saying something for Arie and Lauren. Though I was admittedly disappointed not to see Crick rip into them over that part.
I don’t know about y’all, but that British guy that met Becca first had me all hot and bothered…AND I’M A GUY
I selfishly want Becca to break his heart after the Fantasy Suite just so he will be the next Bachelor so I can see even more of him.
“he must work out”
Was he British though? That accent confused the shit out of me.
My guess is South African. Similar to British accents but not quite the same.
tl;dr
Arie sucked ass
The Krystal time travel bit was a little too on point
Arie and Lauren deserve each other. I truly don’t know how some people can be so recklessly self absorbed. Also, if y’all haven’t seen Bekah M.’s insta posts after ATFR, I strongly suggest you check them out.
Sup @Becca
If you don’t use a woman’s whole name while proposing you’re absolute trash.
Arie, a complete loser, accomplished this twice.
Wait, what?
Actually he did use Lauren’s full name, just not Becca’s. Makes it so much worse.
That muddy river was so symbolic of this entire season.