The ‘Bachelor’ Recap: What Happens When the Bachelor Catches COVID?
It’s going to take more than a highly communicable virus to shut down Season 27 of ‘The Bachelor.’ This week, Gabi is treated like royalty while the rest of the women are left to communicate with Zach through video calls.
I cringe when I look back on some of the things we did in the first few days and weeks of COVID, terrified of the new disease wreaking havoc on the world: We slathered ourselves in hand sanitizer to fight a disease we’d later learn was airborne; we attended dismal Zoom happy hours; we clanged pots and pans out of our windows to cheer on essential workers even if there were no essential workers walking down the street at that time. Worst of all, we watched a weird show called The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart because production on the actual Bachelor franchise shows was cut off. But it was especially hard on the poor souls unfortunate enough to be single during early COVID, as people tried to build chemistry through “virtual dates.” Was this potential partner worth an actual in-person meetup that could lead to contracting an illness nobody understood? You’d have to figure that out over a laggy FaceTime while fake laughing at their fake backdrop and wondering what it might be like to touch and kiss the poorly-lit person on the screen.
All that came rushing back in an awkward episode of The Bachelor Monday night, as our Bachelor, Zach Shallcross, tested positive for COVID. At this point, we understand COVID—we know how to minimize its spread, we know how to treat it, we have vaccines for it, and everybody has figured out their personal risk tolerance. But having the Bachelor himself come down with COVID throws this episode—and potentially a few extra episodes—into disarray.
The episode started out normally enough. Zach and the women went to London, a city that Zach and all the contestants inaccurately described as “romantic.” (Cold, gray, gloomy London—romantic? Why do you think they get the hell out of England to film Love Island?) He even went on a “royal-themed” date with Gabi, as Americans are convinced that there’s only one active monarchy on the planet. (It looks like The Bachelor is headed to Thailand this season, but I doubt they’re going to have dates themed around this guy you’re not allowed to insult.)
Then, Zach doesn’t show up to his group date. And he doesn’t show up to the after-party. And he doesn’t show up to his one-on-one date with Charity. The contestants start to get restless, complaining about how Zach “stood them up.” The women are informed of his absence by a variety of butlers—luckily, “butler” is the most British profession outside of “vicar” and “professor for wizards.” And it kinda seems like he did stand everybody up: We’re shown several snippets of Zach alone in his hotel room, not looking or sounding particularly sick. (At one point, he dramatically blows his nose into a tissue.)
Eventually, host Jesse Palmer breaks the news of Zach’s positive test to the women. “Kaity, I know you’re a nurse, so you can understand the severity of this,” he says in front of the whole group, apparently ignoring the fact that Kat and Kylee are also nurses. “The question is, what are we going to do? How do we move forward from this?” Jesse asks. It’s a reasonable question: If a contestant tested positive, they could pretty easily be quarantined and sent packing—as happened to Logan on the last season of The Bachelorette. Can’t exactly do that for the Bachelor on The Bachelor!
A rational response would be to postpone production for a few days, reschedule dates, and pick things up again when Zach tested negative. But I guess The Bachelor’s traveling road show must keep trucking: They have to go to country X on Y date to fulfill their deals with whatever tourism boards and hotels they have deals with. So, the two dates Zach missed are fully canceled, and Jesse announces a “virtual cocktail party” and “virtual rose ceremony.”
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The vibes were distinctly off for the “virtual” parts of the show. The “cocktail party” did not feature cocktails at all—the women took turns going into a room for a video call with Zach. For the rose ceremony, Zach appeared on a big monitor, à la Big Brother, and called women up one by one. The women then had to pick their own roses up off a table. It feels like this could’ve been a place for Jesse to expand on his limited role as host, but nope: Actual handling of roses isn’t in his contract.
It ended with two contestants, Kylee and Mercedes, getting eliminated without having a chance to see Zach face-to-face for roughly a week. One suspects they would’ve been eliminated anyway, but it was still humiliating for them to get dumped remotely. If there’s one thing worse than getting dumped on TV, it’s getting dumped on TV by a guy who is speaking to you from inside of a TV.
It was remarkable how Zach’s physical absence sucked so much drama from the proceedings of the episode. We’ve seen shows like Love is Blind and The Circle create plotlines from the lack of face-to-face interactions, but The Bachelor just tried to do its normal thing via Zoom and fast-forward to Zach being healthy. And much like those 2020-era virtual dates, the vibes were simply off. There were no surprise kisses or fights about surprise kisses. Everybody was so cordial about dealing with the awkwardness of the situation that they shared time equally instead of trying to cut other contestants short or snag extra virtual face time with Zach (other than Kaity, who delivered Zach a basket of London-themed treats and spoke to him through a closed hotel room door). It was a horrifying glimpse into a world where the phrase “Can I steal you for a second?” had never been uttered.
Best Time Had by Anybody: All the Women Zach Didn’t Date
At first, the women abandoned by Zach were mopey. They got all dressed up for nothing! The group date was a double-decker bus tour of London, and they complained about how gray and cold it was. Kylee noted that she had dressed up “cute and sexy” for Zach and was now “freezing her ass off.” (I guess London isn’t so romantic anymore, huh?)
But after a while, they decided to enjoy a free day exploring London together without having to worry about their likely doomed TV relationships. They went to a pub and slammed a bunch of pints before roaming around aimlessly and ending up at a chip shop—a perfect London day. They got a little tipsy and actually seemed to enjoy each other’s company. Can we do the rest of the season without Zach?
Undisputed Episode Winner: Gabi
The final 90 minutes or so of this episode are a bummer for everybody: Zach is bummed he’s trapped in a hotel room; the women are bummed they missed out on prime opportunities to get face time (as opposed to FaceTime) with Zach; the producers are bummed they organized all these dates that never actually happened; and, of course, two girls are upset about getting dumped over Zoom. Everybody is bummed except for Gabi, who got a one-on-one date before all those nasty viruses got up in Zach’s sexy respiratory tract.
And Gabi didn’t just get any random date: She got the date—the one that ends with one of the contestants taking home a closet’s worth of fancy clothes and designer shoes. (Do they also give her an extra suitcase to carry all that around for the rest of the season?) Twenty-nine women on this show get dumped, and 27 head home with nothing more than memories and 18,000 Instagram followers, but one gets to be the next Bachelorette, and another gets a new wardrobe. They are the show’s real winners.
First, Zach and Gabi went to a perfumery where royal perfumes are made, and a kind, older British man helped them make their own perfume while kindly ignoring all the penis jokes Gabi was making about the various smells—to be fair, he walked right into it by referring to one of the scents as “sensual and woody.” Then, they met a guy who used to be a butler for the royal family, and Gabi got to try on dresses and gowns based on stuff royals wear. And they got a one-on-one date in an elegant castle-ish location, followed by a private concert where UB40 and UB40’s surprisingly 31-year-old lead singer performed “(I Can’t Help) Falling in Love With You” for the couple. (What is this, The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart?) But easily the best part of the date was when Zach and Gabi were ambushed by a goofy troop of corgis supposedly descended from Queen Elizabeth II’s corgis. Gabi repeatedly referenced the fact that they were descended from the royal corgis, as if the dogs wouldn’t have been extremely cute if they weren’t distantly related to more famous dogs.
After her date, Gabi is pretty quiet for the rest of the episode—everyone else is sad about the time lost, but she got the time, the concert, the dogs, and the shoes, so she’s got nothing to complain about. She’s got a huge leg up on everybody else—if she loses, it’s permanent proof that it doesn’t actually matter how much time you get to spend with the Bachelor.
Best Acting: The Fake Beefeater
Part of the ladies’ Zach-less London tour was an extended attempt to distract one of the royal guards—the vacation Will Forte’s character on I Think You Should Leave had dreamed about. They ask the guard in the doofy hat dumb questions and make a bunch of jokes, but the guard is famously trained not to react. Eventually, they start flirting with the guard and dancing in front of him, but he still won’t break. (“This is how it is with Zach, like I’m invisible!” one contestant shouts.)
As the women walk away, the guard finds the camera, stares directly at it, and makes a face as if to say, “Hey, did you see all those hot American ladies flirting with me?” I feel pretty confident this was not an actual royal guard—the real ones have huge guns because they’re actual military guys and not just funny hat people for tourists to gawk at. But the real royal guards should consider hiring this guy—he nailed it.
Worst Performance: Greer
Part of The Bachelor’s annual fancy clothes date involves the contestant returning to the place where the other women are staying and parading her spoils in front of her devastated opponents. It’s a dunk-fest. “Hope you enjoyed sitting at home! I explored a city with a hot guy and got free Jimmy Choos!” The other women always try to keep it together, but you can see the rage boiling over. It may be the cruelest moment of each season of this show where 97 percent of contestants get dumped on TV.
Of course, one contestant can’t keep it together: Greer is upset not so much by all the free clothes, but by the fact that Gabi got to have high tea with Zach. As she explains, her family bonds over tea, and she even got a picture of a little teacup tattooed on her. She told Zach about the tea on an earlier episode—but Zach still gave his tea date to Gabi. She leaves the room where Gabi is showing off her haul to go cry in the hallway.
Unfortunately, Gabi needs the hallway too. When Gabi is done with her fashion show, she tries to bring the clothing back to her room but finds a teary Greer hunched over in agony. Holding all of her dresses and gowns and shoes, she has to step over Greer like Allen Iverson over a humbled Tyronn Lue. And then she has to step over Greer again, because it turns out Greer is directly in front of Gabi’s room. Sheesh! At least AI only did Tyronn once!
Luckily for Greer, Zach didn’t see any of those embarrassing moments—but things take a turn for the worse on their Zoom date. Greer quickly reminisces about when she came down with COVID—it was at the end of a fiscal quarter, and she needed to close some sales for her job before the quarter ended, and she couldn’t because she was stuck at home. It was a well-intentioned attempt to empathize with the room-bound Zach about how hard it can feel to watch life pass by while stuck at home trying not to spread a disease to other people. But Zach doesn’t take it that way: He sternly rebukes Greer for comparing her weak sales to his journey to find love. She apologizes, trying to make clear that she wasn’t actually saying the two things were equivalent, but Zach is clearly hung up on it—he repeatedly states that trying to find a wife is significantly more important than any of Greer’s stupid work stuff.
Worst Britishisms: Kat
As you might expect, the episode is a parade of bad British accents and attempts to use slang words that may or may not exist. Kat took the cake in her FaceTime with Zach: She tried to invite him for a snog but quite clearly kept saying snug instead. I feel like “snog” is common knowledge to anybody who has read the Harry Potter book where he hits puberty, but somehow, Kat botched it. On top of that, she made Zach make out with his iPad screen to simulate a virtual “snug.” I think everybody will be back on their game when things are in person.