One annoying thing about breaking up with someone is actually having to break up with them. You have to look that person in the face and say, “I don’t want to be in a relationship with you anymore.” That’s not fun for anyone. Instead, you could ghost them, which clearly makes life worse for other people, but plenty of people do it anyway because it’s personally convenient for them, like not returning the shopping cart at the grocery store or voting Republican. But when that’s not practical, you have to actually say the words.
But on The Bachelor, a lot of this awkwardness can be avoided. The general premise of the show is that a guy breaks up with 29 women. (If you wait a few weeks after the show is done airing, he’ll probably have broken up with all 30 of them!) Most of these breakups come at rose ceremonies, when the Bachelor doesn’t actually have to say, “I’m breaking up with you.” He just gives roses to everybody else and waits for the contestants without roses to escort themselves out. It’s not breaking up with you; it’s choosing someone else. So when the Bachelor breaks up with a woman outside the context of a rose ceremony, it can come as a challenge he isn’t quite ready to handle—a situation that unfolded Monday night in a comically strange breakup that could take place only on The Bachelor.
Jess spends most of the episode complaining that she hasn’t gotten a one-on-one date yet. It’s a semi-fair gripe—there are nine contestants left, and five had already gotten one-on-one dates before this episode, and two more got them Monday night. When Jess is cogent, she explains that it’s hard to feel wanted by Zach when other women are picked over her. But she isn’t cogent often. When she actually does get alone time with Zach, during the after-party portion of a group date, she jumps on him about her lack of a one-on-one date. At a certain point, Zach straight up tells her to stop asking about the one-on-one dates, assuring her that he’s confident in their relationship even though the solo date hasn’t happened yet, but she refuses. “The clock is ticking,” she says. “What can I do that’s organic and natural and not forced?” After that, she continues to actively use up a moment in which she could have done something organic and natural to complain about the lack of one-on-one dates. I imagine if they actually did have a one-on-one date together, Jess would’ve spent most of the time complaining about not getting a one-on-one date earlier.
After somewhere between five and 37 minutes of this, Zach has had enough. “To be honest—and I’ll always be honest with you—I feel like there’s that disconnect. I don’t feel any more sure about this, and I feel nervous,” he says. “I don’t know how you feel, but I’m not feeling confident, as hard as it is, and it pains me to say.”
Does that read like a breakup speech to you? Does it read like … anything to you? I thought he was just trying to get out of an uncomfortable conversation and back to the party. But it was, in fact, a breakup speech! Jess understood this completely—she nods her head, starts crying, and says, “I’m not going to beg for you,” before the two walk out together. “I wish it was different,” Zach says as he puts Jess into an SUV, which drives her away.
Yes, The Bachelor avoids a lot of breakup awkwardness—but that can make the show’s actual breakups that much more awkward. Zach is so flummoxed by the idea that he has to tell someone that he doesn’t want to be with them that he stumbles through a strange speech that doesn’t even feature any breakup-adjacent words. He’d better improve on that quickly—the breakups down the stretch are a bit more personal. “I’m not feeling confident, as hard as it is, and it pains me to say” won’t cut it when there are just three women left.
Best Estonian: The Unexplained Alcohol Guy
I came into this episode willing to learn a little bit about Estonia. Last week, The Bachelor was in London, a famous place brimming with famous sights. But we don’t know a lot about Estonia! My first guess would’ve been “I bet they’re good at hockey,” but apparently their neighbor Latvia is way better.
There’s not a lot of uniquely Estonian stuff in the episode, though! The episode’s group date is a brief meeting with an Estonian witch who sages everybody, and Zach’s one-on-one date with Ariel is at a sauna, which I always thought was a Finnish thing. (A very naked Estonian couple shows up, marking the first time in Bachelor history that the censorship black box is used to censor actual nudity.) The main Estonian observation made by the cast is that it is extremely cold there.
But I wanted to know more about one specific event: On Zach’s one-on-one date with Charity, they walk into a random shop, where a man in a huge fur coat and a strange hat confuses the hell out of them. He greets them by asking them whether they’re “having a good time or having hard labor,” then immediately hands them an Estonian alcohol. He makes them contort their bodies into a strange drinking pose, with one hand on their heads and one foot lifted into the air and crossed over the other leg at the knee—and when they drink his Estonian alcohol, they hate it. “Pepper! So much pepper!” Zach shouts in pain. Charity charitably says the drink is “electrifying.” They don’t say, “Thank you,” but the guy in the traditional garb says, “You’re welcome.”
And that’s it! Normally on this show, people are happy to explain the unique aspects of their culture, but The Bachelor moves on with no explanation. I have questions about:
- Why that guy was wearing those clothes
- Why he was so oddly hostile
- What the pepper booze was
- Whether anybody enjoys the pepper booze
- Whether Estonians actually drink while standing on one leg with their hand on their heads
- Why they drink while standing on one leg with their hand on their heads
I can’t tell whether this sequence was a bad advertisement for Estonia … or whether my curiosity is so piqued that now I have to go to Estonia to get drunk with the hostile pepper booze guy.
Biggest Snitch: Lip Gloss
The big drama in Monday night’s episode—and this will SHOCK you—revolves around a contestant stealing a solo conversation with Zach at a time when other contestants don’t think it is appropriate. Just when you think this show can’t find new plotlines …
I’ve gotta give Kat credit—she actually does innovate in the field of Bachelor stealing: She swoops in and grabs Zach seconds after he announces his one-on-one date with Charity but before the date actually starts, a moment previously unused for such conversations. She drags Zach to a hallway, where she essentially says that she wanted to have some alone time with him (so did everybody else!) and gives him three small kisses. Not make outs. Mere smooches.
But those tiny kisses turned out to be her undoing. When they return to the room, everybody seems to notice that Zach has a bit of lip gloss on his lips. I’m personally unsure exactly how lip gloss works, although the music of my youth led me to believe it’s “poppin’” and “cool.” But I’ve gotta say, his lips did look a bit shinier than they did before the kisses. Kat’s secret morning kisses were revealed, unsettling Charity ahead of her date.
Things spiral quickly for Kat. Everybody quickly calls her out—Brooklyn continues her candidacy as a future Bachelorette or, more likely, a Paradise contestant with the one-liner: “If the shoe fits, lace that bitch up.” Displaying the opposite of self-awareness, Kat requests that nobody bring up the incident ahead of their group date because it will distract her—hilarious because the incident in question distracted Charity ahead of her date. Kat ends up ostracized. Even she seems to know she was wrong—she just wants everyone to stop talking about it. And she could’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for that meddling makeup!
Best Athletic Performance: Former Offensive Lineman Zach
While touring Tallinn, Zach and Charity happen across a “wife-carrying” competition. Wife carrying, or, as an Estonian guy says, naisekandmine, is a semi-real traditional sport in northern Europe, and Wikipedia says Estonians won 11 straight world championships at one point (although they’ve apparently been surpassed by Finns and Lithuanians).
Zach and Charity learn the traditional Estonian wife-carrying technique, which involves Zach holding Charity’s legs over his shoulders, with her face nestling into his butt. She subs in as his wife for the day, and they dominate. Zach absolutely destroys a random Estonian, trucking through the course with Charity seeing nothing but ass crack. It’s gotta be embarrassing for that Estonian dude to get wrecked in his own country’s national pastime—I’d be humiliated if an Estonian showed up and beat me in one-on-one without ever having dribbled before.
But of course, Zach was prepared for this: He played right tackle at Cal Poly, making him the first offensive lineman to become the Bachelor. Zach is the seventh of 26 Bachelors to have played college football and the third in a row, after Clayton and Matt James—not to mention the host, Jesse Palmer—but they typically all played glory positions like wide receiver and quarterback. Offensive line is about being huge and pushing people as opposed to “being handsome,” which is what Jesse did for the New York Giants. Zach hinted at his football-playing past in the Bachelor Bowl episode, but the show neglected to mention his actual role on the football field. He’s lost a lot of his playing weight—maybe someday this show will be bold enough to feature a brawny, sexy 340-pounder with a soft side—but the skill clearly applies: His job on a running play was taking on weight and moving forward, and in wife carrying, he takes on Charity’s weight and moves forward through the obstacle course. The lesson: We need to start scouting Estonian wife carriers as potential college offensive linemen.
Best Gameplay: Greer
Zach has recovered from last week’s bout of COVID. (Was that 10 days? Are we still doing 10 days?) But the show isn’t done with the virus: Now, Greer has tested positive. Kat got her lip gloss on Zach; Zach got his COVID germs up in Greer’s respiratory system; both are telltale signs that you’ve put your face near somebody else’s face. Greer doesn’t get to Zoom into any dates—she doesn’t even show up on-screen at all this week.
The last time we saw Greer, it looked like she was struggling to stay on the show. Her comments on her virtual date with Zach (in which she compared the way he missed a week of dates with COVID to the way she missed a few weeks of work with COVID) seemed to insult him, and she was the last one to receive a rose. I thought her COVID might get her kicked off the show, which happened to a contestant on the last season of The Bachelorette.
Maybe it would’ve looked bad to kick a contestant off so soon after making accommodations for Zach; maybe Zach is just too nice to dump somebody for reasons out of their control. (After all, this episode showed that he isn’t even good at dumping people he wants to dump!) Either way, Greer’s positive test gave her a free pass into the final seven—she’s just one episode away from hometowns!