‘The Bachelorette’ Recap: Trouble In Paradise
S6:E9 Everyone, look how far we’ve come! We were down to three guys last night on The Bachelorette, and that’s less than how many paper clips your cubicle-mate steals from you every day! I know, phenomenon. Where on earth does wasted time go?
Anyway, since Ali’s so close to making the decision which guy she dated under abnormal conditions and circumstances that she’d like to try and have an average and normal life with, the four flew to the most average and insignificant place in the world: Tahiti! Over the next week or so, Ali made out with all of the guys in the water and solidified our suspicions that The Bachelorette’s second item of business is to turn everyone into alcoholics.
The first few days on the island, Ali hung out with Roberto. They passed the majority of their time in the water, on a heart-shaped island they were way too amazed at. They had dinner on the beach, looked at the sky, and Roberto told Ali he was falling in love with her. Ali did not say she was falling in love with him as well, which leads me to believe she’s not allowed to say it on the show. At the end of their time together, Ali invited him into the fantasy suite that had candles on the floor and even more alcohol. Ali barely noticed how close she came to setting her feet on fire because she was more concerned with taking Roberto’s shirt off, after she deemed it too “wet” for him to wear (even though they only had to walk through the water to the fantasy suite and not swim to it.)
Ali spent the next day with Chris on a boat. They sailed around for a while and when they were ready to go do stuff on an island, were told their vessel couldn’t bring them ashore and they’d have to swim there. (I’ll let this go because there are more important things coming up in this episode than how illegitimate it is for a boat — which is designed to take people from one SHORE to another SHORE — not having the ability to sail to the beach. I know it’s an issue of depth, but still.) So Ali and Chris put on their swim trunks, and the underwater camera captured what seemed to be like Chris having quite the hard time doing the doggy paddle. Not everyone was on the swim team in 5th AND 6th grade, right Chris? Once they got to the beach they started opening up oysters, as in totally breaking what connects the two outer shells to each other and forms the little animal’s house that lives inside it, and taking the pearls out. So really, their little romantic day also consisted of a massive genocide. Only on ABC!
And now for the action. Frank was the last one to meet up with Ali in Tahiti. But before we saw that and watched the other guys on the island, we saw Frank fly back to his hometown of Chicago and confront his ex-girlfriend to see if he still has feelings for her. Now, I’m quite sympathetic to breakups, and to the residual feelings that remain even after the relationship has ended. But Frank’s an idiot and he should have known that the second he laid eyes on his ex, all the warm and mushy and comfortable feelings he had for her would obliterate anything he felt for Ali. This whole time Frank has worried about the likelihood of Ali choosing him or not, and that I understand too, because according to probability and fractions and stuff, the odds were against him being the one she’d end up with. This reality slowly ate away at him, and he chose to go back to what was comfortable and what was a sure thing, rather than waiting in limbo another day to see if Ali would eliminate him. So that’s right everyone, Frank chose to go back to his ex-girlfriend rather than take his chances with Ali. But first, he had to go to Tahiti to tell her!
Once he was in his own little love shack of betrayal and impatience, he told Chris Harrison what he was going to do and then sat around and waited for Ali. Of course, this was all surrounded with clips of Ali running around the island and saying how excited she was for the date, and it was quite depressing because we all knew Ali was about to be reduced to a bag of trash, without a twisty tie, at the dumpster!
The moment of truth finally arrived when Ali arrived at Frank’s villa. She giggled and embraced him openly when she saw him, and after a long silence passed, he said they needed to talk. Watch and learn how it’s done, men.
And here’s the aftermath, because I know you like watching blonds cry even more than watching an m&m melt in the sun.
In the end, Ali had a rose ceremony even though it was obvious that both Roberto and Chris would get roses by default. Ali told herself it was important to have one anyway to see if the men would truly accept them, and her love in all the ways that Frank was unready to. Both guys proudly wore their roses, and Ali resigned that Frank was not the one for her because he was a “coward” and “dishonest,” even though she probably would have chosen him in the end.
But here’s the thing! Ali gave up everything to be on the show, and she keeps telling us that. It was her choice to leave her apartment, her job, and whatever else that’s important to her to do this show, that 9 times out of 10 is completely unsuccessful and doesn’t result in a marriage (or if it does, it ends in a divorce). And yet she’s totally surprised and flabbergasted when a guy, who’s completely unsure his feelings and has no control over the situation, chooses to go back home to a more stable relationship. I understand where Frank’s coming from — he’s an idiot, but I get it. The whole show works so hard to foster love that it creates all these romantic scenarios, but life’s not like that. It’s messy and mean and hard. You want to find a partner you can weed through all that with, not someone who’s in a bubble of bliss and delusion… because once you take that person back to your apartment that hasn’t seen a maid in years, the love that grew when you were both staying in hotel rooms and always had clean towels in the morning runs the risk of dying quite fast.
