There hasn’t been a time in recent memory, if ever, that I can remember being this busy over a 48 hr period than these last two days have been. And honestly, 90 minutes into the ATFR last night, I thought it’d be fine. Show would end, I’d get a ton of reaction, I’d give my thoughts today, and that’d be that. But once ABC decided for the second season in a row to start their “Bachelorette” season early and give us 5 of Becca’s guys (remember, they gave us 4 last season – DeMario, Dean, Blake, and Eric), my phone, Twitter, and email was blowing up unlike anything I can remember since, well, I don’t know when. It was non f***ing stop til 1am, when I finally got settled down to watch the Challenge. Anyway, it comes with the territory, but, I really haven’t been inundated with requests, messages, questions, comments, etc like that in a long, loooooong time. I’m kinda running on no sleep here for the most part. Basically took a power nap before I had to get up at 6:15 for a radio interview in Chicago. Thought I’d go right back to bed, but couldn’t. Anyway, enough about that. Plenty of stuff to address before “Reader Emails, so lets get to it.
Since this is probably the last major day of traffic until May 28th rolls around for Becca’s premiere, wanted to let you know there are still spots available for the 4th Annual Reality Steve Fan Appreciation Party at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas on June 8th. It’s free to come. If you’re flying in, your flight itinerary is your confirmation into the party. If you’re driving in, just give me a hotel confirmation and you’ll be put on the confirmed list. I still don’t know who, if any, Bachelor alums are coming, but will let you know if I get a confirmation from anyone. Open beer and wine bar all night along with some food, and the annual Trivia Contest as well with prizes to the winner and 2nd place. Email me at steve@realitysteve.com if you’re interested in going. It’s first come, first serve. We have to cap it at about 75-80 people, so there’s still room left, but not a whole lot.
Also, if you saw on Twitter last night, Courtney Robertson will be my guest on the podcast tomorrow. Certainly someone who might have an opinion or two on this season, I’d say. You don’t want to miss it. I’ll just leave it at that.
With all the craziness happening the last 2 nights, there are plenty of you that emailed for “Reader Emails” that just didn’t get in. So many of the emails repeated questions that have been answered numerous times and/or, you sent in your question after Monday night’s episode but it was answered last night, so I didn’t bother to include it in today’s batch. Just know there’s really no rhyme or reason to this week’s emails since there were soooooo many. I had to dwindle it down or else I would’ve been up forever answering all these things, most of which have been answered before. So I apologize in advance if your email didn’t make it in today. It just got overwhelming seeing the same lines of questions over and over and over again so I deleted quite a few.
There’s no need to do a full recap of what happened last night. I mean, I watched the whole thing and I still can’t wrap my head around most of it. Probably because my head is throbbing right now, but that’s beside the point. What I will do is answer some of the most commonly asked questions that people have had over these last two nights and 5 hours of programming.
As mentioned yesterday, one of the biggest questions I’ve gotten was “Was Arie contractually obligated to film his break up with Becca?” The answer is simple: no. And this comes directly from Executive Producer Robert Mills, who said so on his radio show yesterday at the 25:03 mark. Give a listen:
Encouraged to? Yes. Suggested by? Absolutely. But he wouldn’t be in any sort of violation if he didn’t, and that’s where he f***ed up the most. He could’ve put his foot down and didn’t.
A lot of, “Why would Becca continue to work with them after what they did to her?” I guess the best answer I can give you and the way I see it is, although production was there to film their break up, that’s their job. She doesn’t blame production for that set up, she pins it on Arie. He was the one who made the choice to do that, they just are there to carry out his request. Also, did Becca get a bad edit this season? Did they Frankenbite her? Was she ever shown in a negative light in an ITM, on a date, post show? The answers to all those questions would be no. So while production may have filmed that embarrassing break up, she doesn’t seem them as the ones being in the wrong. She kind of alluded to it last night. She knows she agreed to have her dating life filmed when she signed on to do this. Granted most, if not all, contestants think that’ll just usually entail the 8 weeks of filming assuming they last that long. Once it extended out and Arie did what he did, yeah it sucked, but she realizes she can’t complain when this is what she signed up for. She seems to be one of the few that actually understand it. Probably because she never had one bad edit all season. I’m sure she’d change her tune if she got, say, a Krystal edit. My point being it’s not like Krystal had the edit she did, then decided to jump back in bed with them (even though she for sure will go on Paradise), it’s Becca. The only thing she can complain about regarding her “character” this season is that she had a broken engagement filmed on camera, which she attributes way more to Arie than to a production team. That’s how I see it.
As for the engagement last night, a lot of you are asking what happened to the engagement at Monarch Bay. The short answer is, I don’t know. To me, it’s still entirely possible that that engagement at Monarch Bay two weekends ago did happen and they just re-enacted their engagement for live television last night. Maybe we’ll get an answer some day, maybe we won’t. If that’s the only thing I got wrong this season, I can live with that. The point out of the whole thing, and I believe I addressed this on the podcast with Sarah Colonna and in “Reader Emails” last week, was that if that engagement didn’t take place at Monarch Bay, and I never got the solid confirmation that I was looking for despite the fact everything pointed to it happening, was that Arie & Lauren would get engaged at the ATFR at the latest. It either happened at Monarch Bay or it was going to happen at the ATFR and that Lauren was moving to Arizona, which she confirmed last night.
This was asked by a reader this week:
So I watched Kimmel and Lauren had the ring, you said Kimmel recorded before the live ATFR, Lauren had the ring. Did she just wear the ring on Kimmel, give it back to Arie to propose to her on the live ATFR? What does this timeline look like?
So last night, I found out they purposely postponed the Kimmel taping until 6:30 PST, and that’s why Arie and Lauren came out later in the show. They were basically off stage on the ATFR at 6:30 PST, immediately left and were wheeled over Kimmel’s studio to tape. Normally on a regular season where there isn’t some giant boffo crazy ending like this, yes, Kimmel tapes at 5:00 PST, and the final couple would be appearing at his taping before they go live on the ATFR. Last night was done differently because of the change up. Hope that clears that up.
As for Arie and Lauren and everything we saw last night between them, I mean what more needs to be said about the guy that I haven’t said already. My opinion hasn’t changed all season and won’t change now. Their contact while he was still engaged to Becca was shady, him hiding the extent of how he was feeling towards Lauren while he was still engaged to Becca is shady, etc. All of it. Just shady. But not the least bit surprising. He’s a womanizer who cannot be alone, has to always have someone new, and there’s nothing he’s said or done all season that makes me think Lauren is going to be the girl he finally settles down with. It was embarrassing watching him last night. Lauren is a pawn in his game. He’s a master manipulator at getting what he wants out of women, and Lauren is just his next conquest. Unfortunately, he put a ring on it, which will make that break up even worse. He put a ring on Becca 3 ½ months and look how that turned out.
Saying on the shows last night and this morning that these two have been looking at wedding venues since the second they started seeing each other again and want to get married as soon as possible? Lauren saying he handled things perfectly? We get nothing from her parents who were the most skeptical of this whole situation BEFORE any engagement happened? Seriously? These people are so far off in another land of reality, none of us can come close to comprehending it, so I give up with them. I don’t care anymore. He is her problem now, we’re much better off without them on our screen, and after a couple weeks and Becca’s season under way, they can slink off into their life in Scottsdale and ride out this wave til Arie finds his new shiny toy to play with. The guy has zero respect for how he treats women, always has, and nothing he said or did this season did anything whatsoever to change that impression of him. Good luck you two. You’re going to need it.
I’m sure there are plenty of other questions and thoughts you want my opinion on and I hope I covered a lot of them in “Reader Emails” starting on page 2, but if I didn’t, I’d like to just put this season to rest now and start focusing on Becca, which began immediately after the ATFR ended last night.
Becca’s season will now consume this site for the next 4 months or so. Filming for the season starts next week, which is the exact same schedule as they’ve been on for the last 6 seasons. Funny, because last year I was in Vegas for the beginning of March Madness and Rachel’s night 1 was the opening day of the tournament. Looks like we’re gonna get a repeat of that this year, as I believe filming starts next Thursday, the 15th, which is the opening day of the NCAA tournament. As we saw, we were introduced to five of her guys last night, none of which I had before they appeared. Within 15 minutes, I had confirmed all of them for you on Twitter last night, so if you weren’t following, here they are their full names and Instagram link. Their bios will be posted in full next week. I’ve also added a 6th guy who will be on Becca’s season that I tweeted about last night. Here are the 5 you saw come on stage in the order they appeared:
Lincoln Adim – linkin_
Chase Vergason – chasevergason
Ryan Peterson – ogrp
Darius Feaster – feasthebeast
Blake Horstmann – balockaye.h
And then a 6th guy I can reveal to you is NFL tight end, Clay Harbor:
Clay Harbor – clayharbs82
As mentioned, full bios will be released next week. And with those 5 being introduced last night and being new to me, it now means I have 15 of Becca’s guys, so over half the cast already. Definitely never had this many that early, so I’ll be releasing more next Wednesday on the morning I leave for Vegas.
Thanks again to everyone who has read and supported the site all season long. It’s been quite a ride. Even after the initial spoiler on Nov. 30th, I feel like I had a new exclusive like every other week once the season got going. There was never any doubt this went down as I laid it out for you (from the phone call he placed to Lauren on New Year’s Day, to the switch up being filmed and Becca being blindsided, etc) you had it all well before you saw it play out on TV. I can’t thank all my sources this season who helped me with this. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to get you guys the goods every single season. And if you think I had a lot of Arie’s season for you, just wait til Becca’s. Sources already in place so you’ll be updated in real time as filming is happening per usual. Thanks again to everyone for another great season. “Reader Emails” begin on Page 2…
