We started off the episode where we left off last week, which was the guys arriving at the cocktail party for the rose ceremony, completely unaware that earlier in the day, Jenn’s ex Matt had showed up in NZ, declared his love for Jenn, and asked if he could join her journey. My thoughts remain the same. The guy had plenty of time before Jenn left for filming to tell her how he felt. He clearly did this for attention and made it much more about himself than his feelings for Jenn. I think any guy whose ex goes on this show gets jealous and then convinces themselves he let them “get away.” Because clearly if Jenn is the “Bachelorette,” she’s now going to be desirable to so many new men, then Matt obviously must’ve let such a great woman get away. It’s an ego thing and I don’t really buy any of his act about him suddenly realizing he let her get away when Jenn has been saying in recent podcast appearances he never even told her he loved her when they were dating. Soooo, this is just a stunt for TV and nothing more.
What I do give Jenn credit for during this is when she sat down and told the men her ex has come back in her life and wants a chance to join the journey, in the past any time we’ve seen an ex show up, the lead will always talk with their group of men or women, and kinda get a feel for the room of what they’d think about it, before then deciding. Which, outside of Nick on Kaitlyn’s season, I don’t think an ex has ever had more than a one episode appearance before the lead decides to send them home. And rightfully so because you know it would just really upset their group since they’re the ones who the lead has been connecting with over the last 3 weeks. The ex already had their chance. And the one time the lead DID allow someone to enter the show in the 4th episode (Kaitlyn allowing Nick), it definitely upset the other men. So props to Jenn for not even asking the guys what they thought of the whole situation. She just told them, “Here’s the situation, I’m gonna go talk to him,” then Matt comes back in and tells the guys Jenn made her decision that her husband is in that room, it doesn’t include him, and he’s gonna peace out. Good for Jenn. With that said, this first 20 minutes was pretty much a giant waste of time. As I said at the beginning of the season, they made it out to be a way bigger deal than it was when they teased it.
Once that was over, Jenn didn’t even have a cocktail party, went straight to the rose ceremony, and John Mitchell and Thomas Nguyen were eliminated. Coupled with Sam N. being eliminated on the group date after party last week, that left us with 9 guys heading into the next “episode,” or rose ceremony #5, also in New Zealand. Her first 1-on-1 was with Jonathon and, knowing he makes it to final 3 before getting eliminated, I’ve been asked a lot this season about who I think is going to be the next Bachelor from Jenn’s season. Well, I don’t know who it’s going to be, but Jonathon is clearly a candidate. Will he get it? Who knows? But if you’re asking me what guys from Jenn’s season could I see being the Bachelor, Jonathon would at least be one. And even Grant, although Grant doesn’t finish top 4 so I think that may hurt his chances. But just looking at the overall appearance, how they were edited, etc, those are two guys I could see in the role. We’re still a month away from the next Bachelor being named, so there’s plenty of time. I haven’t heard anything on that front as of now. Usually don’t this early.
The group date was a classic in Bachelor lore. Not because of what they did. I can’t remember us ever seeing a group of men having to round up about 500 sheep. But just in the fact this show absolutely loves going to some foreign city, finding some random couple that’s been married forever, throwing them on the show and making them dictate what the group has to do. Usually that couple ends up telling us about how they’ve had a long marriage and what they do to make it work, but not these two. I think their names were Myrtle and Edgar. Something like that. Anyway, married for 45 years and they own a farm with a bunch of sheep. The guys wore flannels, had no idea what they were doing, and basically got chastised for not knowing how to farm. Then the couple decides randomly who did the best on the date and they chose Devin, even though I don’t think we as the audience have a clue why they chose him – other than because production told the couple to choose him.
One thing that was interesting about this date is if you go back to the season preview they showed at the end of episode 1 (that I also covered on my YouTube channel breaking down all the scenes), we saw a clip from this group date where it was just Devin running towards Jenn with all the sheep around. And then the next shot was them sitting on a blanket making out. That scene was never showed last night. All we saw was the couple choosing Devin as the “winner,” him and Jenn walking away, and then making out while the other guys on the date left. We never even saw any sort of conversation between Jenn and Devin. One of the few times I can ever remember someone getting extra time by “winning” a group date, then we the viewers don’t get to see them talking at all. Just a weird scene all around.
And we finally got our answer to the question of who was the 7th guy who made it Seattle between Spencer and Dylan. It was the one question I had from final 7 on and I assumed it was Spencer considering we knew he’d had a 1-on-1 date and Dyland didn’t, but it was confirmed last night with Dylan being eliminated. Which means that next week, Grant, Spencer, and Sam are eliminated. I’m pretty sure Sam is eliminated before the rose ceremony, since that’s what it looks like the commercials are teasing. And Spencer and Grant are the two eliminated at the rose ceremony as we know Marcus and Jeremy have the two 1-on-1 dates and the 5 person radio show group date is with Spencer, Devin, Sam, Grant, and Jonathon. Then MTA films next Thursday and airs on the 26th, which is why I think only Jeremy from the final 4 will be at the MTA. Next week is obviously final 7 episode, then Thursday they film MTA. Then the 19th is the hometown episode, so we’ll see Jeremy go home. You can’t have Jonathon on the MTA if the episode on the 26th hasn’t even shown the overnight date episode yet. We’ll see how it all plays out but that’s how I see it now.
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