Delightfully Boring: Bachelor 27, Episode 11 Recap
Zach gets his happy ending and I actually believe this one might work out.
We made it to the end y’all. What’s it say about this franchise that by the end of each Bachelor season specifically there is this feeling of relief? I thought this time would be different. Zach was doing so well, his women were engaging, gorgeous, and really seemed to like him and one another, and then Sex Week had to ruin it all.
The episode starts with Jesse Palmer in what Jared Fried calls “the dome of the undateables.” Sidenote: if you’ve never watched Jared’s live scream of Bachelor Nation shows, please do. He’s hilarious.
Anyway, we’re with Jesse and the audience, and he addresses the school shooting that happened in Nashville early Monday. I was shocked to hear him acknowledge that. I was then equally shocked by the quick pivot to Zach’s Sex Week decision. I love the acknowledgment that our world is in shambles, but it was an odd statement to shove in before all this petty drama.
After that, we get a sit down with Ariel and Jesse. She was dressed like a greek goddess, so pretty! Ariel’s hot seat wasn’t juicy at all. She answered Jesse’s questions almost too well and very much seemed like a woman who has made peace with what went down during the season. Love that for her, but not exciting to watch on TV. One thing we did learn during this hot seat is that she and Zach never talked about his intimacy with Gabi, which means Ariel had to find out with us as viewers. That’s really fucked up. Especially since Zach tried to act like being honest about having sex with Gabi was so noble. My guy wasn’t even honest with all the women left in the process!
Zach comes out to meet Ariel for the first time since filming wrapped. His suit is giving Mens Warehouse, which would be fine if this wasn’t a marquee dating show that generates millions of dollars. Stylist did him dirty.
Jesse gives Ariel the floor and she tells Zach that it’s fucked up that she had to hear about his amended boundaries with the rest of the world. She also mentions that his obsession with not having sex ended up making Fantasy Suite week about nothing, but sex. He agrees and says he regrets making that choice. Ariel accepts his apology but makes sure he knows that his choice during that week took away the women’s agency to choose for themselves, which is ultimately a terrible look. As terrible as Zach was at handling conflict during the season, I was shocked at how well he responded to Ariel’s frustrations and criticism of him.
Meeting the Family
We get yet another shower scene of Zach while his voiceover is talking about how much he botched Sex Week. Production consistently plays games, my man is showering while talking about going against his self-imposed boundary of no sex. You just have to laugh at that.
Zach’s family is in Thailand and he’s explaining to them how last week went and letting them know he’ll be meeting Gabi first. He describes Gabi as being “so secure” in what they have and I feel like we haven’t seen that at all this season. She’s cried constantly and lacked quite a bit of confidence in their relationship, but ok.
Before meeting his family, Gabi wants to speak with Zach about how his words and actions after they had sex made her feel. She wasn’t going to agree to meet his family until they spoke first. Gabi says she’s feeling pressured and wanted to make sure Zach didn’t associate any negative feelings from Fantasy Suites with her. Zach says his comments about being a failure were his naive thoughts that he could make up rules that would ultimately lead to him finding true love (as if sex/physical intimacy can’t be part of love). Gabi likens how she’s feeling to being an accessory to a crime and asks if he regrets what they did. Zach quickly says no and he wouldn’t take any of it back.
I thought Zach’s explanation was good, Gabi didn’t look reassured, but in her ITM she said that she felt truly heard and appreciated how the conversation went. So, she decides to meet the family. She walks in and immediately seems comfortable with Zach’s family. Even her one-on-one conversation with Zach’s dad felt so mature and she came off confident. This felt like a Gabi that we haven’t seen since their first one-on-one.
After such a good day with his family, Gabi feels more ready than ever to start her life with him. She tells him she loves him and Zach seems excited to hear it. I did notice there were no mentions of Zach falling in love with Gabi after he let it slip last week while telling her he was about to share their bedroom business with the world. Seemed convenient.
Similar to Gabi, Katie is still feeling some type of way after Fantasy Suite week. She says she hopes Zach doesn’t end up being like every other man in her life. Katie speaks with Zach’s mom first and starts crying pretty quickly when his mom asks how she feels about there still being another woman left in the process. We never see Katie answer the question. Instead, we get her in the middle of a conversation with his sisters where they ask something similar. Katie says she just wants Zach to be happy and follow his heart.
Zach’s dad asks if Katie wants a relationship where she’s best friends with her partner as Zach does and she says yes (as if she was gonna say no). I know people have strong feelings about the idea of a partner/spouse being a best friend, but I agree with this line of thinking. It’s not the end of the world if your spouse isn’t your best friend first, but I do think it makes things easier becuase the foundation isn’t just rooted in romanticism.
At the end of the date, Katie shares that she’s in love with Zach and hopes to get to see his family again. They kiss and say their goodbyes.
The Final Dates
It’s a new day and Zach is ready for his final date with Kaity. They’re going on a hike and apparently couldn’t give homegirl a heads up because she’s in fucking flip-flops. That can’t be safe.
Going into dinner, Kaity shares she’s nervous that she isn’t sure if it’s her. Zach is being so diplomatic and it’s annoying. Maybe it’s because we haven’t seen a “normal” final two in a few seasons, but acting confused about which woman you’re going to ask to be your wife in 48 hours is weird. Weirder than the premise of this show itself.
Kaity clearly leaves this conversation convinced it isn’t her and preparing to have her heart broken. Frankly, I can’t believe how quickly these women have moved on after Zach made having sex everyone else’s problem just 10 seconds ago.
It’s time for Gabi’s final date and there was no audio! Nor were my captions working. And I wasn’t the only one, Twitter was so confused. Not having audio during the final date of the season finale—usually one of the highest viewed episodes of the season—is not a good look and even more of a reason for this damn franchise to go to streaming. Gabi and Zach rode horses. But for the aforementioned reasons, we have no idea what was said.
After a commercial break to work out the technical difficulties, we’re back with sound! Gabi is telling Zach how much she loves his family and how excited she is at the opportunity of being part of it. She asks how he’s feeling and he shares that he’s nervous but calm. He claims he’s still torn and doesn’t know which way he’s gonna go even though the engagement is in two days.
Zach’s response sends Gabi on her 20th spiral of the season. In her ITM with producers, she says she doesn’t feel like enough and wishes he’d just make a decision. She also says if it were her, Zach would’ve said something to let her know. In her gut, she feels like it isn’t her. I gotta side with Gabi here, even if Zach was still *so confused* about his decision, he should have just lied. Said some shit about being excited to start his life with his person.
At dinner, Gabi takes the opportunity to tell him that she feels some sort of way that Zach is still unsure about what he’s going to do when she’s so sure about him. Fair comment. It seemed like Gabi felt like there was something she could do or say to sway his mind, but baby girl if that was the case, that’s not a man you want to be with. Zach says his heart is being tugged in two places and that this is the first time he hasn’t been decisive in this process, which tracks. He seemed to make decisions very quickly all season and what he was saying last night, was a stark contrast.
He tells Gabi he’s falling in love with her again, but that doesn’t hold much weight for her because she assumes if he’s saying that to her, he’s saying it to Kaity too (interesting to know as a viewer that he wasn’t).
Gabi’s Heartbreak
Before showing us the footage of the final day, Jesse warns us that it’s a tough watch. Jesse is still rather new to this franchise, so I still don’t know whether he’s being dramatic or not.
Instead of Neil Lane, Jesse helps Zach pick out a ring. Usually, we get a much longer segment of this, but we barely got a close-up of the ring!
Zach takes his position on the platform, ring in hand, and Gabi is the first out of the limo. She immediately tells production that the area they dropped her off is muddy and they need to do better for Kaity. What a real one. Even as she’s walking into a breakup, she’s still looking out for her girl. This was a nice reminder that the real love story of this show will always be the friendships.
Gabi walks up to Jesse and says she knows it isn’t her, Jesse tries to encourage her otherwise but is clearly shocked by the revelation.
Zach starts his speech and as soon as he says “but” she cuts him off, which I loved. I hate that the leads have to say all this nice shit before letting someone down, it’s fucked up. She shares that she’s known it wasn’t her and she just wishes he would’ve been honest when he knew. Zach claims he made the decision the night before, but we know that isn’t true (and he says as much later on live TV).
Even though she cuts him off, he follows her to the car and tries to share how much he’ll cherish their time together. It’s so uncomfortable to watch. Gabi gets in the car and breaks down. She calls herself unlovable and says a bunch of other negative things about herself. It was so sad to see her talk so negatively about herself. But I have 100 percent been there and said almost identical things about myself. I can only hope she takes the time to heal and love herself before putting herself out there again to find her person. Hopefully, it happens off TV too, this process seemed like a lot for her.
Back in the studio, she’s on stage with Jesse and explains just how long the proposal day was and how shocked she was that Zach would make her go through all of that only for it not to be her. I agree. I know this show has “rules,” but why would anyone want to break up with one person on the same day they get engaged!? It’s too much! Change the format, and let the leads choose to break up with the other person the night before because this sucks.
I’m mad for Gabi, I get that the sex was consensual and they both agreed to it, but I don’t like that we’ve seen this woman cry so much about not being chosen. For him to not only go back on his word, but make a choice to be intimate, share it with the world, and then not choose her is actually lame as fuck. Gabi called it “violating” and that feels like a fair way to describe it.
When it comes time for Gabi to see Zach for the first time she looks scared. You can tell she’s still hurt. Jesse asks about Zach’s decision to share what happened during their Fantasy Suite and she says it was disappointing because during the day she felt so supported by him and what was aired was such a small portion of what they actually connected over.
We also learn she and Zach promised to keep their intimate moment between them only for him to change his mind the next day. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she didn’t know Zach was going to use her name until she saw it live last week. What the actual FUCK!? She says she feels ashamed and that it’s painful to experience both in the moment and in the watch back.
The Proposal
When it came to his final decision, Zach said he asked himself who he couldn’t picture his life without and he saw Kaity. Similar to Gabi knowing it wasn’t her, it seemed like Kaity knew that it was her.
Kaity and Zach exchange monologues that feel like wedding vows. Kaity’s even in a white dress. He takes a knee and pops the question and she says yes. I think this one might work out, they live in the same city, and as I said a few weeks ago, are delightfully boring. I guess we’ll just ignore the fact that he said he knew it was Kaity when she came out on stage after just telling Gabi he ain’t know 🙃.
As my wish for all of these couples, I hope Zach and Kaity take the time to live their lives off-camera and social media and just enjoy one another. I also hope the transition is easy on them, especially since they get to go home to the same city!
That’s all y’all. Excited to now give my full attention to the mess that is Vanderpump Rules season 10. I’ll be back to recap Charity’s season in June. Maybe they’ll be some sprinkles of Bachelor Nation News in between, depending on how messy these people get. Thanks for rocking with me this season and reading ✌🏾
Thank you for recapping this season!