Peripheral Post #3 - After the Final Rose

 I love my roommate and my mother, but the fact that they force me to watch The Bachelor every Tuesday night when I am trying to get work done (aka watch The Sopranos) really causes what little serotonin I have to take a nosedive. 

Ok. I might be exaggerating with the use of the word ~force~, but there is definitely some emotional manipulation involved, especially when they say things like, "We love you and just want to spend time with you". Gross. 

Anyways, while I normally complain about how much I hate this show (I actually enjoyed The Bachelorette with Tayshia, but The Bachelor genuinely got under my skin in a bad way), I actually sat down and intently watched the "After the Final Rose Ceremony". I had discussed The Bachelor in my last core post, yet I never felt quite satisfied with how I ended it. What was missing was a reconciliation, or rather a reckoning, between bachelor Matt James and Rachel Kirkconnell, who was the woman Matt proposed to during the final rose ceremony. She is also, if you recall, the woman at the center of the antebellum south-themed party controversy. 

I was very interested in watching this because a) I strongly dislike Chris Harrison and he has currently "stepped down" from The Bachelor for defending Kirkconnell and b) it was the most honest I felt this reality show every gets. One of the best parts was when Matt was having a mediated "one-on-one" with Michelle, the Black contestant he overlooked for the white Southern Belle. At the end of their conversation, Michelle's final words to Matt were "I hope you come up with more phrases than 'Thanks for sharing'". Matt claimed that this show was allowing him to confront his personal feelings more and be able to open up, yet it did not always seem that he was extending that same empathy/energy to the women vying for his affections.

The moment of the show that had my eyes glued to the screen was the confrontation between Matt and Rachel. Since the Antebellum revelation, Matt and Rachel had split up. Rachel spoke with host Emmanuel Acho about how she is "not going to make up excuses for herself" while simultaneously avoiding taking ANY responsibility. No surprise there. What really surprised me was when Matt was asked about how these revelations affected him and his decision to end his relationship with Rachel. What followed was one of the most genuine moments I have seen on the show: silence. With every question lobbied at Matt by Emmanuel and every comforting pat by Rachel, Matt just sat in silence. It was apparent that it had affected him in more complicated ways than ABC and gossip websites would like to believe. It was difficult to watch, yet far more difficult for Matt in ways I cannot ever imagine, nor will I ever experience.

While I am being really gossip-y about this show right now, I do want to point out that I am jumping over a ton of the nuances about this episode, show, and controversy simply because this would be an incredibly long post. Race has been such a huge factor in this show, ESPECIALLY this season since Matt is the first Black Bachelor after 24 previous white Bachelors. There was one extremely exploitative episode where Matt was having an extremely difficult "one-on-one" talk with his father, who was absent for most of his life. It was extremely uncomfortable and painful to watch, especially considering the nature and history of The Bachelor. Red rose or not, there are no winners in The Bachelor. That is, unless you're white.