The Bachelor Recap: An Adventurous Wife

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This is a pretty gloomy episode of The Bachelor, especially for Fantasy Suites Week! Is anyone having fun? (Litia is). Is anyone getting what they want out of this process? (Litia is). Is this going to turn out well for anyone involved? (No, not even for Litia. That is my prediction now.)

There’s a lot going wrong here: A lack of any real sexual chemistry between Grant and the ladytestants; Grant saying “I love you” completely unprompted; production giving Zoe the absolute worst date. But for me, what is such an absolute bummer is Grant continuing to objectify the women. Now, he’s not objectifying them by talking about their bodies or how sexy they are; and maybe a little bit of that would be helpful, even, to show us chemistry between Grant and the top three. No, I mean that he keeps referring to them as “a wife” or “a mother,” reducing them to the role they’ll play in his life. Where is “partner”? Or “girlfriend”? Or “Sugarlips”? The most egregious instance is when he says, “When I saw Zoe with her friends and family, I saw a wife.” Zoe was transported to another plane of existence, and she became A Wife. Grant has not said anything meaningful or specific about any of the women except where they rank on the A Wife scale.

By the conclusion of the episode, all women must exhibit a characteristic known as “being adventurous.” To visualize this, imagine an ‘Adventurous-Wife Scale’ where one axis represents the role of Wives and the other, the level of Adventurousness. Let us examine how each woman fares on this scale.

In this exciting episode, we find ourselves in the beautiful Dominican Republic! The editing style seems reminiscent of the Fast & Furious series!

In the opening minutes, we delve into Grant’s past: He has Dominican heritage as his grandmother hailed from there, and he spent three years playing basketball there. Oh, and did I mention he’s trying to identify his future spouse? Yes, it’s a mystery even to him! It’s almost like Grant is participating in a reality show game called “The Wife,” where one of the women is his secret wife, and he must eliminate all others.

The first date of the week is Juliana’s. The show is keeping up this “Pairing the women with a former contestant with similar emotional themes” thing, and I would say Juliana’s emotional doppelgänger is Daisy, if Juliana were angling to be the Bachelorette and very ambivalent about the Bachelor. Juliana tells Daisy about the fact that she was cheated on repeatedly in her last relationship and is having trouble opening up or trusting or something. She says she puts up a bubbly front to hide how emotional she is inside. Juliana’s strategy seems to be emotionally white-knuckling her way through the rest of the season. Daisy tells her that she has no regrets. Easy to have no regrets when you ended up with Terrible Herbst the Fourth.

There are no run-and-jumps on any of these dates! Have we rejected tradition? Instead, Juliana and Grant are going four-wheeling, and Juliana needs a lot of validation that Grant likes her hair after it was in a helmet. I think Juliana is secretly in the lead because neither of them have doubts about each other. And he can see her as Wife, and she’s Adventurous. So if she needs to be told her bangs still look cute after being in a helmet, that’s fine. Grant also says that things in a relationship are going to be rough but that they’re going to be there to help each other through it. That’s what love is. That brings our “That’s what love is” counter to 1.

Time for the evening portion of the date. You might think there would be some drama about Juliana feeling insecure that the other women are also there. Nope, that doesn’t happen. You might think there would be some drama about Juliana feeling insecure that her and Grant haven’t said “I love you” yet. Nope. None of that. Is there any drama or forward momentum? No!!!!!!!!! Part of the reason is we’ve heard some of this information about Juliana’s past relationship before and Grant offers so little about himself or his past relationships that there’s nothing to latch on to. The only interesting thing Grant says is “That’s what love is for. It fixes you.” And RED FLAG! RED FLAG!!! I don’t know how much more ink can be spilled on the amount of inner-child work Grant needs to do, but holy fucking smokes.

Grant says that the moment today when her hair was all messed up and she didn’t even know she was beautiful was so important, and he’s ready to take the lead. He sees her heart and he’s falling in love with her. Information we already heard. They get the Fantasy Suite card, and as the door closes, Juliana says “Oooh, spicy!”

The next morning, Juliana has a level of calm and peace that I haven’t seen outside of the spa at the Four Seasons. He totally told her she was making it to the next week, right? When Grant leaves, she calls him “Mr. Ellis” and says, “Bye, boyfriend!” She’s really trying to get that shit over. She dips her cute little toes in the pool on her balcony and allows the dark thoughts to come flooding back in.

It’s Zoe’s turn! Guys. Who let this happen? This date shouldn’t have happened for so many reasons. Chief among them: They don’t know each other! These are two strangers. Also, the filming this season was two weeks shorter, so there is an alternate universe where Zoe got a one-on-one date, and who knows if she would have made it to Fantasy Suites! Right now, it seems like Grant stacked the deck for his Fantasy Suites week with two people he really, really, really likes … and the hottest person available. Which is a disservice to Zoe because she seems cool! And like someone who may just not be made for reality TV. I said during Hometowns that she and Grant looked really good together, and this episode … they look very awkward together.

Their daytime date is designed to get into Zoe’s head. It’s silent yoga. Are you fucking kidding me? I need Zoe to be a bad bitch and take over the date. This is not the time to actually be silent for the entire yoga session. You have two options: Either say “screw it” and joke and laugh, or go full-on sexy. Remember, ABS: Always Be Straddling. Instead, it seems like the two of them can’t even maintain eye contact for more than 15 seconds. Things are not looking good. (She also met with Rachel before the daytime portion of the date, and you can see it dawn on Rachel how not good this is going for Zoe.)

Zoe keeps saying she wants “the romance and the softness.” She clearly wants to feel like a viable option and wants Grant (and the show) to treat her like a potential romantic partner. And she keeps reiterating she wants a man to see her as deserving of love and then the love will come. During the nighttime portion of the date, we don’t even get to that because Zoe has more pressing questions, like, “What’s your whole fucking deal, dude?” They’re literally still at the “Tell me about yourself” stage and an engagement is supposed to happen next week. My favorite exchange is when Grant tells her that his favorite color is blue and she asks him, “What’s my favorite color?” and he goes “Is it blue?” This is a man who needs his partner to reflect his values and experiences so much that they definitely have the same favorite color, right? NO. WRONG. Her favorite color is teal, which is honestly an insane favorite color choice. Grant tells her about his family history and his dad’s struggle with addiction. Zoe says that those issues are present in her family as well, and they seem to be starting down a road of some compatibility.

Then Grant goes off on his flights of magical thinking and says he wanted to mend his family’s brokenness and be in a family that eats dinner together. He doesn’t really engage with Zoe saying she’s been through similar experiences, and they both pivot into generic TikTok relationship goals: “I’m looking for someone to build an empire with.” Ladies, no you don’t. You want a man who will fold the laundry unprompted.

They head to the Fantasy Suite and … where did their chemistry go? What is happening? At one point, Grant says he admires that she’s a survivor, and I can’t imagine a bigger lady-boner killer than being described as a survivor. Instead of seeing them in bed the next morning, they are heading to a picnic on the beach. The beach? In the morning? Oof. A beach at night? Sexy, romantic, wistful. A beach in the morning? Frigid, uncaring, heartless. You could hold a job interview or an intervention on the beach in the morning. Zoe says they’re ready to build on where they are now, and oh, sweetie.

The show is giving Litia a conflicted winner’s edit, and I’m very interested to see where this goes. She is racing through several different Fantasy Suite Week tropes and dismisses them until she lands on the one she’s going to work with for the rest of the episode. Kaity is there to talk to her about how to manage hearing about the other women, but that doesn’t appear to be an issue this season so that gets put aside. It seems like Litia might be gearing up for an ultimatum if Grant sleeps with anyone else during Fantasy Suites, but that never materializes. Litia ultimately lands on “no sex in the Fantasy Suite,” and I can’t tell if that’s a hard moral boundary or a result of her wanting to hurl on this zip-line date.

Ah yes, the zip-line date. Grant already knows that Litia is Wife. She might be the most Wife out of all the remaining women — but is she Adventurous? The answer is a solid “no,” but Grant mostly ignores that. Litia is about to vomit and/or sue the zip-line company, and Grant is like, “Wow, she’s a trooper!” They head to a cenote and start talking about their future. Grant mentions that his father is in a rehab program in New Jersey, and Litia chimes in, “SO WE CAN MOVE TO NEW YORK?” Listen, my family’s business for basically my entire life has been addiction medicine. My mom ran a treatment center for many years. I don’t think “We’re gonna move to the biggest city near my dad’s rehab” is a thing? I think Litia is treating Grant’s father as if he has a terminal illness and is gearing up for that kind of in-law experience, and while very admirable, it’s not exactly the same as being a full-time caregiver. Grant and Litia just keep saying, “I want you to be happy. No, I want you to be happy” to each other. There’s going to be a lot of self-sacrifice with these two!

It’s time for the evening portion of the date. Grant asks Litia what the next step is, and she says, “Meet your family and get engaged.” She’s watched this show. You can’t trick her. Grant is trying to get a read on how quickly she wants to have kids since everyone in her family told him she was an old crone who needs to be with child. She says her timeline is to have a kid by 33, so she’s got two years. Grant seems a little freaked out by this timeline. He mostly seems like a guy who has never really thought about the fact that it gets harder for women to get pregnant as they get older and was really asking if she wanted to go to Japan or Brazil after they get engaged. They get the Fantasy Suite card, and it sounds like Litia is going to say “no,” but she just wants to say “no physical intimacy.” Grant says he respects that and it shows maturity to not build their foundation on sex and then he says, “I do love you.”

Yeah. Okay. Sure. She says it back, and they head to the Fantasy Suites floating on air. I don’t have time to unpack whatever relationship gibberish Grant was spouting about sex as something that can get in the way of a foundation for a relationship. Because the next morning, Grant looks positively shook. It seems like the reality of telling Litia that he loves her is sinking in, and he says, “Should I stop now and pick Litia? What am I gonna doooo?” And he’s very confused about this. He’s panicking about how to manage the multiple feelings he’s feeling.

Time for the rose ceremony. We all know how this is going to go down. Zoe is eliminated, and Grant tells her how hard this has all been on him. Zoe does a better job complimenting him and telling him he’s going to find someone special. GRANT. PLEASE. The way I have written “AND NOTHING FOR ZOE?” in my notes more than once this episode is depressing.

Then I thought my DVR had somehow traveled forward in time and started the finale episode. But no! It’s time to meet Grant’s family! He says his parents haven’t been together in like seven years and he feels good that his family is supporting him and coming together for this. RIP Freud, you would have loved Grant.

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2025-03-18 21:38