No! NO NO NO!!!! NO THANK YOU!!!! Non! Nein! Nee! Nyet! Nei! Nej! Tidak! Nein again!!!!!
Up until the end, The Bachelorette had a truly fascinating episode on its hands this week. Jenn trying desperately to justify Sam M. wanting to push her off a building for the lolz! Salmon exuding incredible “Nerd in a fedora and tactical kilt who watched one Andrew Tate video” energy! Devin saying something so beautiful I whispered to myself, “That’s beautiful”! And it was all thrown into the GODDAMNED TRASH over some five-foot-nine situationship from three years ago. When the episode hard-cut to Jesse briefing the audience like he was on SEAL Team Six and the squad was moving into place, I screamed. The show has built up a strong visual language, and Jesse Palmer suddenly staring me in the eyes and letting me know that a stranger is approaching unsettled me to my core.
What’s killing me is that Jenn CLEARLY doesn’t want this! She’s soooooo incredibly skeptical of this Matthew person, and who wouldn’t be because they dated for three months three years ago. I’m sorry, that’s too long ago. Really, is this what anyone wants? Imagine your most recent situationship: He’s probably named something like Brad and he works in marketing or insurance adjusting or … was it marketing? He probably loves The Office, still talks about what Hogwarts house he’s in, and his most controversial opinion is he thinks pineapple belongs on pizza. Winky-face-tongue-out emoji. You brought him to one party with all your friends and literally zero people have asked you, “Hey, what happened to that marketing guy?” Got him in your mind’s eye? Now imagine he flew 24 hours to tell you he loved you. You’re jumping into that New Zealand harbor, aren’t you?
Let’s get into it.
They’re in Auckland, New Zealand, because traveling anywhere else is cost-prohibitive before Hometowns. The episode starts with Jesse and Jenn having a cute little lunch, and it breaks my heart that by the end of the episode, Jesse will betray Jenn by encouraging Matt to talk to her. Jesse reveals some Bachelor Cinematic Universe lore that he’s the reason they’re not allowed to eat on one-on-one dates. He would be stuffing his face with the food (my favorite shot was him just mowing down a corn on the cob) and trying to have a conversation. This is a fun energy for Jesse: Your older sister’s husband taking you to lunch while your car is at the mechanic! He was the only one free on Thursday and we’re already near the mall, why not stop into the Cheesecake Factory?
Jenn arrives where all the jentlemen are hanging out, and Sam M. gets the one-on-one date. Jenn says she has an undeniable physical connection with Sam M., and she wants to know if they have an emotional connection. Spoiler alert: He laughs at her pain! They head to the Big Tower that every city has and Jenn asks what Sam M. would like to do on a first date, and he says, “This isn’t our first date.” Ha ha … what? He says when he straddled her on the couch was their actual first date. Sir.
My biggest thing with Sam M. is that this entire date is such a Bachelorette gimme. All he has to do is support her emotionally while she freaks out and then they’ll do the adrenaline activity together. ALL HE HAS TO DO is hug her and tell her he’s got her back. It’s the Bachelorette equivalent of bowling with bumpers, and Sam M. can’t do it.
First foul: Jenn says that maybe walking along the top would be enough for her (and they’re given that option), and Sam M. immediately goes, “No, we would like to jump.” Fuck off, dude! He keeps insisting that she’ll regret not doing it and that she’s gonna do it. Second foul: He says he’s going to push her!!!! Third foul: He says, “I want her to be comfortable, but I also want her to be comfortable being uncomfortable.” No! No no no! Sam M. is looking at this as an opportunity to force Jenn to challenge herself, and that’s fine within a relationship when you’re taking the other person’s lead, but Sam M. is deciding what would be good for Jenn. It’s the weird line of thinking that happens when you expose straight men to self-help content. He’s The 48 Laws of Powering her.
Jenn is weeping, full-on crying, and he’s laughing. Jenn is crying, and Sam M. is like, “Why don’t you come over here and give me a kiss.” Jenn says that Sam isn’t reading her emotions and that every single part of her body is telling her not to do this. Yes! Jenn, extrapolate those feelings to the man, not just the situation. She grabs him and breaks down into tears. Only then does he realize that he’s supposed to comfort her. I’m sorry, does anyone (besides Jenn) like this guy? It feels like he’s doing a performance of a “good guy” that he learned from one of those TikTok chefs who cooks with their shirt off and spanks the Cornish game hen before he puts on a spice rub.
Back at the hotel, everyone but Devin will be on the group date. This means that Sam M. and Devin will have to hang out all day while the rest of the guys are on the group date.
At the night portion of the date, Jenn is looking for Sam M. to go deeper. This man talks in Bachelorette magnetic poetry: “The love I want is wild”; “I want to be a better person for the person in front of you”; “I want a love that chooses you every time.” Also, Sam M. reveals that he was engaged before, and right after they got engaged, something changed and he started to pry and found out that his fiancée cheated on him. I would like to ask his former fiancée if that’s what happened.
Again, I’m so completely over this man, and this story was so, so generic. Listen, I don’t doubt that it happened, but I have some follow-up questions. A man like Sam doesn’t just say, “I knew I wasn’t really being chosen.” This is a sex robot that’s been taught English by watching episodes of dating reality shows. Jenn convinces herself that he really showed up for her when she didn’t want to jump off the tower and at dinner when she broke down talking about her past relationships and he said, “Everybody has trauma.” He gets the rose and the Big Tower lights up in red … for a rose. Right, a rose.
For the group date, the contesticles are playing rugby. The day starts with a Māori group demonstrating the Haka, and somehow that activates the annoying-as-shit splinter cell in Salmon’s brain. Salmon has decided that today is the day. He’s going to kiss Jenn. I would like some clarification on exactly how far Salmon has gone in relationships, because he’s not just acting like a love virgin, he’s acting like a virgin-virgin. He also keeps saying he’s got “bad bitch energy.”
Sam M. and Devin are sitting at the hotel, and Sam M. really doesn’t know how he comes across, does he? He keeps saying he’s not wasting any more energy on Devin … while demanding Devin give him answers. At this point, Devin is trying to mind his business, and even him saying, “I hope he puts his best foot forward and shows his authentic self” when Sam M. got the one-on-one date is like the ninth-bitchiest thing he could say. Sam M. seems INCREDIBLY bothered by Devin, and Devin seems baffled by the whole situation.
Back on the group date, there’s a rugby-training montage where only Marcus has any idea what’s going on. Salmon also has written “Jenn’s Husband” on the back of his jersey, and I am alienated. In the end, he takes it way too seriously and his team wins. For the evening portion of the date, he puts on his best faux-leather moto jacket from Zara and carries the trophy into the cocktail party. Then he just starts doing weird shit, like not giving Marcus enough room to sit on the couch behind the drink he ordered. Like giving the trophy its own chair. Like power-walking into the room. Everyone is immediately over Salmon’s nonsense. They’re mostly laughing about how truly bizarre he’s being.
Tangent time: I was in an improv show at an independent theater in Chicago. The conceit of the show was that we were all people in a small town and it was a “soap opera,” so each week, one person would be the main character and anything that happened in the show that week became canon. There was this one guy in our group named Ken. One show, it was revealed that Ken’s character cheated on his ex-wife and that’s why they got divorced. After the show, Ken came up to another guy in the group and asked him to do a scene the next week where it would be revealed that Ken actually didn’t cheat on his ex-wife and he only said that because she cheated and he was trying to protect her. He just couldn’t handle that his character had any negative traits or did anything bad. His fictional, made-up improv character. I cannot emphasize enough how there were regularly eight people in the audience. The week it was Ken’s “Main Character Show,” he started THE IMPROV SHOW where everything was supposed to be made up by playing a song on his iPhone that was his character’s theme and performing a monologue he had written. We had a cast meeting and confronted him about it and he insisted he didn’t plan anything. Half of the cast spent the rest of the run trying their hardest to absolutely destroy Ken’s character.
I’m having the same feelings watching Salmon as I did in that improv show. Tangent over.
The guys that come out of this group date looking great are Marcus and Jonathan. Marcus struggles to admit that he got hurt during the rugby game because his whole job and identity revolves around being strong and not having anyone feel sorry for him. Jonathan takes Jenn aside and asks her, “How was your day?” while they play lacrosse because they both played in college. He also does a great job explaining to Salmon why he was disrespectful to the other men, even if he’s “focused” on Jenn.
Salmon knows that he’s got to take this relationship to the next level and he’s got to kiss Jenn. Is there a contingent of love virgins out here who cannot read the moment at all? Let me know in the comments if this is some archetype I’m not aware of. My soul left my body and I watched myself watch Salmon ask Jenn for a kiss and her respond, “I admire how open you are and that can’t be easy.” Jenn does the 100 percent right thing and walks Salmon out. Marcus gets the group-date rose.
It’s time for Devin’s one-on-one date. This date is all about sharing culture and tradition, and did we know that Jenn is Buddhist? Is this our first Buddhist Bachelorette?!? The representation!! She wants to know how Devin feels about sharing traditions because she wants to have her children share her religion and culture. They’re heading to a Māori celebration and they sit down with some Māori people who talk about how they look at landmarks as living with spirits. They ask Devin to stand up and talk about where he’s from. He says his dad immigrated from Mexico and he was raised in Houston. Then he says the most beautiful thing that’s ever been said on The Bachelorette: “There are no mountains where we’re from so the mountain in my mind is my mother.”
GIVE HIM THE FINAL ROSE RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!! I CRIED!!! I WEPT!!! THE SCREAM I SCRUMPT!!!! That’s it. He won it right there.
They play some games with the folks and sit down again, and Jenn explains how she’s reconnected with her Vietnamese heritage and her Buddhist traditions. Devin says he never saw an intact family and “a happy, healthy family is all the tradition I need.” PUT IT IN MY WEDDING VOWS!!!!!!!!
In the night portion of the date, Devin talks about how his dad wasn’t involved, so he lashed out at his mom because he didn’t understand how hard she was working to provide for him. Jenn talks about how seemingly one day, her dad was just done being a dad and done being married and divorced her mom. Then her dad wasn’t supportive or involved in her life, so she told him he wasn’t acting like a father and he stopped speaking to her. I forget exactly how much of this we heard in Joey’s season, but whoa. Jenn’s dad sounds like a piece of fucking work. She realizes that she has more in common with Devin than she thought and Devin tells her that he’s falling for her. He gets the rose and a singer appears out of the shadows for them. Devin says, “I can’t play it cool. I can’t play it safe. I want it to be me.” Medium! Cute! Dude!
Then Matt arrives on the scene, and I’ve made it clear how I feel about that. Matt says he wants another chance to prove to Jenn how he feels about her and that she can trust him. Jenn seems shocked that he “didn’t go to both of the weddings.” I need the goss on these weddings and I need to know what each bride thinks about Matt ditching their weddings to go ask if he can join this season of The Bachelorette. I guess we’ll find out next week when JENN’S PAST collides with JENN’S FUTURE.
