Have you guys seen Black Mirror? I’ve only watched one episode. The first episode. It’s called The National Anthem. For the purpose of this blog, all you need to know is that a member of the Royal Family has been kidnapped and will be killed unless the Prime Minister agrees to have sexual intercourse with a pig on national television. Spoiler Alert: He has sex with a pig on national television. The real ethical question posed in this episode is who is worse? The Prime Minister or the captive audience members, crowded into bars and restaurants, surrounding jumbotrons and home televisions, all frothing at the mouth to watch the Prime Minister completely humiliate himself?
Today, all of Bachelor Nation is that audience; watching this trainwreck unfold in front of us, sometimes with one eye closed, but all the while with full attention and ignoring our conscious, which is begging us to turn it off and return to the people we were before this disgusting distraction entered our lives.
I can’t do the normal recap of this episode, though I did take diligent notes and wrote some very insightful and hilarious anecdotes along the way. None of that matters anymore. We are not the same people we were when this episode started. We can never go back to who we were.
If you did come here to see what happened during this episodes, the following bullets tell you everything you need to know:
- Arie introduces both girls to his family, one at a time.
- Lauren can barely answer a question about what her favorite date with Arie was. She’ll be an insufferable partner because she is constantly wrought with indecision.
- Becca kills it in her time with his parents but they keep comparing her to Lauren… in front of Becca. You’ll never know the pain of being a brunette that gets compared to a blonde unless you are a brunette.
- Arie tells both women, “I love you” more times than necessary.
- Lauren B arrives at the rose ceremony first AKA she gets eliminated. She is devastated and rightfully confused. He was trying to talk her into this the whole time and she feels completely duped.
- Becca gets the proposal and the final rose, which she drops. An ominous sign.
Everything that happened was textbook Bachelor finale. The only reason we knew something was up was that ABC has been promoting the shit out of this finale for the past month. Chris Harrison never wasted an opportunity to tell us that this is not going to end the way we think it will end, which ironically made audiences guess exactly how it was going to end: Arie will break up with Becca to try to get back together with Lauren.
This isn’t the first time that a Bachelor has changed his mind before the finale airs. Jason Mesnick famously picked Melissa only to break up with her at the “After the Final Rose” special. Moments later, Molly came out and he confessed his love for her, thus granting him the title of Most Hated Man in Bachelor History. This would change in time, of course, as he and Molly got married and had kids and as we were introduced to much less savory Bachelors like Juan Pablo and now, Arie.
As tasteless as it was for ABC to insist that Jason break up with Melissa on television, it is head and shoulders more respectful than what transpired last night. First, when Jason dumped Melissa on national television, they had the decency not to film it in front of a live studio audience. It was pre-taped and aired at a later date. Second of all, Melissa came out into the studio knowing something was up. The fact that no one was in the studio audience at the famous “After the Final Rose” taping (ATFR to the diehards) was clue number one. Finally, when Melissa was done, she got to walk off the stage, not suffer through watching her own break-up in front of a live audience. I’m getting ahead of myself.
As I mentioned, Chris has been prepping and fluffing the audience about this epic breakup for the entire episode. They even extend the episode by an additional hour to show us completely unedited, live-time, multi-camera footage of this break-up. If they could have handed out 3-D glasses, they would. They are one bad decision away from auctioning off the Kleenex that Becca uses to wipe her tears. It is completely shameless.
Arie arrives at their secret get-away house to see Becca, who has just finished an interview where she’s asked questions about how much she loves Arie and how happy she is and how she knows this is forever. The girl is beaming. She doesn’t see this coming at all, and why should she? Arie walks in the house, out of breath from fear of this confrontation. He asks her to talk 2.5 seconds after walking in the door.
“You’re making me nervous”, she jokingly says. Girl, this is no joke.
He tells her that he can’t stop thinking about Lauren and he thought he would be over her by now, but he is still in love with her.
“I just don’t think it’s fair to be half in it with you and half in it with her,” he says.
“So, what? You’re going to be half in it with her and half in it with me instead?”
Oh, Becca. She still doesn’t get it. She still thinks he’s just conflicted, not decided. But, since this is “unedited”, we actually get to see her face as she realizes she is being dumped in front of a camera crew and that this break-up will air across the country and that this footage will haunt her forever.
This break-up could have, SHOULD have, easily ended here. Hell, Arie could have had the balls to do this off camera and save both of them a little respect. I don’t think anyone would have hated him as much if they showed up separately to the ATFR taping saying “we broke up. He wasn’t over Lauren.” Instead, we get not one, not two, but three entire segments of Becca crying in the bathroom and Arie not understanding that he should leave. He actually knocks on the door and says “Hey, are you ok?” Is she ok? IS SHE OK? ARE YOU AN IDIOT?
Commercial break after commercial break, we keep coming back to see this woman getting more and more upset. They’re already broken up. They’re not getting back together. We know nothing else is going to happen, but we keep watching. We justify it because as a nation, we rally against Arie and call him an asshole and clueless and the worst bachelor ever but we keep watching nonetheless. Chris Harrison keeps cutting in, saying “But wait! There’s more!” We know it’s bullshit but we keep watching anyway. Just as it feels like this episode can’t get any lower, Arie finally leaves the house and we cut back to the studio one last time. The camera pans out to find Becca, live in the Studio Audience, watching this footage for the first time in front of a room full of strangers and a national audience full of voyeurs. She’s still devastated. This should all be over now but it’s not. Lord Harrison isn’t satisfied with her suffering yet. She’ll be facing both Arie and Lauren… on the NEXT EPISODE OF THE BACHELOR! That’s right. The most shocking finale in Bachelor history was actually a cliffhanger. They are going to drag this shit out one more night.
So, which one was worse? The Prime Minister that had intercourse with a pig on national television (to completion, mind you) or the audience members that happily watched it happen. For me, it’s definitely the audience. At least the Prime Minister was trying to save a life. What was the audience’s excuse? What is our excuse? At least in Black Mirror, pub owners, mothers and fathers, classroom teachers, and everyday citizens slowly turned off their TV’s. They’d seen enough. But for us? We kept watching. We’ll KEEP watching, all while we yell at our TV’s and swear off Arie and the next Bachelor and the Bachelor after that. We don’t even realize how much we lost.
As for me and the Bachelor? I think I really am done with this show. I can’t be an active participant in this kind of psychological torture anymore. In fact, given the choice between the two, I’d rather f*ck a pig.
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