Happy Thursday everyone, it’s time for The Bachelorette. Be warned that this episode contains levels of toxic masculinity, posturing, and gaslighting that made me long for something better to do with my time…like have food poisoning.
I’m incredibly fed up with Luke this season who has full-on exposed himself as someone who is emotionally abusive and who is being kept around probably by the producers. Men like Luke should get no airtime, but of course, The Bachelorette will play up his possessive nonsense as if it were romantic.
I hope you’re drinking.
We open in Rika, Latvia, and the first one-on-one date goes to Garrett and the bird that lives in his hair. For the date, they go naked bungee jumping. Yes, that’s a real thing. They’re strapped face-to-face and ABC blurs out their butts. It’s also cold enough to be snowing so…sorry Garrett.
During their dinner Garrett tells Hannah how he grew up in a “big football family” and how he was really pushed to play football, but he really hated it, and acknowledging that was what led him to find golf and…
He tells Hannah he’s falling in love with her, and she gives him a rose.
So the next day Garrett tells the dudes how they bungee jumped naked. All the other dudes are impressed…except for Luke. He refuses to believe Hannah would do such a thing.
Then it’s time for the group date, and Hannah meets seven of the dudes in an outdoor marketplace. Tyler C gives her a bouquet of flowers. They try moonshine, pickles, and cheese–the three most important food groups.
During the date, Hannah tells them the naked bungee jumping story.
Luke P is “shocked.” He tells the camera, “This is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, and I totally thought that was crossing the line. Like, her body is her temple, and to expose it to anyone who isn’t her husband, that’s a slap in the face.”
So that’s incredibly controlling and icky.
Next up is the cocktail party, and I guarantee Luke is going to start some shit. First though, Jed plays a song he wrote for her on the piano.
While Hannah is with Jed, Luke asks the other guys if they were bothered by the naked bungee jumping thing and Tyler C is like “…no?”
So then Luke talks to Hannah alone and tells her, “Honestly, I’m just thinking of you holding [Garrett] bare skinned and it really pissed me off. It really frustrated me.”
Hannah tells him it wasn’t a sexual thing.
“But still, I’m looking for you to meet my family,” Luke says. “It felt like it was a slap in the face. But no matter what you do, I’m going to support you. Even if you make a boneheaded mistake and you do something completely out of your character and wrong, I’m going to do whatever I can do to make this right.”
Hannah just kind of stares at him.
So let’s pause this for a moment to establish something. It doesn’t matter if Hannah is single, someone’s wife or the Queen of Mars. Her body belongs to her, and she can do whatever she wants with it.
It doesn’t matter if she and Garrett somehow achieved full penetration while bungee jumping naked (although that sounds like something that would end with an ER visit TBH), it’s her choice what she does with her body. Sexual. Not sexual. Dangling from a Latvian trolley car. It’s her choice.
Luke framing this as about him, and framing her decision as a mistake, is abuse. Hands down. Hannah’s decisions regarding her body have nothing to do with him. He acts as if he has been shamed and damaged in some way, and he has not. This language that abusers use to control and manipulate their victims.
Hannah, unfortunately, does not address this. Instead she gives the date rose to Tyler C.
Then we cut to the next one-on-one date with Peter. They have a Latvian spa day. The spend time in a sauna where they make out. Hannah says that their relationship is very sexually driven. Later they sit in a hot tub and sip champagne.
Then we get a commercial with Nick Viall and a creepy doll for Annabelle Comes Home and even a fucking haunted doll is smart enough not to accept his rose.
Back to the date. Peter tells Hannah he draws his strength from his job as a commercial pilot because “you can’t fail,” and like I WOULD FUCKING HOPE NOT. She asks him how traveling all the time impacts his dating life, and he admits it gets lonely.
Peter tells Hannah that he’s falling for her, and she gives him the date rose. Then they go outside and watch some fireworks.
Peter comes home and tells the other dudes about his date. Jed gets up and puts on his coat. We cut to him standing beneath Hannah’s balcony serenading her. She invites him upstairs where he sings to her some more.
Then we cut back to the house, and Garrett and Luke are talking about the naked bungee jumping (again). Garrett is telling him that it’s none of his business. Luke says, “I wasn’t telling her what she can or can’t do with her body,” except he was doing exactly that.
The next day, Hannah surprises the guys by showing up at their hotel and asks to talk to Luke. She tells the camera that she’s been processing Luke’s comments about the naked bungee thing, and that she wants to address it.
She tells Luke that she appreciates him coming to her, but that she had real issues with what he said. She specifically brings up the “slap in the face” and “boneheaded mistakes” comments.
“It wasn’t a sexual thing, but even if it was, at this point it wouldn’t matter,” she tells Luke. “You’re not my husband. You don’t own my body. You don’t own me. It’s my body.”
Luke apologizes and says he doesn’t even want to know what she does with the other guys because he’s focused on their relationship.
I’m not buying it.
Without typing out every sentence in this excruciating conversation, Luke tries to walk back some of his statements, but Hannah won’t let him gaslight her. When he says he didn’t say something, she points out the exact words he used. He then uses the old “well I didn’t mean it that way” argument. For the record, the idea that Hannah somehow misunderstood his very clear meaning or that he “didn’t mean it that way” is also a form of gaslighting and emotional abuse.
“I’ve been so excited because I feel like our relationship is finally on track,” Luke says. “I feel like finally the train is on the tracks.”
“I don’t know that its on the tracks,” Hannah says
“Okay but even if it’s not I feel like it’s closer,” Luke replies.
“No, I don’t… No!” Hannah argues.
“If you feel that way… I’m sorry I was misunderstood,” Luke says.
From the kitchen my husband yells, “Did he just say I’m sorry I was misunderstood?” When I replay the clip for him he mutters a lot of swear words.
Luke continues, “I don’t know if you totally remember everything I said in that same breath…”
“I do!” Hannah insists.
Also apparently Luke forgot this was being filmed and we could rewatch his toxicity at any point.
Hannah asks him, “Why is it so hard for us?”
It’s because Luke is a leaking bag of bat guano, is controlling, and is setting off abuser red flags all over the place.
Also in true abuser fashion, when Luke gets back to the room he tells the dudes that whatever he and Hannah talked about was private and that if the other guys hadn’t given details about their dates, he wouldn’t be in this position.
Tyler C calls him out on it immediately. “Are you blaming [Garrett] for talking about his date?”
This results in Luke fighting with all the other dudes. Then Chris Harrison, drawn by the carrion scent of drama, comes in and tells them that Hannah isn’t happy, there isn’t going to be a cocktail party, and that they are GOING STRAIGHT TO ROSE.
All of the other dudes tell Luke this is the third cocktail party in a row he’s ruined, while he stammers that it isn’t his fault.
Garrett tells the camera “I’ve been questioning for weeks now why Luke P is still around.”
SAME, GARRETT, SAME.
The answer is, of course, to keep the drama on the show going.
So then we get to The Dreaded Rose Ceremony.
For inexplicable reasons, the final rose goes to Luke.
In the end Dylan and Dustin go home.
Chris Harrison walks up to Hannah and whispers, “What do you like about Luke?” For Chris to be concerned…that’s …wow.
Hannah says she’s either falling in love with Luke or he’s making her crazy.
I know which one I vote for.
(Ed. note: I’m editing this at 420 am and I just rolled my eyes so hard I may need medical attention. Holy hellfire.)
And that’s the end of that. Are you watching? What did you think?
The “I’m sorry I was misunderstood” bit made my head explode. Immediate ranting about gaslighting and misogynistic scumbags ensued. And that kicked puppy expression he gets when Hannah calls out his crappy behavior? Ugh. I am thoroughly convinced that the producers are making her keep him on the show, because otherwise the guys all get along and the show would actually be about Hannah getting to know each guy and decide who she likes most, and not Luke’s blimp-sized ego.
Luke P just needs to take a long walk off a short plank.
“Like, her body is her temple, and to expose it to anyone who isn’t her husband, that’s a slap in the face.”
…
“If you feel that way… I’m sorry I was misunderstood,” Luke says.
I wish you could see the face I made at reading those statements. I’d be done at that point. Like, ‘I’m not even going to bother with the damn ceremony, just go home and don’t come back’ kind of done.
There are so many red flags here when it comes to Luke P. I can only assume the producers literally won’t let Hannah get rid of him because he might actually go full crazy and try to kill someone which would make great ratings.
I think the Luke thing is backfiring. A lot of people I know who are typically watchers aren’t because he is too much to handle. Maybe ABC will learn something?
So I’ve never watched and will never watch this show, but I’ve read enough about it and absorbed enough through cultural context that I have to wonder…is part of the reason they’re keeping him around so long to have him end up as next season’s Bachelor? (That’s how it works, yes, they pick one of the “runner-ups” or something?) I mean, I hope I’m totally off base here, but it seems exactly like the kind of gross shit ABC likes to pull and they’ll try to spin it as him gaining some sort of “redemption” or “growth” while still actually just promoting incredibly rigid heterocis gender roles.
I do hope I’m wrong, and I also hope the producers let her finally kick him to the curb. The whole thing just sounds awful and I need brain bleach just from reading about it.
This episode was a topic in our daily scrum standup this morning. I really hope Hannah is getting paid well to endure this bullshit.
Have fans been writing ABC that this is textbook abusive behavior?
@Heather M:
No, I don’t think they’re going to make Luke P. the next Bachelor. I think Elyse is right and the only reason they’re keeping him around is to create conflict. They might put him on Bachelor in Paradise – the spin-off show where rejected Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants go to a Mexican beach locale to pair off.
I want to flail my arms and scream DANGER DANGER every time Luke P is on. I do not condone violence at all, but at this point if the guys just dogpiled and beat the crap out of him, i would wave a handmade foam finger to celebrate.
On a lighter note, two things:
First, I would very much like to be the Queen of Mars. Where do I apply?
Second, who’s the cutie smiling in the background of the market photo? Because Hannah should have gone naked bungee jumping with him.
I love Hannah’s expression in the photo on the couch, & I’m completely convinced that she has absolutely no say in who gets kicked out, because after all that, Luke should have been ejected. Naked. From a very high place.
Not only is this abusive to Hannah, it’s a HUGE disservice to have this kind of textbook abuse rewarded by Luke continuing to appear on the show.
@Deianira the cutie is Dustin
I’m so glad I’m only participating in this season via these recaps. I recently left an abusive relationship and I can barely read these recaps, let alone watch this on screen. I have so many more thoughts on this but they’re all getting jumbled as I try bottle up my shrieks of rage and frustration.
Words fail me! Luke gets a rose, smh, it’s all a put up job.
Run, girl. DO not think about, just jump the fence and run and tell them to mail you the check in Barbados or someplace.
Also, I want the girls in the van back. They’ll set her straight.
I’m so tired of Luke and hope he leaves next week, but I know that the producers are stringing this drama out as long as possible. And from the clip-show last week, it seems like someone comes back (with a ring!) after getting cut, which seems like something Luke would assume is a grand romantic gesture, instead of an example of him NOT UNDERSTANDING THAT NO MEANS NO.
Apparently some news about Jed came out this week, and he might not be such a great guy either? He wasn’t my front runner, and also I’ve realized that his hair reminds me of a grown-up Jimmy Neutron.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Mike and Tyler C make it to the final three, and that they’re actually as nice as they seem.
I know the word is overused but I am incredibly triggered by this recap as I just got out of a toxic/emotional abusive relationship where I heard “sorry you misunderstood me” more often than I care to admit. Not to mention the “glad we clearly the air” conversation where nothing was resolved. Arrrgh. I’m going to cry.
What is the likelihood/ viability of a class action lawsuit against the producers for putting us all (esp Hannah) through this trauma?
Sigh, that’s what I thought…
@BrooklynShoeBabe I am so, so, sorry. I will provide better trigger warnings next time
Luke doesn’t sound like a nice guy. but why in the world would anyone go naked bungee jumping in the nude? Ugh isn’t there a lot of chaffing involved. never watched these shows. I guess I enjoy the viewer drama and as frustrated as people get, there’s another one next season. totally clueless on the appeal.
sorry double naked there but you get my point, why?
Off topic. We’re just getting the promos for the new Bachelor series in Australia. He’s an astrophysicist. The promo is a heart shaped comet streaking across the sky dropping rose petals to women below until it lands and we get our Bachelor landed Iron Man style.
I’m both rolling my eyes and kind of curious.
After reading your reviews for quite some time, this was the first episode I’ve actually seen. You deserve a raise, Elyse. Being new to the show, can I ask if it’s common for her to ummmm….engage physically with all of them? I’m not trying to shame – she deserves what happiness she can wrest from this shit show – but I was surprised to see it.
Thanks for this sanity-filled recap. I stopped watching a couple of episodes ago because I couldn’t handle Luke anymore. I’m looking forward to getting the all-clear that my eyeballs are safe from Luke again.
TamB, weird marketing crap aside, I want an Australian astrophysicist! Can I sign up??
Just UGH. I would like to kick Luke so hard he chokes on his balls.
Elsye, have you seen this from the statistical folsk at 538? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-bachelorette/
How To Spot A Front-Runner On The ‘Bachelor’ Or ‘Bachelorette’
What we learned from analyzing all 33 seasons.
I watched this episode with my mom, who has never seen any other episodes, and we were just YELLING at the TV. Luke is actually frightening. Like maybe the producers are telling him to play up this stuff, maybe he’s actually a fine guy who is nothing like this irl, but the character he’s portraying right now is terrifying. And it makes me so sad, because the past two times when Hannah has given him a rose, she’s looked pretty pissed–like she’s done with him, but the producers are making her keep him. She seems way too smart to actually think she’s falling in love with him, so I can only assume this is all the producers, being meddlesome little shits.
For what it’s worth, my mom and I think she’s going to end up with Peter, because she gets really smiley and glowy when she’s with him, more so than with the others.