The Bachelor recap is late this week due to some insanity in my week, but for added entertainment I’m watching with my friend April who has never seen the show. And it’s Fantasy Suites week. Will she still be my friend afterward? Let’s see!
Pudding has her catnip White Claw and is ready to go!
Clayton tells the camera that he’s falling in love with remaining three women, Gabby, Susie and Rachel, and that he might already be in love with Susie.
Everyone is in Iceland. We cut to the hotel where the three women sit in super awkward silence. Susie says that sex is important in any relationship, but she only has sex when she feels really connected to someone. She says if Clayton is intimate with one of the other girls, it will be devastating to her.
April: Maybe this isn’t the show for her then.
The first date goes to Rachel. They go for a helicopter ride and then down into a volcano.
Helpfully, Clayton tells us it’s inactive. Thanks, buddy. I assumed you wouldn’t be going in an active volcano.
April: They are 400 feet down in a volcano with shit dripping down all around them. If her parka is sparkling white when they come up, I call bullshit.
Rachel reflects that Clayton still hasn’t opened up to her about his feelings. During dinner she tells him she felt really unsure during the last rose ceremony.
Clayton says he wasn’t “100% transparent” when he was with Rachel’s family, and then he says, “I’m falling in love with you.”
“You just scared me,” Rachel says.
Yeah, that’s a weird fucking opener to “I love you.”
Then they open the creepy ass letter inviting them to the fantasy suite. It’s written all in block letters like a serial killer is trying to disguise his handwriting or something. The next morning we see them making out in bed. Clayton complains that his shoulder is falling asleep from her laying on it.
April: I have a feeling Susie is out of luck.
Then April and I spend a minute discussing the fact that Clayton’s nipples seem to be too close to his armpit. PAGING DOCTOR NIPS!
So then Clayton leaves, and Rachel yells “I love you!” He yells “I love you too!”
April: After twenty-six seasons how do they still find women who are willing to be like “I love you, this was so magical, we’ll have this forever” when he’s literally on his way to have two dates exactly like yours?
Because they get to sling diet iced tea on Instagram and go on Dancing with Stars after.
When Rachel gets back to the hotel, Susie starts crying because she’s not sure of where Clayton is with the other women. She says again that he if he thinks he’s in love with her, but sleeps with the other women, she won’t be able to handle it.
Then it’s time for Gabby’s date. She says she was hoping for whale watching, but when she’s dropped off in a random field she says she guesses that’s not it.
April: I’m glad she figured out this isn’t where the ships are.
Instead they ride an ATV, then they do wind up on a beach.
During dinner, Gabby is wearing a slip dress with an asymmetrical neckline and it looks like one of her boobs is about to pop out. Clayton thanks Gabby for loving him, and it’s weird. Then he says, “I’m falling in love with you.”
Does this guy just not know how to preface that statement?
Their fantasy suite is a yurt-igloo thing (April and I can’t agree on what it is) with, of course, a random hot tub.
“Oh yeah, we are doing it in style tonight,” Clayton says.
This is an approximation of April’s expression.
Back at the hotel, Susie cries into a glass of wine because she can’t “grasp the concept” of Clayton being intimate with the other women.
WHY ARE YOU ON THIS SHOW. JESUS CHRIST.
When Gabby gets back, Susie is upset that neither of the other women revealed what he’s told them. “I don’t know anything, at this point it’s all confusing,” she says.
Meanwhile Clayton is having a crisis because he’s falling in love with all three women and “1000% I’m going to shatter somebody. I just don’t want to hurt anybody. I wanted to fall in love, I get it. I just didn’t want to fall in love with multiple people.”
Then it’s time for Susie’s date and it’s super windy and hailing. They go to a spa/hot springs. First they go into a cold mist room and Susie hates it, then they go a sauna with an ocean view.
Clayton tells the camera that he’s not falling in love with Susie, he’s past that point and is in love.
So then it’s time for the dinner they aren’t allowed to eat. He tells her, “It’s no longer about me falling in love with you, I am in love with you.”
“Oh my gosh!” says Susie.
“Knowing there’s an engagement, there are things I can’t compromise,” she adds. Then she asks if he feels like he’s in love with the other women or slept with them.
Clayton stares.
“If I’m sharing your love with anyone else… I don’t think I’d be comfortable,” she says.
Clayton says he “shocked” because she encouraged him to explore the other relationships. Then he tells her yes, he has slept with someone else and expressed feelings of falling in love.
“If you feel like you’re in love with me, it doesn’t make sense to me to sleep with someone else,” she says.
He tells her he has different feelings for different people, and that it’s very special where they’re at.
He tells her he’s “the most in love” with her.
Susie starts crying and says that makes her feel worse. Basically she didn’t want to give him an ultimatum, but she had hoped that if he was in love with her he wouldn’t have slept with the other women.
Clayton says a relationship is working through the hard times. Then he says he actually slept with Gabby and Rachel, but he had feelings of love for both.
So then Clayton gets mad and says he can’t believe she waited till now to tell him her expectations and that he can’t believe she’s doing to this to him now, one week out to the final episode.
She gets up to cry and Clayton storms outside. Jesse goes to talk to him and Clayton says, “I don’t know where to go from here. She’s just torn me apart. She just completely destroyed me.”
Dude she communicated a boundary to you, she was under no obligation to do so earlier, and you are refusing to respect her feelings. Fuck off.
They go back inside, and Susie says, “I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ve literally made your mind up,” Clayton snaps.
“I feel awful. I feel like fucked everything up,” she cries.
“I’m just going to be honest with you, you just invalidated everything we had, if [what we had] was really true, you’d work through this,” he says.
“You had sex with two women,” she says. “You are committed to me going home now. I fucked this up”
“I’m not placing blame on you, but I don’t know what I’m looking at anymore, you just dropped a bombshell on me. The way you went about this is BS. I’m done. We’re done,” he says.
So he’s in love with her, but the second she challenges him on anything he gaslights her and makes himself the victim.
“At some point I’ll find someone who will stick through it, and will fight for me,” he tells her.
WHAT AN ASSHOLE.
Susie gets in the car and leaves.
Clayton continues to have a temper tantrum with the producers. “My heart isn’t in this anymore. It’s out. My heart is out.”
Well that would be fatal.
And that’s where we end. Are you watching?
Unexpected Elyse recap, yesss! And a Pudding picture! My day is made.
This dude almost seemed immune to drama but he’s starting to crack. The toxic bullshit gets everyone in the end… the Rose God must be fed.
GIF Perfection, Elyse! Thank You!
The train GIF was everything. Also, this guy is a total asshole.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, and for context this season I have only read your recaps so maybe I’m missing something, but it doesn’t seem like Susie expressed this boundary about him saying love words and having sex with other contestants until super late in ‘the process’ and after he’s already had the other 2 fantasy suite nights. So I guess I can see some of where he’s coming from being upset at having a dealbreaker sprung on him when it’s too late to change anything? Like maybe he might not have slept with the other two if he knew it was a dealbreaker for Susie, or at least might have deliberately chosen to do so knowing what the repercussions would be.
Everyone knows that potential-sex-night is part of the show, she should have known it was coming up soon, but chose not to use her words. And just expected him to magically intuit that – in a show where the bachelor or bachelorette is expected to date and make out with and declare love words to the contestants – someone who had been participating willingly up until this point had this secret boundary he wasn’t supposed to violate, and is upset that he’s not psychic.
IDK, as I said I didn’t actually watch this season and maybe there’s some context missing, and I’m sure Clayton was an ass at the end of the episode, but Susie’s secret dealbreaker feels kind of manipulative to me.
I dunno, maybe if he knew Susie well enough to be “the most in love” with her, he’d have known she wouldn’t be chill about him banging out a bunch of one night stands immediately before possibly proposing to her. Yes, you know what the show is, don’t send in your application believing this is a viable path to the romance of your dreams, etc. AND ALSO, you have the emotional IQ of canned asparagus if you’re shocked and outraged that the person you “love” might not want to be proposed to before the hotel maids have a chance to clean up the condoms you (one can only hope) used on other people.
These people have probably never had a conversation without a production assistant holding up a cue card, and absolutely crucial discussions of expectations and values will never be sexy enough for prime time. Shocker that their relationship ideals aren’t compatible.
Susie didn’t fuck anything up (and I hate how quickly she picked up responsibility for his actions that he wasn’t going to touch). She freed herself to find someone who might independently consider the revolutionary concept that throwing around the L-word while continuing to stick his dick in other people might be hurtful, in the absence of clear agreement about an open or poly arrangement, and choose his priorities accordingly.
Stuff like this makes me think the Hunger Games aren’t that far-fetched.
Fam is no longer watching, the endless rapid fire seasons in the last year broke us.
But I still read the recaps, and appreciate a society that can bring me such a shit show, with such a splendid recap. Huzzah, Pudding!
I enjoyed the recap, Pudding, and the train GIF. I miss Dewey. And the people on these programs are strange. I wonder about their lives before this program.
Pudding looks as disgusted with this episode as I was.
I never watch, I only read your summaries, Elyse.
And my jaw is on the freaking floor.
(Uncomfortable, that.)
What. A. Jerk.
I love Elyse’s reports on the show and updates on Pudding.
It occurs to me that anyone who signed up for this … thing … might not object to flying into an active (or semi-active) volcano, much less an inactive one.
I don’t watch except that one time which was plenty, and I edit Elyse’s recaps so this absolutely makes me The Most Qualified to have an opinion about all of this. My suspicion is that Dude and Susie had had some kind of agreement that they’d be together at the end of the show, and each had their own interpretations of that agreement. They were talking to each other in a way that made me think they were having a larger conversation or a continuation of a prior one that wasn’t on camera, and while little of what they said made sense to me, it made sense to them, clearly. This is solely my completely unqualified theory, but I think they had a backstage agreement, she got upset that he suited his fantasies with two other people, and he was mad he was called on it, and mad that she almost gave away their secret.
I appreciate the sacrifice you, your family, friends and pets continue to make by watching and recapping this show. This is a terrific public service for which you deserve an amazing reward. They should be signing you for lucrative product endorsements and “Dancing with the Stars” appearances. Or something else that you would really enjoy and pays a lot.
Susie dodged a lifetime of abuse, one way or the other. I pity anyone who ends up with Clayton.
If we are playing AITA with this episode, I think everyone sucks here (ESH). With the context I have, she set up a test he was likely going to fail, without telling him. We’re 20 something seasons in? You can’t claim you didn’t know what Fantasy Suites was about, or what usually happens. I will caveat that this assumes that they did NOT discuss this before hand off camera. Basically everything Annea said up thread. So yeah, it’s not cool to set a boundary and then expect the other person to just know you wouldn’t like it crossed without discussion.
But everything Clayton did with that information she provided after the fact is also complete and total garbage. Like steaming pile of flaming 3 week old leftovers from a buffet topped with sour alcohol, in a dumpster floating down a flooded street bad. He didn’t take any ownership of his choice. Would I expect him to be taken aback by her boundary expressed after the fact, absolutely. But he’s got to own his piece in this too. He made a choice, knowing before hand (at least how it’s edited) that he was “falling” for the first two women, but was “in love” with Susie. Did he stop to ask himself what that meant to him, or to her? Just as she knew what was coming up, so did he, so did he take the time to ask any of them where they stood on it? Or did he just assume since they were on the show of course they thought it was ok.
I think the real question is: In the context of the show is fantasy suites night cheating?
Now if they did have discussions about sex and boundaries before this all went down, and then he slept with them anyway? Yeah, he’s totally the asshole.
“WELL!” This is the ultimate “train wreck” of an episode! Alice, you picked a doozey!
Well, Susie dodged that bullet. Not that there’s real truth in how they bill the show, but they aren’t calling it “The Serial Monogamist” and the “fantasy suites” aren’t about moving in together to test for compatibility. The ladies may expect more than a declaration of “pants feelings,” but I’m not sure anyone who views THE BACHELOR expects to have the actual time for the kind of one-on-one conversations that lead up to an authentic declaration of love, much less a decision to spend the rest of their lives together. On the other hand, the contestants shouldn’t have to put up with half-truths, evasions, and gaslighting—after all, there’s plenty of that in real-time dating.
I don’t watch these shows because of the way I feel I’m being played watching them. You can never be sure if it’s genuine or edited for effect. Having said that, staged or not, Clayton’s gaslighting and victim blaming left a nasty taste in the mouth.