We haven’t had a normal season of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette since Arie Luyendyk Jr. showed up to a post-finale “happy couple” secret getaway with a bunch of cameras so that he could tell his then fiancée, Becca Kufrin, on national TV that he had started DMing the runner-up and that, actually, he was gonna go marry her now. That absurd twist and unprecedented access got us a little too excited: Everyone, including this website, called it “the best Bachelor finale ever,” and ever since then, producers have been chasing that high. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, folks, but that shit happened five years, 10 seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, and one full pandemic ago. In that time, we’ve seen Colton Underwood jump over a fence, Clare Crawley tank her own season, and two Bachelorettes sharing a season (with absolutely zero rules or guidance provided by ABC). We had the mother of one weak-willed pilot become a brief and minor celebrity; we’ve witnessed countless attempts to make us forget that the COVID-19 pandemic had restricted multiple installments to sad, empty hotels; and we’ve seen Katie Thurston insist that she was not mad, please do not put in the newspaper that she was mad. The Bachelor’s constant touting that each new season is “the most dramatic season in Bachelor history” has become a running joke, but for a while now, the show has kind of been living up to that hyperbole.
And frankly, it’s been exhausting.
Which is why making Zach Shallcross—possibly a robot, definitely the human embodiment of an Allbird—the Bachelor was such a good decision. He is a classic lead, in the most traditional definition of the word. He’s painfully earnest, vaguely Christian, relentlessly awkward, and deeply corny. He doesn’t really know what he wants (other than a best friend), and he thinks that kissing literally everyone is a good way to figure it out. (It’s not.) For too long we’ve had leads who are too camera savvy, or too decisive, or too willing to collaborate with the producers to create a season of reality television. We need to hearken back to the lamewads who will dance like no one’s watching. Literally:
What’s more, Zach is such a pasty blank slate that it is impossible for him to take up even an iota of the spotlight, which means it’s completely available for the many interesting, impressive women that they’ve cast for Season 27.
On Monday night’s episode, Brooklyn revealed that she was previously in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship, in a sequence that was both gutting and empowering (sign her up for Bachelorette if she doesn’t win this one), and it probably doesn’t go down that way if there’s a stronger personality on the other side of the dinner table. It was like Zach wasn’t even there, which is great, because all I wanted to do was hear Brooklyn tell her story.
In a Sisyphean quest to outdo themselves year in and year out, the producers of The Bachelor had backed themselves into a corner I wasn’t sure they’d ever get out of. And, of course, I don’t want to speak too soon—a reveal that all those UFOs the U.S. military is shooting down are actually Zach’s extraterrestrial family come to bring him back home could be just around the corner—but by going back to the original script and casting a guy who puts all the milk in milquetoast, the show has rediscovered itself. In the words of the walking farmer’s tan who’s leading this season, “That’s awesome.”
Stock Up: The Bachelor’s Travel Coordinators
“It’s world famous for its crystal-clear waters and its warm, tropical breezes.”
When host Jesse Palmer intros the first destination of the season like this, he’s usually talking about Cleveland or Norfolk, Virginia—but not this year! The checks are not bouncing, and we are traveling to places people actually want to go to. Welcome to the Bahamas, also known as the setting for the best film Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen ever made, Holiday in the Sun.
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I don’t have much more to add, other than to note that Megan Fox did not make a cameo in this episode (I’m really banking on everyone remembering specific details from Holiday in the Sun here). But I do have to imagine that every contestant from past seasons who had to act excited about traveling to, like, Galveston must’ve been super pissed seeing everyone slamming daiquiris on Monday night.
Loser: Communicating Sexual Desire in a Normal, Organic Way
Every season there are a couple of one-on-one dates where it’s extremely clear that the two people are just downright horny for each other. It can actually get pretty uncomfortable. Zach and Kat’s one-on-one on a yacht in the Caribbean was one of these dates, and it was definitely uncomfortable, but not for the usual reasons. Instead of feeling awkward because I was watching two people get dangerously close to second base in broad daylight, I felt awkward because I was watching a man struggle deeply with his attempts at physical affection and choose the weirdest ways to beat around the bush.
You see, Zach thinks Kat looks like a model, and he does not frequently interact with models. Honestly, it’s not even clear how often he interacts with humans, period. And so our guy’s motherboard fully short-circuits, especially when Kat starts to rub sunscreen on him. “Are you SPFing me right now?” he asks—his memory chip recalling the joke Kat (a dermatology nurse) made to him as she emerged from the limo on night one. And then he realizes that “SPFing” might be the best way to backdoor himself into touching an attractive woman. “Here, let me get your shoulders,” he drones. “Let me do this: crisscross. If you wanna sit between …” he trails off, vaguely motioning toward an area he surely hopes will be touched by a woman one day. “Sun is no joke!”
This Banana Boat–addled foreplay basically works, though. Kat is a nice person who seems genuinely, if inexplicably, attracted to Zach. And that means only one thing for the rest of the date: SO MUCH MORE FUCKING SUNSCREEN. As Barry White–adjacent music plays in the background, Zach continuously lathers Kat up in a proxy of human connection. We’re led to believe that, other than the really bad dancing as seen above, these two spent their entire afternoon protecting each other from the sun’s harmful UV rays, so desperately horny for one another but capable of expressing it only after several lotion-heavy prologues.
It’s no wonder this guy is so pasty.
Toughest Beat: Gabi
This week’s group date is an island beach party full of steel drums, frozen drinks, and fresh-caught barbecue. A guaranteed fun time. Unless, I suppose, you’re allergic to shellfish, as Gabi is.
It’s actually pretty hilarious how shellfish-centric this date ends up being. People are chomping down on conch fritters. Zach is tossing shrimps into the mouths of various women. Everyone is dripping in seafood. Gabi, meanwhile, is out here looking like a shellfish-hating NERD. “Other girls are involving themselves,” she complains, which is very funny because what she really means is that girls are letting Zach chuck seafood at their faces.
Thankfully, Gabi survives to see another week (and avoids any allergic reactions). And surely, when they go to London, they won’t be surrounded by so much seafood. What’s that? British people exclusively eat fish and chips? “Prawn cocktail” is their most beloved potato chip flavor? Yikes. Sorry, Gabi.
Winner: Semantics
Have you ever seen those viral tweets about how ridiculously confusing the English language is? That’s basically the takeaway of the main story line of this episode, a dramatic spat between Anastasia and Kylee.
Anastasia starts the episode by explaining that she feels like she’s “spiraling,” which, if you’ve ever seen this show, you know isn’t gonna end well. No one ever recovers from spiraling. There’s never been a girl who was like, “Oh, yeah, I was spiraling, but now I’m super chill.” Once you have communicated your spiral, the great minds at ABC do whatever it takes to make sure the process reaches its final destination, which is the back of a black SUV. Anyway, as Anastasia is attempting to halt the spiral and talk to Zach during the group date, Kylee shows up to pull a classic, “Can I steal him for a second?” Anastasia responds to this the way I think everyone should, by pushing back and asking for a few more minutes. But Kylee’s dug in too and says, “Just let me have him. I don’t like to fight, but … please?” You can tell Zach is really enjoying the whole back-and-forth:
Now, there are two ways you can take the sentence “I don’t like to fight,” and technically, neither of them are wrong. Technically, you could interpret that sentence to mean, “I don’t want to literally punch you in the face.” From a definitional standpoint, there’s nothing wrong with that interpretation. But the complexities of the English language demand that we use context clues, and in the context of a dating show being broadcast across the United States, it can probably and safely be assumed that the sentence “I don’t like to fight” carries no genuine threat of physical violence and that the word “fight” really means “argue.”
Of course, Anastasia does not adhere to this school of thought. She literally chooses violence and, one by one, tells the rest of the girls on the date that Kylee has basically just challenged her to a duel to the death. “I felt like I was attacked, to be honest,” she says to Greer and Ariel, who kind of just nod.
Painting Kylee as one of the contestants from that new competitive slapping league turns out to be a very bad choice for Anastasia—because, apparently, Anastasia has been making the rookie mistake of talking about her Instagram follower count and the guaranteed boost it’s about to get from this appearance on The Bachelor. Not to Kylee, mind you, but Kylee heard about the comments, and now that she’s been accused of being violent, you better believe she’s going to bring them to Zach’s attention. (Kylee later says she told Zach because she “respects him too much not to,” but it’s like, nah, you did it to win a fight. It’s fine.) Zach’s greatest fear is ending up with someone who’s not—say it with me, everyone—there for the right reasons, so he’s totally pissed about Anastasia’s IG remarks. Like, he says the s-word and the f-word, which I think are more curse words than he was programmed to use. And even though Anastasia, a content marketing manager by trade, defends herself by saying that she was just spitting facts to some girls who wanted to know which brands she’s worked with, Zach doesn’t really wanna hear it. Using the word “Instagram” is crossing a line. Honestly, though, it didn’t really seem like Zach even liked Anastasia that much, and this whole thing was probably a pretty good excuse to get rid of her.
As of this writing, Anastasia has only about 24,000 followers on Instagram. Time will tell if her aggressively strict interpretation of the English language will be enough to bump her past 50K.
(One semi-related note: Ariel somehow comes out as the sneaky winner of this whole thing. She pulls Zach aside and lets him know that she’s there for him, since she knows how scared he is of being duped. They make out hard, and Zach gives her the group date rose. Ariel is the best game player of this entire season. Keep an eye on her.)
Emerging Trend: Anchoring Bias
Before I go, I just wanted to point out one more thing: Zach has a clear penchant for believing and fully investing in the first piece of information he hears about anything. There are now back-to-back episodes in which a woman has told Zach damaging information about another woman and Zach has totally run with it despite lacking any hard evidence. He fully bought Brianna’s accusations about Christina Mandrell’s bullying (which were only sort of valid), and this week, even after Anastasia offers an explanation for why she was discussing follower counts, Zach replies, “It’s a little alarming it was even brought up in the first place,” as if to say that the mere accusation was damning enough.
This is important because on every season of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, the lead teaches his or her contestants how to behave. And by following through with multiple eliminations in response to specious claims, Zach is showing his contestants that harsh accusations are a surefire way to get some competition sent home. This wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened: Never forget Katie Thurston’s season, when she kowtowed to her group of guys so early and often that they basically became a strong-arming union. It kind of feels like we’re headed in that direction. Zach might just be too drenched in sunscreen to notice it.
