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COLUMN: ‘The Bachelor’ week 5: a ‘shocking’ twist

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In the words of Zach, “Pip pip cheerio!” This week, the 11 women and Zach traveled from the Bahamas to London, where we learned that the women have quite awful British accents.  

Week five 

The episode jumps quickly into Gabi’s one-on-one date, where they explore London royalty. I honestly feel like the producers are reusing all the dates from past seasons because I swear these “royal” dates – specifically the dress shopping sprees – are in every single season.  

Gabi and Zach created a fragrance named “Zabby” on their date. Let’s just let that sink in.  

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During the most awkward part of the date, Gabi walks back into the hotel room while the other women sit on the couch. She has literally handfuls of shopping bags in her arms. It’s more like the producers told her to walk in at just the perfect time, right when they all happened to be sitting there. Gabi then proceeds to empty every single bag, but hopefully they didn’t get fingerprints on it, because I know they are getting returned as soon as those cameras turn off.  

Just when I thought the icing on the cake was the doorbell ringing to bring in Gabi’s royal dress, Gabi – with hands full of bags and a dress dragging on the floor – had to walk past Greer crying on the hallway floor because she didn’t get the date.  

For the date that seems to never end, Gabi and Zach are all dressed up for dinner. Gabi opens up to Zach in a meaningful conversation about her past body image concerns with herself and how she truly felt safe with Zach, leading him to give her the rose.  

As nine girls are all dressed and glammed up for the group date, there is a knock on the door. An envelope lets the women know that Zach is under the weather and to “Go enjoy the day. I hope to see you soon.” The tears start flowing.   

Hoping to see Zach at the evening portion of the date, the women enjoy the day in London.  

In the evening, the women get all dressed up and head to a restaurant, where a butler lets the women know that Zach is still too sick to attend. Like seriously, no one really knew this before the women got all dressed up for a second time? Come on.  

The next day, host Jesse Palmer walks in – you know it’s never going to be good – and lets us know that Zach has Covid literally seconds before Charity was supposed to leave for her one-on-one date. There are literally water works in the room now.  

As everyone is clearly distraught from the news, Katie decides to take action to “heal” Zach and bring him over a gift basket in which she awkwardly talks to him through the door. Somehow, we got a whole three-minute flashback recap of Katie’s entire existence on the show – like, I am not sure where that came from at all. But let's just say it was even worse when she hugged the door bye… 

Jesse Palmer lets us know that there will be, “for the first time in ‘Bachelor’ history,” a virtual cocktail party and rose ceremony.  

As each woman walked into a room to talk to Zach through an iPad for the cocktail party. Greer decided she wanted to express empathy to Zach during her time with him; she explained how she had Covid as a sales worker just as the quarter was ending and she felt she could relate to Zach with that experience. It was so awkward watching the rest of their conversation because Zach responds to Greer – in a way I thought was pretty overreactive – by saying how these are completely different experiences and don’t relate at all. It was literally crickets after he said that.  

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Greer was clearly upset by his reaction and was “considering going home.” We all know you aren’t – let's just get to the rose ceremony already.  

As the women enter the rose ceremony room, there is a projector and a basket of roses. Great. Zach calls off name after name to accept a rose, leaving Greer to – despite the difference in “shared experience” – accept the final rose of the evening, which left two women going home, or being broken up via phone call…  

Anyway, how crazy can next week be, right? I can only imagine.  

See you then!  

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