James Weir recaps The Bachelors 2023 finale

It’s the finale of The Bachelors and even Osher doesn’t want to be here to watch the worst season so far fizzle out. James Weir recaps.

The Bachelors finale is summed up in two words on Sunday night by one of the several random girls who gets dumped by one of the several random guys: “It’s rubbish”.

After a wearisome three weeks of episodes that have been building up to a night of marriage proposals, dumpings and a polyamory twist, the series fizzles out – its presence as faint as Osher’s whisper.

The writing is on the wall for The Bachelor franchise. And it’s written in Jed’s eyeliner pencil.

Even Osher himself doesn’t wanna be here tonight. Usually, he’d be appearing all throughout the last episode – welcoming us to the exotic finale destination. Then he’d hang around right up until the end, whisper-talking the couples through their decision ceremonies. But not tonight. Like us, he simply can’t be bothered.

In the opening minutes, he has a brief cameo where he checks in on the three bachelors as they hang out at a resort – but it’s rushed and almost as if he just accidentally ran into them while walking to the breakfast buffet.

This episode is not like The Bachelor finales of yore. In the olden days, the finales would take us on a tedious days-long journey that included final dates on kayaks and private meetings with judgy mums who’d try their hardest to recite the mean lines written for them by producers.

We don’t get any of that tonight. After all, this is the revamped version of the show. It’s not The Bachelor that your grandma grew up with.

Instead, we arrive to find it’s already decision day. The boys are in their suits and all the girls are running around the resort with hairdresser clips in their fringes.

In an attempt to build tension and hype, producers make a big deal about giving engagement rings to all three of the bachelors so they have the option of officially proposing to whatever girls they choose. Is this a good idea? Of course. After a few weeks of doing round-robin dates with a group of randomly selected girls, the relationships that are decided tonight are as strong as Jed’s paperclip necklace:

Ten’s wardrobe budget is now shared with the network’s stationery budget. On The Project, Sarah Harris has been using a bulldog clip as a barrette.

“I’m absolutely crapping my pants,” Jed confesses. “I’m packin’ it. I’m absolutely shitting bricks.”

Well, the white pantsuit was a bad idea.

Those white flares might be single-use.

From what we glean, Thomas and Jed are pretty sure about who they’ll choose tonight but Felix is in trouble. His final two ladies are Abigail and Jess and he’s leaning towards the latter but she also already has a boyfriend because she’s in a polyamorous relationship with some guy called Damien.

“I didn’t think, at finale, I’d still be struggling so much with this decision on who to choose between two completely different women,” Felix sighs.

Huh. Well, if it makes you feel any better, we didn’t think, at finale, we’d be watching. It’s funny how things work out.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the resort, Abigail is confronting Jess about this polyamorous situation.

Abigail – wrapped in a dressing gown and with hairdresser clips dangling from her head – jumps out from behind a palm tree and accosts her rival about her evil plan to win Felix while also keeping her secret boyfriend Damien on the side for sex.

Jess is appalled by the accusation and says she would never sleep with Damien behind Felix’s back … except if she was, y’know, really horny.

Abigail treats the situation with respect and sensitivit-

“That’s ridiculous! Get a vibrator!” she yells, as a group of resort guests look over from the minigolf course.

Abigail is British which means she’s really good at delivering passive aggressive statements. Jess tries to match it and the whole argument descends into a pass-agg back-and-forth with clipped tones and polite smiles.

“Thank you for giving me your take on things,” Jess says smoothly.

“My take is the truth. I’m just telling you the truth of what has happened,” Abigail replies in a singsong voice.

“That’s your truth,” Jess hits back while scrunching her face in a cutesy way.

Why aren’t either of you dressed yet?

It’s around now Damien is lured to the resort by producers who are working overtime to try make this series relevant. We’ve never watched this show until tonight, so, when we see Damien, we don’t actually realise who he is. At first, we just assume he’s Jess’s dad – paying his daughter a good luck visit. It’s only when she pashes him that we start to get an inkling it’s not her dad.

Anyway, Damien has been brought here so Jess can break up with him and prove that snooty British girl wrong.

“I just wanna hold space for you,” he says while caressing her face between his palms and parroting other nonsense he has heard on mindfulness podcasts.

“I just feel like you probably deserve someone that is completely all in,” she sobs.

Classic break-up line. But the real reason she’s dumping him probably has something to do with this leather and tortoiseshell pendant necklace he insists on wearing:

I once broke up with a guy solely because he had a ‘c’est la vie’ tattoo above his pubes.

And with that, we have just witnessed the first dumping of the evening. Three more to go!

From here, the ceremonies flash by. No one involved in this production wishes to be here any longer than they need to. If you look closely at the footage, you can see producers starting to dismantle lights and roll up cables before the decisions have even been delivered.

They don’t even bother filming that slow-mo footage of everyone getting ready in their hotel rooms. It’s a bit of a let-down. We were looking forward to watching everyone use the sponsorship Dyson hair dryers and seeing Jed touch up his white hair with a Clairol at-home box kit.

In the blink of an eye, Thomas goes and dumps one of his girls so quickly we almost miss it.

“You’re not the one,” he says.

“OK. That’s all good,” she shrugs.

Then he goes and proposes to the other girl and we promptly erase both of them from our minds.

Next up his Jed’s decision. Angela is sure she knows how this will play out. She’s as confident and cocky as Jed is in his white flared pants.

“I do think that he is gonna pick me,” she beams.

Prepare for national humiliation in five, four, three, two …

“I’ve decided that we can’t move forward,” Jed tells her, like a HR exec to an underqualified job applicant.

All the spirits in this church are probably giggling.

“I told you I was falling in love with you and you said the same thing!” Ange fumes to him before storming off and blurting out all the phrases usually uttered by contestants when they get dumped on these shows. “I just feel like an idiot! I feel so blindsided! I feel like such a cockhead!”

Oh, Ange. You shouldn’t feel like an idiot. It’s not like you’re the one wearing white flared pants and a paperclip necklace.

Steal his eyeliner pencil as payback.

So who’s Jed left with? Some girl called Alesia, who has gone out of her way to make it known that she does not — under any circumstances — want to receive a marriage proposal on this finale. Welp, seems like our girl Alesia isn’t aware that, if you’re on a reality show and you say you don’t want something to happen, the producers will work tirelessly to ensure it absolutely does.

“I have a question!” Jed declares to her, dropping to one knee.

“F*ck,” Alesia mutters.

“Alesia, will you marry me?’

“F*ck,” she repeats. “I just … wasn’t expecting it.”

Jeez. You talk repeatedly about how you don’t wanna be proposed to on television and then, when you get ignored and proposed to on television, THIS is how you respond? Alesia, you seem really ungrateful.

Jed understands that she doesn’t want to get engaged right away but he still gives her the ring as a trinket. Fun! She can tie it to a piece of string and hang it on her car’s rear-view mirror.

Oh great. The white flares are also made out of stretchy fabric.

At this point, we can’t tell anyone apart and have no recollection of their personal story arcs. It’s time for Felix to choose between the British girl and the girl who just dumped her secret boyfriend.

“I’ve been searching and searching for something … and … I don’t think I’ve found it,” he tells Abigail.

She’s disappointed but graceful. Boo. We kinda wish she’d get all British and passive aggressive again. She walks off and the producers rile her up.

“It’s rubbish. It’s not ideal at all,” she says, echoing our exact words about this season of the show.

Then we cut to Felix waiting for Jess in a forest at night and it looks like producers are pumping in fog from a smoke machine. When she finally arrives, we can barely see her through the mist.

Osher really should be here to help guide her through the forest with a theatre usher flashlight.

After a coughing fit, she reveals to Felix that she has dumped the second boyfriend with the bad pendant necklace. And Felix destroys our dreams of pulling a Honey Badger. Instead of dumping both girls, he wholeheartedly chooses Jess.

Now, with the end of this series, we look forward to spending our time watching more highbrow, premium television. Which reminds us: Married At First Sight premieres tonight.

Twitter, Facebook: @hellojamesweir

Originally published as James Weir recaps The Bachelors 2023 finale