Things I could have done today instead of spending three hours watching The Bachelorette: Marathon Finale: Run my town's longstanding ten-mile race. Watched the entire first season of Frisky Dingo. Slept. Read a couple of Hardy Boys books. Fixed the pocket door in the kitchen that's not working right.
Anyway, you get the idea.
Harrison welcomes Emily to the stage as the audience cheers, maybe because they hope to feel actual love for real people someday. Harrison tells her she looks great. She's wearing much less eye makeup, it's true. He tells her she looks "in love." And she says she is, and then she cheers the crowd cheering her.
Harrison asks her about what it is about "Jef" that she loves. HILARIOUSLY, Emily says she could talk all about his great qualities, but instead it's about he makes her feel, which is the most important thing. She's going to say a lot of amusing things, like the ring could have been a piece of tape around her finger, for all she cares.
Harrison brings up Arie, and Emily acknowledges that she could stand to be more direct, but she really did fall in love with Arie, and she says that like it matters. Hopefully enough time has passed for Emily to forgive Arie for making her feel bad for dumping him.
After the commercial break, Harrison brings Arie out. It's the first time he and Emily have seen each other since Curaçao, if that's anything anyone cares about. Harrison asks Arie if he has anything he wants to ask Emily. But I think Arie heard, "Do you have any daytime-television self-help nonsense you want to aimlessly babble in Emily's general direction for a few minutes?" Because that's what happens. Harrison does his best to steer the babblings into something resembling coherence.
Arie asks Emily what she wants to say to Arie, and she says she's sorry. "I've learned I need to be more direct, for sure," she says. She says she "had more confidence" in what she and "Jef" have. Well, so much for being more direct! Just saying "I love 'Jef'"! Oh, but that would mean exposing the fiction that this show perpetuates that you can be in love with more than one person at a time (and that it is romantic).
And then we learn that Arie bought a ticket to Charlotte so he could talk to Emily and get some closure, off-camera, but it turns out that when he got there, he thought it would be a bad idea, by which I assume he means that he met a flight attendant en route and decided to spend his time in Charlotte banging her instead of mooning over Emily.
But it wasn't without weirdness, because he left her the journal that she encouraged him to keep, on her doorstep. She's got it with her, although she claims not to have read it, out of respect to Arie (even though he LEFT IT THERE FOR HER TO READ) as well as "Jef." She's got it in an envelope to give back to him.
He says he's happy to know that she's happy. "I do have anything but love for you and I love 'Jef' and he's a great man," he says. Ha ha! Freudian slip? Harrison presses him into admitting that he hoped she'd come back to him after reading it. So much for not actually seeing Emily out of respect for "Jef." And then Emily says if "Jef" hadn't been there, it would have been her and Arie, which I'm sure is helpful for him.
Harrison asks Arie how he's doing, and Arie says he's doing well, and in fact he and "Jef" are friends and talk on the phone a lot. "I'm happy for them, and that really pushed me through to get over this and move on," he says.
Then we kick Arie out and move on to "Jef" who comes out to the same cheers returning astronauts get. He sits down and talk about how it doesn't feel like they met on a show. "I dated a lot of his friends," jokes Emily, which is kind of funny. Harrison asks "Jef" what he likes about Emily, and "Jef" actually talks about her qualities he likes instead of framing it in terms of himself.
Harrison asks if they've spent any time as a family. Apparently they've met up for some secret rendezvous, some of which Ricki came along for. Both "Jef" and Emily give the thumbs-up for the job he's doing as "Dad" for Ricki. "She is the sweetest little girl ever," says "Jef."
God, this never ends! We have to watch the proposal again because "Jef" and Emily have never seen it, BUT THEY WERE IN IT, and we watch "Jef" and Emily watching things in the picture-in-picture thing because it's always so fascinating TO WATCH PEOPLE WATCH THINGS, and the crowd applauds all over again when Emily says "yes."
Harrison asks her what took her so long to say "yes," and she says for like the third time tonight that she didn't want to be that girl who gets engaged a bunch of times but never gets married, and then Emily is like "blah blah blah" and then "Jef" is like "blah blah blah" and then Harrison is like "blah blah blah" and we go to commercial.
Harrison asks them what the first thing they want to do in public is, and he stresses "in PUBLIC" again like he's worried they're going to say, "Well, oral, I guess," and then "Jef" plants a big sloppy kiss on her and says he loves her. "He's good. He's good," says Harrison. He may be jealous. Of whom, I'm not sure.
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And then there is some talk of the humanitarian mission Emily wants to do in Africa, so I guess children's hospital events in Charlotte are going to have to plan themselves for a little while, and it involves "Jef"'s bottled water company, which is inexplicably called "People Water."
And it turns out "Jef" is moving to Charlotte (into his own place) so Ricki won't be uprooted, and then Harrison asks about a wedding and Emily says she doesn't want to be "that cliché girl" who comes on here and says they're getting married week. Yeah, because people on this show get married SO OFTEN it's a cliché by this point, right?
She's been checking out places. Well, Charleston. Way to think outside the Charlotte box!
Harrison asks if they've got a timeframe as to when they might get married. Yeah, ABC's going to want to broadcast the shit out of that, right? Emily says they don't want to set anything in stone, but she'd love a spring wedding. Harrison, on behalf of a lot of people he doesn't actually speak for, wishes them the best, and then ends the show.
And just when you're feeling good about this all ending, Harrison reminds us about Bachelor Pad, which probably sucked out everyone's will to live right then and there.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He's beginning to think following up The Bachelorette with Bachelor Pad was a big mistake. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
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