Desiree is excited. “Feelings have formed!” and “I feel good about the five!” she says, because this show is nothing if not incessantly romantic.
Then she sits down with Chris Harrison, for the ultimate time-waster: the Bachelorette babbling inanely about how she’s feeling. Fortunately, he manages not to ask who she thinks has the biggest dong. Notably, she seems to be all but admitting that Brooks is far and away the front-runner, which isn’t in keeping with this show’s general MO of trying to convince us the Bachelorette is in various stages of love with everyone remaining. But she’s digging Brooks. Harrison asks, “Is this over?” And Desiree half-heartedly says she’s falling in love a little bit with Chris. So is that our final two right there?
Rose Ceremony. Desiree rambles on about how this isn’t about “qualities” because of course they all have great “qualities,” but about the growth of their relationships. She gives a rose to Brooks, then to Chris, then finally to Zak, leaving Michael out in the cold.
He says his goodbyes, and Desiree comes to take her to the car, but she’s doing that thing where the dumper wants to make sure that the dumpee can’t even have the dignity of being pissed off. She tells him she thinks the world of him and they have a great foundation of friendship and this is very hard because he has everything. He says he knows she would have loved his family, but all things considered, he’s glad he got dumped before the hometown date instead of after. He says it’ll be hard to date after this, because no “girl” is going to measure up to her. That seems to hit her hard.
He drives off, and says he feels like his heart just exploded in his chest, and whines about how it sucks to put everything on the line and be rejected. He cries, or fake cries, and I couldn’t care less about Michael. He actually calls his mom on the car ride to tell her she’s not going to meet Desiree. “Here we go again,” says Michael’s mom, which was fairly awesome. Michael opts for a decent bit of drama queening but suggesting that maybe he’s not meant to get married. Generally speaking, I’m cool with Bachelor/ette folks getting married. It’s their reproducing that I tend to have reservations about.