It’s been christened the most disturbing finale in “Bachelor Pad” history since last week’s promos. And before we ponder the term “’Bachelor Pad’ history” – this is just the third season of the spin off – let’s say right now that someone doesn’t come in with a gun and start shooting.
That would have been way more disturbing.
No, what happened was one of the three stated possibilities awaiting the final couple on the show: They’d split the $250,00, one would try to take it for him or herself, or neither would get it.
Given an option to flip a card that said either SHARE or KEEP, both had to have the SHARE card for the split to work. If one had KEEP and the other had SHARE, too bad, the greedy one got all the cash. And if both opted for KEEP, nobody’d get it (except the people who were eliminated would split it).
The last couple standing, to no one’s surprise, was Rachel and Nick. Chris and Sarah were outvoted the ousted couples who were the jury.
But Rachel acted as if she were surviving and deserving because she had been let down by another guy on the show, who had no intention of dating her in real life. She sobbed over that as she was paired with another guy, one nobody had barely noted, Nick.
But though Nick was patient and encouraging with her, he in the final analysis surprised her by turning the KEEP card while she had chosen SHARE. He wouldn’t even be there without her, she said. That’s just the kind of attitude that made it easy for me to keep the cash, he said.
But the winner, Nick Peterson, really was a jerk about the whole thing, grinning and highfiving even after Rachel – whose full name is Rachel Trueheart for goodness sake – was visibly upset.
The live audience cheered inexplicably (because they were witnessing “history”?), most of the sympathy from the participants was with Rachel, now cussing up a storm. And host Chris Harrison had blown all the suspense with the teasers that preceded every commercial break for the two hour finale. It was also obvious what he thought of the decision, though it was clearly one of the possibiities he had described earlier.
The use of opposing card to determine a winner reminded me of some forgotten syndicated dating shows where couples expressed their desire to stay together by flipping such cards. And at its core, “Bachelor Pad” was supposed to be a dating show as well, inasmuch as they wanted to show some hooking up to keep the deadly show spicy from time to time.
Turned out that a romance did bloom from the thing as Tony Pieper proposed marriage to Blakeley Jones in the middle of the tell-all part. With botched engagements frequent on the regular “Bachelor” franchise, they’ll take proposals where they can get them.