This is a semi-terse recap of the finale of The Bachelor, the Brad Womack edition. I won’t give it out here but the spoiler (If you DVR’s this) is at the bottom of this piece. With that said,
The Bachelor started out with Brad’s family showing up in Cape Town, South Africa to meet the girls, Emily Maynard and Chantal O’Brien. It was real nice to see Brad have actual emotions when he say his family.
They first meet Chantal and they loved her. The next day they met Emily and loved her too. From what we’re seeing, the family felt like they’d relate more to Emily than Chantal.
Brad then took Chantal on a ‘swim with the great white sharks’ date. Poor girl, he keeps pushing her beyond her limits on their dates.
Brad then takes Emily Maynard to a remote location via helicopter. She’s smoking hot in this skimpy blue dress and cowboy boots.
Their evening chatter got pretty nervous as they tried to address Brad’s ability to be a dad and he got nervous, she wanted to make sure he knew what he was getting into and though they were trying to convey good things to each other, it didn’t appear to flow as well as it could have.
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Chantal shows up first and Brad tells Chantal that he didn’t know how to say it, but he has stronger feelings for someone else. He asks if she’s OK, she says no. Duh Brad!!!
It was probably the most mature, level-headed break up I’ve seen on The Bachelor. It was a heart-jerker to see them, Brad walking Chantal to the limo.
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Brad had a pretty nice speech prepared and the one thing he said that stuck with me was, “You’re the one ‘Em, you’re the once in a lifetime. Give me your forever.”
It was pretty nice.
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(Psst, I knew this was coming up because Brad flew Emily’s father out to ask him his permission to marry Emily!)
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The did a quick little video snippet montage of their journey through the season.
This looks like a keeper of a couple. They’re both quiet on the inside, but if you’ve seen any of the behind-the-scenes clips of Brad, you know that he’s very different from the polite and stoic Brad we all have seen and he’s actually a lively kind of guy. That means he’s a normal kind of guy when the cameras are off.
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With that said, I was surprised by the After the Rose episode that followed the proposal. There were some serious surprises.
Brad and Emily broke up after the show, Chantal met someone and seemed to recover from Brad pretty quickly. But wait, Brad and Emily broke up? Yep. They’re still engaged but as Emily put it, after the show they need to figure each other out and she’s not ready to move to Austin.
Emily also noted that she’s also getting over what she’s seen on the show. Every Monday night she’d call Brad and grill him about what she just saw. Um, Emily, it’s The Bachelor! ABC’s legal pandering of a single person to a horde of the opposite sex. I’m not sure what she was expecting. But she pointed out that if he fell for her early on, there should have been some things saved just for her, but in the show, he “gave them a lot of material.” I’m thinking she won’t be buying the Blu-ray of Brad’s season!
But then she notes Brad has a bit of a temper and they’ve had some real knock-down, drag-out fights.
Through it all, each time one of them has something “truthful” to say about the other, like each time Emily would tell him she loves him, then she’d lay out the truth. I got a good vibe from the two of them on Chris Harrison‘s interview couch,
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This is a complete surprise to me and it brings a lot of doubt to how long these two will last. Emily Maynard looks like she might be looking for excuses to not move forward. I’m not dissing on this, but is this a female version of the old Brad? I truly thought this was going to be another successful couple. Maybe this is just an incredibly intelligent approach to understanding each other, getting the show behind them and moving forward without all the outside interference.
They both say they’ll be getting married. They see themselves getting married.
Then the show pulled out their three success stories, Trista & Ryan, Molly & Jason and Ali & Roberto, who all pitched in their own experiences, including the dreaded watching the show afterwards on Monday nights. LOL. (Wha? Does ABC keep these six in a locker on-set, ready for sound-bites distribution? LOL.)
Well, that’s one heck of a twisty set of season finale episodes of The Bachelor. I truly hope this works out for the two of them, Brad Womack and Emily Maynard. They both deserve it.
