*Spoilers ahead* 

Sigh. Where do I begin with The Bachelorette season finale? Do I start with the (several) controversies? The disaster of a format? The new Bachelor announcement? 

With way too much happening in one season, I think it’s safe to say that fans are exhausted. With double the leads, fans were promised double the fun. Instead, all we got was double the problems. 

With Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey both being leads for the entire season, production really had to scramble to fit everything into this finale. Considering this episode was three hours long, it showed. 

Recchia was up first — great to get the drama out of the way. We all knew Tino would be her final pick way before the finale. What we didn’t know was that these two were so not ready for any sort of relationship, it’s incredible. 

The two get engaged within the first 20 minutes of the episode — then it all goes downhill. When sitting down during “After the Final Rose (AFR),” a bombshell is dropped: Tino cheated on Recchia. 

Fans were left floored as the episode quickly took a nosedive into flames with Recchia and Tino arguing back and forth about the scandal in a (annoyingly long) segment before breaking up. This fight brought out the worse in both Tino and Recchia. 

Recchia barely let Tino get a word in despite screaming at him to give her answers. Tino is a cheater, so nothing he says is going to work, anyway. 

To top it all off, in a brutal move by production, runner up Aven is brought out on stage at AFR to ask Rachel out. In. Front. Of. Tino. Am I watching The Bachelorette or Jerry Springer? 

Windey and Erich had the easy ending. They got engaged and everything was happy — almost. 

Host Jessie Palmer said that Erich was also involved in a scandal. Fans were hoping that ABC would finally address the blackface scandal — and we were wrong. Very wrong. 

The scandal was text messages from an ex talking about using the show for fame. Come on. 

After promising to divert the show in a more “diverse” direction and constantly dropping the ball (casting Matt James and immediately going back to your typical white leads, Shanae’s ableist comments on national tv, lack of body diversity — do I really need to go on?) fans are done.

I don’t blame them. I personally stopped being invested in the show after Shanae’s ableist comments on ADHD — I even wrote an article about it. Not only did she make the comments, but she was rewarded by being given more screen time. 

This season finale was a disaster when it could’ve been a chance to reignite love for the franchise, which has clearly dipped. 

The show is more focused on drama and scandal than trying to produce a decent show for everyone. The only people this show appeals to anymore is ABC’s standard white audience. 

I think that The Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise has run its course — ABC has run out of substance and integrity. Let this show die, please.