Welcome to The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons Ever! Each week the show will be revisiting a specific season of The Bachelor/The Bachelorette and reliving some of its greatest moments. The show will also be using its time to catch up with some of the contestants from past seasons.
The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons Ever! season premiere featured Sean Lowe. It starts off with an overview of all of the girls from Sean’s season (Season 17). The format of the episode is similar to a “Women Tell All” episode, when the episode reminds the audience of all the most important parts of the girls throughout the season.
Sean’s season happened before I started watching The Bachelor, and you can really get a feel for how dated it is, primarily by how the women dress, but, more noticeably, by their makeup. THICK eyeliner, clumpy mascara, and VERY prominent eyeshadow… YIKES!
Let’s do a high-level recap of the episode, which is a high-level recap of the whole season… So here’s a super high level recap of Sean’s season.
- Leslie didn’t last, but she did break a Guinness World Record with Sean. They participated in the “Longest on-screen kiss” and boy it was awkward! I think the most amusing thing is that their definition of a kiss was just having their faces smushed together for over 3 minutes. If this record was broken on a more recent season, they’d actually be sucking face. But oh-well…
- Next was Ashley’s recap. Nothing really special happened.
- After that was Sarah. I don’t want to only remember her as the contestant who had one arm, but that’s the only thing I remember her as. After watching her date, Chris Harrison brought her onto a video call. The video call was pretty uneventful, except her boyfriend was there watching it with her, which must have been pretty awkward.
- Tierra was the villain of the season. She had a few events which felt a lot like the boy who cried wolf. In one instance she fell down the stairs and hit her head, but then she was fine, and she got more time with Sean, so she claimed that she was happy it happened. Then she was on a date where all of the girls participated in a Polar Bear Plunge (which is where you run into freezing cold water, typically to raise money for charity) but all of the other girls were fine, and Tierra claimed to have gotten hypothermia, but was fine when Sean came to visit her. She ended up fighting with Ashlee and inevitably got sent home. Chris tried to reach out to her, but to no avail.
Here’s an update on Peter Webber! Chris Harrison “revealed” that Peter has been dating…KELLY!!! No one should really be surprised since this news has been out in the world for a while. I think they just wanted to address it, since Peter’s season ended so hairy. They gave screen time to Barb, and I forgot how much I didn’t like her.
The last few segments of the show, they focused on Catherine and Lindsay’s time with Sean, since they were the finalists of his season.
They showed the entirety of final ring ceremony. First, they showed Sean not selecting Lindsay, and her being sent home. Then Chris had a video chat with Lindsay, and she talked about her time on the show. She then introduced her husband and her two very energetic sons. After that, they showed Sean proposing to Catherine. Then Chris video chatted with the two of them. Same equation: They spoke about their time on the show, then spoke about their family together.
This version of condensing an entire season into a three-hour long clip show made me realize that there aren’t enough notable moments from each Bachelor season to fill a three-hour long time slot per season. I would have recommended the show pick one of two different options: They could either condense the seasons into two-hour long episodes instead of three-hour long episodes, making them more digestible for the audience. Or, they could review two seasons per three-hour long time slot, instead of just one season at a time. It’s fun to feel nostalgic while watching the episode, but the nostalgic gimmick gets old quickly and the episode becomes redundant.
Also, this has to be super awkward for Catherine to watch, right? Like, I know they’ve been married forever, and they have kids, but it would never feel good to watch your husband kiss other women (no matter how long ago it was) and watch these other women profess their love for him. If Catherine even watched a minute of this, she is a stronger woman than I am (I can’t even look at a photo of my fiancé with his ex, let alone watch him kiss and date multiple other women).
I also have to say that with everything going on in the world regarding the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s weird to me that the show didn’t address it AT ALL. There was no acknowledgement that it was even happening. I didn’t expect anything big, but I did expect something. I guess I shouldn’t be too shocked since there still hasn’t even been a black Bachelor yet…Get woke Bachelor producers!
Editor’s Note: This review was originally written on 6/8 prior to the announcement of Matt James as the first-ever Black Bachelor.
The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons Ever! airs Monday nights on ABC and is currently streaming on Hulu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iRD22Gf5g4
