THE BACHELORETTE SEASON 21—JENN TRAN

I’ve needed almost a week to process what I witnessed on the finale of this latest season of The Bachelorette. (Yes, I am still embarrassed that I watch this basic game-show-for-love, but I started during the pandemic and can’t stop myself now.)

As early as episode two, I dubbed this the “Open Wound” season of the show because that’s basically what everyone involved on-screen is! I’ve never heard so many tales of abandonment, both familial and in love, in my life! (Well, not since I gave up the one soap opera I watched decades ago.)

The very first thing I want to make crystal clear about the “star” of this year’s rendition of the stupid show, Jenn Tran, is that any guy would be lucky to have this girl!!! First of all, she’s gorgeous. Second of all, she doesn’t even act like it, which is very commendable. There are so many girls out there who are either not good-looking or are plastic-surgeries-out, who act like they’re the queen of the may, but Jenn doesn’t even flaunt her gorgeous tresses, which we’d all be lucky to rock. (Yes, even yours truly, whose own luxurious locks I’m always grateful for! But Jenn’s are a million times better.)

She’s also adorable. And smart, which is demonstrated by her sentiments, vocabulary, sentence structure, and the fact that she’s in school to become a physician assistant, which is just one step below doctor. On top of all of that, she’s an athlete!!! And she’s uber-pleasant. Most importantly, she was willing to find love with that pack of goons.

That poor girl. The casting people gave her the creepiest choices. *Grant Ellis is the only one I would even consider, both in my younger days and now, if I had to choose one of them. *(And I guess I’m not the only one who feels that way—Grant is the next Bachelor!)

So in case you missed the ending, (or if you’re smart enough to not watch the show at all,) Jenn chose Devin, the goofiest of the group, to get engaged to. He’s not good-looking at all, is a bit of a chubster with a hairy chest, has odd yellow-ish teeth with lots of visible gums, and all the other guys hated him, which is usually a clue to the dick-iness of a male. I expected him to be gone the very first week, so I was sure that the producers were making Jenn keep him around, just for the drama he was causing with the other men. (I also am positive that they made her keep Thomas, the one Asian guy, because they were idiots who neglected to cast more than one Asian male when the lead girl is Vietnamese! Is there not even one person with a brain who works on that show???)

When Jenn chose Devin to get engaged to at the end, (which I feel she did because she was attracted to how in love with her he was, and how protected he made her feel, after her father had basically abandoned her early in life,) I could not imagine how she was going to be able to have sex with him. I would throw-up if I even had to kiss him! But to each her own.

Then, as the After The Final Rose wrap-up show was going along last week, the show’s host, Jesse Palmer, kept alluding to that something odd was up with the ending. And his face and those of some of the cast members who were in that audience, along with the expressions on the faces of her mother and brother, made it look like something tragic was coming. So, before the big proposal, (which had occurred two months before in real life,) they stopped the reveal and had Jenn come out on the stage live to tell us what has happened since it was taped. And she was seriously crying. With actual sobs. (Sidebar—Has anyone on that show ever thought of having a box of tissues handy??? Just sayin’. They need my mother there to make sure that happens next time!)

Jenn was soooo distraught that I literally thought that Devin had died. (It actually might have been less sad if he had, bite my tongue.) It turned-out that he had broken up with her! By phone! With no explanation. And then followed (on social media) one of the weirdest Bachelorettes ever, and then went out clubbing with one of his love rivals, Jeremy, whose creepy family had put a kibosh on his relationship with Jenn when he was in the Final Four.

Poor Jenn was in soooo much emotional pain on the finale. And Devin is an idiot because he’ll never get anyone even close to her. Has he never looked in a mirror? He had tricked even my suspicious self—I had not figured him as one of the people who go on that show to find fame rather than love. I figured he’s just a schlub whom the producers accepted to show that they’re diverse-friendly, just like they also had the first big fat guy ever in this cast.

After Jenn told us the very sad story of her broken engagement, Devin came out for the two to confront each other for the first time since he had broken up with her a month ago.

Host Jesse Palmer should have definitely asked Devin what changed for him to make him break up with her, but he inexplicably neglected to do so. What a missed opportunity. Now we viewers, who have invested so much time into each season, will never know what really happened. (My theory is that perhaps desperate-for-love-from-a-male Jenn proved too needy for him.) No matter what Devin’s reason was, there are a zillion better ways for him to have gone about it. He had me convinced that he was madly in love with her, so what kind of number did he do on Jenn?

Actually, she should have broken-up with him when she saw that butt-ugly engagement ring he chose for her! Even Mr. X was amazed that it was even a choice! And I had jokingly said, “Yeah, when Jenn sees that ring, she’s going to not accept his proposal!” (By the way, when they kept previewing that this ending had never been done before, and the coming attractions showed Jenn telling one of the guys—who was tall, so I knew it was Devin—that she was not going to accept his proposal, I knew right away that she was going to propose to him! So that part was not the big surprise they expected it to be.)

For further clarification on Devin, I think that he’s just a liar, in general, and not just about his feelings for Jenn. So this is what I feel one of his big lies is: On a “date” earlier in the season, Devin matched Jenn’s sad tale of being abandoned by her father, to let her know that he was in the same boat in the paternity arena. Of course, that made her feel for him, and, ignoring his nerdiness, brought him closer to her. But then, when he made it to “Hometowns,” (which is when the Bachelorette visits the families of her last quartet of guys,) lo and behold, who was at Devin’s mom’s house but…his father! And Devin and his dad were all friendly, hugging and smiling and acting like they’re best buddies. I knew something wasn’t right as soon as I saw that. I just wish that Jenn had, as well. And now Devin is basically enacting revenge of the nerd.

I wish I was this poor girl’s friend so I could break down just how great she is to her. And I rarely even like any of the morons on this series! It was honestly hurting my soul to see how genuinely miserable she was on the finale. I also wish she would just marry that adorable ex-boyfriend of hers, Matt, who showed-up in New Zealand, (with the approval of the show’s producers) to try to win her back. His looks put the rest of the cast to shame, for one, and he also seemed sincere in wanting to still be with Jenn. So I think they should get back together.

But, happily, now she’ll be competing on Dancing With The Stars starting next week, (which I’ll discuss in a few days,) so perhaps that will bring her some love luck. (She’s partnered with divorced Sasha Farber, who I’m confident will love her—if he’s finally over his ex-wife and fellow dancer, Emma Slater, yet— and they both desperately want children right away, so I’m saying there’s a chance.)

On a side note, Mr. X and I detest that the contestants say, “Can I steal her?,” when they want to have some time chatting with the lead. We also hate that they always say that they’re “trying to get there,” meaning trying to be in love with so-and-so. Why do you have to “try???” There are almost eight billion people in the world! You don’t have to try to love just one of them, especially on what Mr. X always refers to as “a game show!”

I have to end with one thing off the topic of the outcome of this season, which annoyed me no end. If contestant Sam M., (who was the first frontrunner of the suitors because of their “physical chemistry,” meaning Jenn just wanted to make-out with him all day,) said this one more time, “I’m just keeping the main thing the main thing,” I would have thrown-up.

Which is exactly what I’m sure I’ll do if I subject myself to The Golden Bachelorette that also begins next week! I’ll just try to wait to get my franchise fix until next summer’s Bachelor in Paradise. May the Gods have pity on me for watching any of this nonsense to begin with!