Well that was highly un-revelatory. Not that we totally thought it would be — more so that we just hoped it would. Because this season of The Bachelor has been trying at best. Maybe we were hoping for a bit more edge, some hard-hitting discussion on the way these women were treated thus far, or at least some sort of acknowledgement from Juan Pablo that he’d seen the light regarding his dismissive egoist actions. An admission that he’d learned something. Anything. But then again, this is The Bachelor so there’s literally no reason or precedent set to make us think that. We all just want what we can’t have.
Which was, it seems, the general gist of the whole of the Women Tell All special tonight. The women wanted exactly what we, the audience, wanted, but ultimately there was no way they were going to get it. Not from Juan Pebbles, and certainly not from Chris Harrison’s softballed questions. No, ultimately all this season of The Bachelor has been good for is JP’s utterances of "eeees OK," the occasional hairtuck, some dancing, and a lot of mentions of his daughter Cameeeeeeeeela. The Tell-All was no different.
Like most of us watching, the women are not happy with Juan Pablo. And though he was hot and sexy (so WEIRD NEW AND DIFFERENT for them to talk about this!) at the time, after the fact they’re all just sort of embarrassed that they fell for his schtick. To which I say: ladies, welcome to dating.
"Why wasn’t being attractive to him enough?" came the hilarious line of questioning from Chris Harrison. If by "hilarious" you mean offensive and patronizing because, uh, when has being attractive ever been enough to sustain any real relationship? Ferreal, Chris? Are we all high schoolers that need to be reminded that beauty is only skin deep?
Soon-to-be-Bachelorette (I mean, it has to be) Andi was there, leading (in part) the charge in the discussion of Juan Pablo’s hypocrisy and disheartening treatment of all of them. Several brought up his ideas regarding what was “fair” in terms of treatment, and the all-too-annoying way he cherrypicked when to pull out the Cameeeeeeeela card. In fact, the only woman who had only nice things to say about Juan Pebbles was Renee — no surprise there.
Of course, the infamous "pervert" comment came up, but it was just barely a topic of conversation at the end of the 90-minute special. Kelly, Dog Lover, took particular offense as the child of a gay parent. Victoria found his cop-out lost in translation argument offensive given that she was not born in the U.S., nor was English was her first language.
What was most shocking of all, though, was how through all of this, JP maintained that he has “no regrets” about the situation and he wouldn’t change a thing about how he handled himself or the situation he was in. He was honest, which can sometimes hurt, he said. "At the end of the day you have to be very realistic, very mature, very honest in this situation." If only Juan Pablo took his own advice.
