‘The Bachelor’ Recap, Season 22, Episode 6: The One Where Krystal Gets A Two-On-One

Greetings, hello. The Bachelor takes us to Paris this week and one of the women has the same name as a river, so before this starts, I’m legally obligated by the Ministry of Puns to tell you that this episode will contain footage of Sienne on the Seine. And since I’ve never seen a stitch of chemistry between the two of them, I have to imagine this tidy bit of wordplay is why Arie has brought her along for so long. That, and he’s still holding out hope that doctors will figure out how to have penetrative sex with a human brain. Great, that’s all, thank you for your time!

Arie has a brief discussion with Chris Harrison in which we discuss that unlike other weeks, this week is really important, and these decisions will be very difficult — and we’re off. We’re down to ten women, who will be attending four different dates this week: two one-on-ones, a group date, and a two-on-one. It’s more than I’ve ever seen the show cram into a week before, so at least we’re all in the same boat of realizing that this melting vanilla ice cream cone doesn’t have long for the screen.

Say what you will about Krystal, but she’s at least self-aware enough to know who and what she is to the show. “I wonder who will be on the two-on-one,” she speculates, adding, “…with me.” She knows she’s the obvious choice, that it just comes down to who will go along with her, and I’m having a pang of regret that Bibi (R.I.P.) isn’t here to take her rightful place on this two-on-one. If nothing else, Arie, you need to memorize the format of this show so that you can at least adhere to the rules we’ve become accustomed to. You know, unwritten commandments like, “Thou shalt keep someone who can hold their own with the villain on the two-on-one.” And “Thou shalt not waste the time of a single mother.” But he doesn’t get it.

Fouren is going on the one-on-one this week, and as always, the beginning of their date is well within the sightline of the other girls. Right under their noses, Arie acknowledges to camera that he “doesn’t know much about” Fouren, and this is mostly about how beautiful she is. And — WOW CAN YOU BELIEVE IT IN A RELATIONSHIP BASED ON NOTHING — they literally spend the first half of the date strolling through Paris in silence.

Occasionally, in moments of great vulnerability, Fouren asks Arie’s bronzer line how it’s going, or chirps, “Wow” when he points something out about the architecture. He tells both the camera and Fouren herself that he really wants her to like him, and she nods seriously and silently eats a bunch of sand as her eyes fill with tears.

Finally it’s dinner time, and Arie has some concerns. Nothing that he can’t ignore because his date is a natural blonde in a tight red velvet dress, but he would in an ideal world like to hear her speaking voice at least once while they’re out. Slowly, haltingly, Fouren starts opening up to Arie, acknowledging that she felt pressure on the earlier half of their date, and spelling out some very compelling reasons for why she should stay in her shell on this show that’s literally designed to ruin her life, specifically.

In the real world, she says she friend-zones dudes for about six months before dating them, and that hissing you heard in the background was all the air going out of Arie’s peepee. In a frantic effort to fill it back up with vulnerability, he tells an insane story I can’t believe we, as the audience, haven’t heard before. He tells Fouren that his most serious relationship was multiple years long, and she had kids and they lived together. She got pregnant, and he was away racing a lot, which was a point of contention, and at one point, she called him during one of those away weekends to tell him she lost the baby and that she wouldn’t be there when he got back. OKAY WHAT??

But sure, let’s skip right over that so Fouren can break my heart with how not ready she is to be here. She said she already had trust issues after getting stuck between her parents’ turbulent marriage, but did manage to get engaged to her last boyfriend. But as soon as that happened, apparently, he stopped treating her well, which is um, a potentially triggering aspect, considering that best case scenario, she will get engaged to this man and everything will immediately change. “I think you worry too much,” says Arie, stuffing the rose in Fouren’s beautiful mouth so she can’t say any more words.

The group date this week is a choreographed dance at the Moulin Rouge, attended by Becca, Sienne, Bekah, Tia, Chelsea, and Jenna. We all arrive in our nippy shirts, no bras — apparently that’s the theme of Paris that everybody could agree on — and Tia commences being the voice of reason on this insane date. She is all of us when her eyebrows go up into her hairline when she notices that the dancers flashing their undercarriages are wearing thongs, and to my knowledge, she’s the only hero who’s dropped a line like, “I’m not a good dancer and I’m not very sexy” on one of these group dates.

Because literally, who is supposed to excel here? Everyone is dressed like spangled sex peacocks with the strangest parts of their bodies on display, and you have to basically be an athlete just to hold the thing up.  Tia isn’t even as bad at it as I would be, I just really appreciate someone calling it what it is for once. There may not be any whiplash on this date, and nobody went to the hospital, but that doesn’t make it any less brutal.

Speaking of which: Bekah gets the rose — because I forgot to mention, she is the one who’s excelling at this challenge — and gets to dance with Arie onstage and LITERALLY the other women have to watch their date. Their date is the show. And the women are at the show. My god you have outdone yourself, Bachelor Nation. Especially for Chelsea, who’s like, “Hi hello, can I see some consistency here? I’m a 29-year old mom and she’s a 22-year-old rock climber on the missing person’s list. What is your goddamn type? Can I have a hint??”

Krystal’s two-on-one adversary has been selected, and it’s Kendall. (That’ll teach you to stand up for yourself! In this world, that’s called drama, and now you must fight a lion to the death in an arena.) Krystal doesn’t find Kendall to be a worthy adversary, but she’s mostly keeping it to herself at first, as the three of them amble through a chateau from the 1600s. (Women love to look at old guns and oil paintings in a French mansion. And to show their panties and their full bodies to their romantic competition. Paris is going really well so far.)

Arie’s worried about Kendall because she’s never been in love, or in a relationship that lasted for longer than ten months, and you should remember that phrasing, because it comes out of Krystal’s mouth later almost word for word. Arie does also say that he has some doubts about Krystal as well — that if he sees the same side of Krystal that he saw last week in Fort Lauderdale, he’s gonna send her ass home. But he’s also fucking tucking her hair behind her ear and all but apologizing for “punishing her.” She does her big doe eyes at him and makes some tiny baby sex noises and Arie is satisfied. “I could feel that she was sincerely apologetic,” he says, and all I want to do is jump in and ask, “… for saying she wished Peter was the Bachelor??”

But Krystal isn’t done saying weird shit, and as soon as she gets Arie’s forgiveness for everything she did in Fort Lauderdale, she’s on to the next thing. Which appears to be…some kind of acknowledgement that Kendall doesn’t deserve to be here? Not only that she isn’t prepared for marriage, and all the other stuff that Arie was already worried about, but also that she’s not a worthy adversary. Naturally he tells Kendall what was said about her, and she hits the nail right on the head with her assessment — “It’s about winning for Krystal.”

Kendall calls Krystal out on why she would say something like that to Arie, and Krystal doesn’t have an answer. She just nods and gives some more little sex moans. But god bless her, Kendall is not giving up. “I’ve dated someone like you before,” she says. Someone who uses words of cruelty in moments of conflict. She very calmly tells Krystal not only why she’s there, information that ya girl is absolutely not deserving of, but also that just because she says the most hurtful thing in the moment doesn’t mean you win, it just means you hurt someone. “I can empathize with you,” she says, coming over to sit next to Krystal on the couch. But this is the first scene in the movie, where the well-meaning teacher is still naive as hell, trying to connect with the students, and Krystal is not about it. Later at dinner, she calls the conversation patronizing — sure, fair — and seems overall completely unaffected by it.

Oh right because as it turns out, this just became a two-part date! Even after his conversations with both women, Arie explains that he needs more time, so the three of them are also going to dinner so he can noodle on this a little more. (Slash, the producers want to see if they can get Krystal to spiral.)

And yeah, I’m absolutely sure that this date extension was unplanned, and that this little attic restaurant with a full-window view of the Eiffel Tower was available to film in last minute. Or that you were planning to eat here alone off-camera if the extension didn’t happen. Before Arie shows, Krystal tries to get Kendall to admit that they have a bunch in common, like K names and a general denial of their surroundings. But Kendall isn’t having it. “I feel like we may have similar beliefs, but we present them in a very different way.”

And then Arie comes in and Krystal shares my favorite monologue of the season to try to catch him up on their conversation:

“We were just talking about how this journey has been. And through the highs and the lows and through the thick and the thin, that really it’s…indescribable. Really indescribable and yet magical and worth it. Worth all of it. Mmm-hmm.”

Please put that on my tombstone, play it at my funeral, and I’m gonna start saying it all the time. The women at the house feel like Krystal has the advantage on this date, but after an off-camera conversation with Kendall that we don’t even see, Arie gives the rose to Kendall, eliminates Krystal, and doesn’t even walk her out. He just leaves her sitting at the table after their goodbye and goes off to smooch Kendall on the Eiffel Tower, which makes me 1000% sure that it was producers who asked him to keep Krystal around until the two-on-one, and he’s been over it since Fort Lauderdale. But still smooching on her like nothing was wrong for the rest of it. Ugh, charming.

The one-on-one this week goes to Jacqueline, who isn’t feeling quite the picture of confidence. She feels like she’s been given a pony to ride, but says the stakes feel like, “If you don’t learn to ride this pony correctly by the end of the day, it’s going to be shot.” Their car breaks down literally immediately, which is a wonderful sign, and the two have to find some other way to travel to the Buying You Things portion of the date. He — sorry, the producers — get Jacqueline a dress in which, it must be admitted, she does look like a million bucks, and now she has some questions for ya boy.

She’s worried that because it took Arie so long to bring her on a date, that she’s an experiment more than someone he’s excited about. And thinking quickly on his feet, Arie says he was intimidated by her intelligence, and it was his insecurities that set them back. (That was such a good answer that it chills my bones. You must run, Jacqueline. Run and don’t look back in those expensive heels that I hope you got to keep.)

But she’s full of important details today, like the fact that she’s currently getting her PhD, which is gonna take another six years of education. Education that she um, can’t and won’t do in the middle of Arizona. He says he doesn’t want to feel like he’s holding her back, a statement that I’m realizing I can simultaneously agree with and resent in the same moment. She’s a woman with agency and she can make this decision for herself, and also — STEP AWAY FROM THE PHD CANDIDATE. This is a Peter girl for sure, let her go to him.

They both basically know that this won’t work out, but he gives her the rose anyway, saying, “We’ll cross that bridge when we need to.” Which is a very similar conversation to the one I recall between Nick Viall and Vanessa Grimaldi. I forget what happened with them, but I’m confident that they’re still together and cohabitating happily in the same country!!

Safe this week are Fouren, Bekah, Kendall, and Jacqueline, and there are just three roses for the remaining five, and Arie has apparently made his decision and doesn’t need a cocktail party. The roses go to Tia, Sienne, and Becca, which means he sent Single Mom Chelsea home not only in a blindside, but at a Rose Ceremony. Have you ever even seen the show, dude? You’re supposed to find a compassionate time and send her home in private so she can go home to her son. Traditionally-used lines are things like, “I don’t want to waste any more of your time here,” or “What you have at home is too important.” Woof, doggy.

Jenna is also going home alongside Chelsea, and she gets a hug in place while Chelsea at least gets a walkout. Which is literally the last you can do after a blindside. I mean Jesus. His decision immediately throws Fouren into a panic, because he’s behaving so erratically that how can she trust him. Would he blindside Fouren like that? Almost certainly — she doesn’t have a kid.

Our next stop is Tuscany, and from the look of it, we have a lot of crying to look forward to, so I’ll see you back here next week with tissues in hand.

Alexis Rhiannon (@mindtheclam) is a freelance writer and comedian who grew up in Portland, Oregon, and is now located in New York City. Her interests include reality television, bar trivia, pop culture conspiracies, and someday cleaning her apartment. She can be seen monthly at the improvised show Live Dubbed Sitcoms at Videology in Williamsburg.

Watch Episode 6 of The Bachelor Season 22 on Hulu