Bachelor breaks up with winner
Insensitive social media posts spark show controversy
Nearly every season of “The Bachelor,” there’s a stark disconnect between what was filmed and where the final couple is months after the cameras stopped rolling. That’s true this season featuring Matt James — a 29-yearold real estate broker from New York who’s the first Black man to star on the show.
As Monday night’s finale opens, viewers are reminded that before we can get answers to what happened with Rachael Kirkconnell, the 24-year-old graphic designer from Georgia who sparked controversy over her racially insensitive social media posts, we will sit through two hours of James deciding who to pick and whether to propose.
The wait is excruciating.
Last month, internet sleuths found that Kirkconnell had “liked” a post of friends posing in front of a Confederate flag; shared an Instagram post whose language echoed the Qanon extremist ideology; dressed in a
Native American costume; and attended an “Old South” antebellumthemed party in college in 2018. She has since apologized.
Chris Harrison has apologized for how he’s handled the revelation; he’s stepped aside from hosting the “After the Final Rose” special and from the next season of “The Bachelorette.”
But the version of James we see in the finale’s first two hours doesn’t know any of that. At this point, the heaviest thing James is confronting is whether he’s ready to get engaged to either of the two finalists, Michelle Young, a 27-year-old teacher from Minnesota, and Kirkconnell.
James goes on a final date with Young, where they rappel down the resort wall. This is the moment James uses to
express that he’s not sure about an engagement, blindsiding her instead with a breakup.
Next, James skips his final date with Kirkconnell. Later, she receives a date card, instructing her to meet James by the lake. When she shows up, James tells her that he wants to be “everything to you,” but he doesn’t want to rush a proposal. “The truth is that I love you,” James tells Kirkconnell.
The happy couple gets into a horse-drawn carriage, naive to how real their relationship will get.
Emmanuel Acho, a former NFL linebacker and host of the video series “Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man” introduces himself to viewers at home.
James tells Acho that he first fell in love with Kirkconnell’s “authenticity,” but things got difficult when her social media posts surfaced. Before Kirkconnell addressed the images publicly, James said he tried to be there for her. But when she apologized, James started to realize that Kirkconnell might not understand what it means to be Black in America. Ultimately, they broke up.
Kirkconnell arrives and explains that back then, she didn’t consider what such an image or a party really meant. “I never took the time to make that connection. Because if I would have taken the time, I easily could’ve understood what was wrong with it,” she said.
Kirkconnell says she was “blindsided” when James broke up with her, and that she’s still in love with him.
As James arrives onstage, he and Kirkconnell share a hug.
“I really just want to take the time to say I’m really sorry. And once I really tried to put myself into your shoes as much as I could, I really do think that our relationship was very strong, and the love that we shared was very real,” Kirkconnell says. “So for you to end things ... you must have been hurting, and I just wanted to say I’m really sorry.”
James confirms a reconciliation is not likely.