I’ve been having trouble sleeping this week because my wedding is on Friday, but I swear Bachelor in Paradise is the cure for insomnia. This season has really helped me nod off! And all I could feel for about 85 percent or so of last night’s episode was sympathy for the show’s editors. Think of all the footage that was sifted through to assemble these terrible storylines. Imagine having to watch what didn’t make the cut. Let this soak in for a second: The scallops, Blake’s perspiration, whether or not Jack Stone is a good kisser, the “love square”… these are presumably the cream that has risen to the top. That is, except for an unseen romantic date between Derek and Taylor, because the show that’s trying to convince us that it’s about love refuses to actually show any.
Related: A GIF by GIF Recap of Bachelor in Paradise: Episode 7
The ticking time bomb that was the Kristina–Dean–D.Lo love triangle finally exploded last night. I struggled watching the disconnect between Dean’s self-aware ITMs (calling himself a moron and generally feeling shitty for how he’s treated Kristina) and how defensive he came off when he finally spoke with her. He avoided taking any responsibility and seemed to make it about Kristina being in the vicinity (which, I agree with her, was so not the point) and not about what actually happened between him and D.Lo. The next chapter in this saga was D.Lo giving Dean a long-overdue ultimatum. What I liked about how D.Lo went about this was that she didn’t take the tone of Kristina being the enemy. Rather, you felt she knew it wasn’t fair to either of them to be led on on this fashion, much less in plain view of each other. What I didn’t like was how there was almost zero eye contact between either of them during this exchange; what should’ve been a heartfelt conversation about choosing and pursuing a relationship with each other was bizarrely spent not looking at each other at all. A highlight was Dean telling D.Lo he had to focus on her while not once focusing his eyes on her. It was too rich to not be preserved as a GIF…
