<em>The Bachelor</em>: Fame Conquers All

This post reveals “plot” points of episode 14 of The Bachelor season 21.

“You guys all right?” Chris Harrison asked Nick Viall and Vanessa Grimaldi. The couple—the Bachelor and the “winner” of the 21st season of The Bachelor—had just kissed each other for the first time, in public, as an affianced pair during The Bachelor’s After the Final Rose special on Monday.

It was perhaps a strange way to greet the couple who was making, according to the long-established rituals of the franchise, their first triumphant appearance as a newly betrothed couple. (It was the same freighted appearance that,couple Ben and Lauren, had .) Harrison’s greeting, though—“You guys all right?”—was also the only one that made sense, under the circumstances. Vanessa and Nick’s appearance together on Monday, the capper to Nick’s season of was decidedly … not triumphant. It was instead decidedly awkward. That’s because it was full of something is not terribly well-calibrated to accommodate: honesty. Bluntness. Clear-eyed realism about what ’s particular brand of extremely traditional and extremely non-traditional romance is all about.