As I lay down in my bed at night after After The Final Rose, I put my hands together and began to pray. To who? Maybe God; maybe the ghost of Joseph Smith, reading his gold plates somewhere in Missouri; maybe to whoever will be producing The Bachelor in the future if this Bachelorette outster becomes a full scorched earth campaign. Maybe Beyoncé can do something. Anyone! But I closed my eyes and said my little prayer: Dear lord, Bachelor Nation has suffered too long. Starved for romance, for beauty, for two non-fuckboi leads in a row. May this be the last time I raise my voice to you in prayer. No more leads who didn’t make it to at least Hometowns. No more, lord!!!! Strike it down! Cast it out! Smote it? Smite it? Throw a big rock at it!!

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: when the lead hasn’t made it to at least Hometowns, it will be a disaster of a season. Think about it: Colton, Clayton, Matt James, Katie Thurston, Jenn. You might be sitting there saying, “What about Hannah Brown!?” Hannah was a capable and entertaining lead, and most of the drama was Luke P. and his aggressive Christianity, but may I remind you of Jed and his attempted music career.

And the issue isn’t that those leads chose the wrong person (which plenty of them definitely did); it’s because most of those leads never had control of their seasons. Underreactions to obvious contestants who were there for the wrong reasons. Overreactions to seemingly reasonable hesitations from their final three or four. Or they completely misunderstand their role as the lead.

What we saw happen here with Grant and his break-up with Litia illustrates another issue with a lead who doesn’t make it past the top six. They don’t understand the emotional stakes for the contestants in the Fantasy Suites or Finale Dates because they never made it that far. Another perfect example of this is Clayton, telling three women he loved them, sleeping with multiple women, and then being completely incapable of dealing with the emotional fallout. It seems the leads who make it that far don’t grasp that the feelings and love the contestants have are real and need to be handled with care. I’d bet that because they went home pretty early and didn’t have super strong feelings and probably got over it once they got some thirst traps in their DMs, they probably assume that every contestant, no matter when they go home, feels the same way. And whatever they do as the lead is justifiable because everyone will get over it. A lead who doesn’t make it to the top three or four doesn’t know that part of their role as the lead is to get through the season with the least emotional carnage possible.

That’s why everyone fucking loved Joey. He didn’t want how he felt at the end of Charity’s season to be how anyone else felt. That’s why Grant was absolutely stunned that Litia might have thought they were getting engaged and why every single woman eliminated felt blindsided up to and including the runner-up.

Let’s get into it. It being the three-hour finale and After the Final Rose, that honestly could have been an email.

I forgot that last week’s episode was the first five minutes of this episode, so Litia just teleported to Grant’s family’s hotel room. Was I the only one who thought Grant looked MISERABLE with Litia meeting his family? As a kid, we’d go visit my grandma, and she’d just take us around to her friend’s houses and have coffee cake, and we’d sit on the floor and wait for her to be done catching up with Sheila or whoever. Grant is hanging off Litia, making the same blank expression that my brothers and I would have two hours into a gabfest at Sheila’s house.

Grant tells his family that Litia doesn’t lead with beauty, and oh boy … Litia sits down with Grant’s mom and tells her that she’s fully prepared to be Grant’s new mommy and she’s already tracking her basal body temperature to give her grandkids. Whoops! Is that jumping the gun!? She also says that she would never ask Grant to move to her, so she’d want to move to a neutral third place. Girl, why? I’m begging you, stand up! Litia sits down with Grant’s dad and tells him that the most fulfilling part of your life begins when you have kids, so she’s currently taking folic acid and iron. But no rush! Grant’s dad says he can tell Litia would fight for her marriage and I just want to see Grant’s mom’s texts to her girlfriends when that clip aired.

Then Grant says the thing that should have tipped us all off that he wasn’t going to pick Litia. Grant sits down with his dad and says he didn’t get to enjoy his 20s and klafjsdalksdg — I’m sorry, my eyes rolled out of my head, so I couldn’t see the keyboard. I popped them back in. He didn’t get to enjoy his twenties, so he want to “enjoy his life” for three to four years and then have kids. His dad says, “Don’t let one issue stop the show,” and I feel like having kids is a pretty big issue worth stopping things for. But this is why he didn’t pick Litia. He wants to have an influencer life for a couple of years before having kids. I’d put my money on a long engagement, too.

Throughout the episode, it’s so clear that Litia feels like she’s got this in the bag and that she just needs to get through the next few days and she’ll get engaged. She keeps going, “I looooove yooou soooo much” and cutting Grant off to finish his declarations of love. At one point, she literally goes, “Pick me!” when they’re talking about engagement. I know you’re excited, but please. Please, Litia. And Grant looks miserable. On my broadcast, there was a commercial for a Volkswagen playing the song “Are you having any fun?” and that felt like a direct attack on Grant.

It’s time for Juliana to meet Grant’s family, and she answers every question by saying, “Wow, what a great question.” Also, she’s got truly ridiculous tan lines. Juliana put down the SPF 3 oil. Grant’s dad wants to know what kind of food he’ll get at family get-togethers. “Are we talking meat sauce? Marinara? Karen’s last ziti?” Grant says he loves Juliana’s dad and can’t wait to get the dads together. Juliana sits down with Grant’s mom, and his mom grills her about if they’ve said I love you and basically tells her if she can’t say I love you, to back off and let Litia re-raise her son. Juliana makes the smart tactical move of asking Grant’s dad a question about how Grant handles stress and Grant’s dad loves it.

Then Grant sits down with his dad and they have a conversation that both of them clearly have been needing to have for a long time. Grant’s dad says he feels that Grant can be safe with Juliana (which is the other thing that pushes Juliana over the edge) and Grant says it means so much to have his dad sit with him as a best friend and talk with him. His dad tells him he’s proud of the man he’s become, and Grant turned out to be a good person despite his dad’s other struggles and mistakes. He says he’s not leaving again, and he’ll be there for Grant until the very very end. This is incredibly sweet, and I’m glad Grant’s dad, Robert, got to express how much he loves his son. The petty side of me still thinks that Grant idealizes his father and has some resentment for his mother and valorizes the role of “Father” and “Husband” in a way that I’d love for him to unpack in therapy if he isn’t already.

Grant sits down with Juliana and tells her that he loves her. Juliana says that she’s known he loves her too and she wants them to be together at the end of this. They kiss and kiss and wow, they have a chemistry that he just doesn’t have with Litia.

Then we have a useless panel with former leads who fell in love with more than one person, I guess. Clayton has a terrible haircut, and Charity looks amazing.

Back to the episode, and it’s time for the final dates. Juliana’s up first, and Grant says it’s really important to see how the night goes, and I wrote in my notes, “Why? What information do you need?” She calls him “boyfriend” a lot, and when he leaves, he calls her “girlfriend.” He tries to make a little drama out of the fact that she was “denying” she was in love. Okay. Whatever.

Next, it’s time for Litia’s final date, and she is BUZZING. I think she thinks he might propose today. Just get it over with. She’s laying it on THICK. They’re riding horses, and she tells him that horses, her grandma, the ocean, and him are her favorite things. He’s doing his best to get through the day, but … he’s just not into Litia anymore. At the night portion of the date, he’s sitting so stiff and still, maybe hoping that her vision is based on movement and she won’t see him and forget he’s there. Litia is going on and on about how the love he has for her is the love she’s always known she deserves and it’s the love that’s taught her how to love. Then she tells him she’s never told anyone “I love you” before, and if you turn your volume up to the max, you can just hear his butthole clench so hard it could turn coal into a diamond. I also noticed in this convo he stopped returning every “I love you,” and when she says “PICK ME!” with chaos in her eyes, he just goes, “You’re funny.” “You’re funny” with no laugh is a man’s declaration of hate.

The next day, his dad comes to his hotel room, and they have a conversation about the fact that he can’t decide. Here’s the thing: I don’t think any of this was “Who is he gonna pick?” It was “How do I pick Juliana when Litia is so clearly the perfect on-paper choice? How do I tell the Perfect Woman I don’t want her?” Also, when he said, “A woman who’s 31 knows what she wants and will be there for me, or a woman with whom I have a lot of fun?” No man with a lone wolf tattoo and an earring has ever picked the 31-year-old who knows what she wants.

It’s proposal time, and Grant has to make a decision. Who to send first? My mom called me during the episode, and we realized that if Grant admits he doesn’t want to marry Litia, he’s also admitting that he isn’t really ready for a family and this serious commitment. By not picking Litia, he’s subtly betraying his self-conception as A Good Man who wants a Family and to be A Father and Husband. He does … just not yet.

And one note before the mess: both women look AMAZING. These are two of the best proposal dresses in recent history, and Kim Kardashian will be showing her plastic surgeon Litia’s face on her next visit.

When Litia is the first to arrive, a groan of disappointment rings out in the audience. Litia also can’t walk in her dress, making this final walk all the more excruciating. She makes it to the proposal gazebo, and Grant, why do you keep KISSING HER?! STOP KISSING HER?! Litia launches into her speech about how she wants to make a home for their kids, how he’s shown her how to be loved, and how she wants to be loved like that forever. Grant starts by saying he was looking for an emotional connection, and Litia jumps in, “You do, you do have that.” Grant finally spits out that he’s not her person, which is an AWFUL thing to say, and that he has a stronger emotional connection somewhere else.

There has been a lot of writing about the Mormon/fundamentalist baby voice as a way for women to assert their femininity and present a childlike demeanor to the men in their communities. It’s sweet, it’s submissive, it’s innocent. Litia drops that shit in this moment. She doesn’t give Grant a fucking inch during this conversation or any other conversations in this episode. She asks, “When did it change?” Grant is completely unprepared to answer any questions from Litia. Mostly because THIS WAS A BAD REASON TO GIVE HER!!! Especially knowing how he was talking off-camera. He also says he hopes she doesn’t view him any differently (because Being A Good Man is important to him, and her having a different opinion of him shatters that), and she says, “C’mon now!” Hahaha! Litia! Yes! Finally!

Litia says she’s disappointed and stops herself from asking questions that will hurt her feelings. She also says, “Juliana is a beautiful woman; she deserves love, and I would have a lot of questions if I were her. That’s stuff for you to work out. That’s not my business.” HAHAH! LITIA!

When he walks out, he asks if she feels misled. Why is he doing this? This is a bad idea for Grant. Litia says everything he’s been saying up to his point makes the switch up crazy. My favorite part is she says she’s mad. Yeah! This would make you mad!

Now it’s time for Litia to confront Grant in the present-day, live episode. She says she felt like the rug was pulled out from under her. She lists everything Grant said to her. On night two, he said he would stop the show for her. The night before the engagement, she said, “Wow, we’re getting engaged tomorrow,” and he said, “I’m excited! I love you! I love you! I love you!” She also says the worst part was she kept trying to manage her expectations and told Grant not to say those things and not make promises because things can change on the show and he kept pushing it. She also says, “he went out of bounds.” What does THAT mean? My favorite is he told her to keep a journal so they could read them to each other. (You see Juliana writing in a journal at one point during the episode.) Litia said she felt pressure to catch up to where he was.

Grant comes out, and Litia runs him through the many things he did and said to keep pushing the stakes emotionally. All he can offer is “I’m sorry I hurt you,” which is nice but not enough. Why did you do that? What was running through your mind? Why do it to Litia? Someone who was so clearly serious about marriage and kids? Litia says it felt like he didn’t want to lose her, so he kept pushing for more and more promises. At one point, Grant says it’s hard to compartmentalize, and that isn’t the issue. You promised to get engaged (who knows what he said on their overnight) and never hinted that things might change. He doesn’t seem to get the problem and knows he can’t really push back because that’s just a bad look.

Litia wraps up the segment by saying, “I’m excited for this to be the last time I talk to you about this.” And that’s how you clear a bitch!

Now it’s time for a HARD PIVOT to Grant and Juliana, and honestly … I knew that Grant really liked her from early in the season, so this isn’t a surprise. Grant just picked the younger woman with a looser timeline who would probably let him feel like the Big Man in the relationship. He always wanted someone to save, but Litia wasn’t going to be saved. They get engaged and with one last “WOLF PACK BABY!” They run off into the sunset.

This post-engagement isn’t particularly revealing. Juliana is one of those people who express positive emotions with a high-pitched squeak!

They look happy and seem to be in love with each other. I don’t like how no one uses anyone’s name in this segment and just says, “This woman” or “This man.” Objectifying everyone right until the end! ABC is sending them to Italy! Whatever! They’ll be moving to Boston. Grant, let me say from experience: bad idea.

Rapid fire wrap-up: Zoe has an amazing bob that is BOBBING. She’s going to Paradise. So will Leslie and Gary from the Golden franchise! The Golden folks will be down in Paradise! I hope a 23-year-old falls in love with one of the Golden contestants. I don’t care what the genders are (but I have a preference!). See you in Paradise!