‘The Golden Bachelor’ Recap: Season 1, Episode 6

I run to my window and call out to a boy on the street below. “What’s today, my fine fellow?”

“Today?” he shouts back. “Why, it’s hometowns!” Hometowns — I haven’t missed it! I toss him a coin and tell him to bring me a turkey as big as he is. How much can a turkey be, anyway?

It’s a sacred day even in the worst of Bachelor[ette] seasons, and we’re in for a hell of an episode this week — and not just because meeting children and grandchildren is an entirely different ballgame from meeting parents. Gerry informs us early on that he has strong feelings for all three women but that he only wants to say “I love you” to one more person in his lifetime.

Oh, Gerry. Gerry, Gerry, Gerry.

Up first is Theresa, and I am so excited that we’re visiting my native New Jersey that I feel like I’m taking you all on my hometown date, though in fairness, that would involve a lot more bagels and also my dad yelling at you for reasons that will never be entirely clear.

Theresa hasn’t introduced any man to her family since her husband passed, but given how obviously crazy about Gerry she is (and I really do think she is), her sisters are immediately onboard. He sits across the picnic table from Theresa’s three young grandsons like this is a panel interview for the coveted position of new pawpaw. All four of them do an impression of Theresa taking a selfie. “Oh, this is precious!” he says, and in doing so, achieves a state of being that I am certain is mathematically verifiable as Peak Gerry.

Theresa’s daughter, Jen, is the only source of any resistance, which isn’t saying much. She asks about how they’d cope with the reality of having two families in two different places and doesn’t seem totally satisfied with his optimism and shrugging off of the question. “We’ll figure it out!” Okay, but, liiiiike, she currently sees her grandkids every day, though? He also
equivocates when Jen asks if he’s falling in love with her mom.

It’s clear that of all her loved ones, Theresa is most anxious about securing Jen’s approval. When mother and daughter sit down for a chat, Theresa brings kind of a manic, I’m so excited, I’m so scared energy to the moment: “Isn’t he great? Like, he’s amazing. He’s amazing. He’s so handsome. He’s so great. Yeah, no. I’ve never met anyone like him.” (Honestly, it’s very sweet.) Fortunately, the Gatch gets two thumbs up from Jen. I don’t know how it didn’t occur to me before, but of course Jen’s own grief over her late father makes meeting her mother’s new potential husband all the more complicated. “It doesn’t change how much love we had for my dad,” she says, overcome with emotion.

Gerry and Theresa decamp for my beloved Seaside Heights (get crazy, get wild, etc.) — kudos to production for figuring out camera angles to include, by my count, zero puking teenagers in the background. She tells him she loves him on the Ferris wheel (this is their second Ferris-wheel moment together, no? Will they put one on their registry?). This time, Gerry’s diplomatic spin on a Han Solo “I know” is “That makes me feel so special.” He doesn’t say it back to her, but he does elaborate on his feelings to the camera: “For the first time since 1968, I know that I’ve fallen in love again. This is the love I’m looking for. I’m in love with Theresa.”

“Uh, okay,” I remember thinking to myself. “Should we … call it a day?” How young and foolish I was.

Faith is next, and we quickly learn that her hometown of Benton City, Washington, sure seems to be taking liberties with the definition of the word “city.” Riding horses is her pickleball, she explains — which is a sentence I never would have foreseen myself typing, but here we are. Gerry does fine astride a horse walking around very slowly, and that is a relief for all of us.

They talk about how they’d have to figure out a mutually agreeable place to call home. Naturally, Faith wants to be close to her sons in Washington, and also, her “horse is buried here.” I watched this scene back three times to make sure I had heard her right. This is not the first time Faith has made a throwaway remark that I wish we could devote a full hour of airtime to an explanation thereof.

At home with her family, the Gatch plays football with the kids and recounts the dramatic hair toss after removing her motorcycle helmet that won Faith the first-impression rose. She points to one of her sons, who immediately screams, “I called it!” One of us, one of us!

“More questions than answers” seems to be something of a family motto. “God, I hate to say it, but they seem to be in love,” Faith’s sister Beth says in an interview. “I’ve never acknowledged that I believe in that ‘in love’ thing, but they seem in love.” Are you … good? Beth, if you want to talk, I’m here.

Everybody likes Gerry, because of course they do. “I can tell you’re in love with Faith,” Beth tells him, prompting this exchange:

Faith: Did she just say that out loud?

Gerry: Would you say it out loud?

Faith: I would say it out loud.

Gerry: I love you.

Faith: I love you, too.

Faith has never been my top pick (not that I dislike her!), but that was genuinely rom-com-worthy. Then they make out in front of the entire family, and everyone is taken aback but tries admirably to be upbeat about it.

“We’re in love with each other! It’s official! We’re a thing!” Faith gushes to the camera, then starts sobbing in her front yard as he drives away.

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But what about his feelings for Theresa? “I don’t know where I’m going to go with that,” he says, and me either, bud. Surely this isn’t about to get even more complex, dot dot dot.

Last but not least, the Gatch is on to Minneapolis for a day with Leslie and her family, who seem nice and fun. They, too, collectively cosign Gerry’s obvious kindness and his chemistry with their smitten mother/grandmother/sister — while nevertheless fearing that she might soon be heartbroken.

The most protective is her older brother Stuart, who served as a surrogate dad to Leslie after their father passed away when she was 16. He isn’t totally thrilled about the existence of Gerry’s two other serious girlfriends. Nevertheless, Stuart gives the couple his blessing and calls him a mensch, to Gerry’s obvious delight. Please add “being called a mensch” to Gerry’s list of favorite things right below “being looked at.”

When she appears unintroduced in the cold open, I instantly know Leslie’s granddaughter is Leslie’s granddaughter because she has a miniature version of exactly the same face. I love her. “Is it true,” she cross-examines Gerry like a baby district attorney, “That you actually love my glam-ma, and are you actually a couple?”

“At this point, I see no reason why I couldn’t have a long-term permanent life with Leslie,” he says to the camera, though I personally do see two reasons, those being his other hypothetical long-term permanent lives with Theresa and Faith.

Leslie drops the L-bomb, as is customary at this stage (it may be Golden, but it’s still The Bachelor): After seeing him with her family, she’s not falling, she is in love with him. Gerry leads her over to a wall that he can romantically press her against in order to say, “A wise man told me, ‘Don’t walk by an opportunity to tell someone that you love them when you love them.’ And Leslie, I love you.” I yelp at my computer screen. (Also: Who is this wise man, one wonders, and does he happen to be on the payroll of The Golden Bachelor?)

Wow. So Theresa is actually at the back of the pack heading into the rose ceremony, given that Gerry never reciprocated a to-her-face “I love you.” That’s some good editing.

Gerry, for his part, is “confused” and “terrified” at the prospect of reconciling his conflicting feelings — and of hurting someone he loves (!) very badly. At the rose ceremony, we’re briefly shown a gold rose under a glass cloche, which goes unaddressed but looks like a criminally overpriced souvenir I would have unsuccessfully demanded my parents buy me after seeing Beauty and the Beast on Broadway in 1996.

Leslie gets the first of the evening’s two (normal, red, biologically of the Earth) roses. When he picks up the second, the Gatch has a meltdown. He walks off set, crying. The camera finds him doubled over outside the mansion, on the verge of liberating the contents of his stomach. How could he bear to send either of these women home?

And … that’s where they leave us. I have not been this personally affronted by a cliffhanger since The goddamn Matrix goddamn Reloaded.

Anyway, I only see one possible solution here, and we need to put our best people on it immediately: Clone Gerry Turner.