Bachelor producers may want to think about renaming the Fantasy Suites after Andi's disastrous overnight date. Episode nine of the show's 18th season took Juan Pablo and his remaining three ladies — Clare, Nikki, and Andi — to the beautiful island of Saint Lucia, where Andi's dream of falling in love on reality TV turned into, in her words, "a nightmare." Let's recap!
"Overnights are special because there are no cameras," Juan Pablo explains in the first few minutes of the two-hour episode. "I'm going to have the chance to talk to the girls with privacy." (Talk? Riiiight.) "All the time we want. No cameras," he says. "Perfect."
Not so fast, Juan Pablo. Clare's overnight date is up first, but she's not sure she wants to spend the night with you after the drama in Vietnam. "I want to be able to have, seriously, just one-on-one time," she says in a voiceover, as she and Juan Pablo ride their yacht to a fancy beach in Saint Lucia. "But…back in Vietnam, Juan Pablo and I went swimming in the ocean [at 4 a.m.] And that, I guess, made him feel uncomfortable…and so, I'm really not sure if spending the night together is the best idea."
At dinner that night, Clare tries to talk with Juan Pablo about his daughter, Camila, and the situation with his ex-girlfriend Carla. It's kind of a one-sided conversation — his most substantial comment is "You've been doing some good thinking here" — but Clare comes away from it feeling like he's "serious" about their future. And speaking of the future, is there some Fantasy Suite action in store for these two? Clare tells Juan Pablo she's concerned he's going to regret their overnight date the way he regretted their 4 a.m. swim, but he assures her this is different. "I really, really, really want to spend more time with you…as long as we're on the same page," she concedes.
Back in the Fantasy Suite, Clare finally musters up the courage to tell Juan Pablo how she's feeling about him. "I'm just loving falling in love with you," she says nervously. "You melted me." Later, in a confessional, she adds, "This is perfect. And I don't want to lose him. I don't want to lose these feelings…He's that next step. He's that man that I want to have babies with, and I want to get married to. And I've never felt that about a man before."
Hold that thought, Clare, because your dream guy is about to spend the night with another woman. Andi's date with Juan Pablo is up next, and unlike you, she doesn't seem to have any doubt that they'll be waking up together the next morning. After lunch, an impromptu jam session on the steel drums, and a pickup game of soccer with some of the locals, Andi and Juan Pablo hop in a land buggy and head to a secluded picnic at Latille Falls, where they chat a bit about his hometown visit and then kiss for a while under the waterfall.
Over dinner later, Juan Pablo asks Andi about a statement she made in Atlanta about "wanting badly" to fall in love. He's worried she wants it so badly that she'll force a connection, but she says "wanting it" and "forcing it" are different, and insists she's thought seriously about why she's there. He's been doing some serious thinking, too, about whether Andi would be a good mother to Camila, and his honest answer is that he's not sure. But he's hoping a few hours in the Fantasy Suite will clear things up.
"I feel, like, on cloud nine right now. I mean, I just can't stop smiling," Andi says after agreeing to spend the night. "I just have this overwhelming sense of, like, fortune, and I'm excited, and I can envision myself with Juan Pablo for forever…Just feeling this happy…I couldn't have even imagined this in my wildest dreams."
Fast-forward to the next morning, and Andi is singing a decidedly darker tune. Juan Pablo has never felt better about their relationship — he giddily says they "freakin' talked and laughed for hours" — but she has a different view of how the evening went. "Waking up this morning, I could not wait to get out of the Fantasy Suite," she admits in a confessional. "The fantasy suite turned into a nightmare. I saw a side to him that I didn't really like, and the whole night was just a disaster. I hope he did not think that went well. I really hope he did not think that that was a good date."
So, what, exactly, went so horribly, horribly wrong? "Every time I started to talk about feelings or started to talk about, you know, something from my past or whatever, it was always him that started telling his own story. It was all stories about him, and not once did he really ask anything about me," she explains. "I just started to realize that he didn't really care about who I was, and what I thought, and what I want in life."
Beyond that, she says, he bragged about his overnight date with Clare. "It blew my mind that he thought that was okay to talk about," she laments. "There's just no filter with him…He thinks that he can say whatever he wants to say, and that everyone's gonna laugh and still fall in love with him…but, you know, it gets to a point where it's just offensive."
And on that note, it's time to move on to Nikki's date, which, at this point, kind of seems like filler while Andi figures out how to escape Juan Pablo's narcissistic clutches. The daytime part of the date is pretty uneventful — they do some horseback riding on the beach and then make out for a bit in the surf — but things get ever-so-slightly more interesting in the Fantasy Suite. After chickening out on her hometown date last week, Nikki finally tells Juan Pablo she loves him. "It feels really good to tell Juan Pablo how I feel," she gushes. "I don't want this night to end. I don't want the sun to come up in the morning."
Alas, it must. And it's bringing with it another rose ceremony. Prior to the big moment of truth, Chris Harrison sits down with Juan Pablo to get a read on what he's feeling about the remaining ladies, each of whom have left the Bachelor a video message. Both Clare and Nikki use their tapes to tell Juan Pablo how much the experience has meant to them, but Andi uses hers as a setup for a face-to-face confrontation. "Waking up after the Fantasy Suite…there were a ton of thoughts that went through my mind…and I don't want to share those thoughts with you in a video message," she says. "I want to share those thoughts with you in person." Translation? Prepare to be dumped — and dumped on.
"I realized that I wasn't in love with you and that I wasn't going to be," she tells him, to which he replies simply, "It's good that you tell me how you feel, and if you don't think it's me, it's okay." Except it's not, Andi argues. "I know that I didn't leave behind a child, but I left behind family and friends and a job, and I missed weddings, I missed things," she says. "And I did that all willingly. But because of all that…it's not okay. When you say it's okay, that bothers me…You saying it's okay comes off to me as you not having feelings."
"You don't even really know who I am," she continues, before laying into him about bringing up his Fantasy Suite date with Clare while on a Fantasy Suite date with her, and then telling her she only made it to the final three by "default." "Do I appreciate honesty? Absolutely. Do I think in my opinion you take it too far? Absolutely…There's a difference between being honest and being an a–hole."
In the end, Andi and Juan Pablo say an icy goodbye, and she heads home in a minivan, lamenting the whole way that Juan Pablo still doesn't get it. Fortunately for him, the remaining two ladies are all too happy to stick around in Andi's place. So who's it going to be, Bachelor nation: Clare or Nikki?
