Welcome to The Bachelorette finale recap — the final recap of this horrifying journey through love and swarms of horrifying men. If you need to catch up on what happened on last night’s episode, read Nadine von Cohen’s stupidly funny article here.

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I only want the best for Ali.

It’s weirdly true. I started recapping this show basically because Rebecca Shaw refused to recap alone, and just between you and me, she’s something of a diva. I didn’t want to do this show — I’d just recapped The Bachelor and the only lesson about love that I’d learned was that love probably didn’t exist.

I needed some time to recover, and I thought going on this journey with Ali would be fucked. Plus I’d just had a breakup in the first week of the season lol.

But actually, Ali was the perfect vehicle for me to drag my bitter and cynical recapping hulk out of retirement for one last spin — because she’s just like me. She’s been through a lot, she’s foolishly thrown her heart into the vicious piranha pond that is love again and again. I thought at the very least, I can spend some time getting paid to make fun of her.

But here’s the thing — I just want her to find love. I really do. I find myself wanting her to be happy in a way that’s not… into her personally, or even paternal, but more like… a formal, standoffish British uncle. I might shed a single, secret tear at her wedding, but never actually say anything to her after the ceremony.

It’s with mingled surprise and disappointment that I find myself actually hoping she finds happiness somewhere in this fetid soup of horrifying men.

So, for one last time, let’s discover all the terrible lessons about love that we can learn from The Bachelorette Finale.

The Bachelorette Finale Decision

Let’s give Ali some credit — over the last few episodes she managed to actually weed out the proper psychopaths from her crew of absolutely wanked suitors.

Hooray!

But now she’s been left with the somewhat classic dichotomy, the yin and yang of dating: nice versus dumb, pretty versus handsome.

The first of her two suitors is Todd, who is such a pretty man. He’s got a torso to die for, and hair that’s been ripped directly off the scalp of a Disney prince. He has a nose ring, which is a big surprise in 2018. I feel like when he was a teenager, he worked at a waterpark and everyone had a crush on him.

Anyway, he’s emotionally vulnerable and caring and sweet. Whatever!

Apparently his biggest problem is that he’s 26 and he might not want to put babies inside Ali immediately, because first he must become a policeman, which is a CLASSIC problem.

Then there’s Taite, whose chin is upsettingly fuckable. You could put a penis inside that bad dimple boy! (Fun fact, I googled to see if there was a word for this sex act, and there isn’t, but someone on Twitter suggested “Chintercourse”.

Taite is masculine and jacked and has good hair and eyes and knees probably. I think the thing with Taite is that he’s a giant idiot, but that also makes him sweet. Kinda later season Andy Dwyer from Parks and Rec. I feel like he worked at a soup factory when he was a teenager, and everyone had a crush on him, especially the bawdy older women who worked further up the production line.

Taite’s biggest problem is that he’s “emotionally guarded” and won’t tell Ali that he loves her. Personally, I think it’s more that he’s still catching up to all the baffling things going on and doesn’t mentally understand the concept of love.

So, the lesson in romance here is that you always have to choose between two good things: hot and dumb or hot (in a different way) and nice.

Introduce Your Boyfriends To Hoobastank, Your Withholding Father

This episode, Ali introduced the Double T’s (Todd and Taite) to her father, who has a name which seemed to change upon every hearing. Here are some of my guesses:

• Harpool
• Hartwood
• Hartford (Connecticut)
• Hartmut
• Halfred
• Harpoon Harry

Often meeting the families is a big snooze fest, because it’s usually some suburban mum and dads having a nice barbeque, just thrilled to meet someone from TV.

But this time, Hungerford turned out to be a weirdly withholding and intimidating father. He only EVER called Ali “Alison”, and simply made ferociously mild eye contact with Taite and Todd, stripping them down to their core selves.

“Todd gives the right answers, very noble words — but is he the same man behind those words?” asks Helmet, and we’re like… damn. Do we know? Also Todd just really wanted to make an emotional connection with Hartfreind, but I imagine that he’s the kind of dad who had two friends during the war, and both of them drowned in that submarine.

Meanwhile, Taite from the beginning hoped for one thing: “Excited to meet Ali’s old man, hopefully he’s nice and not too scary.”

I think Taite hopes that about EVERY SINGLE SITUATION HE’S IN. The world must be confusing.

Anyway, Taite found him very scary. My favourite interaction was when they talked about how Taite used to be a football player, and Hogwarts said derisively, witheringly “And now… you work in money.”

And pure, labrador boy Taite responded: “Yeah – I work in a bank!!”

The lesson is: have a scary dad to haze your boyfriends.

Get Paid A Lot Of Money By Northern Territory Tourism

Ali took her husbands on a bunch of dates again, yadda yadda yadda, this time around the gorgeous scenery of the Northern Territory.

Here’s some highlights:

Todd and Ali drank some ant-infused gin.

“I didn’t know you could have ants in gin” says Todd. Like he’d been waiting all his life to put ants in his drinks, but always thought it was illegal or something.

“All the flavour comes from the bum” he declares.

Meanwhile, Taite goes on a FAN BOAT.

“He’s goofy,” says Ali “but he’s also so smart and logical”. She then proceeds to show him a little propeller plane that they’re going up on, and he legitimately, without creative editing, looks at her with wonder in his big moist eyes and says “What… no?! Are you flying it?”

My god.

The lesson here is that if a tourism board funds your dates, you can look past even the rankest idiocy for a while.

Throw Out All Your Rules Because You Are Horny

So, finally it comes down to the final decision. Todd or Taite? Taite or Todd? Toad or Tart?

On their last date, Taite finally manages to string enough sentences together to tell her that he’s afraid of saying that he loves her, because it will involve committing to her insane three year plan, which involves getting engaged in 6 months, married in a year, babies immediately, and then I think spontaneously ageing and dying holding hands in a cruise ship as it sinks from an iceberg.

She’s been so clear and blatant about this plan being her priority that she’s rightfully thrown a loop by this new information from Taite, and she does a bunch of crying. Conversely, perfect and handsome Todd tells her that he loves her, and that he will sacrifice his own plans for her happiness.

Seems pretty obvious who she will pick! So, she gathers them to her creepy witch’s swamp, in which lurks the extremely handsome and good Osher, and she tells us which dude she picks, which seems so obvious.

Taite.

She picks Taite.

Todd turns up looking like an actual angel, with a wedding ring in his pocket, ready to propose and literally make all her dreams come true…

But she decides to pick Taite.

And you know what, I’m not even mad, because the lesson here is so obvious, and so somewhat antithetical to this entire recap and show, in that love doesn’t give a rats arse about your plans. Love makes you do the whacky. And for some inexplicable reason, Ali loves the big handsome Taite, and all the logic in the world can’t fix that, and we can only hope it just works out.

Meanwhile, Todd, call me.

The Bachelorette is over, go watch another show. Maybe something with murders.

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Patrick Lenton is the Entertainment Editor at Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.