The Bachelorverse touts “history-making” events each season, yet turns a blind eye to its own past once a lead’s final rose has been bestowed. That was certainly the feeling during Monday’s premiere for season 19 of The Bachelorette, which is led by not one, but two women: Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey. Weirdly, this is not the first time ABC has anointed dual Bachelorettes, no matter how much host Jesse Palmer insists otherwise.
The year was 2015, and recent contestants Kaitlyn Bristowe and Britt Nilsson had both been tapped as leads of The Bachelorette’s 11th season. There was a sexist wrinkle, however. The twosome would only be coleads for one night, during which they were “competing for the honor of becoming this year’s Bachelorette,” as former host Chris Harrison put it. That premiere ended with a Survivor-style voting room where men cast their roses for a preferred Bachelorette, declaring Bristowe in and Nilsson out.
Bristowe has since said that she was “triggered” by the resurgence of two female leads. “I don’t know how their little system is going to be,” she said in March on her podcast. “But I know how two Bachelorettes felt, and it felt like we were being pitted against each other for the men to decide.”
Seven years later, much about this concept has changed. Recchia and Windey, both of whom were jilted finalists on Clayton Echard’s ill-conceived season, walk into their season holding hands. Blindsided by Echard’s declaration that he was in love with—and slept with—both of them, our Bachelorettes won’t be squaring off against each other, but will join forces in their pursuit of Neil Lane–sponsored engagements.
“Having Rachel by my side is truly the best thing I could’ve asked for,” Windey insists alongside footage of them chest-bumping and sipping from their own Champagne bottles. “It’s like going out on a night on the town with your best friend.” Still, the inherent strangeness of this conceit lingers: “Hopefully I meet my husband and hopefully it’s not the same one Rachel wants,” Windey quips. Ah, 2022’s sharing-is-caring brand of reality TV romance persists.
One merciful by-product of having two Bachelorettes is the trimming of unnecessary fat—no cheesy intro packages here! Within 25 minutes, Windey and Recchia are meeting their 32 suitors—not the most contestants to appear on a season of The Bachelorette, despite what Palmer may say. (Side note: everyone else heard the host’s odd ad-break plea to Bachelor applicants—“You’re boyfriend’s a loser, everybody knows it, dump his ass”—right?) There are odd job titles, of course—Chris is a “Mentality Coach,” Termayne emerges as “Crypto Guy,” and James is saddled with “Meatball Enthusiast” after arriving with a comically large hoagie.
Wondering what will happen if a contestant calls the Bachelorettes by the wrong names? You won’t wait long to find out. John, an English teacher from Nashville, attempts to salvage his snafu by telling producers he left “a big impression” on the women. One gets the impression that Windey and Recchia are playing coy during many of these joint intros, save for the occasional profession that someone is their “type.” That is, until Quincey (a.k.a. Prince), a life coach who tells the leads he hasn’t had sex in almost a year and a half. “That makes one of us,” Windey tells a similarly tickled Recchia.
Once inside the mansion, the question of “how is this gonna work” (the episode’s drinking phrase) truly crystallizes. Some contestants speak to the Bachelorettes as a unit, including magician Roby (who is apparently Leelee Sobieski’s brother?!) and 24-year-old twins Joey and Justin (a stunt also pulled in a previous season). But the personalities of each Bachelorette—Windey as the wisecracking type to ask a suitor if she has a booger in her nose, Recchia earnest enough to swoon over a contestant’s handwritten birthday card—emerge in their solo conversations.
Craig Sjodin