Today it was announced that another Bachelor Couple has bit the dust. Clare Crawley and Dale Moss have called it quits (as announced via Dale Moss’s Instagram account. Clare has yet to make a comment publicly). We have seen many Bachelor/Bachelorette break-ups over the many years this show has been on, but what makes this break-up different is that 99.9% of people saw it coming. This is the least shocking break-up to ever happen in the history of the show and I don’t think a single viewer is surprised.
For those of you unfamiliar with the background of this couple, they are the most recent of 2 couples to come out of this past season of The Bachelorette. I say two as this was the first time in Bachelor/Bachelorette history where there were 2 Bachelorettes in one season. Why were there two you ask? Well, there were two because Claire selected her fiancé in less than two weeks of filming, and the show needed a second Bachelorette to continue production. To give you some perspective on timeline, this show on average takes 2-3 months to film. So to say the least, Clare picked her guy in record time.
There was a lot of controversy and discussion that took place when this all unfolded. Most fans were left shocked and couldn’t believe how Clare not only made it obvious she was into Dale and only Dale the entire time, but there was a lot of speculation that they had met prior to filming and had been communicating pre-production. Clare and Dale later on denied this was the case (although Clare sort of admitted to basically social media stalking the guy daily prior to filming starting. Not judging here as this all started happening while we were all deep in quarantine. The poor girl just needed a hobby). This led to a lot of frustration for the contestants who were never really given a chance for Clare to get to know them, but it also left producers with no choice but to confront Clare and to cut her “Journey to Find Love” short. Eventually this chaos concluded with a shot gun proposal (and probably one of the most forced proposals I have ever seen) by Dale and a sudden ending to a show that had only given us 3 episodes of content.
Producers were shocked, Fans were shocked, and even Chris Harrison (host and basically the biggest supporter of the show) was left shocked and unsure what to make of the whole thing. Nothing like this had every happened in the history of the show where someone “picked their husband/wife” in such a short period of time. There was the argument that at the age of 39, that Clare just knew what she wanted and was finally ready for marriage, that maybe she did find her soulmate. But to most of us true Bachelor fans, we knew this was not going to end well.
This show is as untraditional as you can get. On average contestants who make it pretty far in the season only get on average total of 12 hours with the lead. In this case Claire probably got a total of 2 hours with Dale before it led to him getting down on one knee and proposing. I for one have been and always will be a sucker for this show. Yes, it’s a T.V. show and probably one of the most unrealistic ways to find your husband or wife, but there has been success on this show. It has led to engagements, marriages, and kids. To give you a numbers perspective, The Bachelorette has found a success rate of 30% while the Bachelor has had a success rate of 11% (yikes).
So what went wrong with Clare and Dale? Was it too fast too soon? Was it that they got caught up in the moment and realized post show they had nothing in common? Were they both really, truly looking for love and thought they found “The One”? What I do know is that Clare and Dale will go down as one of the most unsuccessful couples to come out of the show. I personally think Clare is in love with love and at the age of 39 really, truly, deeply just wanted to find her happy ending. I think prior to the filming of the show she had built this idea in her head that she would not doubt in her mind find her husband but went about her Bachelorette Journey in every possible wrong way. It was the Dumpster Fire of all seasons and to be honest what a season it was. Almost 20 years later this show still manages to surprise and live up to “The Most Dramatic Season Yet”. After all this though, I do think we can all agree that it is time for Clare Crawley to throw in the towel and retire from Bachelor Nation.
