So much for Mr. Nice Guy. Gerry Turner did our Minnesota girl Leslie Fhima dirty on Thursday’s season finale of ABC’s runaway hit, The Golden Bachelor, the show that reminded America you’re never too old to find love… or to get your heart broken.
We had an inkling it was coming. The spoilers were out there. As was the mounting sense that Leslie, the 64-year-old fitness instructor from Minneapolis—who has been disappointed by men again and again, but was willing to rappel down slippery rock for the chance to find true love—was perhaps a bit too much woman for “aw shucks” Gerry from Indiana. Still. The way he turned on her, the raw emotion she expressed at putting herself out there so completely and being so totally led on, only to be dumped on live TV, was painful to watch. Brutal. And utterly relatable.
“You make me feel whole,” Leslie whispers to Gerry in their final scene before the big kiss-off.
“Thanks for that,” he replies.
Leslie gives him the benefit of the doubt, and tries again. “I can’t imagine being without you. I love you.”
“Hmm,” he says. “That’s huge. That’s such a special sentiment.”
Special sentiment? Really, Gerry? That’s cringy, even for you. Were you not, just an episode ago, telling Leslie she’s your girl? Telling her you LOVE her? We all heard you, Gerry!
But there on the loveseat in Costa Rica—mere days (hours?) after his steamy back-to-back fantasy overnights with Leslie, and then Theresa, he says to our girl Leslie: “I have fallen in love with Theresa and that’s the direction I’m going to take.”
Cameras pan to the live studio audience, which includes the previously dumped Golden Bachelor contestants. Pickle Ball Ellen gasps. Kris Jenner lookalike, Susan, gives an epic eye roll. Joan, the one who probably would have been chosen if she hadn’t left early, shakes her head. Bad move, Gerry. Bad.
And then. Then, Leslie makes the sort of reality TV history that had every woman who has ever been dumped, wronged, lied to or disappointed by a man of any age jumping off their couches and screaming at their televisions. She does not politely tell Gerry to have a nice life. She looks the 72-year-old Golden Bachelor in those piercing blue eyes and says, “So everything you told me the other night is a lie.” He squirms, mutters something about feelings evolving, but she isn’t having it. “This is typical of my life,” Leslie says through tears. “This is how it always goes. No one chooses me.”
Gerry keeps pulling Leslie in for hugs and we all want to stop him. Stop touching her, Gerry! You made this mess! You broke her heart! “No,” he insists. “No, it’s not like that.”
To borrow a phrase from Golden Bachelor contestant Kathy, we all yell, “Zip it, Gerry!”
But Leslie doesn’t need our help. She’s got this.
“All due respect,” Leslie says, “I can think whatever the f*** I want.”
And the audience cheers. The applause, dare we say, seems louder and longer than when the chosen Golden, Theresa, finally makes her giddy appearance.
Throughout the entire two-hour episode, host Jesse Palmer teases us with a “surprise we won’t believe.” And we think, yes, we will. It’s so obvious. Leslie must be the first-ever Golden Bachelorette. How could America possibly be more invested in seeing this vibrant, authentic, heartbroken woman find true love? But no such announcement is made. Instead, we learn that Gerry and Theresa plan to get married, and we’re all invited, Jan. 4 on ABC.
Okay, fine. Sure. We’ll watch. But we’ll wear our “Team Leslie” shirts for the broadcast. Theresa gets Gerry. But Leslie won our hearts.