Gerry Turner might’ve made dozens of women weak in the knees with his emotional communication at the beginning of his season as ABC’s first Golden Bachelor, but the back half of his season has been a different story.
The mess started when 72-year-old Gerry professed his love for all three of his remaining women. During Fantasy Suites week, things got worse when Gerry told Leslie, one of two finalists alongside Theresa, that she could be “The One.” The line felt like a set-up for inevitable disaster, especially given the previews we’ve seen all season of Gerry sobbing over breaking a woman’s heart. Sure enough, halfway through Thursday’s finale, Gerry confessed to Leslie that he’d decided to propose to Theresa—but only after forcing her to drag it out of him.
As always, a bevy of Bachelor Nation stars gathered to watch the conclusion of Gerry’s Journey to Find Love™. Also in the crowd were Jennifer Love Hewitt and Ava Elizabeth Phillippe—Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe’s daughter. Host Jesse Palmer was in peak form, as he gently guided us all through the emotional carnage. Gerry might’ve wound up engaged, but as often happens at the end of The Bachelor, the gut-wrenching break-up is what really sticks in one’s memory.
Theresa was the first of Gerry’s two finalists to meet his family, and she was clearly nervous. As Gerry promised, however, his daughters Jennifer and Angie loved her, as did his granddaughters Payton and Charlee. The same was true for Leslie, but throughout that latter date, something was amiss.
Gerry was suddenly closed-off. He wasn’t reciprocating her “I love yous.” It was impossible for anyone, especially Leslie, to ignore the painfully obvious truth: He had already made his decision, and he wasn’t picking her.
Things only got more painful during the pair’s evening date, where Leslie gave Gerry a handmade book of their memories together while the Golden Bachelor did his best not to spill the very obvious beans. Then, after an awkward pause, he stared into her eyes and said, “Be happy.” At that point, the writing was basically on the wall.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Leslie asked. But it was no use; Gerry just mumbled something vague about having a tough decision to make and saw himself out as she cried. After a few minutes, he got up the gumption to do the decent thing and come back to break up with her on the spot instead of forcing her to walk down the aisle just to get dumped. Even before he got to her room, however, a crestfallen Leslie said, “I know why he was off today. I know exactly why.”
“It’s been difficult,” Gerry told the woman he’d said could be The One, “but I’ve kind of made a decision about how I want to go about this. And I have fallen in love with Theresa. And that’s the direction I’m going to take.”
Leslie’s response was understandable: “So everything you told me the other night was a lie?”
Gerry tried to talk Leslie down when she cried that this is how her life “always goes,” but she wasn’t having it.
“No offense, I can think whatever the fuck I want right now,” she said. “I’m heartbroken once again. But now, I have to do it on front of the whole world to see once again how broken I am. How no one chooses me. You didn’t choose me.”
Like those of us at home who can remember the things Gerry told her on camera, Leslie was indignant at his proclamations. “You made it sound like you chose me. You said things to me that made me think that this was going to be it. You led me down a path, and then you took a turn and left me there. ...And it’s mind-boggling, to be honest, how you can talk to me all night, say you love me, and then one day—not even a day, 12 hours later—you changed your mind.”
After Gerry tearfully saw himself out, he dropped the line we’ve heard in every promo video: “I took a really good person, and I fucking broke their heart... I think the only time I’ve ever felt worse in my life is when my wife passed away, and this is a goddamn close second.”
On stage during the live portion of the finale, Leslie said she’s not angry—just hurt. “The most important thing I fell in love with was your integrity,” she told Gerry. “And because of your integrity, your words meant so much to me.”
While Leslie said she would never share the things Gerry told her off-camera during their overnight date, she added, “those words gave me 100 percent certainty that I was your girl and we were going to get engaged.” Because of that, she said, she felt “blindsided.”
Gerry’s explanation is about what you’d expect: Because he wanted to give each woman his undivided attention and block everything else out, he got caught up in the moment. “I wish there was a better way of doing it,” he said. “But in my own imperfect way, I couldn’t find another way of doing it more graciously. And I am so sorry.”
Like a self-respecting icon, Leslie told Gerry on stage, “I don’t know if I accept your apology, but I understand it.”
Gerry’s sensitivity might’ve endeared a lot of his bachelorettes, but his break-ups speak to a growing problem in Bachelor Nation—men making grand emotional proclamations that they can’t back up. At some point, these men will need to learn that you shouldn’t say “I love you” to multiple women when you’ll inevitably need to dump all but one—and if you can’t learn that lesson by your 70s, when will it happen?!
Anyway, yes, Gerry and Theresa got engaged in Costa Rica. When asked what it was that transformed his lack of clarity around Theresa into a resounding “yes” overnight, Gerry said that their conversation uncovered “sudden realizations”—like that she “was a woman who knew how to maintain and nurture a relationship.”
Theresa was blunter: “I knocked his boots off,” she said. “No—with my kisses!” (Gerry’s grandchildren seemed adequately traumatized by that statement.)
Evidently, Gerry and Theresa still do not live together; she’s still in New Jersey, and he’s still in Indiana, and they talk on the phone every night. But as announced onstage, the two plan to get married as soon as possible. And in the meantime, the show is sending them to Italy. What can we say, but buon viaggio?
Next up on the Bachelor rolodex, we’ve got Joey Graziadei’s season in January—and if the teaser Palmer shared for “Joey Mania” is any indication, he’ll be on a pedestal just as high as Gerry’s. Let’s just hope that the inevitable fall isn’t quite as hard.
