Last Night’s ‘Bachelor’ Finale Gave Us One Of The Most Cringeworthy Live TV Moments Ever

In case you missed it, season 21 of The Bachelor concluded last night with Nick Viall proposing to 29-year-old Canadian Vanessa Grimaldi, to the surprise of absolutely no one watching at home or in the studio audience during the live televised event. Following the two-hour finale, Nick and Vanessa awkwardly presented themselves as a newly engaged couple who totally don’t already hate each other on the After the Final Rose special that would have otherwise been pretty uneventful.

All night, however, ABC had been teasing a historic, shocking twist that would be revealed during the special, but as it turns out this had nothing to do with Nick and Vanessa’s utter sham of a relationship after all — and instead the focus was turned to newly minted Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay. Rachel’s announcement as the new Bachelorette was unprecedented in not just that she will be the first woman of color to head up a season, but also that it came before she was technically eliminated from the current season. Supposedly the reason for this decision was so producers could get a head start at finding a superior crop of men to woo the 31-year-old Texas attorney.

Uh, about that. As it turns out, the “twist” was that the next season of The Bachelorette was to start right then and there, as host Chris Harrison totally ambushed Rachel by kickstarting introductions with the first handful of men who would be vying for her heart. On live television.

As if that all isn’t stressful enough, this is how one suitor named Dean decided to introduce himself:

In case you think your ears may be deceiving you, yes he did just say: “I’m ready to go black, and I’m never going back.” Dean. DEAN. Bro, do you know you just said that on live TV? With millions and millions of people watching?? How many text messages do you think were waiting on Dean’s phone when he got backstage? Like a hundred?

Viewers expressed incredulous disbelief over Dean’s comment on Twitter (myself included), which he ostensibly practiced before gifting it to the world:

https://twitter.com/bachelorburnbk/status/841483348233072640

If they even let him back on the show, anyway.