The Bachelorette Season 15, Episode 8 Recap: Mess With The Bull, Get The Baloney

It’s the week before hometowns, which means episode 8 of The Bachelorette finds Hannah making some seriously tough decisions, and actually start “opening up” to her remaining seven men: Mike, Luke P., Connor S., Tyler C., Jed, Garrett, and Peter. Fair to say that our girl’s been having a rough go over the past few weeks, so we're all hoping that the guys will treat her well (that means you, Luke P. —enough with your gaslighting).

“I’m falling for multiple people in different ways, and that’s exciting, but scary,” she quips as she wanders through a ridiculously gorgeous field of colorful flowers. Perhaps the Netherlands could turn this whole trainwreck around! Well, you know what they say about putting all your eggs in a basket of tulips, right?

Hannah kicks off her first day in the Netherlands with a one-on-one date with Jed, which clearly makes the other men jealous. “Did he bring his guitar?” someone mutters as Jed and Hannah skip off to explore the city. And indeed, he did not, sir. But that doesn’t stop the musician from pulling out all the stops to impress Hannah with their shared dorky humor.

“Hannah, will you accept this pansy?” he giggles at one point, pulling at a flower from a streetside planter. The pair ogle chocolates, hop on a paddle boat, and dance a jolly jig in the town square, clicking their heels like two young kids in love. The only thing missing from their daytime date, truth be told, is some Halo Top ice cream ©.

At a cute cafe, they happen to sit next to an adorable elderly couple who’ve been married for a whopping 54 years. “But we spent together before we married only 10 days,” the not-at-all-planted wife tells Hannah and Jed. “It was written in the stars.”

That night, Jed meets Hannah on a bridge, a bouquet of tulips in hand. A giddy Hannah tells the cameras that she feels like they’re “boyfriend girlfriend” (sorry, Pilot Pete, you’re not the only one!) and they enjoy an evening of opening up: Hannah admits candidly that she has feelings for multiple men, and admits to feeling stressed out about the process. Jed responds in song. No, just kidding. He doesn’t, but his answer is definitely music to Hannah’s ears (okay I'll stop). What he actually tells her is that he wants to take on some of her stress so that they can have a “foundational powerful relationship.”

Hannah takes the opportunity to take a few deep breaths to confess to Jed something that’s been weighing on her mind: the fact that his town square heel-clicking really turned her on, emotionally, and that she feels like she’s falling in love with him.

“Just let me have my moment,” he says as the pair smile at each other over untouched salads. “I feel the same way, and yeah, I’m falling in love with you. I’m not going to be able to sleep for three days.” No surprise here, Jed gets the rose.

Back at the mansion, Connor S. is really struggling. The poor guy hasn’t had any major one-on-one time with Hannah since their sort-of failed date, when she was so stressed out by Luke P.’s shenanigans that she was hospitalized and had to stay in bed. When Tyler C. gets the next one-on-one date, Connor tries to stay positive, telling everyone that he’s “holding onto hope” even as his face turns a particular shade of pale green. Oh, buddy.

For Hannah’s one-on-one date with Tyler C. and his tight jeans the next day, the pair ride horses around the Hague and conquer some of his worst nightmares (starting, first and foremost, with the horses). Their furry friends aren’t quite so cooperative, however, and refuse to start or stop the way either Hannah or Tyler want them to. When Hannah tries to steer her horse toward waffles or ice cream, for instance, her horse goes backwards; magically, and unfortunately for Tyler, however, they decide to behave when the pair pull up to a street vendor dishing up pickled herring.

Pickled herring, it turns out, is Tyler’s real worst nightmare, and the poor guy can barely keep a bite in his mouth before he’s hurling the fish right back up — in front of the vendor. (Kudos to the sound effects team here for really capturing all that squishing and dry heave audio.) Back on solid ground, however, the pair are better, more able to actually chat without having to steer their horses any which way.

And that night, the couple take their relationship to a deeper level still, with Hannah digging to get “the dirty and the raw and the things that have scarred you” out of Tyler’s handsome head. (Well, pickled herring, for one.) And the construction worker-male model complies, opening up to Hannah about how much he fears a failed marriage, having witnessed his parents go through a messy divorce. Hannah is all-in and gets personal too.

“I don’t want to be in a relationship 10 years from now and not be able to communicate with my husband,” she says to a sparkly-eyed Tyler. He concurs, and she hands him a rose. Boy can’t stop grinning ear-to-ear. “I feel like I am falling in love with you,” he tells Hannah, the second love confession she’s heard in two days.

Meanwhile, the dudes are once again awaiting the next (and final) one-on-one date card for the week, and it comes with a ding-dong. Boyish Connor perks up, only to be let down yet again.

“Mike, I’m drawn to you…” Jed reads the date card aloud. Connor’s soul dies a little bit inside. This means that he, Peter, Luke P., and Garrett are set to go on the last group date of the season. Fed up, but politely so, Connor congratulates Mike and sulks out of the room.

He stomps his downtrodden way over to Hannah’s hotel room and finds her in a bathrobe, a sad but meaningful throwback to their first and only one-on-one date. And employing his vocal fry to maximum effect, he tries to confess his love for Hannah, or more like, “the feelings of falling love,” but ultimately, it’s too little too late for Hannah B., who’s been makin’ out with lots of other men with whom she clearly has stronger relationships. And Hannah, never one to beat around the bush, tells him so. She tells him that she can’t quite see a future for the both of them, and a mopey Connor hangs his head, gives her a hug, and sighs his way into a black SUV. So sorry to see you go, young Connor!

With Connor out of the picture, there are now just six men left vying for four hometown date roses: which leads us straight into the next morning, when a hot pink leather-clad Hannah meets a beaming Mike for a bike ride around the city. Nothing hotter than a grown man thoroughly enjoying a brisk bike ride with a basket, am I right?

The pair pull up to an art museum warehouse, where they’re told they’re going to sketch each other. Turns out, though both are great at hamming it up for the camera, neither are very artistically talented. “She got me looking like Dodo the Clown!” Mike exclaims after seeing Hannah’s interpretation of him on the page. Her portrait is no less flattering, with angry eyebrows and a too-wide mouth. Still, the giggly pair manage to have a blast, posing in robes (hello, Mike) for an actual artist to paint them.

Later that night, however, Hannah’s feeling less confident in what they have, and she gets emotional as she stares at paintings in the gallery where they’re set to have their romantic meal. By the time Mike shows up looking dapper riding up a glass elevator, she’s pretty much bawling. His huge smile drops and no doubt he knows what’s about to happen.

“I’ve never been surrounded by so much beauty and it’s really overwhelming,” Hannah says to stall for time, talking about how a painting of St. Catherine with men in the background fighting had her feeling all the feels. Finally, however, she can’t hold back any longer, and tells Mike that she so admires what a “leader” he’s been, and how much he loves his grandmother, his mother, and his sister.

“I know I’m not that fourth lady,” she says. Mike, ever the gentleman, responds kindly. “I know that’s hard to say, but you needed to say it. … I don’t know what to say except thank you for being honest.” He leaves, “crushed” by Hannah’s words. Say it with me now: Bachelor Mike 2020!

Back at the mansion, Luke and the other men are jibber-jabbering about what’s to come, with Luke P. spewing incendiary things to get under the other guys’ skin. “At this point to see someone come in and take [Mike’s] suitcase, that would make my day,” this season’s “5-foot-8 villain” (Tyler’s words, not mine) says. “You’re in my way.”

Unfortunately for anyone who’s ever watched The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, we all know how this story will end. Luke, who’s somehow managed to have minimal screen time throughout the first half of the episode, suddenly gets way too much screen time during his group date with Garrett and Peter, and viewers at home know what’s up.

In Gouda, Netherlands, an anxious Hannah tells her trio of anxious men “let’s just try to make it as fun as possible,” which is not the way anyone wants to start a date. Our gal also says things like, “the heart wants what the heart wants,” signaling that she’s probably already got Luke P. deeply embedded in her heart.

And sure enough, when Hannah and her three men sit down for some lovely afternoon light bites and sips, Luke steals her away from the start and proceeds to bash the other men, despite prefacing their talk with, “I hate talking about other guys.” Within the first five minutes, however, he’s already thrown Jed and Garrett under the bus. A clearly exhausted Hannah tells the cameras that she’s exhausted with Luke’s never-ending drama — and yet Luke continues to wrap her around his finger.

For his turn, Garrett’s one-on-one time with Hannah doesn’t go as planned, and ends up being more time spent talking about Luke P., much to both his and her annoyance. “It’s not fair to our relationship,” Garrett presses, which seems to set Hannah off. Things aren’t boding well for our golf pro, and sure enough, by the end of the afternoon, it’s Pilot Pete who gets the first group date rose. (He practically skips down the steps with joy — equal parts for getting the rose and for getting out of that awkward situation, I can only imagine.)

Left alone while Pete gets his boy scout badge, Luke and Garrett talk have a literal bologna fight. Garrett sits back and smiles, acting as passive as possible, while poking the bear left and right. And then it happens: Luke goes off, finally yelling about how serious he is about Hannah (the clip we've seen time and time again in the promos at the end of each episode). And to close the whole encounter, Luke (armed with another physical metaphor by a pun-loving producer) declares the whole situation to be "baloney" before dropping a pile of literal bologna lunch meat in Garrett's lap. Yes, this happened on a major network television show watched by millions of people.

That night, the showdown continues, with Garrett and Luke P. the two remaining men vying for the final hometown date rose. Garrett seems somewhat confident that Luke's antics are finally unraveling (that's Pete's word, but we'll let Garrett borrow it), and he attempts to seal Luke's imminent bon voyage by confessing that he is in love (not falling in love or developing really strong feelings for her... full on in love) with her. While Hannah responds passionately to his confession, there was another bold move that night, and only one rose. And this is where the ominous music starts.

Wouldn’t you know it: Luke P. does pull the hail mary that Garrett predicted. Just not in the way he (probably) thought he would. Our resident snake/weasel/[insert other name the contestants have lobbed at him] tells Hannah about his shower scene with God — the one where he says God spoke to him and he decided to stop being a player so he could be ready to find his wife — and divine intervention wins Hannah over despite Garrett's confession.

In an unexpected-but-expected twist of fate (we should really see this coming at this point), Hannah picks Luke P. over Garrett. Which means, dear viewers, that Luke is going to hometowns. Maybe we’ll finally get some clarity as to why Luke P. is the way he is when we see him in his hometown with his parents. Or maybe we'll just count the seconds until he and Hannah spar over her sex life and she confesses something about sex in a windmill. Who knows!

When Hannah poses for Mike during their one-on-one date, Mike lets drop one of the sweetest lines in Bachelor history: “Hannah’s 100% my muse. I mean, that’s God’s creation. But I’m trying.” Again, can we give this man the Bachelor treatment already?

In a deleted scene during the end credits, Garrett plays with the bologna that Luke P. dropped in his lap during their heated confrontation on the group date, and even makes eye holes out of two of ‘em. Bless a man who can find humor in an otherwise humorless situation. 10/10 would give that taunting smirk its own rose.