Jenn Tran’s Bachelorette season really heated up during the July 22 episode.
Still in Australia, Spencer received the only one-on-one date of the week. They took a helicopter to The Twelve Apostles and popped champagne during the ride.
“This is a feeling I want to stay in,” Jenn, 26, said in an on-camera interview.
Spencer, 30, had something he wanted to share with Jenn during the evening portion of their date, and when they sat down together, the pet portrait entrepreneur revealed he’d been engaged before and learned months before the intended wedding that his fiancée cheated on him.
“I was betrayed,” Spencer said to Jenn. “And it was rough for a little while after that because I was kind of just left to pick up the pieces.”
Jenn asked Spencer if he felt ready to get engaged again.
“Now more than ever after being able to learn everything about myself I have over the past four years, yes, I’m very ready,” he assured.
Jenn ended the date by offering Spencer a rose because she felt like “we can be our most authentic selves with each other,” and he accepted enthusiastically.
“I feel the best I can remember feeling in a long time,” Spencer said to the cameras.
Dylan, Marcus, Tomas A., John M., Grant, Jonathan, Sam N., Thomas N., Sam M. and Devin embarked on the first group date of the week. Jenn gathered the guys at the Forum Theatre in Melbourne and introduced them to members from the Thunder Down Under male dance revue. The dancers proceeded to teach Jenn’s suitors some moves because they’d be putting on a show of their own for Jenn and a live audience to compete for the title of Mr. Love Down Under.
“I think what today’s really all about is showing your personality and really stepping outside of your comfort zone,” Jenn told the men before their performances.
They put on protective cups and costumes before hitting the stage, and Dylan, 24, kicked the show off by performing as a “CE make you OOOO!” Marcus, 31, did a striptease as an astronaut, Tomas A., 27, dressed as a snake wrangler and Grant, 30, went on as wrestler Mr. Eight Rounds.
Devin, 28, felt a bit insecure about his body going into the date, but when he took the stage, the freight company owner donned nothing but a thong, swung his leg up and thrusted in Jenn’s face. After injuring his thumb during rehearsal, Sam N., 25, also dreaded taking the stage. But when he did, the entrepreneur truly shocked Jenn and the men.
“I know you want us to bare it all, but I’m here to bare my soul,” Sam N. said on the stage. “From the moment I first saw you, I knew you were different. You make me feel confident, you make me feel secure. I see myself getting on one knee for you. Jenn, I’m already falling in love with you.”
Sam N. walked off the stage and left the other men cringing.
“I think that caught everybody off guard,” Sam M., 27, said. Thomas N., 31, called Sam N.’s declaration “intense” and “premature.”
Host Jesse Palmer declared Jonathan, 27, Mr. Love Down Under, and then Jenn and her suitors headed to the afterparty.
When Devin spoke to Jenn, he told her about the insecurities he had about his body. “I worked really hard to change that, but I’d be lying to you if I said it doesn’t come up every now and then in my mind,” he said. “So that was another thing that I just wanted to thank you for was giving me the confidence to forget about myself in that moment.”
Sam M. wanted to talk to Jenn about his time on stage, too. “I want you to know that you’re making me feel a special type of way and maybe I could’ve said it a little bit better,” he said.
But Jenn didn’t want him to backtrack. “I don’t want you to ever feel ashamed of ever telling me how you feel. I want to hear those things,” she said. “I think that’s what makes a relationship honest.”
To the cameras, however, Jenn admitted that Sam N. using the word “love” during the group date did feel a bit impulsive. “These are some big, big statements to be making so early on,” the physician assistant student said. “It does feel very early, but it also feels kind of good because at the end of the day, I am here for love and to find my person.”
Sam N. also addressed what he said to the guys.
“Some things were said that I don’t want to say were in the moment because I am feeling some type of way and just because I used the word ‘love,’ I feel like it deval -
ues what I was trying to say in the entire context,” Sam N. stated to the group. “I feel pathetic.”
But Devin reassured him. “You have no reason to feel sorry for what you do and who you are, and you deserve to feel how you feel,” he told Sam N.
Sam M. and Thomas N. snickered as they listened in on this conversation, which caused Sam M. and Devin to get into it.
“You say mutual respect, but you don’t believe that,” Devin said to Sam M.
The contractor shut him right down. “I don’t respect you,” Sam M. said to Devin. “I got nothing to say to you. We are not going to be friends.”
Devin’s candor ended up scoring him the group date rose.
Before Aaron went on his group date with Austin, Kakeem and Jeremy, he received a call informing him that the fighter pilot training dates he’d been waiting on for a year and a half came through — and would start next week. Aaron, 29, only had 24 hours to decide whether or not he would go.
Aaron met Jenn and the three other men at the racetrack, hoping to get some clarity during the date. Each guy got a chance to race around the track with Jenn and the man with the fastest race time would be named the winner. Austin, 28, came out on top despite Aaron being the only one with experience driving stick shift and driving on the opposite side of the street.
At the afterparty, Jenn proposed a toast to “slowing down.” Austin informed her when they spoke one-on-one that he’d been cheated on, Aaron told Jenn he saw a future with her and Jeremy, 29, asked Jenn about her past relationships. “Time for a nontoxic relationship,” the real estate investor said after hearing about Jenn’s previous heartbreaks.
Jenn told the cameras, “To hear all these guys open up about their past makes me realize how much I want a healthy relationship.”
She decided to give Jeremy the date rose, which left Aaron wondering about the tough choice he had to make.
“I didn’t get that like, stamp of validation that I was looking for tonight,” Aaron confessed in an on-camera interview.
Aaron came to a decision and informed Jenn at the beginning of the cocktail party that he’d been leaving the show to follow his dreams.
“I wish I was further along where I felt like, as long as I have Jenn in my life, I’m happy,” Aaron explained to The Bachelorette. “So I’m just not there yet, so I made the decision, the dream, aspirations I have, I’m choosing those.”
Jenn understood and told Aaron she “wouldn’t want to be a source of resentment ever” and preferred to cheer him on as he pursued his dreams.
Before Aaron left, he gave Jenn an ominous warning about the remaining men. “There’s people that I don’t think will be ready at the end like you are,” he said.
Jenn pressed Aaron for names, but he wouldn’t supply any.
“I feel like it was a disingenuous conversation,” Jenn said to the cameras, adding that she felt it was “cruel” of Aaron not to tell her who he specifically thought had bad intentions.
That left Jenn with no other option than to address the group directly. “If you think that this is not the place that you should be, then you need to get out,” she said to the guys.
The men began bickering over the fact that Aaron placed doubt in Jenn’s mind and started calling each other out. “I don’t respect you, I don’t like you, I want nothing to do with this,” Sam M. said to Devin.
Spencer tried to get everyone to settle down and move on. “What is the point right now?” he asked the group.
At the rose ceremony, Jenn reiterated that she didn’t want anyone to stay if they didn’t intend to be sincere. “If you accept a rose tonight, I hope you know what the weight of that means,” she told the men.
Jenn extended roses to Marcus, John M., Jonathan, Austin, Grant, Sam M., Thomas M., Dylan and Sam M., which left Hakeem and Tomas A. heading home.
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The Bachelorette airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
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