Entertainment

Rachel's 'Bach' Hometown Date Doesn't Matter Now

Rick Rowell/ABC

Rachel has been my favorite contestant on Nick Viall’s season of The Bachelor since the beginning — she got Nick’s first impression rose, and dammit, she got mine, too. But as the numbers dwindle and more women get sent home back to Los Angeles or Nashville or wherever Bachelor contestants come from these days, things are getting dicey. Will Rachel get a hometown date on The Bachelor? Her new status as Bachelorette puts plenty of things into question.

It’s true — Rachel Lindsay is the new Bachelorette, and it was announced on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, before she was actually eliminated from the show. We now know that it doesn’t work out between Nick and Rachel, but I want to know if she had the opportunity to have Nick meet her family. On Rachel and Nick’s one-on-one date in Bimini, Bahamas, they discussed at length what it would be like for Nick to meet Rachel’s parents, especially her father, Sam, who is a federal judge. Nick is to only call him “Mr. Lindsay,” not “Sammy,” as Rachel calls him (it’s a term of affection, according to her). But I wonder when he sets her free — will he even need all of that hometown prep work?

Me, personally? I think that Rachel makes it nearly to the end of Nick’s season of The Bachelor because of a clip of a date that we haven’t seen yet on television. Nick and Rachel are sitting there, bundled up, in a yurt-like structure, and they’re smooching and talking about how they like each other (you can see it at about the :50 second mark above). This has not happened yet, and since Rachel lives in Dallas and not Denmark, my guess is that Nick meets Rachel’s family and wherever that cold-weather climate is comes later. Add to that the fact that Nick is in cold weather when he proposes, and it seems like Rachel nearly goes the distance. It could all be a red herring (Bachelor producers love to do that to us), but my gut tells me that Rachel gets a hometown date and then some.