Bonding in Budapest

Welcome back to Roses and Thorns, it’s been awhile. Last time I posted, it was the first night of Zach’s journey. Now, it’s the week before hometowns, when the final four women will bring Zach home to meet their families. To decide who gets a rose for that important week, Zach and the women travel to Budapest for a group date and two one-on-one dates.

The first one-on-one date goes to Kaity. Kaity and Zach have actually already had a one-on-one earlier in the season where they got to spend the night in a museum together. A night together so early on formed a close connection between the two and she’s been a strong front-runner ever since. Every time she talks to Zach, he has googly eyes and looks head over heels. I think there’s a good chance he chooses her in the end, but we’ll have to wait and see. For their second date, they explore Budapest, writing love poems on typewriters and sharing emotional stories over dinner. Kaity reveals that both her biological father and step-dad left her as a child, and Zach awkwardly tries to comfort her. It seems like he handles it badly to me, but she seems happy and he gives her the rose, meaning he’ll be meeting her family next week.

Next up, it’s the group date and since Budapest is apparently the “birthplace of magic,” Ariel, Charity, Kat, and Gabi, head to see a magician. Each girl sits down with Zach and the magician guesses what words they wrote down to describe one of their thoughts or worries about love. He successfully guesses all of their words, and the girls reveal many insecurities they have towards finding love. The date brings on a lot of breakdowns, and everyone besides Ariel seems like an anxious wreck going into the night portion of the date. The conversations go well for most of the women with Ariel and Zach joking around, Zach telling Charity he has no doubts about her, and Zach telling Gabi she’s fun to be around even though she’s felt like she’s been too much for people in the past. Unfortunately, Kat isn’t so lucky. Zach is worried about the fact that she said she wasn’t sure she was ready for Zach to meet her family. She tries to reassure Zach and it seems like it works, but their connection still seems a lot weaker than his other relationships and she ends the night crying when Gabi gets the group date rose.

Greer also has a rough time in Budapest because she comes back just to be broken up with. She’s just ended her 6 day COVID-19 quarantine, but Zach sends her home because his other connections have gotten so much stronger while she was gone. She’s upset to leave, but I have a feeling she’ll end up on Bachelor in Paradise in the future.

After ending things with Greer, Zach heads off to his date with Brooklyn. They travel through Budapest, taking a hot air balloon ride and stopping at a spa house to talk to a cute old Hungarian couple who had their first date there 25 years ago. At dinner, Brooklyn shares how excited she is for Zach to meet her family because she’s so confident, but Zach isn’t feeling the same way. He tells her that it isn’t fair to her to keep her if he isn’t as confident, so he sends her home.

This leaves two hometown dates left, with Kaity and Gabi already having the first two. During the rose ceremony, Charity and Ariel get the remaining two roses, meaning that Kat will not make it to hometowns. This wasn’t surprising at all because their relationship has been rocky recently, but it leaves both Kat and Zach in tears. Kat feels like she gave so much, and Zach is struggling because he’s gotten to the point of the show where the lead has to take on the burden of breaking people’s hearts. I think the leads don’t anticipate how hard it’s going to be to have to break up with people towards the end of the show, and Zach seems to learn this the hard way.

Still, Zach seems to have some solid relationships left, and next week he’ll be able to meet their families during hometown dates.