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A vicious argument between Corinne and Taylor rages on just before the rose ceremony in Wisconsin. When the dust settles and the roses are all given out, two heartbroken women are sent home. However, for the remaining 13 bachelorettes, it’s on to one of the great romantic cities in the United States: New Orleans. Nick’s first one-on-one date in the Big Easy provides combustible chemistry as the couple sightsees, dances and goes to a Lolo concert. Ten bachelorettes join Nick for a thrill-a-thon as they visit an allegedly haunted plantation where a resident ghost makes her presence felt. Two arch rivals prepare to face off in the dreaded two-on-one date. Tensions are high as they head to NOLA’s mystical bayou. Which woman is stranded in the swamp, and which gets the rose? The evening ends with another abrupt surprise for both Nick and his date, on ‘The Bachelor,’ Monday, Jan. 30 (8:00-10:01 p.m. EST), on the ABC Television Network. Mark Coffey/ABC via Getty Images
3 min read

Rachel Lindsay to become the next Bachelorette

She’ll be the first nonwhite woman to headline the show

Clinton Yates @clintonyates
Topics:
All Day Television The Bachelorette The Bachelor Rachel Lindsay

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    5:58 PMWhen this season of The Bachelor kicked off, it didn’t take a genius to see one glaring difference between this year’s cast and those previous ones. There was a noticeable amount of women of color. While that development was one thing in itself, for the viewer with the long plan in mind, the next step felt obvious. The next Bachelorette, simply by the numbers, had a pretty good chance of being black.

    Reports have it that Rachel Lindsay, the attorney who lives in Dallas, will be assuming the star role on The Bachelorette. The move, which is supposed to be announced on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday night, at this point is a bit of a ratings grab for a season that hasn’t exactly gone well. Nick Viall has been throwing people overboard left and right, which led to a less than riveting run of episodes with hometown visits coming up.

    But there are two ways to look at this. For a show that’s in its 20th season, it’s ridiculous that it’s taken this long to get to this point. Are we supposed to celebrate the fact that the most popular dating television show in the country is finally showcasing a nonwhite woman? Or should we be holding up our fists and boycotting any program that doesn’t treat us correctly to begin with? Well, we can do both.

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    https://twitter.com/astoldbytrea/status/831232079752994817

    Earlier this month, show alum Wells Adams felt so strongly about the matter that he went so far as to say that a black Bachelorette is not something this country is ready for. “I think the franchise wants to so badly break out of its cookie-cutter, white person shell,” Adams said, “but I don’t think that America will embrace it, sadly enough.”

    That strikes us as a stretch. As popular as the program is, we’re not talking about a sitting head of state. America need not embrace the main character of a program in order for it to be popular. See: the White House. But beyond what she looks like, more importantly, Rachel is awesome. She seems like one of the more genuinely fun people we’ve seen on the carousel of rose ceremonies in a long time.

    Yes, they’re still taking applications.

    Clinton Yates is a tastemaker at Andscape. He likes rap, rock, reggae, R&B and remixes — in that order.