In Clare Crawley's Bachelorette debut, the biggest drama revolved around COVID tests

The Daily Beast

"Honestly, this insanity might be just the balm we all need right now," Laura Bradley says of Clare's long-awaited Bachelorette season premiere. The romantic fantasy underpinning Clare’s Bachelorette season isn’t about piles of roses and candle clusters big enough to set an entire resort ablaze. (But I mean, make no mistake—there are still lusty accoutrements aplenty.) This year the real fantasy is a world in which this competition, Clare’s 'journey,' is the most pressing thing going on. Although Clare did drop a requisite acknowledgement that there are, in fact, far more important things going on in the world, for much of Bachelor Nation the premiere brings a whiff of comforting familiarity. That isn’t to say that The Bachelorette ignores the pandemic; on the contrary, we spent several minutes this week watching our beloved contesticles settle down for sheet masks and solo games of chess as they awaited the results of their Covid tests. We watched with bated breath as Chris Harrison murmured those six sexy words: 'I got your final test results.' And we watched Clare and her meaty man harem jump with glee as they all found out they were clear to tear off their masks, hug, and most importantly, MAKE OUT! That is the real fantasy: Here, the stakes of a Covid test come down to whether or not Clare can cozy up with this clubhouse of goofy hunks. For millions around the world, this is not the case. But for two hours, two glorious hours, I’ll admit it was an embarrassingly immeasurable relief to just pretend."

ALSO:

• Clare Crawley admits she was worried about filming during the pandemic: "I’m a germaphobe," she tells The Hollywood Reporter. "So when I got the call about restarting filming, my reaction was, 'What exactly is going to be happening here — are we going to be kissing with masks? What is the protocol?' But once I spoke with everybody and got the piece of mind that it will all be safe and healthy and OK to proceed in a natural way, I didn’t have any fears."
• This is the season to get into The Bachelorette: "It’s absurd, overproduced, and the perfect way to shut down your noisy, tired mind for a little while," says Madeleine Aggeler. "The Bachelorette demands nothing of you: It’s nice to look at and easy to digest. Everyone onscreen is extremely fit and has a very defined jawline, and the editors are generally pretty heavy-handed in positioning the heroes and villains of the season, so you don’t even need to think too hard about whom you like or dislike. The decision has already been made for you. You can watch The Bachelorette like a computer in sleep mode — effectively shut down to the world, conserving what remains of your mental and emotional energy, powering up occasionally to say things like 'Damn, I can’t believe Kyle punched a wall' or 'Are bootcut jeans back?' The Bachelorette is also generally more fun than The Bachelor, in my opinion."
• Here's every hint of Clare's 180-degree turn in the season premiere
• Jimmy Kimmel grills Clare on this season's Bachelorette rumors