The Bachelor used Barbara Weber to fill the void left by her unappealing son Peter Weber

Vulture

All season, "Peter lacked the force of his own convictions, and didn’t know himself well enough to be the powerful figure at the center of his own show. But power abhors a vacuum, so someone had to step in and fill the void," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "Enter Barb. In essence, producers have been teasing Barb’s role as the central figure of this show from the very beginning. Footage of her sobbing and begging Peter to “bring her home!” has been the most frequent and dramatic part of the show’s promotions, including “coming up on” teasers and advertising clips. Where the main mystery of a Bachelor season is usually who the Bachelor picks, that promotional device meant that the real mystery of Peter’s season was 'who is his mom crying about?'...Rather than anything to do with Peter, Hannah Ann, or Madison, the most dramatic parts of the finale were between Madison and Barb, after Chris asked Barb how she was feeling. It’s almost always the contestant’s role to say that a finished episode doesn’t show everything from behind the scenes, but here it was Barb, explaining with some frustration that the episode hadn’t shown Madison keeping them all waiting for three hours, without apology.

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