I'm Claire Fallon and I'm Emma Gray and this is Love to See It, an obsessively detailed

recap podcast about reality dating shows like The Bachelor and other pop culture that makes us laugh, cry, and curse the patriarchy.

We can't live with these shows and we can't live without them, but we can break down every juicy moment and unpack all the weird messages these shows send us about love, sex, and dating.

Welcome to a post-pachelorette finale bonus episode of Love to See It.

Now that Gabby and Rachel's joint season has limped to its inevitable conclusion, we finally get to take a deep breath and talk about some off-screen chatter.

Yes, today we will be covering a lot of post-show goss and mid-show goss that we never got to.

We'll be talking about Eric's Blackface photos, Gabby's response to them, the show's lack of response to them.

We'll be talking about more insights from Rachel on her breakup with Tino.

We'll be talking about Tino's Dad's podcast debut and Caitlin Bristow's Savage commentary on our upcoming Bachelor Zach.

Plus, we're going to get to finally preview Bachelor and Paradise season 8 because somehow it's like about to happen.

I mean, wow, the franchise content treadmill truly never sleeps.

It doesn't stop. It's just exercising all the time.

So let's start with a topic that we have been waiting to kind of address more in depth because we haven't done like a gossip episode since the news came out and we've been trying to keep the recaps more focused on what's on screen.

So it's time to talk a little bit more about Eric's Blackface photos, which surfaced toward the end of the season.

As we did mention on the recaps, there was a yearbook photo from 2011 of Eric in high school wearing a full Blackface costume that leaked shortly before the finale.

And he posted an apology not long after on his Instagram, which left a lot to be desired. We'll get into that. It was a black square with the apology and the caption his apology called his actions quote insensitive.

But it did not use the word racist. We have mentioned this. We want to reiterate it here. This apology is not for non black people to accept.

We saw a lot of predictably predictably of what seemed to be white fans accepting the apology and thanking him for it in the comments.

It's not our place to do. So we want to really try to avoid that.

But we are going to try to talk about the apology itself, the critiques that have been made of it by black people in and around the franchise who have very generously sought to educate the fan base about these issues and the franchise.

And just kind of like talk about Gabby's response, how the show has handled it and where that all stands right now.

Yeah. We have been as Claire said, like super grateful to the generosity of black commentators and black show alums who have spoken really publicly about this, including, you know, the black chillerettes highly recommend listening to their podcasts.

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