So Long, Blake, and See You at Stagecoach

By Maria Sherman | September 10, 2019 | 2:38pm

Entertainment TV

So Long, Blake, and See You at Stagecoach

The joy of Bachelor in Paradise is its ridiculous premise: take a bunch of hot losers from past Bachelor and Bachelorette seasons, throw them in a few sexy situations, and watch the poorly adjusted ones show a bit more of their true colors than they would on the other programs. It’s hot out there in Sayulita, Mexico, and afternoon tequila makes it easy to forget there are cameras around. The formula never fails, and it’s always fun to watch a guy reveal himself to be a bonafide bullshit artist. This season, that role was gloriously fulfilled by Blake Horstmann (from Becca Kufrin’s season of The Bachelorette) who left at the end of Monday night’s episode in tears, after an impromptu one-on-one on the beach with Kristina Schulman. Their date ended almost as quickly as it began, as Kristina offered one of the franchise’s classic breakup lines—“I don’t think I can get there.”

Anyone watching saw this split coming. In cutaway interviews, Blake would say generic things like, “I don’t think she’s ever had a guy fight for her, so, I can be that guy,” and “I could see her becoming my wife,” about Kristina, the same nonsense he told Hannah G. at the beginning of the season (but it’s not what he said to Kristina and Caelynn Miller-Keyes at Stagecoach, aka country music Coachella, prior to filming, or anyone else he tried to get with at the beach.) Kristina was something like his third pick, his Hail Mary pass to remain in Paradise, and she was not having it. She wouldn’t return his public flirtations, and yet, somehow, he still cried over their non-relationship, left the show, and decided to write a novel on Instagram about it. Did he not know he was insanely manipulative for weeks? Blake is like a sentient emo lyric, the entitled male protagonist incapable of taking responsibility for his bad boy behavior.