It’s Not Just You: Heather Martin’s Late Bachelor Entrance Was Beyond Uncomfortable

Matt James' season of The Bachelor is really putting his contestants through the wringer. A couple of weeks ago, five new women came in late in the game to share Matt's time with the other contestants, and now Heather Martin, of "Never Been Kissed" fame on Colton Underwood's Bachelor season, has shown up to throw her hat in the ring as well. If Heather thinks she and Matt could be soulmates that's great, truly. But the way her entrance on The Bachelor was orchestrated was not just awkward, but wholly insensitive to the other women. It made watching the whole thing pretty unbearable.

First off, the timeline of the whole affair is very confusing, which suggests that some timing is being manipulated through editing. Per the timeline presented on the show, Heather crashed the show more than halfway through filming (which only took place for a handful of weeks anyway), and Chris Harrison told her that she would have to quarantine before she met Matt. That would conceivably push her entrance another two weeks, if the show followed CDC guidelines. But when the show cut to Heather quarantining, she proclaimed that she'd just passed her first COVID test and "Hopefully in a day or so or a couple days, I can meet Matt!" That timing, as shown on screen, doesn't exactly add up.

But then there's Heather's supposed backstory, which is rife with unnecessary drama. Heather claimed that she decided she just had to meet Matt after her best friend Hannah Brown — who was on Colton's season with her — raved about him. The timing behind that whole story is fishy, too. Hannah met Matt early in 2020 and Heather knew he would be the Bachelor since at least June 2020 when the announcement was made. Why did Heather wait until more than halfway through the show's production period to decide to meet him? Why not just go on the show in the first place?

Also, exactly no one believes that Heather just drove up to the resort in a minivan one day on a whim. Thanks in part to the fact that we've seen this late arrival move before on The Bachelor, and in great part due to the fact that Chris Harrison's acting isn't exactly convincing in Heather's first scene. There is no way production wasn't involved in setting this whole thing up.

And in doing so, the show genuinely did a disservice to every single contestant, including Heather. Producers brought her in late, and then presented a narrative of Heather as a possibly obsessed, loopy woman who struggled to keep it together during her quarantine (we're pretty sure that's just how quarantining works, in Heather's defense). Plus, producers were there when Matt's cast reacted cruelly to new contestants the first time around. Heather is basically being used as chum at this point — especially considering that producers didn't orchestrate an actual introduction and instead sent her straight into see Matt, who was mid-conversation.

Next, the promo for the Feb. 15 episode shows Heather crying and already Heather's fellow Bachelor Nation alums are jumping to her defense, including Colton season standout Demi Burnett:

Everyone loses as a result of this "twist." The remaining contestants are once again losing time with Matt after days of drama and a cancelled cocktail party cut their existing time short. Heather was thrown into what is clearly a hostile environment. And how on earth is Matt ever supposed to decide who he loves and wants to marry if new women are waltzing in every week? I'd like to say The Bachelor could have done better, but this whole thing is par for the course this season. All we've been shown are situations designed to pit the women against each other wherein everyone — including Matt and those of us watching at home — end up the losers.

In the words of Pieper James, whose connection with Matt was so rudely interrupted by this plot twist, "What the fuck."