After taking last summer off, Bachelor in Paradise is back — with a twist.
ABC kicked off season 10 of BiP on Monday, July 7, with a three-hour premiere that introduced a new resort, quick connections and several eliminations. Us breaks it all down, with some insight from host Jesse Palmer, bartender Wells Adams and the new addition of “Paradise Relations” Hannah Brown.
The Changes
The new look of Paradise is jarring (in a good way!) with the camera quality raising the bar, and making Us do a double take that we aren’t watching Love Island.
“Love Island stole our idea! So I’m so sorry that we stole your cameras. You stole the IP, we just stole the technology to make it look like that,” Wells quipped to Us.
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While the resort — complete with air conditioning and a swim-up bar — seems to be a hit, it didn’t take long for the new climate to interfere with production as a storm cancels Justin and Lexi’s date. “I have to be honest with you, I do not think that we are gonna film Paradise in Costa Rica in May again, that was monsoon season,” Wells admitted to Us. “And we probably should not do that … you see in the first episode, it affects the show a lot.” (Us can confirm the storms in Costa Rica were no joke — and come with no warning.)
The premiere also introduced the idea that compatibility games will be incorporated into the season, with the supertease at the end of the episode showing physical (and almost Survivor-esque?) competitions too. Jesse also dropped a cryptic tease to the cast — “We hope to offer our best and our strongest couples a life-changing opportunity” — that may be related to the $500,000 bag of money briefly shown in the trailer?!
“There’s more twists and turns coming,” Jesse teased to Us.
The Initial Connections
After naming each other in respective interviews with Us as the person they hoped to see on the show, Jess and Spencer got their wish – and quickly sealed their connection with the first kiss of Paradise. While she was briefly interested in Sam M. in the premiere, Jess ultimately picked Spencer.
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“I saw it pretty instantly that they have this connection and they really got along from the get-go,” Hannah told Us. “I feel like Spencer’s one of those people [who] really knows he wants something and he’s completely locked in. But Jess has had harder relationships in her past, so being able to date someone like Spencer and see if that’s actually what she wants, it’s really interesting kind of seeing her navigate that through the season. They’re both really great people and watching both their love stories is going to be really sweet.”
While Dale was a hot commodity when he first arrived — on a yacht! – he took Kat on a date. The twosome hit it off and based on the trailer, their relationship will give Us plenty to talk about. “She definitely has her eye on Dale,” Jesse told Us. “[Dale’s arrival] was women’s swooning and men nervous.”
After a quick love triangle between Jeremy, Kyle and Bailey, she picked Jeremy at the rose ceremony. Other initial pairings include Lexi and Justin, Zoe and Brian and Jonathan and Alexe.
The Exits
With the women in power, there are four men — Sam, Hakeem, Kyle and Ricky — dumped, err eliminated (oops, reminder that we’re not watching Love Island!) in the premiere.
Hakeem and Ricky, for their parts, sealed their fates when they got into a fight during the first “game” about identifying your own red flags. When Ricky suggested that Hakeem wrote “vanilla” answers — seemingly to ensure less red stickers? — things escalated. The argument, which turned into the two men fighting over the definition of calling something vanilla, confused Us and their fellow beachgoers.
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When asked about the four men who went home, Jesse told Us: “That’s a lot of first round picks. It was surprising to a lot of people. It’s hard to single anybody out, but what I appreciate about the producers is they just let reality happen and they let reality be reality. Whoever goes home goes home.”
Jesse believes that there “are a lot of shows” that might have producers step in to “make sure a certain person stays on a little bit longer because you have a plan or you think it’s gonna boost ratings,” but that wasn’t the case this year on BiP.
“I feel like there was a concerted effort to just hands off. If it happens, it happens. And listen, being at the rose ceremonies, there were times where I, my own mind thought, ‘Don’t send him home. Are we really gonna lose him?’” he said.
Wells, meanwhile, was disappointed to see Jenn Tran’s villain, Sam M., gone so soon.
“I really wanted to see Sam because Paradise is such a redemptive story for a lot of people. I feel like he deserved it,” Wells said. “Yeah, he said, ‘the main thing was the main thing’ too much and had that bad radio date [on Jenn’s season], but he [also] called out Devin and no one believed him and he was kind of right. I feel like he deserved better than that. He’s really handsome and has a cool story and isn’t a guy, like, selling stuff on Instagram. He has a business. I was rooting for him.”
Bachelor in Paradise airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
