Tuesday evening’s final The BacheloretteOne sentence stuck in my head: “It’s about the cruelty.”

Adam Serwer of the Atlantic wrote these words in 2018 to explain the appeal of Donald Trump’s particularly vicious brand of politics. But the same ethos can also be applied to The Bachelor franchise. To some extent, it’s always been that way; as a viewer, you log on to watch a bunch of hot, over-served 20-somethings fight for the right to get engaged to the main character over the course of just two months.

None of this is natural. One could even say that none of this is real.

But last night’s finale of Jenn Tran’s season, in which the show so heartlessly gutted its main character, should be proof that such a brutal drama needs real pain at its core. The show’s promise of true love requires the threat of real heartbreak to make it feel earned. That means that periodically, when the fairytale ending doesn’t come to fruition and give the show its big cathartic conclusion, the cast is instead traumatized for our entertainment.

To the producers, many of the contestants and the audience, it may have been just a TV show. But the tears streaming down Tran’s face were an uncomfortable, stinging reminder that at the center of all this pageantry is a real human being who may genuinely believe that through this silly show, he has a chance of finding the love of his life.

You may think that’s ridiculous, but that doesn’t make it any less true—nor does it justify the utter disregard with which Tran’s ex-fiancé and the show that starred her as the first Asian-American lead treated her at her lowest point.

Here’s a summary for the uninitiated: Tran’s choice fell on two men, Marcus and Devin. Both shared traumatic childhood experiences with her. Marcus was more reserved, which made every move toward love seem authentic, but Devin was a fan favorite, a vibrant personality who seemed genuinely in love with our leading man. It was almost shocking how unguarded he was with his feelings.

The only question seemed to be whether Tran would choose the feisty Devin – who was admittedly less conventionally attractive than some of the other men – or the less available Marcus. That should ratchet up the tension.

In the middle of the finale, Jenn had a difficult conversation with Marcus in which it became clear that he would never “get there” emotionally, so she decided to end the relationship. That meant Devin – who seemed like the “right” choice, the guy who was actually there for the right reasons, the one who was really into her – was the only man left. The show had been preparing us for an unprecedented finale for months, and many viewers had inferred that Jenn would propose to her husband. In Hawaii, after breaking up with Marcus, Jenn told Jesse that that was exactly what she planned to do with Devin. It seemed like she was close to her happy ending.

But then producers switched from the proposal to the ABC studios, where host Jesse Palmer was, and it quickly became clear that something had gone terribly wrong between that moment of triumph and yesterday’s live taping of the post-finale special. This was a break from the norm, because even if a couple has split up since the end of the season, the show lets the proposal play out before breaking the bad news to the audience. Over the next hour, we would see just how far the show would go in exploiting real emotion for cheap entertainment.

First Jenn alone, and then Jenn and Devin together, recapitulated what happened after the as-yet-unshown proposal. The story as presented to us was that Devin snapped and went cold almost immediately after the cameras turned off. When they returned to real life from filming, he was noncommittal and absent. Jenn said he dumped her in a 15-minute phone call in which he said he never loved her, then refused to have a more detailed conversation about it until they were back in front of the TV cameras. For his part, Devin insisted that the feelings he expressed to Jenn during filming were genuine, but otherwise did little to refute her allegations about his behavior after production wrapped, only repeatedly saying he “let her down.” He also admitted to following a previous season contestant, Maria, on Instagram, who was widely rumored to be the next Bachelorette before Jenn was announced.

Maybe we viewers should have seen this coming. Earlier in the episode, Palmer asked Jenn’s brother how he was feeling. “Angry,” was his response. It was a strange answer, but it made perfect sense when the true twist of the finale was revealed.

Then came the final slap in the face. After rehashing their painful breakup, with Jenn struggling to keep her composure, Palmer suggested they watch the proposal anyway. He tried to paint it as an empowering moment, saying that even though the engagement had fizzled out, Jenn had still “chosen herself” in that moment and that was what mattered. Would it be OK for her to air it?

“Do I have a choice?” she cried with a pained laugh. The answer was implicit: No.

So the producers cut to the beach in Hawaii, where Jenn and Devin were to get engaged, and showed contemporary overlays of Jenn describing how happy she is. In the corner of the screen, they showed Jenn live in the studio, sitting next to her ex, looking at her marriage proposal, knowing it was already invalid. Jenn was sobbing uncontrollably. Whatever you may think, whether she was truly heartbroken or more ashamed of the humiliation, the agony was real. (At this point, a friend texted me, “This is torture. Broadcasting this is actually a violation of the Geneva Convention.”)

As her season progressed, I came to the conclusion that despite her questionable taste in men, Jenn was a real man. She came on this absurd show for all the right reasons. Seeing all of that ripped away from her in such a public way was sickening—and admittedly captivating.

Of course, for the production team the only thing that mattered was making good television. The Bachelor The franchise has been struggling with mediocre ratings for some time now. Jenn’s season was marred by bad rumors (which I think was unjustified, but that was the prevailing sentiment). They needed a big finale, and Jenn’s emotional devastation delivered. There’s no denying that ABC created a memorable climax – we can only hope they didn’t permanently damage a real person’s psyche in the process.

Because that’s the real risk. There’s been a lot of debate about whether reality TV participants deserve union representation and stronger legal protections. I think the argument against these measures is usually that these people know what they’re getting into. But that doesn’t mean they’re not vulnerable to emotional trauma that’s part of the experience. Jenn’s last appearance, which was quickly pushed aside so Palmer could introduce the new leading lady for the next season of the franchise, is a painful reminder of that.

This is the same show that once blindsided a contestant who thought she was meeting her fiancé, only to discover that she, too, was about to lose the man who loved her (or so she thought). The show that perhaps intentionally cast a racist black bachelorette for its first season. The show that ridiculed its main character’s virginity.

This morning, as I was reflecting on last night, I was reminded of a 2022 essay by Catherine Horowitz in Bright Wall/Dark Room, in which she analyzed a moment in which a “character” from The Bachelor seemed to be suffering from genuine emotional distress and stretched the show’s material to breaking point. This led her to this crucial realization, one that’s easy to forget in our age of ubiquitous reality TV: These narratives may be short-lived entertainment for us, but they’re part of other people’s life experiences, something they’ll carry with them long after the lights go down and the studio audience goes home.

“For the participants, reality TV is not something artificial; it is a real part of their lives, something that has a lasting impact on them,” Horowitz wrote.

And almost paradoxically, these format-breaking moments tell us a story that “maybe, just maybe, people could believe.” The price, however, might be the well-being of the show’s cast.

The Bachelor is not meant to be human, it’s just meant to entertain. Cruelty has always been a feature of this show. That’s the point.