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After the fact that it's a blatant and ridiculous fraud (in that it almost never gets anybody married), the first thing you might notice about The Bachelor(ette) franchise is its prim, Victorian attitudes about sex. For a show that encourages 14-person dates and the temporary negotiation of a lifestyle that could be best described as G-rated swinging, the whole shebang is awfully precious when it comes to the fact that sometimes, some of these people have sex with each other.

The having of sex generally makes its official arrival in the narrative each season at the point where the Bachelor or Bachelorette (let's say Bacheloron) has three Strivers left to choose from. These are the ones who go on "overnight dates." At an overnight date — and the more you hear this explained, the more creepy and clinical it will sound — the couple opens a sealed note from host/procurer Chris Harrison, who instructs them that they may spend the night in separate rooms or together in the "fantasy suite." The fantasy suite is not filmed, meaning that it does give couples the chance to spend at least a little bit of time alone before they decide to get married (!), but the unspoken purpose of the fantasy suite is, unambiguously, that you can have sex in it before the final decisions get made.

It's always been clear that some Bachelorons are comfortable having sex with three people within a few days and others are not. Not everybody Does It. Not even everybody who goes to the fantasy suite Does It. Some people probably Do Stuff That Is Not It, or that is Not It Exactly. Generally, the show connotes the suggestion that sex at least may have been had by showing you the door to the suite closing on the couple. Generally — although I can blissfully admit I have not seen every episode of every season — this is not something they talk about directly after the fact. They do not say "the sex was great," even though you can tell sometimes that it was. They do not say "the sex was disappointing," even though you can tell sometimes that it was.

Instead, there is a sort of strange agreement that although everything else, including engagements and breakups, is entirely public, you have a right to secrecy when it comes to who did what with who. We will follow a sad person into a limo to cry and collapse, but whether you kept your underwear on is for you to take to the grave.

That's what made Monday night's finale and post-show live update so surprising.

Generally, the way a Bachelorette season works is that each of the final two men has a private moment with the Bachelorette in which they propose to her, and she says yes or no. The analog in a Bachelor season is that each woman goes to find out whether he's going to propose or not. (If you have noticed that you commit a final act of either acquiescence or decisiveness depending on whether you are a boy or a girl, you win $20,000 in imaginary Bachelor Bucks in the Spot The Freakazoid Gender Politics Up In Here Sweepstakes.)

This year, however — and she was not the first to do this — Bachelorette Andi decided that since she already knew she wanted to marry giant-toothed former baseball player Josh, she would spare Wisconsin native Nick the trouble of picking out a ring and putting on a suit. So she went to see him and told him that it wasn't him, he was not the guy, and she would be giving her final rose (...never mind) to Josh.

Nick, who had been feeling pretty confident, looked devastated. He kept struggling like he was trying to say something to Andi, and as I watched him squirm and seemingly bite his tongue, I came up with a stone-cold guess regarding what his deal was.

I suspect the thing Nick is not saying is that he believes she had sex or sex-ish contact with him under false pretenses. #TheBachelorette

— Linda Holmes (@nprmonkeysee) July 29, 2014