Sometimes I think I would be more psychologically healthy if I didn’t watch this television show. Unfortunately for me there is no twelve-step program designed to get me to stop watching, no nicotine-style patch to help me get over this addiction. So I’ll just keep writing until years and years into the future, with my dying breath, I whisper, “What even are the right reasons?”
We find ourselves back here again, friends. The whole world could go to shit (and so many people think it has), and ABC would still air The Bachelor. And I’ll let you in on a secret: I would still be blogging about it.
I’m rooting for Nick this season, guys. If any of you followed along as I blogged during Katilyn’s season, I trashed him for being on the show “for the wrong reasons.” But if this guy is really willing to attempt to find a fiancé on national television for the FOURTH time, I’ll root for him.
Just based off where last week’s episode ended and where this one begins, it seems to me that JoJo has been out there on that tarmac crying for this past week without stop. For those of you who missed last week’s episode, it ended with JoJo running off onto the airplane hangar they were on and crying into the darkness.
For the past week, the rest of America has been sitting on the edge of their seats begging for an answer to this question: Is she going to send Luke home? That was the teaser to the end of last week’s episode. For those of you who missed it, JoJo was about to dump Luke when he pulled her aside to tell her he loves her. JoJo, I can relate. The last time just as I was about to dump a hot veteran who was in love with me (and was basically a male protagonist in a Nicholas Sparks’ novel), he told me he loved me too. It’s rough, but I made it through and so will you.
The episode starts with a classic boy pow-wow, where the guys talk vulnerability. Chris Harrison comes to explain, mostly to the viewers, that there will be three one-on-one dates and a group date this week. Farquaad is getting nervous about this, because he hasn’t had a one-on-one date yet, and thus feels like his relationship isn’t moving fast enough. If this were a Skimm headline, it would say:
The Bachelorette heading to Buenos Aires, Argentina, means that the Spanish language is about to be butchered worse than when I took Fourth Semester Spanish last Spring. (Only you know what that means, Profesora Datel.) So Chris Harrison, who decided to leave behind his Netflix and chill session and make the trip with the rest of the cast, has a little chat with JoJo. They talk for a little while about how big this week is going to be. In summary: Very big. Muy grande, if you will.
Due to some technical issues, I missed the first fifteen minutes of the show and am the going to have to draw from Twitter to summarize what happened at the beginning of the episode. Here’s what I got for you: Chad showed up at the house and Jordan Rodgers gave him the opportunity to apologize. Chad says no, confirming what Justin Timberlake always knew, which is that it really is too late to apologize. Chad instead throws his protein powder in the air a la LeBron James (more on the Cavaliers later).
*Written while on a red eye to JFK*
It may have been a little naive of me to expect Tom Hanks to be in Seattle, waiting patiently since the early 90’s for me to show up and knock on the door of his houseboat. But the sleepless delirium of a six-hour, 8:00 a.m.-departing flight combined with the disturbingly fresh Pacific Northwest air tricked me into thinking that I might be welcomed to this city by Mr. Sleepless in Seattle himself. Sadly, it appears he’s moved forward with his life, I assume to New York City to live with and send mail to Meg Ryan. I suppose I’ll have to settle for Patrick Dempsey.*
*I should note that by the end of the trip, I had come to the disturbing revelation that neither Patrick Dempsey nor the rest of the cast of Grey’s Anatomy lives in Seattle. Let’s just call it one of the greater letdowns of my entire life and move on.
I want to start by saying that there were a lot of things wrong with last night’s special two hour episode of The Bachelorette. I’ve written 20 some-odd recaps about this show before and I’ve seen everything. Alcohol. Sex scandals. Sexism. Racism. Violence. I’ve been a loyal fan through it all, frequently commenting that I never felt the show was particularly worse than the world around us is about any of these controversial issues. The world is sexist. The world is racist. The world is violent. But last night’s episode pushed me a little over the edge, and, even though I’ve written a complete recap about the episode, this is the blog post I’d rather you read.
Can you believe that we are here again? Somehow ABC tricked us all into spending another night watching this show. Here we go, here we go again.
Post-conversation with Chris Harrison, Chad comes into the house to have a short convo with the boys. Like a kindergartener, he has a little bit of trouble expressing his feelings. As in he doesn’t know how to express his feelings at all. Somehow, they come to a reconciliation together, a reconciliation which seems about as sturdy as that tightrope Joseph Gordon-Levitt walked across in that movie The Walk. But don’t worry, the ABC producers are on the case. They’re going to throw a pool party. That’ll fix this.
And now we’re back. From outer space. We just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face. If you (for some ungodly reason) missed the last episode, you can catch up with my recap from last week here.
The gist of the two minute introduction to this week’s episode is that Chad is last year’s JJ, without a buddy Clint, and without the opportunity for redemption on Bachelor in Paradise. For those of you who don’t know what that means, let’s just say that he seems like trouble right here in river city, with a capital “T” that rhymes with “C” which stands for Chad. On a completely separate note, I cannot watch another montage of JoJo standing on a balcony thinking things. As I watch I make up my own dialogue for what she is thinking.
Okay, Here's The Situation 