When we left Nick last, ABC had just manufactured a meet-up with everyone’s favorite of his ex-girlfriends. No, no, it wasn’t Kaitlyn. It was Andi. Remember Andi?
If you’re wondering why Andi’s there, you are not alone. Me, Nick, most of Bachelor Nation, and possibly even Andi herself, are with you. It basically makes no sense for her to be there.
When this week’s episode starts everyone is reeling from the bomb that Nick dropped. You remember, when Nick said he wasn’t sure this show would work out for him? Well, to clarify, not everyone is reeling. A very select group of six women on a reality show are shocked that Nick might not find love.
Most people, law of averages say, are not reeling from Nick’s declaration that he may not find love on the show. Most people probably forgot that it happened in last week’s episode and just carried on with their lives unfazed by the speed bumps on Nick’s road to true love. Or (more likely) they don’t watch The Bachelor at all.
We have a new president and yet we’re still watching the same drama on The Bachelor. How many weeks in a row can Corinne behave like a child before she gets the boot? Let’s find out.
When we left off, Vanessa and Nick were in a heated conversation about Corinne. Vanessa calls him on HIS SHIT, and has a real take-it-or-leave-it attitude which I really admire. Nick leaves the mansion for a few hours, giving the girls plenty of time to confront Corinne before they have to start putting their faces on for the rose ceremony.
To start this week’s episode, Nick has a lot of ‘splaining to do. When we left him last, Nick had sent Liz home and decided that it was time he tell the rest of the girls that he had sex with Liz at the wedding last Spring.
Nick arrives for the rose ceremony to talk with the girls. He tells them all about the Liz situation and the girls seem pretty stoic about it. They all get a chance to tell him that they’re “processing,” and “blindsided,” and “shocked.”
Nick talks to all the girls and tells one of them that he “is a big fan” of her.
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:
*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.
Dear Amy,
How have you been? Of course, I’m asking more out of politeness and courtesy than anything else. If I think back hard enough I can remember how you have been feeling lately, how I was feeling six years ago. Congrats on finally getting your braces off, by the way. Metal-free is the way to be, after all. I actually am writing with a purpose larger than just congratulating you on your metal-free existence. If you can tear yourself away from David Caruso and his sunglasses and whatever Sean Kingston song just came out, I want to tell you some things.
For all of the excitement and praise you receive on graduation day, no one ever thinks to warn you about how sad it really is to graduate. In between the “You did it’s” and the “We’re so proud of you’s” is just the most frightening mixture of nostalgia, fear and lack of control. I felt it yesterday, sitting at my dorm room window, looking over the field as the maintenance staff of Boston University cleaned up discarded water bottles, graduation ceremony programs and graduation caps that were thrown into the air one minute and then left behind the next.
I have to ask: Does everything really have to end?
I know the short answer to this is, “Yes, of course everything ends.” Through teary eyes, I watched the last scene of F.R.I.E.N.D.S., where the six keys sit all alone on the counter in the empty apartment and, in that moment, I knew that everything ends. But as I watched the cameras pan through the apartment I secretly hoped everyone would come back and that they would bring the barcaloungers and the large porcelain white dog. But I knew they wouldn’t.
Without getting too depressing, people die, stories end, and television shows get canceled out of the blue. (Fifteen years later and I’m still a little bitter about Freaks and Geeks.) So are endings really inevitable?
And then there were three.
This week’s episode takes our three remaining girls and Ben to Jamaica. “The water is blue, the air is fresh,” and Ben is starting to sound like an idiot. As Ben intros the girls he lists his reservations about them. With Caila, he has a real problem with how happy she is. Basically she smiles way too much for him. I guess that phrase happy wife happy life really doesn’t apply to him. Ben:
Okay, Here's The Situation 