Tonight was a first in Bachelor(ette) history: I was actually 100 percent invested in what was on my TV. This is such a great season already! There is so much drama I can't keep my head on straight — it's like watching a soap opera unfold, but with worse acting and better lighting. Last season involved a lot of crying but i'm pretty sure the contestants on this season are straight up psychopathic. You almost feel bad for Kaitlyn at the end of this episode because it's like, how did cool, fun, awesome Kaitlyn get stuck with this motley crew of garbage humans? There are a few whom I genuinely love (and we'll get to that — Shawn or die!) but the majority are just around to cause trouble, and I guess I love them for that in a different way. Let's recap!
I forgot about Kupah already. Man, oh man. Kupah should be the poster child for sobriety. Dude got tanked and got caught badmouthing Kaitlyn to the guys last episode, so she booted him out of the house. Dude gets even more tanked and starts yelling at the cameramen who are trying to get his final interview before he leaves — and Kaitlyn catches him again. One of the great things about alcohol is that it totally incapacitates your reaction time, so when Kaitlyn catches him, he tries to slip into an “I did nothing wrong” demeanor about 30 seconds too late — she sees the whole thing and forces him to leave. His reaction? “I didn't know you were coming out here.” Yeah, Kupah, we know.
We finally move on to the rose ceremony from last week, and the lucky men who live to see another week in the mansion are: Jared, Ben H., Shawn, Jonathan, Tanner, Chris, Ryan, Justin, Ian, Joshua, Tony, Joe and Corey (Clint, Ben Z. and JJ all got roses during the episode's dates). Tony, as usual, waxed poetic to the camera about his love being for nothing — “I left my job, my dog, my bonsai trees, all the things I love in this world to be here.” I'm just glad he loves his dog more than he loves his bonsai trees. She sent Cory the dad home, which absolutely killed me because I was rooting for him and justifies it by saying he needed to be with his daughter, which brought me back to life and killed me again. I honestly cannot believe Tony made it to another week. He's no Ashley S.
The men of the house get woken up by two extremely large men parading through the house banging on gongs. Yes, gongs. The first date's theme is sumo wrestling, and the extremely large men are world champion sumo wrestlers. The guys on the date have to fight the sumo wrestlers! I honestly have to say I think this is my favorite date on this entire series thus far. The boys took it in stride, especially Joe who I'm really starting to warm up to. He picks up the mawashi (sumo diaper) and can't figure out what it is, saying it looks like he has to wear a giant water hose. A giant water hose! I love him!
The entire date is spent pixelated on my screen because of all the #butts flying around the ring. Seriously, everyone is basically naked the entire date. The men are disgustingly sweaty by the end of it and they have no chance at defeating either of these wrestlers. As one of the contestants appropriately put it: “I think they'd have better luck charging a brick wall.” Tony goes all out when it's his turn and literally just slaps the sumo wrestler until he runs out of breath. He's like a rabid dog, charging at him over and over and over again until he wears himself out … and then going off to brood back at the house because he's just a delicate little flower who wants peace and love. Let me tell you something, the Tony I saw trying to take down a sumo wrestler 30 seconds ago was not all about peace and love. He ignores Kaitlyn as he walks into the house because the whole incident demoralized him.
Tony's going home. I'm calling it. There's no way he's going to stick around after this. Kaitlyn spends a majority of this date trying to put his ego back together, but I'm pretty sure he's gone for good. If you are so ~ spiritually and emotionally advanced ~ you probably shouldn't be on The Bachelorette. But that's just my opinion. JJ also needs to stop getting involved in every little thing because it's really starting to get on my, Kaitlyn's and everyone else in the house's nerves. Side note: why is JJ a former investment banker? What did he do to lose the title? File it under Things I Need To Know But Probably Never Will.
The men return to the sumo ring after Tony's meltdown to face off for Kaitlyn's heart — of course, first, Kaitlyn steps into the ring herself. After the sumo wrestler picks her up and spins her around a few times, she easily pushes him out of the ring. Natch. Clint literally takes Joe and flips him over and out of the ring. It's like he weighs nothing! It's like they're in zero gravity! I'm scared of Clint! Back at the house, Tony is still whining about the brutality of the day's events. “Why can't we go to the zoo and imitate animals?” I don't know, Tony. It's here that Tony decides to pack up his stuff and leave the competition. A bold move, but one I applaud. Like I said, he's no Ashley S. He explains himself to Kaitlyn, leaves the mansion, and we will probably never hear from him again. I hope the bonsai trees were worth it!
Clint spends most of his week with JJ whining about how Kaitlyn won't take him aside and talk to him. Last time I checked, Clint, there are 20 guys vying for her attention, so she's not going to pull you aside whenever she has a free moment. Because she doesn't have free moments. Because she's The Bachelorette. JJ and Clint have a pretty heavy bromance going on (ugh, I hate that word, but ABC used it so I'm kind of going along with them) and it's threaded throughout the entire episode. They just click, which is cool, because no one else can stand them. JJ, although he may be a total jerk, dissuades Clint from giving Kaitlyn the cold shoulder — gotta give the man some credit, as he gets that the show is a competition. God forbid Clint has to work to get a girl to notice him! He even says to the camera that he's realizing Kaitlyn isn't the right girl for him because she won't chase him. It's bizarre. However, none of that matters because Shawn got the group date rose and you can all just go home now.
Chris Harrison plans Kaitlyn's one-on-one date, which ends up being a horror movie freakshow of a date with Ben Z. I love Ben Z. They show up to a set that looks like Storage Wars, so for a second I was like, cool, they're going to do something fun with garage sale stuff! Wrong. So wrong. They participate in a “live escape room experience” — basically Saw without actually dying in the end. They have to work to piece together clues to get them out of the room before the gas chamber opens and presumably leaves them to a long, painful death. I'm just kidding (sort of). It honestly looked like a lot of fun, although really creepy and terrifying and I probably would have cried if I had to do it. If you watch American Horror Story, the entire thing basically looked like a drawn out sequence of the theme song. If you don't watch American Horror Story, here's what I'm talking about. One of the clues was a picture of Britt, which I thought was great but also, like, can we stop talking about her already? Unless maybe she's planning on showing up in the haunted house, killing Kaitlyn, and taking her place as the Bachelorette. I wonder if there's a Bachelorette line of succession? Of course, Kaitlyn and Ben make it out of the room alive, and go back to the hotel where they spend the rest of the date in the hot tub talking about their fears and personal lives. Ben opens up to Kaitlyn about the day his mom passed away, and she gives him a rose. It was all very sweet, although the snakes in the room they were locked in were really gross.
The final date of the episode is the second group date: learning about love. Kaitlyn takes the boys to teach a sex ed class to children, but what they don't know is that the class is filled with child actors directed to ask the most embarrassing questions they possibly could. For Justin, this was a nightmare, as “I learned everything sexual I knew as a kid by watching our cows.” Yikes. Good luck in the fantasy suite, if you even make it that far! He called a tampon string a rip cord. (We interrupt your normally scheduled Bachelor programming to bring you JJ thanking Clint for popping his bacne. Sorry you had to hear that.)
Ryan gives the kids the most misguided anatomy lesson I've ever seen … apparently women have three vaginas. As soon as he said “anus,” the kids went absolutely wild, and I was cracking up too because I'm a child. Thank god these kids are actors because it really is the most inappropriate sex ed lesson I've ever seen. One of the “students” asks Jonathan what the four bases are, and he tells them that they'll figure out what a home run is when they're old enough. Ben H saves the day with a discussion of when the right time to have sex is: he works in his relationship with Kaitlyn and the importance of loving someone before you commit to anything physical, earning himself the third rose of the night.
We arrive at cocktail hour and a storm is brewing at the mansion. Clint will not shut up about Kaitlyn not seeking him out, and once she gets to the cocktail hour, he steals her away and apologizes for his behavior. As he kisses her, we hear a voiceover: “I was wearing my power socks so I felt like I had the power and I had to abuse it. I don't even really like her, but I love JJ, and I have to stay on this show to hang out with him… I need this rose.” Is he kidding? This guy is quite possibly an evil villain. He even walks around the house like one! Before anyone says anything, I'm aware that this is all due to editing and direction, but I'll be damned if that guy does not play the villain well. Also, pretty sure JJ is still in high school as he referred to the guys he doesn't like as “JV croquet players.” Maybe that's why he's a former investment banker — because they found out he was actually a 16-year-old.
Thirteen out of the 15 guys in the house tell Kaitlyn that she needs to be careful with Clint, and it raises a red flag (as I would hope). This was just like the mutiny against Kelsey last season, except with the entire house minus JJ rising up against Clint. I was so enthralled that I didn't even check Twitter the entire last fifteen minutes of the episode — this season is truly sucking me in! Like last week, we have to wait until next Monday to find out how Kaitlyn handles the situation but if the previews tell us anything, Clint will be gone after this next ceremony. Fingers crossed, and see you guys next week!
Thoughts & Feelings
- Do you think Kaitlyn is channeling her inner Taylor Swift a little too hard by insisting that Clint will be “going down in flames”?
- Justin got his first kiss in college and has never been in love — could he be this season's Becca? The dark horse of the competition may be closer than we think …
- Will you miss Tony? Do you think his dog gets jealous of his bonsai trees? Do you, too, have the spirit of a gypsy?
- Is Jared's black eye really that hot? It kind of looks like he walked into a door frame…
Quotes of the Night
- “Joshua talking about sex education is like me talking about nucular physics.” (Yes, he said nucular. Yes, I know it's nuclear. That's the point.)
- “The tampon — it's like a little torpedo!”
- JV CROQUET PLAYERS!
Past Episodes:
Episode 3: This Isn't Church Camp
Episode 2: Who Is the Bachelorette?
Episode 1: Fireball on the Rocks
Meghan is a recent graduate of SUNY Geneseo with a degree in Personal and Professional Communication. You can find her at the nearest Chipotle tweeting about Drake, her sorority little and Project Runway.
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