Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Bachelor Week 9: If only I could be more like a monkey

Ah, the Fantasy Suites. Or as Chris might say if Chris had a better handle of the English language, The Fantasy Sa-weets. 

So Chris, who will spend the week speaking in euphemisms about "intimacy" and "next-level", finds himself in Bali, walking the streets 


and contemplating the meaning of it all. Feel free to use this screen grab to create a motivational poster. You're welcome. 


"I want nothing more than to have clarity at the end of the week as to who could potentially be my wife," Chris narrates. And nothing provides more clarity than sleeping with three different women on three consecutive days, right? Right. The amazing thing is, as juicy as this horribly irresponsible and morally reprehensible episode should be, it manages to be two of the dullest hours ever to air on broadcast television. 

For instance, we spend a good fifteen minutes watching Christ and Kaitlyn visit an Indonesian temple and  look at things. Just look at things. 


Things like this statue of an angry, mustachioed Danny Devito.


At one point Chris mimics the native women and puts this thing on his head:


Slow clap for cultural sensitivity.


Then Chris and Kaitlyn visit a stand that hands out bananas to attract monkeys, because I guess they've never seen Outbreak?


When ebola hits Iowa, we'll all know who to blame.

There's no footage of them thoroughly scrubbing their hands after the monkey encounter, so I have to assume it didn't happen before they ate their meal. 


Eventually the card from Chris Harrison arrives, inviting the couple to forego their individual rooms and stay together in the Fantasy Suite. They both agree that it's the right thing for their relationship at this point, you know, because they'll get to spend some time alone, and just, you know, talk, and like, you know, see if their relationship will really work, and they're totally just going to talk and not do anything else that a couple might do overnight in a room called The Fantasy Suite. 

They enter the fantasy suite and find that organ harvesters have brutally murdered someone in the bathtub.


Or maybe those are rose petals. Hard to tell. 

Kaitlyn and Chris then get to work "taking their relationship to the next level." Ew.


About six hours later, Chris meets Whitney for a picnic on a boat. It's just fruit and alcohol for breakfast. I don't think they even touch the fruit. 


It looks as though they're headed to an island where the gold doubloons be buried, yar!  


Then their PDA becomes so unbearable that someone makes them walk the plank. 


I suspect it was the captain. He looks pretty ruthless.


Chris keeps his buccaneer shirt on for dinner while Whitney dresses like a very voluptuous green apple. To prevent scurvy, perhaps.  


The two sea-voyagers have a serious talk about the future, and Chris asks how Whitney would really feel about living in Iowa. Whitney says that she has worked really hard for her career, but that she feels incomplete without a husband and children, and that she's ready to abandon her career for a family. "I would be ready to have babies. That would be my career," she says, and as a professional baby-haver myself, I have some words of advice for dear Whitney. Girlfriend, do you realize you'll be living hours away from a Target? Hours. You really want to embark on the adventure of motherhood without any proximity to the mother's sanctuary that is Target? You don't. I promise. You'll also be far far away from a McDonald's drive-thru and $1.00 larget Diet Cokes. Just saying. Is he worth it?

Whitney seems to think he's at least worth forgoing her individual room to spend the night as a couple in The Fantasy Suite. 


At least each woman gets a different fantasy suite. You know, to keep things classy. Speaking of, there are few shots on this program that do not include a container of alcohol of some sort. 


So, yadda yadda yadda, they have a sleepover, and then Chris has to rush out the door for his next date.

With Becca. Who, now maybe you've missed this because they've been really subtle and not at all beating a dead horse with a stick about this, is a virgin. According to the show, this is her one defining characteristic.


It's no surprise then that the producers have planned a date focusing exclusively on adult relations, including this visit to a shaman whose advice for the night is to make love.


I actually have no idea if he's called a shaman. 


So slow clap for MY culturally sensitivity, I guess.


Becca is nervous heading into boomchickabowwow time because she still has not revealed her secret virgin identity to Chris.


Even when then sexvite from Mr. Harrison arrives, she says she wants to "spend that time" with Chris. Look at his face. That's the face of a man who's expecting more than just time. It's also a sweaty face. Bali is hot, apparently. 


She does eventually, nervously, announce her sexual status as though it's anyone's business but her own, 


causing Chris to have a full-blown brain fart. 



"I'm glad that you...I...," he stutters, before he remembers he's on television and then says that he admires her for her commitment to wait until marriage. 

But then he still draws the curtains shut? Never stop hoping, Chris.


The morning after, Becca and the camera crew take a walk on the beach


while Chris mulls over the decision he has to make. Kaitlyn and Whitney are ready to move to Iowa tomorrow. Becca has some reservations (read: is the only one telling the truth).

Chris is torn, and tries for a full minute to muster up some tears. 


Not even poking his eyeball helps. 
Then Chris and Chris sit down for a chat BECAUSE THIS SHOW ISN'T LONG ENOUGH.


Chris tells Chris he can see a future with all the women, loves them all, etc., reciting the same speech every bachelor has recited since the dawn of reality television.

As Chris further considers his forthcoming decision, he is either deep in thought or he smells pizza. Come on, guys, this show could easily be just an hour without all this nonsense. 


He shows up to the rose ceremony looking like this:


while the women look like this:



Before handing out any roses, Chris asks for a minute to speak with Becca. Whitney and Kaitlyn all but high-five each other, assuming that another one is about to bite the dust. 


Turns out that when they were alone in the FS, really actually just talking, Chris asked Becca if she thought maybe she just feels like she's falling in love because they are on TV.


It's a surprisingly honest and sincere question, and Becca does her best to answer in kind, ultimately convincing Chris that she would, eventually, be ready to call herself an Iowan. 

So Becca is not sent home


and the other two women are less than thrilled to see her return to their presence. 



Chris, either tortured by the difficulty of handing out the first rose or still smelling that pizza, calls Whitney's name. 


She is pleased.


Then he calls Becca's name.


Kaitlyn is not pleased. 


at all. 


"That was the most humiliating moment of my whole freaking life," she tells the limo cam. If I were sitting next to her, I would tell her about the time in third grade that I stood up to give a book report and passed gas loud enough for the whole class to hear. Just to make her feel better and realize that on the humiliation scale, making it to the top three on The Bachelor really isn't so bad. 






































Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The Bachelor Week 7/8 Part 2: What Kind of Hometown Date Is This?

Well, we're still in Iowa.


And Chris has completely run out of things to do. So his date with Becca includes sitting on a couch, talking about feelings.


Plus posing for the stock footage that plays on Karaoke machines. 


Trying to recover from her humiliating word vomit from the night before, Britt tells the other girls that she has packed her bags and will leave tomorrow before the rose ceremony. 


The other girls treat this announcement like that of a five-year-old who has just told her parents that she's running away. 



They all but say "Don't let the door hit you on the way out!"

Britt cannot understand why a group of women who are all trying to win the affections of the same man are not completely devastated to hear of her planned departure. 


Britt hopes to tell Chris that she's gonzo at the cocktail party. But wait a second, here comes Chris Harrison with news. 


"There will not be a cocktail party," he tells the girls. 

TWIST.


So like a lamb to the slaughter, Britt heads into the Rose Ceremony without the chance to become the dumper instead of the dumped. 


But she won't give up so easily, and cuts Chris off mid-speech to request a quick chat.


An exasperated Chris does not give into her big-eyed, winning-smile apology the way Britt hoped he would. 


In fact he surprises us all by sending her home.


She doesn't take it great. She sits outside on the curb, wailing loud enough for everyone inside to hear.


It's music to Carly's ears. Carly isn't here so much for love as she is for Schadenfreude.


So it's not really surprising when Chris does not give her a rose.

Still, her limo ride home is a tearful one. 


"My heart feels completely broken. I think I deserve someone who freaking loves me for all of me and freaking wants me. Why is it so hard to want me? I don't understand. What's wrong with me?" You thought signing up for The Bachelor was a sound life choice? That's what's wrong with you. 

Moving on.

Chris visits the four remaining women in their hometowns. 

First up, Becca in Louisiana. 


Becca appears to have lost a bet and now has to wear this shirt.


Chris is likely relieved that their plan for the day entails a private boat ride through a swamp so he doesn't have to be seen in public with that thing. 


Eventually night falls and it's time to meet the fam. 

It's so thoughtful of Chris to bring flowers that a producer totally handed him. 


Chris has an intense talk with Becca's sister.


"Becca is not an intimate person by any means," she tells him. What she's trying to say is that Becca is a virgin, but Chris isn't getting it.


"You can mess with me. Don't mess with my kids," Mom warns Chris. He's still not getting it. 

Becca tells her sister that she plans to reveal her big secret in the fantasy suite and blah blah blah, sorry I can't focus, I'm too distracted by that motel curtain trying so desperately to pass as a blouse. 


If her sister really cared about her, she would insist they burn that sartorial sin immediately. 

After leaving the family home, Chris tells Becca he has a surprise for her, and takes her to a ferris wheel at some fair grounds that are closed, which is lucky for him because if people were there they would see the shirt he's hanging out with....

But really. That gaping armhole is problematic, right?


Next Chris heads to Chicago where he meets Whitney, who yes, is annoying, but is at least properly clothed.


"What do you say we go make a baby?," she asks Chris. Like I said. Annoying.

Whitney makes Chris dress in scrubs


to observe a monitor showing the in vitro implantation process. 


I hope they got this embryo's consent to appear on camera.


Then Whitney shows Chris the...male...specimen...collection...room. 


And then acts like she would like a sample from him. But then JK! LOL! Not really. 


Chris seems a little disappointed that he won't be able to demonstrate the power of his baby batter. "I'm pretty confident my soldiers are marching," he says.

That evening Chris and Whitney dine with Whitney's family.

Whitney's sister, whom Chris must ask for her blessing, is a bit of a tough cookie. 

She says she's not really down with the whole date a bunch of women at once then try and marry one of them thing. Wow. Talk about an unbeliever.


This is a JOURNEY to find LOVE and Chris is here for the RIGHT REASONS. 


"I don't want her to be one of four," she says.

But who cares what she thinks? Not Whitney. In fact Whitney goes full over-committed and pulls out the wine she says she bought specifically to share with the man she knew she would marry. 


Instead of running in fear or writing her a check for the wine she probably should have shared with the man she will actually marry, Chris does this:


While the photographs of Whitney's dog watch from the corner.


Chris then travels to Phoenix to visit Kaitlyn. 


Kaitlyn has decided to rent out a recording studio for the afternoon, because when you look at Chris Soules, the first thing you think is "Man, that guy's got flow."


This producer is thinking, "They're not paying me enough for this."


After making a mockery of the entirety of hip-hop culture, Kaitlyn and Chris head to meet her family.


It is wholly and entirely uneventful.

Then Kaitlyn surprises Chris with this billboard.


Because I guess she has money just burning a whole in her pocket.

You know what they say...the way to a man's heart is through signage. 


Finally, Jade greets Chris in Nebraska.


Quick refresher: Last episode we learned that Jade has "Playmate" on her resume, but Chris still does not know about the nude photos.

These people all know though, which may be why they look so terribly awkward when Jade walks in with her unsuspecting new beau. 


Chris has a surprise for Jade. Her very own letterman jacket from his alma mater! Dude cannot let go of high school. 


Jade's dad has some concerns. 


"A lot of her boyfriends... she's too much for them." More like too much naked, amirite! Ha! High fives for my killer joke. 

Zach hints at Jade's past transgressions. 


"She's a wild mustang," he tells Chris. More like a wild...naked...I dunno. I'm tired. This is too much Bachelor.

As the day winds down, Jade knows it's time to reveal herself (ha!). But she's nervous. 


"It's hard for me to talk about. I do get judged a lot." Okay. Look. If Jade had like, a facial deformity, or a stutter, or something else she couldn't help, she would have my sympathy for being judged. But she chose to take off her clothes and be photographed, and it feels like maybe she should have thought about potential judgment beforehand, and I really just don't feel bad for her. 

So she tells Chris.


Chris does not know what to do with his face.


Then Jade says, hey, why don't we look at the photos (and video!) together, and Chris says, well sure, if it makes you comfortable. Real smooth.

So they have some nice couple's bonding over Jade's...art.


For being so ashamed of these photos, Jade sure knows how to find them online quickly. 


Soon the show is over and Jade anxiously awaits Chris's reaction. 


NBD, he says. This doesn't change who you are. And I think he wants to add "Don't hate me, feminist bloggers!"


So the four remaining women meet once more in Iowa for the next Rose Ceremony. 


Kaitlyn, Becca, and Whitney get a rose. Jade does not.


"Damn," Jade whispers under her breath. 

Chris walks Jade out and goes to great lengths to explain that it has nothing to do with the pictures. You hear that, Huffington Post? 


"It's nothing about what you said," he tries to reassure her and not a single person watching believes him. 

It's a tough goodbye for Chris. Or maybe he just remembered that shirt Becca wore? 


Jade cries it all out for the lim-cam. 


"It just really hurts cause I was falling in love with Chris and I just didn't see this coming." Oh, I kind of think you did. 

Until next week...