The Bachelorette Week 5: Phrasing, man

Nick enters the apartment and is greeted warmly by the other men.

To be fair, Ben Z. kind of always looks like this

JJ set his blowdryer to "extra poof" this morning

It's 15 against 1

The fifteen want to make sure Nick isn't here chasing his sixteenth moment of fame. 

Tanner especially be frontin', asking about Nick's recent encounter with Andi. 

Because Tanner is a big tabloid reader and OH MY GOSH THIS IS SO BORING WHO CARES?!

Nick makes the mistake of calling Kaitlyn a "cool chick."

"Is she a cool chick or an amazing woman?" Josh demands to know. 

Josh doesn't trust this character. 

Not one bit.

But every one else is kind of like, "eh, what's one more? Welcome to our cult!" 

Every one else except Shawn because Shawn has a real connection with Kaitlyn...

and um...he...what was I saying? 

Sorry...I got distracted.

Shawn refuses to acknowledge Nick or call him by his name. It only gives him more power.

The gaggle of guys heads to Citi Field

where they meet their overlord.

JJ grabs Kaitlyn and runs her around the bases. He's in a good mood since there's a new bad guy in the house.

JJ is nothing more than a first year Slytherin compared to He Who Shall Not Be Named.

JJ's guy intuition, which he seems to think is a thing, is telling him that something is not right with the new fella.

Shawn feels the same way. 

Kaitlyn is a little more upset by Shawn's opinion because:

The men are lined up on the baseball diamond and summarily executed.

Just kidding. It's worse. A rose ceremony in what appear to be temperatures cold enough to freeze the very depths of Hell and gail force winds that do this to Ryan's hair:

A very cold Kaitlyn, mentally cursing the producers for making her take dramatic pauses between names, finally has just one rose left. 

She gives it to Voldemort.

Three men must go.

Ryan seems relieved just to get out of the cold.

Jonathan thinks, "Yeah, it's week 5, I'm black, sounds about right."

And this guys is like 80 years old, so I'm sure he'll have better luck with the ladies in his assisted living center.

Kaitlyn and the twelve men she's dating make their way to San Antonio, and soon the first date card arrives:

Ben H. has a bit of trouble deciding what to wear.

5. 5 shirts in this photo.

He and Kaitlyn drive this car

to this dance hall

where they will be competing in a two-step dance contest. 

The show gives an incredibly nuanced depiction of the town and the people in it. 

In case you forgot where we are

" It's full of the most authentic, true, honky tonk Texas folk," Kaitlyn says. 

One of those authentic, true, honky tonk Texas folk is Betty Jo.

Betty Jo has been dancing the two-step for at least 50 years.

Betty Jo and the other dancers offer their best love advice.

You won't believe this, but relationships are a lot like dancing. Another mind-blowing analogy.

Dale Watson and his Lone Stars perform

and the contest commences.

Ben H. and Kaitlyn last one song before getting tapped out.

They ask the spectator most likely to have visual impairment how well he thinks they performed.

Then they make out. Just Ben and Kaitlyn. Not the geriatric man. 

After a quick costume change wherein Kaitlyn decides to accessorize with a vile of blood from boyfriends past around her neck,

the two have a conversation and ignore their food. 

Ben H. shares deep stories, or the deepest stories you can possibly have at age 26(?!)

Is he even old enough to drink that wine?

Despite Ben H. basically being a minor and their relationship essentially being illegal, Kaitlyn gives him a rose.

And they make out until it's way past his bedtime. 

The group date card arrives for the men at the hotel and it  reads:

So Kaitlyn drags ten men to meet a Mariachi band

and tells her suitors that they too will don sombreros and tight pants when they perform the songs they are tasked with writing for her.

Kaitlyn is an exhausting woman to date, right? At some point someone is going to break and scream, "FOR THE LOVE CAN WE PLEASE JUST WATCH NETFLIX AND EAT EASY MAC TONIGHT?!"

My money's on Joe. 

Over the past month Joe has had to wrestle a sumo, box in front of a crowd, audition for a broadway play, and wear this:

Dude has to be near his breaking point.

But some people thrive on the challenge. People like Ian. 

Ian says, "I've got the muscles and the brain and the heart...and I can sing too...so..." It's too bad his humility is holding him back. 

He chokes. 

Pretty bad. 

At least you have the muscles, brain and heart? Except technically the heart is a muscle, so really you just have muscles and a brain, just like every other living human, so I guess you're not actually special, bud. Sorry. 

Nick takes a different approach and serenades Kaitlyn from a balcony. He's bad, like really really bad, but it kind of works?

Much to the chagrin of the ground-level gringos,

and the absolute despair of Josh. 

It's from this point that Josh starts to tailspin and make some very ill-advised decisions, the first of which being asking Kaitlyn to cut his hair. 

She tries to give him a mohawk but "the buzzers die."

I'm no expert, but I don't think you can blame low batteries for this:

Josh walks sheepishly back into the room

and the other guys are super nice about his new look

Nick and Kaitlyn spend some time getting to know each other better,

and when Nick returns he is met with the wrath of a man whose head looks as though it lost a fight with Edward Scissorhands before he learned how to make those rad shrubberies. 

The thing is, when your hair sucks, everything else sucks too. Have you ever had a good day on a bad hair day? Of course not. So Josh is having a really bad day. And he just can't take it anymore. So he cracks and says to Nick, "I'm just having a helluva time trusting you."

Nick all but giggles. Everyone else squirms, because this story is a horse so dead from stick beating that it's already in an Elmer's bottle. 

But Josh thinks that just because he won't shut up about Nick, everyone else cares. 

"I have this theory that if you shaved off all his hair he'd look like a British man"

And he decides to talk to Kaitlyn. Because their last interaction went so well.

Kaitlyn is less than pleased to learn that all her boyfriends are lying to her.

It's hard to say what Josh was expecting her reaction to be, but he seems really confused by her anger. I'm starting to get the sense that Josh is not especially great with the ladies. 

Kaitlyn marches back to her gentlemen in waiting and asks, "Is everyone being honest with me aBOAT how they're feeling aBOAT the situation here?" 

No one laughs at her accent.

Instead they just sit in shocked silence until saying, "yeah."

Poor Josh. This is just not his night. 

"I just hope that these guys aren't gonna leave me out to dry here," he says, and everyone else continues sitting in silence.

To add severe insult to Josh's already life-threatening injury, Kaitlyn gives Nick the rose. 

Josh is still sulking the next morning when the men gather to see Shawn off on his date with the woman they all hope to marry. 

Kaitlyn is mildly excited to see Shawn.

We have to watch some kayaking nonsense before seeing Shawn topless. 

But once on dry land, we get a good looksie. 

"I love his voice, I love his smell," Kaitlyn says.

If smell-o-vision were a thing, I bet Shawn's scenes would produce an aroma of leather and mint.

 And biceps. Whatever the smell of biceps is.

Unfortunately, Shawn puts a shirt on for the date's evening portion.

Kaitlyn and this season's clear winner don't even pretend to eat. They just snuggle and talk because they're so freaking into each other it would make me sick if they weren't such an attractive couple. 

Shawn shares a story from his past. Something about a car wreck...

he nearly died...

what was I saying?

Kaitlyn is either really into that story or spent the whole time thinking about his physique like I did, because she grabs him and kisses him. 

"I'm falling in love with you," Shawn says.

Kaitlyn replies in turn,

which is definitely against the rules, but Kaitlyn isn't really one for upholding legal and binding documents. 

"That was my husband telling me he loved me for the first time," Kaitlyn says, then as fireworks shoot off in the sky, 

she declares, "Shawn is the guy that I gave the first impression rose to and he's the guy I can't wait to give other roses to and he could be the guy that I give my final rose to." I can forgive her for ending that sentence with a proposition. She has a lot on her mind. 

Ian, perhaps having caught a glimpse of Shawn's torso, has come to terms with the fact that he will not be this season's winner. 

Like anyone who's been rejected, he says some things that maybe aren't super good to say on television. 

Like, "Against all of my logic, Kaitlyn doesn't want someone like me and it's just making me look bad for trying. I don't understand why Kaitlyn wouldn't want a Princeton graduate, former model, that defied death and has been around the world a couple of times. I have a good job, good education, charisma, brains, looks. If that wasn't impressive enough, then I don't know what else is impressive here."  

Remind me where you went to school again?

And, "She's not half as hot as my ex-girlfriend."

  

"I could be The Bachelor. I think I am a very eligible bachelor in this country and in this world," Ian says. I'll be honest, I would watch that. But I watch Bachelor in Paradise so television program discernment has never really been my thing.

Ian decides he's going to lay it all out on the table during the rose ceremony which will be held near the Alamo. "The Alamo is a place where Texans made their last stand for independence and San Antonio is a place that is going to be my last stand in this journey," he explains.

In preparation, he tells the camera, "I'm not here to be with Kaitlyn. I don't find Kaitlyn interesting. Kaitlyn just seems like she wants to make out with a bunch of people and have a good time. I'm not here just to have a good time. I have a good time in my own life."

Meanwhile, Kaitlyn makes out with a bunch of people.

And Joshua cries because his hair still looks like that of a toddler who found a pair of safety scissors and went to town. 

Kaitlyn finally stops "having fun" long enough to sit down and chat with Ian.

"I feel like everyone is kind of on vacation from life. For me, this isn't a vacation. I came here for love. And I came here to find a wife. And it's really difficult for me hanging around a group of guys who are just making fart jokes, and poop jokes. That's what works for you but that's not what works for me," Ian says.

Then he continues, "I came here expecting to meet the girl who had her heart broken and was devastated by Chris Soules, not the girl who wanted to get her field plowed. I feel like you are here to make out with a bunch of guys on TV... I really see you as a surface level person at this stage. I wonder if you're really that shallow because I don't see anything beyond the surface."

 

Kaitlyn pulls out a knife, and thrusts it in Ian's abdomen. He does not die, but is injured and angry. A jury of Kaitlyn's peers find her not guilty because they all would have done the same. 

Or at least that's what I assume happens. We'll have to wait until next week to find out.

Until then.

Thanks, again, for reading. And thank you for your donations. Sometimes streaming services don't cooperate and I end up having to purchase the episode on multiple platforms to get the screenshots just right. With your donations I'm not operating at a total loss. Which is nice.

Remember to follow along on Instagram, or just type the address in your browser. Whatever.