The first night of any new season in Bachelor world is bitter sweet. The bitter in this case can be traced to the trough of Aperol Spritz that is percolating balletically through my system as I write this; the sweet? Well I think we all know where that’s coming from. There is a unique nervous energy about night one; it’s almost middle-school dance-ish, where every individual stepping through the miasma of Axe body spray and across the pitched battle lines of sex is under the microscope, ripe for objectification, whispering, and under-informed judgement. There is an imperceptible itch that is scratched every time a new candidate emerges from the limo, or truck, or RV, or classic car, or enormous gift box and I love every moment of it.
Katie Thurston: Seattle’s prodigal daughter; Washington State’s most confusingly cute yet sexy product since Meredith Grey; oh, and did I mention, as if the copious Space Needle B-roll wasn’t euphemistic enough, she’s sex positive? A quick Google Trends search quickly illustrates that I wasn’t the only person who had no idea what sex positivity was before last night (see below), and I’m glad I know now, because boy we haven’t been beaten over the head with positivity like this since Magic Johnson! Katie’s intro covered all the greatest hits: 5 different elementary schools, struggled making friends etc. but now she’s firing on all cylinders and is ready for the love that she deserves.
The male intros all kind of blended into one but there were some notable highlights: one of the guys lives in a mansion, one of the guys can dunk, one of the guys said “in” instead of “en” route, Connor B played the ukulele naked in the bath showing off hairier legs than Sasquatch, one of them is a football player in Austria, one of them is a virgin (I sense some sex negativity), one of them is an artist whose self-proclaimed “hands know what they’re doing” and Tre knows 40 digits of pi and reads Latin.
This season was always going to be different without puppet master Chris pulling at the participants’ heart strings, but the show has gone from independent arbiter who facilitates the drama by giving half-baked advice like “follow your heart,” to a self-professed “girl gang” who is there to hold Katie’s hand through the process. While waiting for the men to arrive, they really played up Katie’s damsel in distress vibes as she wallowed in her self-pity about having no counsel through this tough process. Meanwhile, Tayshia and Kaitlyn were sneaking up behind her with about as much stealth as Clifford the Big Red Dog.
I hate nothing more than describing the play-by-play of the different men coming out of the limo – the one major takeaway I have from the entire experience is that Katie was really living up to her family name and relentlessly Thirstin’ over these men! Katie has never had qualms about displaying her sexuality – lest we forget the baby arm of a vibrator that she showed up with on Matt’s season – but the extent to which she, and her would-be men leaned into it was unlike any Bachelor opening I’ve seen. The awkward arms-length hand hold is about as sure a thing on night one as the sun rising in the east, but the men greeting Katie with lines straight out of an E.L. James novel was a little jarring. “Stroke and stroke and stroke it out,” “I don’t know if there’s a genie in here, but I’m hoping we can rub one out together,” and Cody, after a protracted introduction about his late-night pandemic partner, whipping out a sex doll called Sandy, were just some of the advances on Katie. By far the best introduction was Connor B, who hid his Sasquatch legs underneath a full cat suit looking to play to Katie’s feline fondness. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a huge cat guy (subscribe to my other blog www.preciouspussies.com if interested in additional cat content) so this is obviously a major tick in the pros column for Katie. She fell for the costume almost as hard as the people reading this who clicked on my fictitious cat blog!
The first cocktail party is always a huge shit show. Katie, despite claiming to Kaitlyn and Tayshia that she MAY kiss one person on the first night wasted very little time in sucking face with what seemed like half of the cast. Greg’s performance was a highlight, and his gift of a pasta necklace made by his three-year-old niece carried him all the way to the first impression rose. He was so nervous in the cutest way and yes, I now feel quite bad for eviscerating him in my preview and referring to him as the model for the human version of Shrek. Other notables were James, who emerged from an enormous gift-wrapped box, hair immaculate and not displaying any of the characteristics one might expect from someone who was playing a stowaway refugee trying to cross a much-scrutinized border. Connor B, the cat math teacher, sucking face with Katie was really vindicating for all of the costume lovers out there who are still salty that the sloth from Colton’s season was sent home night one. Cats really are the key to her heart huh?
One final observation: Hunter looks like Taylor Lautner if Taylor Lautner was a software strategist.
It’s always worth sticking around during the first episode to get the sneak preview of what is to come. Any phrase that is remotely controversial said over the course of the season is taken wildly out of context and cut together with such blissful toxicity you’d have thought Satan himself were producing the season. This season, Blake Moyne’s return is among the devilish deeds we have in store, and boy, I cannot wait.
Until next week wonderful people 🙂
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