It’s here. We’re back in business people with another season of the Bachelorette. I surely cannot be alone in thanking the fucking lord that we don’t have to watch this season’s empty vessels crit their way around some non-descript, middle-of-nowhere resort with an uppity marketing manager who finally used their Bachelor addiction for use and floated their hotel for consideration. I still get targeted ads from Nemacolin, ads which consistently make me think about Matt James menacingly rubbing his hands together and licking his lips in woodland settings, thoughts that no hopeful, curious 26-year old should be having! If this season achieves nothing else, hopefully it spells the end of “big resorts” having their way with my Instagram feed!
Michelle’s intro was sweet. It predictably began at schooI with a couple of questions from Michelle’s students. I wish I had gotten to have asked my fifth-grade teacher “how many boyfriends are you going to have?” That would really have shifted the power dynamic in the classroom and put Miss Evans on the hot seat big time. One nice piece of advice that came from a pupil was “don’t change yourself for anyone Miss Young.” Now forgive me, maybe I just don’t understand the strength of the youth Libertarian movement in Minnesota, but this quote reeked of producer influence; it was kind of like the kid that said it had come into school after the build your own planet assignment with a topographically accurate Mars sculpture, complete with moving Mars Rover and pull-out cross section of the crust… no way you did that yourself kid. The papier maché, pop-the-balloon equivalent would have been something like “good luck Miss Young.”
What was the conversation like in the production meeting as they were brainstorming her intro? “Ok, let’s go to her school and have a couple of kids ask wildly personal questions about her dating life; then let’s do the All-American back-yard BBQ with the parents to try and claw back some of the family values viewers who attended the antebellum parties with Rachel Kirkconnell; and then let’s have Michelle galavant around screaming “I’m the Bacheloreeeeette” at the top of her lungs all over the Midwest. Alright Pinnochio, we get it, you’re a real boy! Oh, and let’s tie everything back to the fact that she played basketball in college and can seemingly drain threes on command.
When the limos arrived, Nayte was the first one out, and ended their little chat with “better Nayte than never.” Then a guy called Romeo who was inexplicably speaking French despite being a mathematician from New York. Jack Russell was wearing a white tux and made a very rehearsed joke about how he’s loyal and attentive like the dog; Clayton got spanked with a ruler; Rick was clearly listening to a little too much Lizzo while brainstorming his entry, because he wasn’t “just a snack at all, baby he was the whole damn meal,” emerging with his head on an entrée platter; there was a firefighter who showed up on a toy firetruck who proceeded to get summarily big-dicked by another firefighter who showed up in a legit firetruck and that was kind of it for the notables!
The male intros are always hilarious, although a suspicious number of contestants are either basketball players and others have strong connections to teaching. There’s an academic interventionist (boy I wish I had known those existed before), an academic administrator, two contestants with teachers for mothers, and one guy who rocked up in a school bus dressed like AC/DC’s Angus Young in his school uniform.
It must be spooky season, because Michelle was re-introduced with a ghost from her past – the last man out of the limo, Joe, and Michelle had DMed back and forth about “basketball” (yeah right) and then he had ghosted her. Getting dragged out of the maelstrom of men and having to explain why you ghosted someone on national television is one degree of difficulty away from public crucifixion, but hey, good for Joe for thinking he could come on the show and get away with it! His reaction to being called out was “It’s something I’ve been working on…” When it comes to communication in the DMs, this isn’t necessarily the best thing to say to the girl who you are trying to court, but hey, toxic kings gonna stay toxic.
The crux of the entire episode was this guy Ryan, who showed up in an ice cream truck, and had basically put together a dossier with dos and don’ts for going on the Bachelor. The topics in this dossier ranged from how to get more screen time, to tips such as expressing extra interest in Michelle’s teaching. Now this probably would never have come to light had Tayshia and Kaitlyn not been going door-to-door and performing Stasi-style searches of these guys’ belongings, but alas. Given her seeming disregard for personal data, if this whole Bachelorette thing doesn’t work out, Kaitlyn can just go found her own consulting firm and call it KaitBrist Analytica!
Michelle was tipped off about the dossier by the slithery snakes Kaitlyn and Tayshia and proceeded to pull Ryan out of the pack and speak to him. The two had had a quite jovial initial encounter, but this one was anything but… Now I’m all for a bit of research, but when confronted about said research, you have to just own it. Ryan went for the old “those were notes written by my friends’ wife,” a foil that usually works until the person you’re lying to asks to go up to your room and check the notes. If Shaggy is looking to remaster his cult classic It Wasn’t Me with Ryan’s help, the lyrics might go something like this: “But she caught me on the counter, it was my friend’s wife; saw me banging on the sofa, it was my friend’s wife, I even had her in the shower – it was my friend’s wife, she even caught me on camera – it was my friends wife.” Ryan didn’t just have notes, he has an absolute encyclopedia of oppo. research longer and more detailed than a CVS receipt around Christmas-time. He was unsurprisingly and unceremoniously sent home as a result.
The first impression rose went to Nayte and then we were right into the rose ceremony! The rose ceremony locale is very interesting. Usually the setting is intimate, dark and sweaty; the walls feel like they’re closing in on the candidates as they sweat it out for roses.
This location felt much more like a photo that would be taken at the end of a gala dinner in front of a the spiral staircase. It was too open, and there were too many architectural distractions for the men to be fully focused on the dwindling rose count next to Michelle’s giving hand. There was nothing super surprising about what unfolded. Thank God dinner plate Rick got a rose. I hate to keep bringing it up but the fact that the Sloth didn’t get a rose night one on Peter’s season is still the greatest miscarriage of justice in Bachelor franchise history.
Joe ultimately got a rose as well which was unsurprising. As we know from Katie’s season, all you have to do is fire off a couple DMs back and forth before the season and you’re pretty much guaranteed the win! Oh Blake!
Anyways, happy watching folks and looking forward to the season kicking off proper next week!
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