Happy Valentine’s day everyone! I hope you had wonderful experiences in your real life that were nothing like anything that happens on The Bachelor. I visited Ben’s hometown of Sonoma, hoping he could tell me all about the true meaning of love, but alas he was nowhere to be found.
In this week’s episode, Ben F. and his six ladies spend the week in Belize, and everything we’ve come to expect from this show occurs (helicopters, overcoming fears, opening up). While I’m starting to tire of the repetitive nature of this mess, I can’t stop watching it.
Chris Harrison explains “hometowns” to the women. Basically, next week, the four remaining ladies will take Ben to meet their families. Everybody will talk a lot about how important the family’s approval is, moms and brothers and sisters will instantly love Ben, dads will be standoffish at first, but after a man-to-man conversation they’ll give him their approval, and the moms will say something about how “they have a feeling” Ben and their daughter are going to end up together. I’m really not looking forward to these conversations, but I digress. This week there will be 3 one-on-ones and one group date. No roses on the one-on-ones, and at the end two girls will be sent home.
Lindzi gets the first date card, and Nikki is already crying because she didn’t get it. This is probably the earliest tearful confessional in Bachelor history—we’re less than 3 minutes into the first segment, and she’s not more than a couple hours into her first day in Belize.
Emily, upon seeing Ben come to the pool to pick up Lindzi, compares Ben to a piece of cheesecake wearing swim trunks, which is actually fairly apt.
Ben and Lindzi fly off in a helicopter, which nobody expected at all. They fly over the ocean and we hear Lindzi talking about relationships and stuff. Ben looks out at the view and says “it’s crazy”.
The plan is for the two of them to leap from the helicopter into the ocean. Surprise! Lindzi is afraid of heights! There’s a solid five minutes of both of them droning on and on about overcoming fears, and we see the helicopter hovering a good 75 feet in the air.
Finally they jump in, but in the brief shot of the actual jump we see that they’ve lowered the helicopter significantly, to a measly 30 feet.
They overcome the fear together! Where have we seen this before? Ride in a helicopter, do something slightly daring or adventurous together, and then talk about how analogous this made-up challenge is to a real relationship? Oh right, we see this every week on “The Bachelor”.
Back at the hotel suite, Rachel reads the date card like she’s the bachelorette passing out roses. It goes like this:
Emily,
“do you Belize in love?”
-Ben
I’m not sure if Ben came up with this one himself, but if so, I’m not impressed at all. The girls most definitely are.
Back at the candlelit couch on the beach dinner, Lindzi is ready to really put herself out there and tell Ben how she feels:
“I really like you, and i’m definitely ‘falling’ for you?” (note the questioning inflection, as well as the quotations inflection).
Afterwards, she says “It feels really good to finally let my guard down…”.
I’m sorry Lindzi, but there’s a pretty big difference between saying “i’m falling for you?” like a question and saying “I love you”, or even “I’m falling in love with you”. Not to burst your bubble but what you said is really not a big deal.
The two go back and forth a bit talking about their relationship and boy are they a couple of cupcakers to make you puke! Ben pulls out a piece of paper and a bottle and they decide to make an illustration of them jumping out of the helicopter (which, unfortunately we never get to see), and to write something “a little more serious” on the back. Then they reflect on how the letter being serious and silly is perfect because it’s just like their relationship. Also they agree that their relationship is like a fairytale.
If one of them would just pull their head out of this honey muck and say “oh man, we’re pretty disgusting, aren’t we?”, I could totally tolerate this behavior and enjoy watching them cupcake. Instead we have lines like this:
“Ben’s a prince charming because he’s… he’s my prince charming.” -Lindzi.
“Tonight what really stood out to me was how open she was.” -Ben.
Yuck. On to the second date:
Emily gets picked up in…. a plane! This provides a much-needed break for the helicopter pilots of the Pacific, who are tiring in week seven of this show.
Emily and Ben ride beach cruisers around some town in Belize, which looks super fun. Emily is really enjoying the scenery:
“I love the colors too… it’s like so… perfect”
They barge in on a basketball game, Emily drops a sweet right-handed layup on a couple of poor Belizians, and then they’re off to buy some shell jewelry.
Next, the two go lobster fishing, which also looks really fun. The lobsters are quicker than you’d think, but they both succeed in catching one.
Back at the hotel, our villain Courtney is now the victim and in tears. Ben doesn’t “have her back” like a good boyfriend should, because he hasn’t kicked off Emily, who is on Courtney’s shitlist. She seems ready to give up on the entire relationship, saying she’s not ready to bring Ben home and that “it sucks” because she “really liked him”.
Courtney brooding out the window
Ben’s apparently going to ask every girl if she feels comfortable bringing him home as if any of them will say “no”. He asks Emily and her response is pretty money. She gives it some thought and in a well-spoken and thoughtful manner, extends a formal invitation for him to come home to meet her family. I like how sincere she is and I think she and Ben are adorable, even though Emily sticks her tongue out in a weird way when they kiss. Sadly, she doesn’t stand a chance.
Back at the hotel, the girls are having some pajama time and speculating about the date.
“Does anybody think the (emily/ben) date is not going well?” somebody asks.
“It’s so hard to tell” says Rachel. So true Rachel. I mean, not being there and all, it really really is. But we appreciate you being so thoughtful about it.
Courtney complains that she won’t accept a rose from Ben if she doesn’t get a one-on-one date, and then she gets the date card. She proceeds to gloat like a little brat for a good five minutes, basically repeating “yay I’m excited” in a baby voice while the other girls sit and stare at her with hateful eyes. At this point it’s very, very hard to like Courtney, and very very hard to chalk up her bitchiness to ABC-produced drama.
Kacie B gives a nice confessional where she describes how she wants to squash Courtney like the black widow spider that she is.
Ben and Courtney head off on a nature walk, and “stumble upon” a glorious Mayan temple. Courtney is having trouble concentrating on the ancient monument because she’s preoccupied with how Ben has been neglecting her.
They both share their extensive knowledge of mayan culture: “This is probably where they sacrificed humans.”
Courtney tells Ben that they lost the spark, that he’s neglected her, and that she’s not sure she’s ready to bring him home. She lays it on pretty thick, putting the pressure on Ben to console her. This is a risky ploy, but Courtney is confident in how well she has Ben hooked, and it works like a charm. Ben is horrified to think he may be losing her, but so so happy to have to work a little bit for one of these women (not that he says this, of course), and after climbing to the top of the temple the spark has magically returned and Ben is hooked harder than ever.
Over dinner, they get on the subject of the other girls in the house, and Courtney talks for a while about how vanilla and self-absorbed they are. Ben probes a little bit, and seems genuinely troubled by her obvious position as outsider. He asks her if she has a lot of girl friends, to which she replies “I have good friends… I have a lot of guy friends”. Which is not what any guy wants to hear (then again, you don’t want your girlfriend to have only girl friends… a good mixture—heavy on the girls—is really what you want).
Ben wakes the girls up for the group date in the early morning. They have to get ready in less than an hour, so there’s a mad dash to the bathroom and some frantic high-speed leg-shaving.
Many thanks to Nikki for the enlightening commentary
Once out on the date, Rachel lets loose another gem:
“The stakes are high today. I mean, this is the most stakes we’ve had so far”. No comment.
The date is to be an afternoon of snorkeling with sharks.
Ben says that “getting out of your comfort zone and overcoming your fears is what being in a relationship is all about…”. I probably could have written that line word for word without even watching this episode.
Surprise! Rachel is really scared of sharks! She needs Ben to take care of her, which infuriates the other girls. It’s kind of like the girl bringing her grandma to the opening cocktail party—how do you not award the rose to the girl who overcame her phobia of sharks?
Rachel talks about how she’s really feeling the pressure of getting the rose on this date: “reality hits in”. Comment: mixed metaphor! “Sets in” plus… “hits”.
Rachel, aka Confucius
Nikki is falling in love with Ben, and she’s not afraid to tell the f***ing ocean! She doesn’t really tell him, though. She says something about how real her feelings are.
Kacie B wins the tell-Ben-you’re-in-love-with-him sweepstakes: “I’m falling in love with you,” she says. Congratulations Kacie B!
Ben brings the three girls together to give one of them the rose, and tells each of them why they deserve the rose (he refers to Rachel as “Raitch”, which i’m guessing isn’t her favorite nickname). He then gives the rose to Kacie B, for “really wearing her heart on her sleeve today”.
This probably makes the other two girls feel really bad and wish that they’d somehow worn their hearts more on their sleeves today—whatever that means. My advice to Ben and future Bachelors is to dispense with such explanations. Nobody but the recipient of the rose wants to hear your reasoning. It implies that this is some sort of sport you can get better at, this Bacheloring. It’s like a coach giving a speech to his players: “hey listen, you know this one really stepped up today and earned the game ball… and maybe next time, if you put in that 110% effort, it could be you”. The difference is this isn’t a sport (debatable, I know), and these girls aren’t on the same team. They’re not happy for Kacie B, and they’re not basking in the glow of a collective victory.
Anyway, after giving Kacie the rose, Ben reflects on the topic of being open, as he is wont to do: “it’s nice that everybody is so open here”. This is followed by an awkward pause, after which we get to see the intervention that’s been built up all week long: Nikki and Kacie B express their concern about Courtney. They lay it on pretty light, really. They say they’re not sure she really cares about him, and that they don’t want him to get hurt. Ben listens, but I think the girls were too vague. I think they should have told him that they don’t like Courtney. I think they should’ve said that she’s unkind, unpleasant, and downright nasty to all of the other girls.
Upstairs in the suite, Courtney gets wind of Kacie B receiving the rose, and has this to say:
“Kacie B is a little girl in a little boy’s body”. OH BURN.
Finally we’re on to the cocktail party, where everybody is a little bit nervous except Courtney, who is smug and flashing her weird little self-satisfied smirks, which are KILLING ME at this point.
Chris Harrison comes out to break the news: Ben (read: ABC) has decided to pull the classic no-cocktail-party-go-straight-to-the-rose-ceremony maneuver, because Ben is totally sure of who he wants to give roses to and doesn’t see the point in prolonging the inevitable. This is fine by Courtney.
Ben comes out, apparently 100% mind made up, not in need of any extra time with any of the women, completely sure of who he’s going to give roses to, and… steals Courtney aside. We don’t get to hear the whole conversation, but it’s something about being sure she’s there for the right reasons, which she says she is, which is good enough for Ben. The girls all speculate as if Courtney might be going home, but we know she’s staying. Sorry Rachel.
And Emily! I had no idea two girls were going home until right at the end of the episode, and Emily is sent home too. I’m pretty crushed, honestly, having really grown to like Emily and her little raps. ABC would be so proud of me: I’m frustrated with Ben, fed up with Courtney, and dead-set on watching all the rest of these 2-hour life-wasters in the hope that good (Kacie B) prevails over evil (Courtney). On the other hand, it would be really interesting to see Ben and Courtney deal with all of the fallout from her antics (can you imagine the “After the Final Rose”?!?!?!?!)
Awards:
MARF: Kacie B for sure, although I must say Nikki really grew on me this week, especially in the early morning scene where she pointed to herself and said “this is so not sexy”, but actually looked really pretty.
Ben’s Best Line: A very weak-sauce and unfunny week for Mr. Bach. I liked it when he said “I’m a weird guy”. It’s healthy to recognize and appreciate one’s weirdness.
Ben’s Biggest Mistake: Sending Emily home. She’s a real winner, and seems a better match for Ben than Courtney.
The ‘Fit that Didn’t ‘Fit: Let’s take a shot at Courtney and say her cocktail dress was the worst outfit of the week. She’s got some big ol’ shoulders, and this dress from behind made them look exceptionally broad. Take THAT Courtney!
Pole Position: I think Kacie B is still there, but Courtney is awfully close behind.
Next week: Hometowns!!! Courtney’s family looks just as cold and creepy as she does, Moms and Dads don’t approve so readily of Ben (spoiler alert: they all end up approving of him. These are just shots taken out of context to fool you into thinking they’re going to chase him out of their house with a shotgun, but actually everybody likes him).
I say Nikki gets sent home.
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