The Bachelorette
June 24, 2019
After a contentious and frankly disastrous trip to Scotland that ended with everyone yelling at everyone else — Hannah yelling most of all — the manherd, including improbably that dum-dum Shower Jesus, are dragged to Riga, Latvia of all places. And here’s where I have to admit my ignorance of all things Baltic State related. That said, Riga, it seems really lovely.
The men arrive at their hotel, and after everyone agrees to “stay in [their] own lanes” (meaning, not talk shit about one another and not worry about what anyone else is doing) the date card is delivered: “Arnold Palmer: Can I trust our love? Love, Hannah.”
Shower Jesus pouts that he’s jealous of Arnold Palmer — even though he JUST HAD a one-on-one date, a date that went terribly — but chins up that he thinks Arnold Palmer will be sent home that night because no one cares about Hannah as much as he does.
Hannah meets Arnold Palmer next to a river out in the Latvian woods where she points out a tram as it makes its way above the center of a river. A couple bungee jumps from the tram, but to Hannah’s genuine shock and horror, the couple is VERY COMPLETELY NAKED. “WHY ARE THEY NAKED?” Hannah screams, prompting Arnold Palmer to reply, “YOU TELL ME!” And somewhere in the production van, the producers are high-fiving one another.
The couple emerges from the river, still very naked, and proceed to have a full conversation with Hannah and Arnold Palmer about how naked bungee jumping is a Latvian tradition, just chit-chatting away as if all of their business isn’t hanging out while a light dusting of snow comes down on them. Hannah and Arnold Palmer are apparently as ignorant of all things Baltic State as I am because they are like, “WELP, I GUESS WE’LL JUST TAKE YOUR WORD FOR IT THAT NUDE BUNGEE JUMPING IS A LATVIAN TRADITION AND NOT SOMETHING THE PRODUCERS MADE UP TO CREATE MAXIMUM HUMILIATION AND DRAMA. THANK YOU FOR THE INFORMATION, NAKED LATVIANS WHOM WE HAVE JUST MET AND HAVE NO ACTUAL REASON TO TRUST.”
And because the people who go on these shows are very different from yours truly, Hannah and Arnold Palmer agree to 1. go through with the bungee jumping 2. naked. As for your trusty blogger, this would be the moment when I ripped off my mic and began doing research on whether or not Uber works in Latvia so as to take me to the Goddamned airport and fly my clothed ass home.
Hannah and Arnold Palmer — now mostly naked, black boxes covering all the relevant naughty bits — get into the tram and are strapped into their harnesses, at which point Hannah removes her bra. And I can only assume that this means that they were actually allowed to keep their panties on, as I can’t imagine that they would both be going around bottomless while Hannah kept on her bra and what I am saying is that I have WAY overthought this whole thing.
Then they bungee jump topless “naked” and then they congratulate themselves for bungee jumping naked while sitting around in robes and no shoes on the side of a river in the freezing cold. NO THANK YOU PLEASE. Oh, and just in case you didn’t get the metaphor that this show and The Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise have ALL used at least once a season, bungee jumping (or rappelling off of an office tower, or cliff diving, or skydiving) is just like falling in love, you guys. It’s exactly the same thing. And this time even more so because everyone was naked.
That evening over dinner, Arnold Palmer reveals that he has a fear of heights (OBVIOUSLY — they don’t send the contestant without vertigo on these dates, where’s the fun in that?) and asks Hannah what her “hurdles” are. She talks non-specifically about how she struggled to live life for herself and not others, and how she hates rejection — that rejection is “like, ALL fear.” Whatever that means.
As for Arnold Palmer, he explains that he spent his life playing football to make his father happy only to get to college and realize that he HATED football and that golf was his true calling. A story of courage and struggle. Arnold Palmer then reiterates how bungee jumping naked is like falling in love and OH MY GOD WE GET IT. With that, he tells her that he’s falling in love with her and she offers him the date rose because once you’ve bungee jumped with someone topless “naked,” it’s pretty much required.
Back at the hotel, the men receive the next date card: “Mike Johnson, Guitar Guy, Footloose, The Tony Robbins Fan, Shower Jesus, Vocal Fry, Humphrey Bogart: Let’s discover Riga. Love, Hannah.” This means that Pilot Peter will receive the final one-on-one date to Humphrey Bogart and The Tony Robbins Fan’s gnawing sense of dread. Might as well pack your suitcases now, boys.
The next morning, before they head out on their date, Arnold Palmer tells the other men about naked bungee jumping. “NO,” Shower Jesus says, “I REJECT THIS. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN. HANNAH DID NOT GET NAKED WITH THIS PERSON.”
So they group date. They go to a market, they drink moonshine, they eat dried fish and pickles, they stand around while Hannah dances with some locals, they arm wrestle, they ride on a tram. It’s on the tram that Hannah tells the men about naked bungee jumping, and the tiny little nugget of meat that is Shower Jesus’s brain explodes inside his giant empty lunchbox of a skull. “I MEAN, NOT REALLY, THOUGH,” he insists, but she explains that it’s just this thing that Latvians do, and when in Rome, you know?
As Hannah leads them into an 800-year-old church, all the while Shower Jesus soliloquies about how THIS IS THE WOMAN HE WANTS TO SPEND THE REST OF HIS LIFE WITH and that HER BODY IS HER TEMPLE and how SHE SHOULD NOT EXPOSE IT TO ANYONE BUT HER HUSBAND and how THIS IS A SLAP IN THE FACE TO HIM, A MAN WHO WAS VERY NEARLY SENT HOME TWO DAYS AGO FOR BEING AN ASSHOLE and HE HAS TO SAY SOMETHING TO HER, IT’S IMPORTANT.
That night at the cocktail portion of the date, Footloose is the first to take her aside where he tells her how impressed he was at how she handled the rose ceremony situation in Scotland, and that her fighting spirit is exactly what he is looking for. Hannah straddles him and they make out.
Hannah is also serenaded on the piano by Guitar Guy, whatever.
Meanwhile, out in the lobby, Shower Jesus shares his concern about naked bungee jumping with the other men, and Footloose, God bless him, is all, “Frankly, I respect her for going for it. It’s her decision, let her have her own experiences and live life to the max, right?”
NONOTRIGHT, screams Shower Jesus’ teeny tiny amygdala. He then explains that he has a plan for winning the date rose: 1. He’s going to slut shame her, 2. ???, 3. DATE ROSE!
And so, step 1.: The slut shaming. With his time alone with her, Shower Jesus begins by asking if she’s ever been cheated on, noting that it makes you feel like your stomach has been turned inside out. He then explains that this is how he felt when he heard about naked bungee jumping. Her body is a temple, and the thought of her holding that temple against another man, it PISSED HIM OFF. He’s looking forward to introducing her to his family, he explains, and this was a SLAP IN THE FACE. But no matter what terrible decisions she makes going forward, he wants her to know that he will do whatever it takes to make it right.
This idiot, he is SO PROUD of himself, believing that he just did something brave and strong and not INCREDIBLY SEXIST AND RUDE AND PROFOUNDLY INSULTING.
As for Hannah, she gives the date rose to Footloose, thank God.
The next day, Hannah meets Pilot Peter out in the countryside where she takes him to a pirts, which is basically a sauna + some woodswitch magic hoodoo. A Latvian couple rubs them with potions and hit them with leaves and then shove them into a sauna where they make out.
After, as they hot tub (because obviously hot tub — between the hot tub and the “bungee jumping = falling in love” crap, if you’ve been playing Bachelorette Bingo, you should be close to a winning card by now), Pilot Peter mentions that his fee-fees were hurt when she lumped him in with all the other bickering dudes, and he just wants her to know that he’s not in the middle of all the Shower Jesus dramaz, thanks.
That night at dinner, he asks her about where she gets her confidence, and Hannah replies that if any of them are looking for someone quiet or demure, they’ve come to the wrong place, SHOWER JESUS.
Hannah asks him about being a pilot and how that has affected his relationships. He confesses it can get lonely before explaining that he had been in a very serious relationship but it didn’t work out and as a result, he’s put up guards around his heart.
Go ahead and mark “guarding my heart” off on your Bachelorette Bingo card.
He then tells her that he is falling for her, before reciting some Spanish saying about letting rivers flow or some shit. Hannah identifies with this, explaining that she had been engaged twice before (wait, did we know that? I mean, I’m sure it had to have come up at some point, and it feels vaguely familiar, but it seems like it should also be A MUCH BIGGER DEAL?) and that everything that she has been through has led her to this moment or some crap. She offers him the rose before heading out to look at fireworks.
That night when Pilot Peter returns to the hotel, Guitar Guy sneaks out with his guitar and serenades Hannah until she invites him upstairs to her room. There, he plays an entire song for her which I guess is supposed to be some sort of grand romantic gesture and not just free publicity? Anyway, he whispers that he is falling in love with her which might come as a surprise to the two women he was allegedly schtupping moments before he joined the show.
Back at the hotel, Arnold Palmer confronts Shower Jesus about bitching to anyone who would listen about his naked bungee jumping date, noting that this is a perfect example of Shower Jesus “coming out of his lane.” Shower Jesus counters that Hannah is his girlfriend, too, and therefore what she does on dates with other men is “[his] business.” But then something happens, Shower Jesus has a flicker of self-realization that maybe, just maybe he’s sounding like the asshole here, and he asks Arnold Palmer to promise to not bring any of this up at the Rose Ceremony. Arnold Palmer just laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs because WHY? WHY SHOULD HE PROMISE ANY SUCH THING? So Shower Jesus yells at him to leave this area that is not his bedroom. GOODNIGHT.
The next day, Hannah surprises the men in the hotel room and asks to speak to Shower Jesus alone. There, Hannah explains that it took her a little while to be offended by the SEXIST AND INSULTING BULLSHIT he had to say about her naked bungee jumping date BUT SHE FINALLY GOT THERE. HERE WE ARE.
Shower Jesus, this fucking asshole, tries to claim that when he said that her going naked bungee jumping with another man was a slap in the face to him and that it gave him pause about bringing her home to his family and that she made a “boneheaded mistake” that he didn’t mean those things, and that in fact, he fully respects the decisions that she makes with her own body. He was just misunderstood!
But now Shower Jesus, he’s happy they’re back on track and all of that has been cleared up because, honestly, he doesn’t even really remember what he said.
Hannah is like, 1. WE ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT BACK ON TRACK and 2. I REMEMBER EVERYTHING AND WHAT YOU SAID WAS FUCKING DISRESPECTFUL.
While Shower Jesus promises, again, to do better, Hannah wonders why it’s SO GODDAMNED HARD WITH HIM.
Well, we can begin with the fact that he’s a lying, misogynistic halfwit who uses his religion to justify his insecurities and impulses to control what women do with their bodies. We can begin there.
Shower Jesus returns to the men where, again, he’s fairly forthcoming about the fact that he just had another difficult conversation with Hannah, before blaming Arnold Palmer for telling everyone about the naked bungee jumping and making Shower Jesus jealous. Nevermind that Hannah also told the men about the date, this is obviously Arnold Palmer’s fault, and he needs to STAY IN HIS LANE. The rest of the men are like, “dude, that’s not what that means …” but SHOWER JESUS MAD, SHOWER JESUS YELL until Chris Harrison pops his head in and is like, “Go get dressed and get in line: Hannah is ready to hand out roses and doesn’t want to spend any time listening to you bozos yell at each other.”
The men grumble that Shower Jesus RUINS EVERYTHING, and line up.
Rose #1: Guitar Guy
Rose #2: Mike Johnson
Rose #3: Vocal Fry
Rose #4: Shower Jesus
Which means goodbye to That Tony Robbins Fan and Humphrey Bogart, a completely predictable outcome considering together they might have said all of three sentences on camera.
Meanwhile, alone with Hannah, even Chris Harrison is like, “SHOWER JESUS STAYS? HIM? IS HE FUNNY?”
OH WE ALL KNOW WHICH ONE IT IS, BABYGIRL.
Say goodbye to the men who have been eliminated:
Here are the men along with their dumb nicknames who are still “dating” The Beast. All nicknames subject to change when I — or one of you — think of something better:
The Bachelorette airs Mondays on ABC at 7/8 p.m.
SHOWER JESUS MAD SHOWER JESUS YELL hah! Worth the wait 🙂