‘The Bachelorette’: A bunch of bologna

The Bachelorette
July 1, 2019

From exotic Latvia, we head to the considerably more familiar environs of The Netherlands (which, by the way, great game, ladies, but U!S!A! U!S!A! U!S!A!) where Hannah spins around in fields of tulips and reminds us that this is the final week before the Dreaded Hometowns. The producers have also told her that it’s time for her to start share with the men how she feels about them because I suppose we haven’t had enough drama on this dumb show.

Hannah meets the men at a sidewalk cafe where she asks Guitar Guy to go on the first date with her. As they leave to go wander around Amsterdam, Shower Jesus laments that time with Hannah that has been “robbed” from him, all the while insisting that he’s just concerned about Hannah. The other men are all, “DUDE, IT’S YOU. YOU’RE THE ONE ROBBING ALL OF US OF TIME WITH HANNAH. CAN YOU TRY TO NOT BE SO FUCKING AWFUL IN THIS LAST WEEK? PLEASE?”

Meanwhile, on their date, Hannah and Guitar Guy buy chocolates, go to a toy store, take a boat ride in the canals, dance to some sort of calliope contraption and talk to an older couple who have been planted at a sidewalk cafe for this very purpose.

Question: Does the Bachelor put out a casting call for older couples who have been married for a significant amount of time (and ideally chose to get married after an astonishingly short courtship period) in every country they go to? Or are these people just straight-up actors doing a little Bachelor improv? I’m genuinely curious about the mechanics of this.

That night at “dinner,” Hannah announces that she is going to tell Guitar Guy how she feels about him and how she feels about him is THUMBS UP. Apparently, while they were dancing to that calliope contraption, everything started spinning for her and she came to realize that she had been drugged is falling in love with him.

ARE YOU EVEN ALLOWED TO DO THAT? WE HAVEN’T HAD HOMETOWNS YET. I’m going to have to go to the ancient Bachelor library and consult the sacred texts, but I believe this is the earliest that I’ve seen a Bachelor or Bachelorette tell any of the contestants that they are falling in love with them.

Hannah adds that she’s still not sure how any of this is going to play out for her, but she just felt the need to give him some false hope assurance that her feelings for him are progressing, too. And with that, she OBVIOUSLY offers him the date rose.

Back at the hotel, the next date card arrives: “Footloose: will you ride into the sunset with me? Hannah.” Footloose is obviously thrilled to receive the date card, while Vocal Fry, who hasn’t been on a one-on-one since that early date that had to be aborted because she was sick, crosses his fingers that he’ll receive the last one-on-one date of the week.

As for their date, Hannah and Footloose ineptly ride a pair of horses around The Hague. I’m not even a horse girl but this level of riding incompetence, it is painful to watch.

Also, Hannah makes Tyler eat a pickled herring and he very nearly vomits all over her. Great date.

That night at dinner, Hannah pushes Footloose to share more about himself — just tear open those emotional wounds and bleed your family issues all over national television, she insists. So Footloose begins talking about how his family lost their house in the financial crisis and had to move into a much smaller home. This put pressure on his parents’ marriage, which led to divorce. Hannah insists that she can relate even though her parents are still married because she doesn’t like the way her parents communicate, which is TOTALLY the same thing as divorce, definitely.

Then there is some talk about the fear of failure before Hannah finally offers him the date rose, yawn.

At the hotel, the final date card is delivered: “Mike Johnson: I’m drawn to you. Hannah.” Vocal Fry, realizing that this means one more group date for him, goes for a Hail Mary and marches to Hannah’s room to speak to her … to convince her to take him off of the group date? I’m unsure what his plan is here.

Vocal Fry whines at her about being constantly relegated to group dates, and Hannah is like, “I hear you, but the thing is, you suck at group dates and that’s why I never gave you another one-on-one date besides that time I called you to my sickbed. And you know what? While you’re here, why don’t you just go ahead and pack your shit, ain’t no way I’m meeting your parents, bye.”

The next day, Hannah and Mike Johnson ride their bikes to an artist’s studio where they take turns drawing brilliantly terrible drawings of one another.

Genuinely, these portraits are genius.

They then wrap some sateen scarves around themselves in the weirdest possible ways and sit for a portrait by an actual artist. I want to buy all of this “art.”

That evening, while waiting for Mike Johnson to arrive for “dinner,” Hannah wanders around the Mauritshuis museum and has a moment with the Girl with a Pearl Earring …

… before being reduced to tears by a painting of St. Catherine for some damn reason.

Mike Johnson arrives to find a weepy Hannah who explains that she’s been crying over the art, particularly a painting of St. Catherine holding a sword and a bible while men fight in the background and she just connected with it, you know?

Yep. Because having a handful of bemuscled halfwits fighting for your affection is exactly the same thing as being scourged, starved and beheaded by a Roman emperor. SAME THING.

Hannah continues to explain that seeing the art and stuff, being surrounded by so much beauty is overwhelming before lowering the boom: she knows there are three important ladies in his life, she just doesn’t think she is going to be the fourth. Mike Johnson, who had to have seen this coming from a thousand miles away, still seems surprised somehow, but handles it with grace, thanking her for her honesty.

In the ga nu naar huis van, Mike Johnson sighs that Hannah “crushed” him, but this won’t be the last we see of Mike Johnson. The only question is whether or not the producers will do the right thing and make him the next Bachelor or whether they will do the most fucking predictable thing in the world and add him to Paradise.

MAKE HIM THE BACHELOR, YOU COWARDS.

While the men wait to learn Mike Johnson’s fate at the hotel, Shower Jesus notes that he would be happy to see Mike Johnson go home, prompting Footloose to call him a “5’8″ villain.”

When Footloose points out that NOBODY LIKES HIM, Shower Jesus is all, “NUH-UH! ARNOLD PALMER WAS NICE TO ME THE OTHER DAY.” In response, Arnold Palmer clarifies that he was just bullshitting Shower Jesus. He didn’t mean anything that might have been perceived as being polite, he just can’t be openly rude to someone’s face when there aren’t cameras to play to.

Pilot Peter and Arnold Palmer remind Shower Jesus that they are all on the group date in the morning and that THERE BETTER NOT BE ANY MORE GODDAMNED BULLSHIT COMING FROM HIS END. GOT IT?

The next morning before Shower Jesus, Pilot Peter and Arnold Palmer leave for their final group date, just to try to reinforce what they have all been saying one last time, Guitar Guy advises Shower Jesus to keep his head out of his ass and not worry about the other guys. Shower Jesus, he is SHOCKED! JUST SHOCKED! that Guitar Guy would say such a thing to him. SHOCKED.

Hannah meets the men … somewhere. It’s unclear what this building is but it also doesn’t matter in the least. Shower Jesus asks to take her aside first, and Pilot Peter and Arnold Palmer joke about just taking the two date roses and leaving because NO TO THAT GUY.

When they are alone, Shower Jesus whines at Hannah that he wishes she could see how the other men treat him when she’s not around, not that he’s going to name names. But if he WERE going to name names, why, just this morning Guitar Guy told him to keep his head out of his ass, CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE? Also, too, Arnold Palmer told him he was just being FAKE NICE TO HIM. It’s all so terrible, really.

Hannah then asks to speak to Arnold Palmer, who tries to avoid the Shower Jesus conversation, telling her instead that he’s been at such peace since he told her that he was falling in love with her. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” says Hannah, “So what’s this about you being fake nice to Shower Jesus?” Arnold Palmer sighs heavily and explains that yes, he was bullshitting Shower Jesus, but that’s just because he’s Southern and he can’t be openly rude to someone’s face, it’s just not physically possible.

Arnold Palmer then leaves Hannah and interrupts Shower Jesus’ lunchmeat feast to inform him that Hannah told him Shower Jesus has been talking shit about him again. Shower Jesus insists that he was just answering Hannah’s questions, but Arnold Palmer is all, “Whatever. Listen, I know you’re full of shit and now Hannah does too, and you’re just the fakest person I’ve ever met, but it’s all good because she is definitely sending your short ass home” before smirking and calling Shower Jesus “a weasel or a snake,” and “Shower Jesus, psychopath the snake,” which is frankly just not a very catchy nickname. Shower Jesus gets up from his chair to scream in Arnold Palmer’s face that he and Hannah HAVE SOMETHING SPECIAL and ARNOLD PALMER is NOT going to MESS IT UP. Shower Jesus then throws a handful of bologna at Arnold Palmer, “BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT ARNOLD PALMER IS. A PILE OF BOLOGNA.”

Shower Jesus, he realizes that he done fucked up, though, and he tries to take Pilot Peter aside to explain that yes, he did shit talk the other men to Hannah, BUT HE CAN EXPLAIN. But Pilot Peter is like, “Jesus Christ, dude, what is wrong with your dumb brain?”

And Pilot Peter, who is the only man on this date with an ounce of sense, he avoids the Shower Jesus potholes entirely when he chats with Hannah, which is why he receives the date rose.

As for the other rose, that must wait until later that night, and after Shower Jesus and Arnold Palmer have another staredown, this time with bonus bologna face.

+

Best. Episode. Ever.

So that night, Arnold Palmer, Shower Jesus and Hannah have dinner, where, again, Shower Jesus is the first to take Hannah aside to talk. There, for the first time, apparently, he shares with her his shower testimony: when he first went to college, he drank too much and made a lot of the sex. But then Jesus told him in the shower to stop making all the sex, so he did. Hannah finds this story moving, and announces that she feels so much more connected to him now.

Hannah then chats with Arnold Palmer who talks about how excited he is to bring her home and adds that it hit him like a ton of bricks that day that he is in love with her.

But Arnold Palmer fails to punctuate this profession of love with any stories about hearing Jesus in the bathroom, so when it is time to hand out the final rose of the night …

Rose #1: Shower Jesus

Hannah walks a stunned Arnold Palmer out to the ga nu naar huis van, where he takes the rejection surprisingly well, telling her to not apologize — he gave it his best.

Bye, Arnold Palmer. You were a little smirky, but you were still leagues better than Shower Jesus.

If it’s any consolation, the preview for the coming episodes sure make it look like Hannah will eventually figure out that Shower Jesus is a manipulative, slut-shaming asshole and he will get his when she informs him that she had sex with someone else in a windmill (!!!)

Speaking of that preview: there’s been a TON of speculation that the windmill sex must have happened during this week in the Netherlands on account of the fact that the country is famous for its windmills. Viewers even began speculating that it must have been on Hannah’s date with Guitar Guy because there was a shot of a windmill early in the date.

However. Having written about this show for years now, I’m here to tell you there is NO CHANCE Hannah and Guitar Guy had sex on this date without the show making a big goddamned deal of it and AIN’T NO CHANCE they snuck away without the producers knowing.

Instead, I think the windmill sex must have happened during the Fantasy Suites. I wish I could remember where I saw this originally, but some blogger pointed out that the Fantasy Suites take place in Greece, and that there are luxury villas in old windmills that you can rent out in Mykonos.

My money is Footloose in the Mykonos windmill. Twice.

Say goodbye to the men who have been eliminated:

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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:

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The Bachelorette airs Mondays on ABC at 7/8 p.m.