Thirty-Word Recap
We try to summarize the episode in 30 words: one word for each contestant the season started with.
Ariel: Nick stupidly sends Rachel home, but she is our bachelorette, yay. Women Tell All is horrible to watch. Taylor sucks. Vanessa and Nick are terrible together. I hope Raven wins.
Matthew: Nick has convoluted conversations with Rachel and Vanessa. He argues most with Vanessa, so obviously he sends Rachel home. Everyone loses at Women Tell All. Raven frolics in the snow.
Fantasy Suites! Discuss!
Matthew: This week was a horribly edited mess where somehow the least that has happened on this show all season took three entire hours to tell. The first hour of the show was the remaining two fantasy suite dates with Rachel and Vanessa (and also the morning after with Raven, which strongly suggested the outcome of the orgasm cliffhanger with a sequence of her frolicking in the snow like a woman seeing the joy of the world for the first time – these forty seconds were honestly the only thing worth watching this week).
"Nick is really good at what he does, so I'm pretty satisfied today." – Raven#TheBachelor pic.twitter.com/4q0emrB4IB
— The Bachelor (@BachelorABC) March 7, 2017
Matthew: And then the last two hours was Women Tell All, where they bring back all the contestants to rehash old drama. It was as horrible as it sounds.
Let’s speculate on whether Raven or Vanessa’s going to win next week. I’d much rather try to guess the ending than summarize an hour of Nick’s passive aggressive and weirdly nonsensical conversations with the remaining contestants like he was trying to wring out any potential reason to dump someone, anyone at this point.
Ariel: My speculation about the winner is that it’s Vanessa. I think the fact that they disagree on what feels like everything and he’s still kept her in means it’s probably her. Like you’ve suggested, the editing here feels designed to throw us off.
Matthew: Totally agree. No way it’s not Vanessa. The misdirection could only be more obvious if she were wearing a shirt that said “TOTALLY NOT GOING TO WIN THIS SEASON”
It’s so weird because he hasn’t had… ANY tension with Raven? Or with Rachel, even, for that matter? There was nothing but fairly pleasant footage between Nick and those two, but every episode has at least one “I don’t know where our relationship is!” scene between Nick and Vanessa.
It’s befuddling why he’s sending home the people he is. Which, yeah, is how these things work anyway, of course. It’s all based in feelings and doesn’t always make sense. But it was still so strange to see Nick send Rachel home when they had a fairly nice time?
Except for the part where Nick told Rachel he’s also sort of a minority, which was when she should have sent HIM home tbh. THANKS FOR MAKING ME REGRET SAYING YOU HANDLED RACE WELL, NICK.
Ariel: Wait, was that when she was saying he was rare because of the type of guy he was, and he was like, “I’m white, but I guess that makes me a minority in a way” really jokingly? I forget the exact phrasing, but it was along those lines, I think. It was an odd moment, and I didn’t bother to rewind, but I didn’t think it was that bad? It was kind of funny even though it was stupid.
Matthew: I’m gonna admit that my friends were super chatty this week so I probably missed a bunch of stuff, like the context for that one. That said, I’m white and I would 100% not say that? That kind of joke is SO your mileage will vary, even as a joke.
Like it worked for them, cool. I feel like that’s a joke that people will definitely have different reactions to? It just sounded cringeworthy to me.
Ariel: Yeah, it felt more like a bad dad joke than offensive.
Matthew: Although “cringeworthy” could describe literally anything Nick said this week.
Ariel: Right?? It was not his finest MULTIPLE HOURS.
Matthew: SO MANY BAD TALKS. I bet the producers told him he REALLY needs to get these women to talk about whether they love him or not this week, because goddamn that cirque du soleil-level word salad that poured out of his mouth for like five minutes before Rachel said she was falling in love with him.
By the end of that he was saying something that was asking her about her biggest fears and checking her ego and DUDE STOP THIS IS BAD DATING.
Ariel: Yeah he was trying so hard to give her her cue to tell him she was falling for him. I think whoever is going to be the next Bachelor/Bachelorette has to be/seem completely heartbroken so everyone roots extra hard for them during their season.
Back to what you were saying about the lack of tension between Nick and Raven specifically. I agree! It’s not even in a boring way, it’s in a way that seems completely natural for when you’re dating someone and are actually compatible. I don’t think either of them would shy away from a conflict if one had come up. I think that Nick and Vanessa are confusing their arguments for being really in love. Look how passionate we are! Look how much we are struggling to make this work! It must be worthwhile!
Ariel: I don’t know, though. Maybe they will manage to figure things out, but it seemed like a huge red flag that Vanessa won’t compromise on seeing her family every Sunday for forever. Nick also seems very close to his family.
Another red flag was the way she cut him off when he tried to explain himself. It was cheesy when he was like, “I’m proud to be an American.” But I get it, and for her to immediately jump down his throat and be like WELL I’M PROUD TO BE CANADIAN shows me that she couldn’t take five fucking seconds to hear him out and empathise and be like, “I get it because I feel the same way about my country.”
Nick had to be like, “You asked me…I’m not saying you’re not proud to be Canadian?” That is a weird thing to have to clarify given it was so obvious.
Matthew: Pretty much. I have to wonder how much is actually bad communication and how much is weirdly terrible editing. I totally zoned out for most of these conversations because they just did NOT make sense.
And then Rachel went home, although we’ve known she’s the next Bachelorette for a month now, speaking of strange decisions, so that was underwhelming.
I don’t think there’s really anything else to talk about with the fantasy suites. For an hour of tv where someone banged three people, it was really uneventful.
Women Tell All! (We Hate This Shit)
Ariel: The Women Tell All gave me so much anxiety. It was people just talking over and arguing with each other constantly! It was like being at one of my family’s gatherings.
Ariel: One thing I found really interesting was which of the women came to Corinne’s defense this time around. Obviously, Josephine has always been Team Corinne, but Jasmine had a total turn-around with her!
I think it’s clear from even some of the blooper footage of like Corinne and Raven being hysterical together that Corinne probably is a pretty nice person and her unpleasant sides stem from insecurity. She was correct when she said she didn’t say other things about the women in the house except Taylor and that was AFTER Taylor was mean to her.
Taylor repeatedly telling Corinne she was trying to help her and that actually Taylor was the victim was such a typical mean girl strategy. Corinne did try to ask people in the house why there was animosity towards her, that is different than what Taylor supplied.
I forget who it was, maybe Josephine, who was like, “It was up to Nick to decide how he felt about Corinne, not you guys…and he clearly liked her a lot.” I was like THANK YOU. And why were they so fixated on the disrespect of not going to this one Rose Ceremony when she had a rose already????
I can totally get how that was annoying for them since the Rose Ceremony is a notoriously miserable experience, but it makes everyone who keeps acting like it was the worst thing ever look very very silly.
I actually have a lot more to say about the Liz stuff and some other bits and bobs, but I will give you time to respond before I launch into that rant.
Matthew: Oh man, I am so pumped to talk about literally anything that is not Taylor/Corinne beef, so I really want to get through this fast. I have so little interest in analyzing a 23-year-old and a 24-year-old arguing about who’s more mature.
I totally agree with everything you said but also still 100% do not like Corinne.
I’m so glad you brought up how interesting it was how (just about) everyone came to Corinne’s defense, because The Bachelor edits out so much of the women’s friendships that it becomes guesswork, or it makes it look like everyone fucking hates Corinne when clearly that wasn’t the case! MORE BAD EDITING. BOO.
I totally agree that Taylor came off looking like a mean idiot here and wound up very clearly having the worst night of her life, but I have to push back on how open Corinne was to self-reflection. She was asked multiple times if she saw how her actions or words could at least be interpreted in ways aside from how she meant them, and she repeatedly did not budge, which is one thing with the nap bullshit, but another thing entirely when she refused to see how anyone could possibly understand the word “nanny” differently. And then she wound up saying “I didn’t want to insult her by calling her a cleaning lady”, so, uh, fuck cleaning ladies, I guess? I’m not saying that her comments like that come from a place of intentional malice, but they do come from an unwillingness to consider others’ perspectives.
Matthew: Mostly I’m just kinda bummed out that no one could actually identify her actual worst behaviors and we instead just talked about naps for an hour.
Ariel: YES I have to agree with you there, Corinne doesn’t seem open to much self-reflection. The whole cleaning-lady thing was really weird. I knew she was trying to say that there wasn’t a way to refer to Raquel that expressed her relationship with the family, but the more she repeated it, the more uncomfortable I felt.
Matthew: And “nanny” STILL doesn’t explain their closeness!
Ariel: Well, I think she was her nanny when she was younger
Matthew: Fair, but she just didn’t understand that the words she was using did not mean the same thing outside of her head.
Ariel: Yeah, she could have clarified and said, “She used to be my nanny” or something.
Matthew: And I’m definitely kicking the hornet’s nest with this one, but I have to air one last Corinne-related thing: seeing the audience members with Trump-style red baseball caps saying “Make America Corinne Again” just made me REALLY uncomfortable.
Ariel: Oh my gosh those hats…hate it. The joke/sentiment there feels more sinister than it should.
Matthew: Right? I don’t want to talk politics, but it’s not as innocuous a joke as Corinne and ABC seem to think.
And just to preemptively counter the “it’s just parody!” counterargument… okay, but it’s not, because parody has a target. Who’s the target of THAT joke?
Ariel: Make America…blonde/white/privileged again…?
Matthew: RIGHT? THANK YOU.
Ariel: I don’t get it. It’s not funny, and if anything it could be read as literally as what I said above which is…awful.
Matthew: All the first black Bachelorette stuff is in such stark contrast with how much The Bachelor just tried to ignore Corinne’s privilege.
Ariel: Well, I certainly don’t think she’s the only one with privilege. I actually find it creepier the way everyone seems to fetishize Kristina’s past more than ignoring the privilege.
Oh god all the other women trying to use Kristina’s suffering to show how emotional it made them and how caring they were…I couldn’t.
Matthew: Well, yeah, privilege on The Bachelor franchise is not limited to Corinne. Fun fact: the twins from Ben’s season have their own TV show now.
Yo, Kristina was a delightful contestant, but god did they make her a one-note contestant.
Ariel: Oh god I saw that on twitter and was like LOL WHY but I might watch it.
Matthew: I was rolling my eyes a lot as they really started laying on the “but now you live in AMERICA, LAND OF OPPORTUNITY” more and more.
Ariel: RIGHT???
Matthew: Like, “dude, really not the year.”
Ariel: When Liz was like WE ALL NEED TO THINK ABOUT HOW PRIVILEGED WE ARE. I was like well, yeah, probably, but stop trying to get more attention.
So Liz had clearly had time to practice making her explanation about coming on the show sound less convoluted, but it still reeked of BS.
No one cared that she slept with Nick…but somehow her whole speech turned into how you should love people for who they are and not their past. It was like, “I don’t care about you! Or any of this! Why are people cheering?”
It would be like if I opened a new restaurant and was giving my speech about how excited I was, and then when I realized people weren’t as pumped as I’d hoped, I was like, “ALSO TERRORISM IS BAD” and people would be forced to agree with me.
So Liz forced people to clap for her correct message but in the wrong context.
Matthew: The show tried SO HARD to make that drama a thing and no one was having it, and during Women Tell All they were like “hey, you know what I bet will be interesting this time?”
I liked that one contestant who was like “all anyone knows about Liz is that she slept with Nick”, which I choose to interpret as her throwing shade AT THE SHOW, because that made me happy. MORE. BAD. EDITING.
Ariel: omg omg omg I’m so happy you brought that line up because I had something to say about that!! So before every commercial break they played that line like what she said next was going to be a SHOCK.
So whoever that was, she says, “all anyone knows about Liz is that she slept with Nick, but I know her as someone who volunteers for orphans” or something like that. Like she follows it up with this very nice statement about Liz, but what the fuck were they trying to make us think she followed that line up with? “All anyone knows about Liz is that she slept with Nick, but I know her as someone WHO POOPS ON CHILDREN CONSTANTLY!”
Matthew: This is a minor point, but I just remembered that she actually said “All America knows about Liz…”, which was where I was like “lol Bachelor, calm down”.
Ariel: YES good memory! As though America is like, “LIZ slept with NICK!!!!” When I feel like America is like, “WHO??? Where is my taco???”
Matthew: I feel like Liz sleeping with Nick is not the #1 thing on America’s mind right now.
Ariel: I would venture to say not even #40,000
Matthew: Not even #40,000 on this show.
Ariel: Maybe it falls somewhere between, “I wonder what peanutbutter would taste like with mushrooms” and “Did anyone else watch Step by Step or was it just me.”
Matthew: I think the only other things of note from Women Tell All were Rachel talking about being next Bachelorette and Nick returning to take some heat, but nothing worth talking about happened? I’m way more pumped for Rachel’s season than to watch the finale of this season where Nick obviously chooses Vanessa?
Ariel: Everything else was just yelling and Alexis immediately admitting she was in a shark costume. There was not enough Alexis.
We Give Out Our Own Roses (For Acting The Most And The Least Like An Adult)
Matthew: My rose for Acting The Most Like An Adult goes to Raven for her celebration of female sexual desire vis a vis a montage of joyous snow angels. Why the fuck not. No one else acted remotely like a grown-ass human this week.
Matthew: I want to say my Acting The Least Like An Adult rose goes to everyone else, but I can narrow it down to just Corinne, Taylor, Nick, and Vanessa. All four of them. For reasons extensively outlined in the rest of the post. Way to make me feel every second of this three-hour episode, you monsters.
Ariel: I think my Acting The Most Like An Adult goes to Rachel who just is always so wonderful and even could handle being heartbroken with so much grace.
Acting The Least Like An Adult was everyone who spoke more than like 3 times at the Tell All. Anyone who spoke less than that gets an honorary Acting The Most Like An Adult rose.
Matthew: Honorary Acting Most Like Alexis rose goes to the woman in the audience who found and wore Alexis’s shark costume.
Ariel: HAHAHAHAH. YES.
Matthew: Goddamn, I hope Rachel’s season is good. It’s weirdly hard to stand out on the show once it’s about you, somehow. I’m so pumped for her season.
Ariel: Do you know when it starts? It must be super soon, right?
Matthew: In May. Thank GOD. I need a break.
