Author: Debra Yeo (Page 21 of 29)

Watchable the week of March 8, 2021

March 8, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOWS OF THE WEEK: Pandora’s Box (March 8, Vimeo, iTunes, GooglePlay and more); Underplayed (March 8, Crave)

Christine Okili Khatıma, right, in Nairobi, Kenya, and some of the women who work for her,
sewing menstrual kits for girls. PHOTO CREDIT: IR Films

If you’re female, female-identifying or just have a well developed sense of fairness, these two documentaries may enrage you. But, for me, there was also exhilaration — that women are taking steps to right historic wrongs, not sitting around waiting for someone, i.e. men, to do it for them.

Did you know that in the state of Texas you won’t have to pay tax on a cowboy hat, but you’ll be taxed on menstrual projects? How bloody ridiculous is that?

That kind of dissonance — and the general shame and stigmatization heaped on half the world’s population for something that’s part of their biology — is the subject of “Pandora’s Box: Lifting the Lid on Menstruation,” written and directed by Canadian Rebecca Snow.

It makes the case that “period poverty,” the inability of women and girls (or anyone of any gender identity who bleeds) to access menstrual products, is a question of human rights, not just an inconvenience. And it’s something that can have serious consequences, keeping girls out of school — not just in developing countries like Kenya and India but in poor parts of so-called first world nations.

Part of the battle is getting menstruation talked about openly and not treated as something dirty that women have to hide — a tall order when there are still places where women are required to shut themselves away when they are menstruating and when 60 per cent of girls, as per UNICEF, don’t even know what a period is before they get one. One of the saddest parts of the doc for me concerned Hellen, a bright Kenyan teen who wanted to be a teacher but stopped going to school because her family could only afford pads for one daughter and she was too embarrassed about the possibility of bleeding in class.

There are good parts, too. Thanks to the work of the Period Equity project, 20 American states have stopped taxing period products. Britain abolished the “tampon tax” in January (in Canada, the GST was removed from menstrual products in 2015). Organizations like Days for Girls, Safe N’ Happy Periods, the Myna Mahila Foundation, the Red Box Project and Ladies of Hope Ministries, to name ones highlighted in the doc, are getting period products directly to women and girls and/or educating them about menstruation. But as the doc states, “The fight for menstrual equity continues.”

Canadian DJ Rezz, a.k.a. Isabelle Rezazadeh, in “Underplayed.” PHOTO CREDIT:

The subject matter of “Underplayed” is not as universal but no less stirring. It concerns the dearth of women in the electronic music industry.

Female pioneers (think Delia Derbyshire, Clara Rockmore, Wendy Carlos or Daphne Oram) are not well known; women comprised just 8 per cent of the solo acts at EDM festivals in 2019; women who do break through, like Canada’s Rezz, Australia’s Nervo and Alison Wonderland, and American Tokimonsta, get paid less than men and have to endure implicit and overt sexism, including vicious social media posts.

And yet the impulse to create endures, despite the obstacles.

I was cheered by vignettes like Rezz performing at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre; the twin sisters of Nervo cheerfully bringing along their babies to gigs; Alison Wonderland sharing the stage with an all-female group of musicians; and queer Jamaican-American DJ TYGAPAW defying poverty and the patriarchal attitudes they grew up with to make their music.

And all of these artists, along with others highlighted in the doc, are teaching and inspiring young girls and women.

Electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani says she thought that women in the industry were “done, gone, finished, lost,” but with this new crop of women, “we’re on the crest of a big wave.” Long may it roll on.

I have one more program to draw your attention to, also debuting on March 8, International Women’s Day. “Secret of the Missing Princess” (BBC Select) examines the disturbing case of Princess Latifa, daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and vice-president of the United Arab Emirates. Latifa hasn’t been seen since February 2018 when she was captured during an escape attempt, on a boat in international waters, and taken back to Dubai. In a video she recorded before her flight, posted seven days after she was taken, Latifa described both the escape and recapture of her sister Shamsa in 2000 in England, an offence against British law for which the UAE was never held accountable, and her own first attempt to flee in 2002, after which Latifa said she was held in solitary confinement and tortured for more than three years. Her disappearance has raised grave concerns for her welfare in a place where women have no rights and are essentially considered the property of men. “If you are watching this video either I’m dead or I’m in a very, very bad situation,” Latifa says.

63 Up (March 9, BritBox)

Cab driver Tony, one of 14 people whose lives have been documented from the age of 7 up,
in the documentary “63 Up.” PHOTO CREDIT: BritBox

There’s an added poignancy to this instalment in the “Up” series, which has followed its 14 subjects since 1964, beginning at the age of 7 and every seven years after. The death of filmmaker Michael Apted in January means this is the final chapter.

The 12 people who participated in “63 Up” — one woman, Suzy, declined; another, Lynn, died — will go on, or not, but we’ll no longer have a window into the twists and turns of their lives.

They’ve been ordinary lives on the evidence of the films, which seem to be the most extraordinary thing that’s happened to them, turning them into minor celebrities according to cab driver Tony, who wanted to be a jockey when he was 7.

Only two of the 14 ended up with the careers they envisioned as kids: upper crust lads Andrew and John, who became a solicitor and barrister, respectively.

Yet, overall they’ve lived lives of satisfaction despite the disappointments. All 14 married, some more than once; many take great pride in children and grandchildren. Others have found ways to compensate for career shortcomings: Tony with occasional acting jobs; Jackie in late-life closeness with her sister; Paul as a foster parent; Peter in his rock band and the novel he’s writing.

Even Neil, who seems to have had the roughest time, battling homelessness as a young man and ongoing depression, has found peace in his work as a municipal politician and in his church.

Apted began the project as a commentary on Britain’s class system but ended up with a treatise on the human condition. In their paths to futures that they never imagined at 7, the “Up” participants are individual but also universal. They are all of us.

100 Years From Home/What Will Become of Us (March 9, 8 and 9:30 p.m., PBS)

Lilit Pilikian at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia, in “100 Years From Home.” PHOTO CREDIT: Squared Pictures/WNED

If you’re not clear what the Armenian Genocide is or why it’s still a topic of conversation nearly 106 years after it began, these two documentaries will give you an understanding.

It was the extermination between 1915 and ’23 of as many as 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children by the Ottoman Empire in an area that is now part of Turkey. Those who weren’t killed outright were subject to rape, starvation, torture and displacement.

Obviously it had enormous psychic repercussions not just for those who were there but for their descendants.

In “100 Years From Home,” production designer Lilit Pilikian, whose parents were born in what remains of Armenia, becomes the first member of her family to return to Kars, Turkey — which was part of Western Armenia before the genocide — since her great-grandparents fled the city in 1920.

The journey is fraught, not just with the emotion stirred up by the genocide but with fear, since Lilit is an Armenian in Turkey (which continues to deny the genocide happened) searching for her family’s former home.

“I didn’t expect to be so angry,” says Lilit, who at the beginning of the doc (directed by her non-Armenian husband, Jared White) describes herself as not feeling Armenian enough.

I won’t tell you whether she found the house, the blueprints of which have been passed down through her family since 1897, but she definitely found a sense of identity.

“What Will Become of Us” is concerned not just with the repercussions of the genocide but with future generations moving out of its shadow while also retaining a sense of Armenian identity.

Among those we meet is survivor Asdghig Tetezian Alemian, who was 108 at the time of the interview. Her father was among the first group of men killed in 1915. Asdghig recalls her mother digging graves with her hands for her two brothers, who were 2 and 6 when they died, and says sorrowfully, “I don’t know what happened to my mother.”

Her granddaughter, Karine Shamlian, says descendants of Asdghig and others like her have a responsibility to “not let it have been in vain.”

The rest of the doc explores how those descendants are trying to keep their culture alive in America, including people like musician Sebu Simonian of the band Capital Cities; comedian and actor Lory Tatoulian; Andrew Hagopian, who is learning traditional music from his grandfather, oud master Richard Hagopian; and designer Michael Aram Wolohojian, who created a New York City sculpture to honour Armenians who migrated after the genocide.

Meanwhile, we see Aram Hamparian of the Armenian National Committee of America working to have the United States recognize the genocide, something that finally happened in 2019, after the doc was made.

As long as Turkey refuses to acknowledge the genocide, however, it will remain an open wound for Armenians.

Genera+ion (March 11, Crave)

Justice Smith as Chester in “Genera+ion.” PHOTO CREDIT: HBO Max/Bell Media

Your appreciation of this HBO Max drama might depend on what side of the generational divide you stand. Like other teen-focused dramas — I’m thinking “Euphoria” and “We Are Who We Are” as examples — it portrays youth as intelligent and self-aware but also cynical and sometimes behaving against their own best interests.

In the series, created by gay writer-director Daniel Barnz and his bisexual teenage daughter Zelda, and executive-produced by Lena Dunham (“Girls”), a diverse group of kids are fumbling their way through life and love while the adults around them, even kind-of-cool guidance counsellor Sam (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), come off as clueless and ineffectual.

Chester, played by out gay actor Justice Smith, is the most compelling of the group. He’s clearly smart as hell but pretends not to care about anything, including whether the repeated dress code violations spurred by his gender-non-conforming outfits will get him kicked out of school.

Nathan (Uly Schlesinger) is coming to terms with his bisexuality, which his Christian mother (Martha Plimpton) is doing her best to ignore, while his twin Naomi (Chloe East) is eager to gain heterosexual experience. Then there’s her friend Arianna (Nathanya Alexander), who’s attracted to Nathan but has experimented with girls, and who likes to shock people with her homophobic jokes even though she has two gay dads.

Riley (Chase Sui Wonders) seems to be straight, but there’s an undercurrent to her connection with Greta (Haley Sanchez), who’s lesbian and smitten with Riley.

In the four episodes I saw, the kids drank, smoked weed, made out, and shared many, many texts and Instagram posts, including a full-frontal dick pic.

The question for me was whether the series was building toward anything in particular aside from who might end up sleeping with whom. But perhaps, as the character of Delilah (Lukita Maxwell) complains about the school’s teaching materials, that’s too binary a way to look at it.

“Genera+ion” may not speak to me personally but, with its focus on racially and sexually diverse characters it still has something to say.

Odds and Ends

CBC’s “Nature of Things” has “The Last Walrus” (March 12, 9 p.m., also CBC Gem) as its season finale. The doc by Nathalie Bibeau examines the debate around keeping marine mammals in captivity in places like Niagara Falls’ Marineland and the Vancouver Aquarium. The title comes from the last adult walrus remaining at Marineland.

CBC Gem has the Canadian debut of “Bad Banks” (March 12), a German-Luxembourg drama about a woman thrust into the corrupt world of high finance at an investment bank.

Netflix has “Marriage or Mortgage” (March 10), a series that blends wedding and real estate reality TV in a “Love It or List It”-type structure. But instead of deciding whether to sell or renovate a house, young couples have to decide whether to spend their cash on a wedding bash or a down payment on a home. Real estate agent Nichole Holmes and wedding planner Sarah Miller are the ones doing the convincing. Netflix also has “Yes Day” (March 12), a comedy film produced by and starring Jennifer Garner in which a couple decides to say yes to whatever their kids want to do for 24 hours.

A ‘toxic’ Bachelor season? Not according to ‘Women Tell All’

March 2, 2021 / Debra Yeo

From left, Serena P, Anna, MJ, Mari, Pieper, Chelsea, Victoria and Serena C on the somewhat misleadingly named “Women Tell All” episode of “The Bachelor.” PHOTO CREDIT: All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC

Oh the irony. There was erstwhile “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison Monday night talking about how there’s been more “explosive drama than any of us were prepared for” this season. Little did he know when that “Women Tell All” episode was taped, just five days before that fateful “Extra” interview with Rachel Lindsay (a fact noted with a disclaimer at the start of the program), that he’d be at the centre of the most explosive drama the franchise has ever seen.

As I write this, there’s still no word on how long Harrison’s hiatus from “The Bachelor” will last or whether it will be permanent (if you’re not sure what’s going on, go google Harrison and Extra and/or Rachel Lindsay and/or Rachael Kirkconnell). We now know that author and TV host Emmanuel Acho will replace Harrison on “After the Final Rose.”

Here’s another thing I know: it was maddening to watch Harrison soft-pedal the drama that did occur this season — the name-calling, the bullying, the gaslighting, the overall meanness — by not calling out the women behind the worst of it and basically just sitting and nodding along while some of them talked more crap.

I mean, come on, we’ve all seen Harrison ask tough questions in these types of situations before, but they were MIA here.

Victoria was still milking the “Queen” nonsense on “Women Tell All.”

So we had Victoria, the Queen of Mean, suggesting that the fact that contestant Ryan was upset about being called a “ho” and an idiot and a “shady bitch” on TV was down to Ryan being overly emotional.

“It’s hard to hear yourself being called a ho on national television,” Ryan said.

“Do you think you’re a super sensitive person?” asked Victoria. And then, noting that she herself had been subject to social media backlash, Victoria added, “I’m a little bit puzzled as to why you’re holding on to this emotional anger right now.”

At least Kit and Chelsea defended Ryan’s right to be angry over being called “horrible things” on TV.

From left, Katie, Jessenia, Ryan and Brittany on “The Women Tell All.”

And Victoria did apologize to Katie for calling her disgusting. But then several contestants piled on Katie for having the nerve to bring up the unpleasantness in the house to Bachelor Matt James.

Chelsea actually said, and I quote, “The house wasn’t toxic until you made it toxic by bringing it up to Matt and then causing the domino effect that led to every single drama in the house that you were involved in.” Hello, shoot the messenger much? It’s complete bullshit. Personally, I was writing about how nasty women like Victoria and Serena C and Anna were being several weeks before we saw Katie talk to Matt about it. She didn’t cause the drama; she just brought it to Matt’s attention.

After Serena C recycled her BS about how Katie “wanted to do it to light a flame and start a fire,” I was the one feeling “emotional anger.”

Katie did a great job of keeping her cool and later got to sit in the “hot seat” with Harrison, saying all the right things for a prospective future Bachelorette, for instance that she’s “embraced exactly who I am” in the past year, that she’s hopeful her “person’s still out there,” that she’s “the most confident I’ve ever been.”

But, as much as I like Katie, the women who brought the most grace and class to an otherwise disappointing episode were Brittany and Abigail.

Brittany was invited up to talk about the rumour that Anna spread about her (and that “Bachelor” producers chose to broadcast) that Brittany was a high-end escort.

“When you google my name now, the first 20 results say ‘Bachelor contestant Brittany Galvin accused of being an escort,'” Brittany told Harrison, adding that there’s nothing wrong with escort work, “but that’s not me.”

“I didn’t sign up to get bullied, I didn’t sign up to get slandered.”

Brittany added that Anna had not reached out to apologize to her despite having had weeks to do so. But gee, Anna was “so, so sorry” at “Women Tell All.” Yet, despite how “awful” Anna said she felt about letting her anger and insecurity get the better of her, she kind of doubled down by telling Brittany she’d heard the rumours about her from people who knew her ex-boyfriend and went to school with her, noting that “Chicago is a small town.”

Brittany very graciously accepted Anna’s apology, saying, “I don’t want people to destroy your life as well.” And if we’re talking about potential Bachelorettes, we could do way worse than someone with that kind of maturity and generosity of spirit.

Abigail was looking every inch a potential Bachelorette on “Women Tell All.”

And then there was Abigail. If anyone had a right to be bitter about how the season turned out it was her. Since when does a first impression rose winner not get a one-on-one date? Has that ever happened before? I’d have to do a little research to find out, but it certainly seems odd. Frankly, it seems like Matt led her on. Abigail said merely that she had “a big what if,” as in could she have been a frontrunner if she’d had a whole day with Matt.

She also focused on the positive feedback she’d had from the deaf community about the fact that a deaf person was shown in a romantic light, since “disability isn’t always romanticized.”

And she mentioned that she was now “a much better version of myself, to share with whoever wants to share that with me.”

Pieper, another hot seat occupant, had a similar sentiment about her time on the show, saying she’d grown as a person. Serena P was invited onstage as well, where she confirmed that, no, she wasn’t having second thoughts about dumping Matt, even though “I care about him still so much.”

(As an aside, I don’t think Serena P is in the running for Bachelorette, but perhaps she’ll pop up on the newly announced “Bachelor in Paradise Canada” coming to Citytv. You never know.)

No offence to Matt, but I am not a fan of the beard.

Finally, I hate to end on a negative note, but Matt’s time in the hot seat was aggravating for me.

Given the chance to comment on the toxicity among the women, all Matt could say was that he was “a little surprised.”

“I just tried to be empathetic to the women and what they were going through because I hadn’t gone through it, so I couldn’t say I (would) have acted differently in their position. There’s a million different factors you have to take into account, so I try not to hold them to an unrealistic standard.”

So not calling other women sluts and ho’s is an unrealistic standard? Good to know.

Matt basically apologized to MJ for sending her home on the two-on-one and then Serena C piped up, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, about how she hoped Matt wouldn’t think the women were bad people or mean ones.

“I’ll be the first one to say I am not a perfect person so I’m no one to sit up here and judge how any of you all decided to handle yourselves and deal with that emotion in real time.”

I guess you could say Matt was being a good Christian, but just know, Serena C, that I am judging you and, yeah, definitely mean.

The distasteful icing on the cake was that Victoria, who up until then had maintained her sangfroid, got all weepy about her dramatic exit — you know, the one in which she loudly called Ryan “the shadiest bitch” and said she, Victoria, was the only one with “a brain” in the room — and blamed it on her “fear of rejection.”

And Matt actually apologized to Victoria if she felt offended. And he also said he “dropped the ball” on their relationship. Their relationship? They had a relationship?

I’m just going to leave it there.

Next week, it’s fantasy suite dates and, yes, more drama, but we’re in the home stretch, just two more episodes to go.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

Watchable the week of March 1, 2021

March 1, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Raya and the Last Dragon (March 5, Disney Plus)

*Raya, voiced by Kelly Marie Tran, with dragon Sisu, voiced by Awkwafina, in “Raya and the Last Dragon.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Disney*

I’d love to say that I love this latest feature from Disney Animation Studios. It was co-written by a Vietnamese-American playwright, Qui Nguyen; it features a largely Asian cast voicing Asian characters; and it’s a female-led story. And yet . . .

I felt emotionally detached in the early going from the tale of teenaged Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), on a quest to find the last dragon (Awkwafina) and save the world from the Druun, amorphous purple blogs of smoke and light that turn people into stone.

The story rolls along — literally when Raya rides her pet part-armadillo Tuk Tuk (yes, you can already buy the toy) — with Raya and cuddly-looking dragon Sisu (yep, another toy) seeking the broken pieces of a powerful dragon gem, which are spread throughout the warring nations of the formerly peaceful land of Kumandra.

Those pieces prove relatively easy to obtain, even with Raya under attack from her arch-enemy, fellow teenage warrior Namaari (Gemma Chan), with whom she engages in some eye-catching martial arts battles. Raya has help from a motley crew of adversaries turned friends, including warrior Tong (Benedict Wong), “con baby” Noi (Thalia Tran) and her monkey-like companions, and “shrimporium” boat captain Boun (Izaac Wang). The addition of these teammates marks when the story began to resonate more with me, which is fitting since it’s all about trust and people working together to achieve mutually beneficial ends.

Will Raya learn to trust her fellow humans, defeat the Druun once and for all, and bring her beloved father (Daniel Dae Kim) and other lost loved ones back to life? Take a wild guess.

“Raya and the Last Dragon” is bright and colourful and has its heart in the right place, which is not nothing in these crazy times we live in.

For Heaven’s Sake (March 4, CBC Gem)

Comedians Mike Mildon and Jackson Rowe investigate the disappearance
of Mike’s great-great-uncle Harold in “For Heaven’s Sake.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC Gem

When a true crime series is produced in association with Funny or Die, you know it’s not going to be your typical murder documentary. In fact, it’s unclear whether murder is even involved in the disappearance of Harold Heaven in October 1934 from a cabin on Horseshoe Lake in Haliburton.

The unlikely investigators are Mike Mildon and Jackson Rowe, better known as the comedians behind the comedy sketch series “Trophy Husbands.” Whatever their day jobs, they seem to be genuinely interested in solving the disappearance of Harold, who was Mike’s great-great-uncle.

Mike describes the disappearance as an “open wound” within the family.

Almost as big a mystery as what happened to Harold — and it is a tantalizing case — is whether Mike and Jackson stand a chance in hell of solving it. Mike’s own family members, who are interviewed throughout, openly express their skepticism.

What the family does believe is that Harold didn’t kill himself, which was the police conclusion after a week-long search turned up no trace of Harold, described as a nature-loving loner. As his relatives rightly point out, if it was a suicide where’s the body?

Mike and Jackson consider murder a more likely scenario, but cases don’t get much colder than 86-year-old ones. Harold seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth, leaving his oil lamp still burning and his front door open, clad in just a suit, dress shoes and a fedora, and carrying a .22-calibre rifle. And the people who might have direct knowledge of his fate are all dead.

But Mike and Jackson persevere and, despite feeling their quest would ultimately prove a futile one, I found myself rooting for them and curious to know just how far they would get.

Short Takes

Rohan Campbell and Alexander Elliot as Frank and Joe Hardy in “The Hardy Boys.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Hulu/Corus Entertainment

Vikings (March 3, 9 p.m., History)

Another Ireland-shot saga of family and war comes to an end, albeit with much less fanfare than “Game of Thrones,” as “Vikings” concludes after six seasons. The spirit of Ragnar (former series lead Travis Fimmel) is very much present in this finale, not least because of the presence of Ragnar’s old friend Floki (Gustaf Skarsgard), who’s repented his former bloodthirsty ways and found relative peace among a group of North American Indigenous people. Having only dipped in and out of the series over the years, I can’t say how well this finale will satisfy fans, but it’s entertaining enough as an episode of television. It wraps up the stories of the remaining sons of Ragnar, Ivar (Alex Hogh Andersen) and Hvitserk (Marco Ilso) in England, and Ubbe (Jordan Patrick Smith) in the new land; gives us one last bloody battle and ends on a surprisingly gentle note.

Punky Brewster (March 4, 8 p.m. W; March 5, 8 p.m., YTV, STACKTV)

The pig-tailed tot who was the eponymous star of the 1980s comedy is all grown up and a divorced mother of three in this reboot. Punky (original star Soleil Moon Frye) is a photographer just like her late adopted father Henry and living in his old apartment. She maintains a cosy relationship with her ex, Travis (Freddie Prinze Jr.); has best friend Cherie (original star Cherie Johnson) for moral support; and her kids, a daughter and two adopted sons, seem well-adjusted if occasionally, triflingly annoying. When social worker Cherie asks Punky to foster Izzy (Quinn Copeland) who, like Punky, was abandoned by her mother, it seems obvious that sitcom history will repeat itself. What keeps the whole thing from tipping over into laugh-tracked shlock are the moments of sweetness between the characters.

The Hardy Boys (March 5, 9 p.m., YTV, STACKTV)

If you’re in the mood for something nostalgic, wholesome and that walks a line between adult and youth entertainment, this might fit the bill. The newest TV adaptation of the venerable Hardy Boys mystery novels sets the action in the 1980s. Frank (Rohan Campbell) and Joe Hardy (Alexander Elliot) end up in Bridgeport, the hometown of their father Fenton (James Tupper) and mother Laura (Janet Porter), after a family tragedy. There they become embroiled in a mystery involving a missing person, a car accident, a sunken boat and a strange artifact. The boys, backed by friends Chet (Adam Swain), Phil (Cristian Perri), Biff (Riley O’Donnell) and Callie (Keana Lyn), are smart, intuitive and capable, and Campbell and Elliot are likeable and believable in the roles.

Wynonna Earp (March 5, 10 p.m., CTV Sci-Fi Channel, Crave)

It’s the beginning of the end for our favourite demon hunter unless producer Seven24 Films finds an American distributor for the Calgary-shot series. If that doesn’t happen these next six episodes will be the last we see of Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano), Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon) and the rest of the gang in Purgatory. As we begin, Wynonna and Doc are still at odds, while Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) and Nicole (Katherine Barrell) plan their engagement party. But there are complications thanks to a Cupid the ladies encounter when Wynonna throws the happy couple a bachelorette bash at a strip club, resulting in some of the loopy comedy that the show is good at. Jann Arden guest-stars.

Odds and Ends

CTV has a new docuseries debuting March 6 at 10 p.m. “This Is Pop” promises to dive into “pivotal moments in pop music history over the past seven decades.”

On the subject of documentaries, Netflix has a couple that sound worth checking out: “Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell” (March 1), about late rapper Notorious B.I.G., and “Murder Among the Mormons” (March 3), about a series of pipe bombings among the LDS community in Salt Lake City in 1985.

Amazon Prime Video has the movie “Coming 2 America” (March 5), the sequel to the 1988 comedy starring Eddie Murphy as Prince Akeem, with Wesley Snipes, Arsenio Hall and John Amos all reprising their roles.

One woman’s exit leaves Matt speechless on ‘The Bachelor’

February 23, 2021 / Debra Yeo

Matt James didn’t get the rose ceremony he expected on Monday’s episode of “The Bachelor.”
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos, Craig Sjodin/ABC

Matt James asked a rhetorical question on Monday’s hometowns episode of “The Bachelor,” on which he met the relatives of the four women still in the hunt: “The fact that their families are here to meet me and spend time with their daughter, how can you not be excited about that?”

I wasn’t excited at all, truth be told. This has felt like a gruelling season, first because of the nasty behaviour among some of the contestants, later because of the racism controversy that led to Chris Harrison stepping down as host. It’s the first time I can remember that I started to appreciate weekly episodes less as entertainment than as milestones to the end of the season and not having to watch anymore.

But then the first “hometown” date, with teacher Michelle Young, chipped away some of the stone where my “Bachelor”-loving heart used to be. There were cute children on Zoom asking awkward and funny questions. There were lovely moments of affection and care between Michelle and her parents.

By episode’s end, I was feeling sorry for Matt, who seemed to have the wind knocked out of him when Serena Pitt told him he wasn’t her “person” and sent herself home. The stunned silence with which he greeted her pronouncement was raw and real. He hasn’t seemed that disturbed about anyone else leaving, which makes me think that Bri lucked into what would have been Serena’s rose. More on that later.

Back to Michelle’s date. Taking questions from the children of Ms. Young’s class was probably good practice for Matt meeting the parents later on.

Matt got to “meet” teacher Michelle’s students on their hometown date.

The kids weren’t messing around. “How many girlfriends do you have?” asked a girl named Marnie. “Are you going to have babies?” queried Kelsey and Luke. “Are you going to marry her?” asked Tyler. Matt wasn’t saying, but promised he’d give Tyler a Zoom call when he knew.

Michelle’s dad Ephraim wasn’t quite that direct, but he did ask Matt if he was in love with Michelle. “I am falling for your daughter,” Matt replied. He also said he’d be willing to move to Minnesota if they ended up together.

Michelle had emotional conversations with both her mom and her dad, not just about her feelings for Matt but about how they supported her after what I presume was a bad breakup two years before. “That’s our job, to be there when things get tough,” Ephraim said, which gives me hope Michelle will be just fine if Matt doesn’t pick her.

Later, Michelle told Matt she was falling in love with him. He did not say it back, but he did seem happy she said it, so we’ll see.

Rachael gets a rose from Matt. Should I read anything into the fact that her hometown date
was the only one that the ABC website didn’t provide any photos for?

The next date was with our problem contestant, Rachael Kirkconnell.

If you’re like me, you’re probably hoping that Matt doesn’t pick Rachael because if her social media blunders were more than just youthful ignorance, and the allegations that she bullied high school colleagues for dating Black guys are true, then her getting engaged to Matt can’t end well.

Matt certainly does seem attached to Rachael, however. There was a mishap when they went skydiving and Rachael came in for a rough, face-first landing. She was fine other than bruises, but Matt said the near-miss had put his feelings in perspective. “It’s a different feeling when you’re falling in love and that person’s, like, potentially really hurt and the thought of losing you set in in that moment . . . I didn’t realize how strongly I felt until something like that happened,” he said.

When it came to her family, Rachael’s father Darrell was skeptical, but he wasn’t rude about it. “To me it would be difficult to care about someone when you’re seeing other people,” he told Matt and who the hell can argue with that sentiment?

Rachael wasn’t dissuaded when Darrell suggested Matt was telling the other three women the same things he was telling her. “I don’t think he is,” she said. “It might be a little naive of me to think I’m different, but I really think that I am.”

What could Dad do but tell her she had his support?

Rachael was a little put off, however, by the fact Matt hadn’t asked her father for permission to propose. “That’s not a conversation I want to have with four families,” Matt explained and I applaud the hell out of that remark. He promised Rachael he’d phone her pop when the time came.

If there’s a wedding for these two, Bri might need to pull out the step stool at the altar.

Bri’s date was the most uneventful of the four. There was only one child in view, her mother Lauren’s new baby, and she was too young to ask questions. There were no injuries despite the fact Bri took Matt off-roading.

Even though Matt said he was falling for Bri, her mom wasn’t sure if he meant in love or lust. But when Bri tearfully told Lauren she was falling in love with Matt, Mom was all for sharing that with him. “Worst case scenario we are mending a broken heart together and we’ll survive,” she said.

I could be wrong, but I suspect there’ll be mending to do, only because when Bri told Matt she felt like she was falling for him, he responded, “Thank you for sharing that with me tonight.” It seemed too polite a reaction.

Serena and Matt indulge in a Canadian pastime.

And now for Serena. Like her, I am a proud Canadian so I was most interested in the Toronto publicist’s date. One room of the Nemacolin was turned into a mini Canadaland. There were stuffed moose and beavers; there was maple syrup; there was a map of Canada and Canadian flags; there was a quiz in which Matt couldn’t distinguish between a toboggan and a toque. I’ll be honest: unless you popped into a souvenir store you wouldn’t see any of that stuff just wandering around Toronto. Although, yes, I occasionally eat poutine and BeaverTails and Nanaimo bars, but hold the peameal bacon.

Serena whupped Matt at hockey and beating Americans at hockey is something all Canadians like to do, or at least to see being done.

But there was to be no cross-border love story here. It wasn’t that Serena’s mom and dad and sister were opposed to Matt; it was that the more questions they asked Serena about him the more confused she became about her feelings. She was the only one of the four women who didn’t tell Matt she was falling for him. In fact, she told him very candidly that she was having doubts.

So the next day, Matt went to Serena’s suite to try to resolve those doubts after telling Harrison it was a relationship worth fighting for. Except it turned out to be a pretty fast knockout.

Matt told Serena he could see a future with her. Serena told him that despite the fact he had everything she could want in a husband, “it just comes down to the fact that I don’t think that you’re my person.”

For at least 20 seconds, Matt just sat there stunned before finally responding, “It sucks to hear that.” Serena walked him out and hugged him and handed him into an SUV. And Matt had tears running down his face in his confessional, so that one definitely left a mark.

My guess is that Bri would have gone home had Serena stuck around and that’s just because he seems more into Michelle and Rachael. But with Serena gone, all three got roses — after a warning from Matt that accepting a rose meant accepting everything that came it, including a potential engagement.

Next week it’s “Women Tell All” so expect rancour and tears, including from Victoria, and maybe even some apologies, fake or otherwise.

Then in two weeks, there’s some sexy time on the overnight dates, buckets of tears, including from Matt, Rachael saying she “can’t do this anymore” and Matt telling Harrison that maybe he doesn’t want to do it anymore either, so make of that what you will.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

Watchable the week of February 22, 2021

February 22, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Ginny & Georgia (Feb. 24, Netflix)

Diesel La Torraca as Austin, Brianne Howey as Georgia and Antonia Gentry as Ginny
in “Ginny & Georgia.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

A lot of the fun of “Ginny & Georgia” is the way it both fulfills and subverts our expectations of this kind of youth-oriented fare. It’s part high school dramedy, part rom-com, part coming-of-age story, part family drama, part redemption tale.

There are tropes like the alluring bad boy, the queer best friend, the stuck-up girls’ clique, but the characters aren’t caricatures and when you think you know where the show is going it often veers a different way.

At the centre of it all are Ginny and her mother Georgia.

Ginny (Antonia Gentry) is a biracial 15-year-old who’s smart, self-aware and somewhat cynical but also full of doubt and angst and insecurity. Her mother Georgia (“Batwoman”), who had Ginny at 15, has wit and intelligence that belie her blond hair and body-hugging, cleavage-baring clothes. She’s also a thief, a con artist and possibly dangerous, and you sense she’d do anything to protect her kids, including son Austin (Diesel La Torraca), who has a different father than Ginny.

After a lifetime spent moving from place to place, usually to run to or escape from a man, Georgia settles in Wellsbury, Massachusetts, in what she hopes will be a permanent home, but Georgia has a messy past that is obviously going to catch up with her.

There also a couple of love triangles in play, one for mother, one for daughter.

The series was shot in Toronto and the supporting cast is loaded with Canadian actors, including Jennifer Robertson (Jocelyn on “Schitt’s Creek”) as Georgia’s friend and neighbour Ellen; Sara Waisglass (“Degrassi”) as Ginny’s lesbian bestie Maxine; Raymond Ablack (“Degrassi,” “Shadowhunters”) as Joe, the eligible owner of the town cafe; Mason Temple as Ginny’s boyfriend Hunter; Sabrina Grdevich (“Traders,” “Intelligence”) as Georgia’s rival Cynthia and Katie Douglas (“Mary Kills People,” “Pretty Hard Cases”) as Abby, part of Max’s and Ginny’s gang of friends.

The series, created by screenwriting newbie Sarah Lampert, is like its heroines: smart, clever, feminist, sometimes frivolous and exuberant, sometimes quiet and thoughtful, and my interest didn’t flag once throughout the four episodes I watched.

Beartown (Feb. 22, 9 p.m., HBO, Crave)

Ulf Stenberg as Peter Andersson in “Beartown.” PHOTO CREDIT: Niklas Maupoix/HBO

“Beartown” begins with a drone view of two figures running through snowy woods, one with a gun. The pursuit ends with the sound of a shot.

By the end of the first episode, you’ll know who the hunter and hunted are, but you’ll need to watch the other four for the why and to learn whether that shot hit home. The explanation is a potent mix of toxic masculinity, family dysfunction, rape mythology and hero worship.

On its surface, “Beartown” — based on the acclaimed novel by Fredrik Backman — is a hockey drama.

Former NHL player Peter Andersson (Ulf Stenberg) moves his family from Canada back to his Swedish hometown to coach.

Beartown is a bit of a backwater. The town’s pride and a good deal of its financial stability are tied to the fortunes of its junior hockey team.

With Peter as coach the team starts winning games, making him a hometown hero. He also becomes a father figure to star player Kevin Erdahl (Oliver Dufaker), whose emotionally repressed father Mats seems to care only about hockey and money.

But when Peter’s teenage daughter Maya (Miriam Ingrid) is raped, the ugly chauvinism behind the town’s hockey worship is exposed. Players, parents and fans close ranks against the victim — “she was asking for it,” “she’s a whore” — and anyone who supports her.

Given the entirely believable onslaught of hate, it makes you marvel that any young woman would be brave enough to report a sexual assault.

There is a resolution of sorts to the case but no real justice and no real redemption for the town.

The victim and perpetrator and their families move on, but it seems the warped masculinity that underpins the hockey will continue.

Short Takes

Alex Garfin and Jordan Elsass as Jordan and Jonathan Kent with Elizabeth Tulloch as Lois Lane
in “Superman & Lois.” PHOTO CREDIT: The CW/Bell Media

Superman & Lois (Feb. 23, 9 p.m., CTV Sci-Fi Channel)

You think being a superhero is tough work? Try saving the world and being a good father at the same time. That’s the crux of this series created by genre veteran Greg Berlanti (“The Flash,” “Arrow,” “Supergirl” and much more) and Todd Helping. Superman/Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch) are married with two teenage boys, one of whom appears to have inherited Dad’s superpowers which, as you can imagine, is a lot to deal with on top of the usual adolescent angst. Complicating Clark’s desire to be more present for his sons is a new extraterrestrial foe out to destroy Superman. And did I mention the family is moving from Metropolis to Smallville?

Arctic Vets (Feb. 26, 8:30 p.m.); Kingdom of the Polar Bears (Feb. 26, 9 p.m., both CBC and CBC Gem)

Dr. Chris Enright with a female polar bear who was anesthetized and taken by helicopter into the wilderness to keep her from getting shot. PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC

Feb. 27 is International Polar Bear Day, so it’s fitting that “The Nature of Things” has made the majestic animals the subject of its episode the night before, the same evening that CBC premieres the docuseries “Arctic Vets.” The first episode of “Vets” just follows Dr. Chris Enright of the Assiniboine Park Conservancy in Winnipeg as he travels north to Churchill to help the Polar Bear Alert Team with an animal who’s wandered too close to town. She has to be trapped, anesthetized, examined, tagged and then taken by helicopter 70 kilometres away where she’ll hopefully live out the rest of her life far from humans. For an idea of what that bear’s future might look like, “The Nature of Things” has the two-part “Kingdom of the Polar Bears,” in which tracker Dennis Compayre aims to spend a year following a mother bear and her cubs, beginning as soon as they emerge from their birthing den. The doc is full of awe-inspiring moments that will make your heart ache when you consider that climate change has put these animals in grave danger.

Bachelor Matt James’ final four include controversial contestant

February 16, 2021 / Debra Yeo

One of Matt James’ one-on-one dates on Feb. 15 involved a driving manoeuvre called “drifting,” which seems like a good word for the season as a whole. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos, Craig Sjodin/ABC

After six weeks of spinning its wheels, Matt James’ “Bachelor” season got back on track Monday, at least insofar as the ostensible purpose of the show, which is him getting engaged. Let’s call it “The Fast and the Serious.” And I’m not talking about Jessenia’s “Hail Mary” one-on-one date, which involved a race car and “drifting.”

After weeks of telling pretty much every woman he spoke to that he was into them, Matt finally buckled down and separated the “maybe I can fall in love with you’s” from the “I kind of like you’s,” ending the episode with the four women who’ll get so-called “hometowns” next week.

But first there was a little detour into Red Herring Land. Yes, I’m talking about Heather Martin, who strutted in last week seemingly convinced that she could turn Matt’s head despite how far along the season was, all because her bestie Hannah Brown said Matt was perfect for her.

My eyes are rolling so hard over the idea that Heather jumped on a red-eye flight to Pennsylvania all on her own initiative that they’re doing backflips.

It was one of the more ridiculous production tricks we’ve seen and a mean one too. Like, duh, Matt wasn’t going to let Heather stay, even though he claimed he needed time to think about it. He even told Chris Harrison (who is host at least until the pretaped episodes run out, more on that later) with a straight face that he didn’t know what to do: “When someone I respect like Hannah, who knows me and has dated my best friend, puts her stamp of approval on somebody, that carries a lot of weight with me,” Matt said. Spare me.

In the meantime, Heather was getting the Mean Girl treatment from the other women. It started with a reasonable question from Serena P: Why hadn’t Heather tried to date Matt before he became the Bachelor? Then Pieper accused Heather, who was on Colton Underwood’s season, of Bachelor-hopping. And when Heather apologized for interrupting Pieper’s time with Matt, Pieper replied, “I still do not understand why you’re here Week 6.” Kit added, “Like, bitch, what are you doing?”

At that point, Heather started to cry and say that she felt sad, and Serena C. snarked, “OK, talk about it (in your) interview because I don’t want to hear your tears right now.” Heather walked away.

Was Heather coming there a dumb, dead-end move? Yes, but it was humiliating enough to get sent home by Matt without getting verbally torn apart for it.

Clearly Matt wasn’t listening in when the women unloaded on Heather — or when they cried and grumbled and blustered about her being there — because he commended them just before the rose ceremony for how they handled the “surprise.” Then he gave roses to Bri, Rachael, Serena P, Kit, Jessenia and Abigail, cutting Chelsea and Serena C loose.

The question then became who would get the two one-on-one dates this week. Since Jessenia and Abigail were the only women left who’d never escaped group date purgatory, it seemed logical it would be them. But then Serena P got her second one-on-one and blew that theory out of the water.

Matt and Serena P. hanging out a few episodes ago.

Mind you, Serena might have had second thoughts if she’d known Matt was taking her on a tantric yoga date. I mean, seriously, who thinks practically having to grind your partner on TV with some yoga instructor breathing down your neck is a good time? Oh wait, Matt thought it was great. Serena did not enjoy it and told Matt so, which made me like her even more.

As it happened, Serena’s intense dislike of tantric yoga seemed to be a main topic of their dinner conversation, with Matt blathering on about how much he liked her being real and honest and open and . . . sorry, dozed off there for a second.

Serena got the rose and with it a guaranteed hometown date, although hello, quarantine, so we won’t see Matt visiting Toronto.

The group date was next and sadly Abigail was on it, along with Pieper, Michelle, Rachael, Bri and Kit.

Here are Abigail, Kit, Rachael, Michelle, Pieper and Bri on the part of the group date we never saw on TV.

I really have no idea why Matt would give Abigail the first impression rose and not take her on a one-on-one. But that group date card was the kiss of death for the franchise’s first deaf contestant.

We never saw the daytime portion of the group date, just the cocktail party. Matt actually had the nerve to tell Abigail that all he’d wanted was more time with her. THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU TAKE HER ON A ONE-ON-ONE?

First impressions didn’t count for much for Abigail, unfortunately.

When Abigail told Matt she could picture a future with him you knew it wasn’t going to end well. He told Abigail that giving her the first impression rose had been a no-brainer and he’d been so comfortable in their relationship he’d decided to explore other relationships and, oops, those other relationships got stronger than theirs. None of that clears up the mystery of the missing one-on-one and, in fact, sounds like bullshit, but Abigail took her dismissal with grace and class.

And now, obviously, she’s in the running to be the next Bachelorette, assuming the whole franchise hasn’t blown up by then.

As for the rest of the group date: Bri confessed to Matt that she’d quit her dream job for the chance to be with him. Matt called that huge, but not huge enough to give her the date rose. He gave it to Rachael after telling her that he thought about her whenever he wasn’t around her, yet another indication of her front-runner status.

Rachael and Matt on their one-on-one in a previous episode.

(As an aside, Rachael being a front-runner is obviously going to be a problem for a lot of people after she was called out — and issued an apology for — social media activities that were seen as racist. Chris Harrison has stepped aside as host for an unspecified period of time after defending Rachael, who as you can see is white, in an interview with former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay, who is Black. I don’t think this controversy is going to just go away nor should it, but I don’t want to address it in detail as an aside in a recap.)

Kit with Matt back when she still thought she had a chance of ending up with him.

Seeing Rachael get the rose shook Kit, who had used her time with Matt to tell him she wanted to delay getting married and having kids until she finished her education and did some travelling. When Matt said he was cool with that, Kit figured it was full steam ahead for the two of them. But seeing Rachael get the rose and get whisked away for a private concert with Aloe Blacc spurred Kit to jump before getting dumped.

Kit went to Matt’s suite and told him she didn’t have the “clarity” she needed and was heading home. Matt tried to dissuade her, but Kit went anyway, saying it was “the right thing for both of us.” Except, in the SUV of Shame, she expressed doubt about her decision, which makes me wonder if she’s going to pop back up in a future episode.

Next on the list of lost causes was Jessenia’s one-on-one date.

Matt and Jessenia went drifting on their date, in more ways than one.

Bless her optimistic little heart: after spending some time learning “drifting” with Matt, which looked like basically a lot of crazy-ass, reckless driving, Jessenia said, “Today really feels like the first day of what could be a long future together.”

That future was measured in hours, however. Matt, who talks a good game about honesty, led Jessenia on by asking her what meeting her family would be like and picking up the rose after she told him she was falling in love with him. He could easily have given her the “you’re great, but” speech without picking the damn thing up. What nasty producer taught him that trick?

Matt told Jessenia they were missing “that intangible love and connection” needed for an engagement and it was so long Jessenia, who was feeling blindsided.

Just like that, it was time for another rose ceremony. Predictably, Matt gave Bri and Michelle the remaining two roses, leaving Pieper feeling like her soul had been stomped on. Considering she just had a one-on-one last episode during which Matt told her to trust him with her heart I can understand why.

Next week, it’s “hometowns,” which means Matt meets the final four’s families at the Nemacolin resort. Expect the usual mix of protective parents and skeptical siblings — plus we’ll be another week closer to the end of this disappointing season.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

Watchable the week of February 15, 2021

February 15, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: It’s a Sin (Feb. 19, Amazon Prime Video)

Olly Alexander as Ritchie and Callum Scott Howells as Colin in “It’s a Sin.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Red Production Company/all3media international

As a character lies dying of AIDS in the final episode of “It’s a Sin,” he tries to explain to his mother that there was beauty in the behaviour that led to him becoming ill, that all the boys he had sex with were great. “That’s what people forget, that it was so much fun,” he says.

Russell T. Davies, who created this limited series about a group of friends in 1980s London buffeted by the AIDS crisis, has not forgotten about the fun.

There are moments in these five episodes that will tear your heart out, but there are also moments of infectious joy.

It begins when a couple of young, gay men, Ritchie (British musician and actor Olly Alexander) and Colin (impressive newcomer Callum Scott Howells), leave their homes on the Isle of Wight and in South Wales, respectively, to come to the big city. They fall in with drama students Jill (Lydia West) and Ash (Nathaniel Curtis), and their friend Roscoe (Omari Douglas), who flees his home after his parents threaten to send him to Nigeria to be turned straight.

Together, the five of them rent a flat they call the Pink Palace and form a happy chosen family.

But among all the partying and the hookups there are hints of danger: talk of a “gay flu” in San Francisco and of deaths in New York. A gay colleague at the Savile Row tailor shop where Colin works, played by Neil Patrick Harris, gets a mysterious cancer.

The series begins in 1981; by the time it ends in 1992, AIDS has cut a swath through the Pink Palace. We see the knowledge and treatment of AIDS evolve with the years: from patients being isolated and locked in rooms to being attended with sympathy and respect; and from a diagnosis being an automatic death sentence to the hope that life can be prolonged.

We also see the stigma associated with AIDS, even from other gay people; one character is fired when his closeted boss discovers that he’s merely reading about AIDS.

But there’s also abundant love, particularly among the five key characters, which makes it heartbreaking when the bitter, bigoted mother of one of the men (played by Keeley Hawes) takes him home to die and refuses to let the others see or speak to him.

The families aren’t all bad — one mother stands steadfastly by her sick son — but it’s clear the bonds between Ritchie and Jill and Ash and Colin and Roscoe are the ones that nourish them the most. This is what makes the drama resonate: it’s history on a human, relatable scale.

And if you wonder why revisit this particular history, consider that from the start of the epidemic till the end of 2019, an estimated 32.7 million people died from AIDS-related illnesses, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.

Deaths and new infections have been greatly reduced, but people are still getting sick and still being shamed for it.

Note that I ran out of time before I could review Amazon’s other big new release, the movie “I Care a Lot” (Feb. 19), but with Rosamund Pike, Dianne Wiest and Peter Dinklage in the cast, how can you go wrong?

Honour and How to Catch a Serial Killer (Feb. 16, BritBox)

From left, Umit Ulgen as Mahmod Mahmod, Fisun Burgess as Behya
and Keeley Hawes as Caroline Goode in “Honour.” PHOTO CREDIT: Hera Pictures for ITV

“Honour” is a TV movie and “How to Catch a Serial Killer” is a documentary, but they both concern themselves with police officers doing everything in their power to get justice for female murder victims.

In “Honour,” Keeley Hawes (“Bodyguard,” “Line of Duty”) plays real-life London Metropolitan Police detective Caroline Goode, who received a medal from the Queen for her dogged pursuit of the killers of 20-year-old Banaz Mahmod, a Kurdish woman who immigrated to England when she was 10.

When Banaz was reported missing by her boyfriend, her own family insisted there was nothing wrong and that her disappearance wasn’t unusual. But Goode believed otherwise, given that Banaz had been to police on five previous occasions to report threats from her family and even turned over a list of relatives who wanted her dead.

But there were no witnesses willing to talk, most of the suspects had alibis and two of them fled the U.K. It took cross-referencing hundreds upon hundreds of cellphone records, and tapping and translating the calls of a jailed suspect for Goode and her team to piece together what happened to Banaz.

She died, by the way, for falling in love and wanting to marry a man her family didn’t approve of.

“How to Catch a Serial Killer” is a companion piece to “A Confession,” which debuted on BritBox last year and which I recommend. The latter is a dramatized version of the true story of how Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher (played by Martin Freeman) caught the killer of two young women but trashed his career in the process by not following the rules for interviewing suspects.

In “Serial Killer,” the real Fulcher maintains that he did the right thing, particularly since he believed at the time that one of the victims was still alive. As he explains it, had he not done what he did, the women might never have been found and Chris Halliwell might have gone free to potentially kill again.

The irony is that just a few years after Fulcher was found guilty of gross misconduct and resigned from the Wiltshire force, the confessions that Halliwell gave him were ruled admissible in court.

Short Takes

Graham McTavish and Sam Heughan of “Outlander” on the St. Andrews Links in “Men in Kilts.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Corus Entertainment

Men in Kilts (Feb. 16, STACKTV, Global TV app)

We could all use a little fun these days, couldn’t we? Then strap in for this travelogue, subtitled “A Roadtrip With Sam and Graham.” That would be Sam Heughan, who stars as Highlander Jamie Fraser in “Outlander,” and Graham McTavish, who played his uncle, Dougal MacKenzie, in the popular time travel, romance, period drama. Scotsmen born and bred, the pair drive around their native land showing off its charms which, as someone with Scottish ancestry, I happen to believe are considerable. The episodes I saw focused on food and drink (no haggis was consumed, just FYI) and sports. Sam and Graham, though two decades apart in age, seem to have a comfortable friendship and take the pish out of themselves and each other. Since it will be a good while before we see Season 6 of “Outlander” (production reportedly just started this month and, yes, the show is referenced in “Men in Kilts”) fans should enjoy this trip. But even non-fans will find something here to make them smile.

Simona Brown and Eve Hewson in “Behind Her Eyes.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

Behind Her Eyes (Feb. 17, Netflix)

What keeps this miniseries from being a run-of-the-mill melodrama is the sense of foreboding beneath the surface. Divorced single mom Louise (Simona Brown, “The Little Drummer Girl,” “The Night Manager”) becomes intimately involved with both her psychiatrist boss David (Tom Bateman, “Jekyll & Hyde,” “Vanity Fair”) and his wife Adele (Eve Hewson, “The Knick”), having an affair with him and befriending her. But what seems at first like a simple case of a bored husband straying is clearly much darker. Hewson, in particular, does an excellent job as Adele, who seems vulnerable and menacing at the same time. Netflix also debuts “Animals on the Loose,” an interactive movie in which viewers help Bear Grylls track down escaped wild animals, and “The Crew,” a comedy series starring Kevin James as a NASCAR crew chief. Both drop on Feb. 15.

I don’t usually highlight single episodes of series that are already in progress, but I’m making an exception for “Frankie Drake Mysteries” because the talented Sharron Matthews, who co-stars as Flo, conceived and co-wrote the Feb. 15 instalment (9 p.m., CBC and CBC Gem). It takes the detectives to an underground Toronto gay club where, as a special treat, you’ll get to see Matthews and the fabulous Thom Allison (“Killjoys”) sing. Stratford Festival alum Sara Farb also co-stars and performs as a drag king. CBC also has a couple of its comedy series starting new seasons this week: “Workin’ Moms” for its fifth and “TallBoyz” for its second on Feb. 16 at 9 and 9:30 p.m., respectively.

The show that everyone is likely to be talking about this week is Allen v. Farrow (Feb. 21, 9 p.m., Crave), the docuseries by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering (“The Invisible War,” “The Hunting Ground”) about Dylan Farrow’s sex abuse allegations against her adoptive father, filmmaker Woody Allen. Reviews, however, are embargoed until Feb. 16.

One last note, about “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,” the Netflix true crime series that I recommended on last week’s list. I was not familiar with the Elisa Lam case before I watched the show and had seen just enough before writing my post to know where Elisa ended up after she disappeared but not how she got there. Now that I’ve watched the whole thing, I find it distasteful that this series fools viewers into thinking they’re seeing a murder mystery unfold when it’s actually a very sad story about a mentally ill young women. I also find the weight given in the series to ridiculous and groundless conspiracy theories irresponsible, particularly the ones that ruined the life of a death metal musician named Morbid, who was accused of murdering Elisa even though he was in Mexico when she went missing. That is eventually made clear but not until after much lurid conjecture about the man, who was driven to a suicide attempt by the abuse he suffered online. I love true crime as much as the next person, but not when it’s sensationalistic nonsense about something that wasn’t even a crime.

The Bachelor sends home a favourite and lets in an interloper

February 9, 2021 / Debra Yeo

Pieper and Matt spent part of their date at a carnival in the woods at Nemacolin. Wheee!
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos, Craig Sjodin/ABC

Matt James took one of his dates to a private carnival on Monday night’s “Bachelor,” but it felt like viewers were the ones being taken for a ride.

I mean, is there any good reason why Heather Martin, a contestant from Colton Underwood’s season, would show up halfway through Matt’s season other than to stir up as much shit as possible?

Are ex-Bachelorette Hannah Brown and her pals in charge of casting now? Have the producers decided that Matt’s journey for love is a lost cause and they might as well pump up the drama any way they can?

I get that Matt’s chances of settling on someone to marry seem to dwindle every time he takes another woman on a one-on-one and claims he can picture a life with her. It’s like frontrunner roulette: Oh, he’s really into Bri . . . no wait, it’s Sarah . . . never mind, it’s Serena P . . . spoke too soon, it’s Michelle . . . oops, now it’s Rachael . . . er, it’s Kit? . . . sigh, now he’s into Pieper.

All this while his first impression rose winner, Abigail, is consigned to group date purgatory week after week.

And now Heather comes strolling in like she’s freakin’ Cinderella at the ball? Ridiculous. The only purpose it serves is to drive the other women crazy, just when things were settling down after weeks of sniping and bullying in the house.

Matt with MJ back before he got tipped off to her new girl-baiting ways.

So about that, one of the last of the mean girls got dispatched early in the episode.

You might recall from last week that MJ and Jessenia were on an instant two-on-one after Jessenia outed MJ as an “antagonist” for making the newer contestants feel unwelcome.

MJ figured she could fluff her hair, put her “weak bitch moment” behind her and that Matt would believe her crap about spreading harmony and peace. He did not. She got escorted to an SUV of Shame and driven away, complaining about how “petty” Jessenia was.

Matt was supposedly so exhausted from refereeing MJ vs. Jessenia that he couldn’t endure a cocktail party with the rest of the women ahead of the rose ceremony. That made Ryan and Pieper cry. Serena C, a.k.a. Mean Girl Jr., blamed it on Katie. Like huh?

Matt gave roses to Serena P, Michelle, Pieper, Bri, Chelsea, Katie and Serena C (Jessenia, Kit, Abigail and Rachael already had them), thereby ensuring the Katie-Serena C drama would continue. Magi, who seemed like a sweetheart from what little we saw of her, went home, along with two of the new girls, Ryan and Brittany, which makes you wonder what was the point of bringing them in in the first place. Oh right, drama.

Speaking of drama, the next day Serena C confronted Katie to complain that Katie’s “antics” were costing her time with Matt. “You’re lighting all these little fires everywhere. You’re the freakin’ arsonist,” complained Serena. It escalated into a shouting match. The silliest part? Neither Serena C nor Katie stood a chance in hell of ending up with Matt, so WHY ALL THE YELLING?

Little did they know an even more disruptive force was pulling up at the gates of the resort. It was Heather Martin asking to see host Chris Harrison.

“Heather, what are you doing here?” asked Harrison, echoing all of Bachelor Nation.

Heather explained that her pal Hannah Brown, who met Matt early in the pandemic when she quarantined with him and Tyler Cameron, had told Heather that Matt was her “perfect match.” “I couldn’t let him get engaged and not meet him and not try my best,” said Heather.

Well, we’re six weeks into the season now, so yeah, you could.

Harrison said he had to talk to some other people before deciding if Heather could stay, which meant he and some other people were going to pretend to debate letting Heather in while having a good laugh about how upset the other contestants would be when they saw Heather on rose ceremony night.

*Matt and Pieper with country trio Temecula Road. Don’t worry, they all had their COVID tests.*

In the meantime, Matt had a one-on-one with Pieper. He waited till after dark, drove her to a wooded area of the resort, made her walk into the trees and voila: a whole mini carnival with rides and games and junk food.

Yes, it was pretty sweet. Later, Pieper told Matt about how her family doesn’t use the word “love” and so it was hard for her to express her emotions, but she somehow summoned up the courage to tell Matt she was falling in love with him. Matt told Pieper he wanted her to continue trusting him with her feelings and her heart, which seems like a really bad idea if you ask me.

There was a rose, there was kissing, there was a band. Yes, a country band. What else?

Serena C. works off her Katie aggression with some bowling.

Next up, the group date ladies — Bri, Kit, Rachael, Michelle, Jessenia, Serena P, Abigail, Chelsea and Serena C — went bowling with Matt. They were split into two teams, even though there were nine of them, and the losing team was banished from the cocktail party even though they came back from an almost 200-point deficit and lost by a measly six points. What’s worse is that Matt let them walk back to their suite, frustrated and angry, and waited to send over a date card inviting them to the party.

Double the drama: the losing team was riled up and then they got to disappoint the winning team, who’d been thrilled they only had to divide Matt’s time four ways.

Chelsea took it particularly hard, until Matt assured her that he could see himself with her — well, who can’t he see himself with at this point? — but Michelle got the date rose.

And then it was Katie’s turn for a one-on-one, but first Matt reconnected with his bestie Tyler Cameron over a game of pool and talk of Katie’s “cactus-size vibrator” (um, ouch?). Matt said getting advice from Tyler gave him confidence because he’d seen the process “work” for Tyler except . . . did he actually watch Hannah’s season, because I’m pretty sure she picked Jed. And now she’s apparently dating some model.

Anyway Katie arrived for her date and it looked like she and Matt were going to spend the afternoon at the hotel spa. All right, not a carnival in the woods, but OK. But then Matt told Katie that Tyler was coming in for a massage, and Matt and Katie were going to hide in a little room watching on a monitor and secretly telling the actor pretending to be a masseuse what tricks to play on Tyler and . . . this is a date? I mean, yes, Tyler without a shirt on, I get it. But really?

Matt and Katie have a laugh on a previous episode.

The choice of date was the first clue that Katie was stuck in the friend zone. The unsmiling look Matt gave her at dinner when she said she wanted her love story to be Matt’s love story was another. But then he picked up the rose, so maybe she was going to stick around after all.

Instead Matt blathered a bit about how much their relationship had grown and how she set the tone in the house and how much she meant to him, but sorry, it wasn’t enough to give her a rose.

Katie kept her head high and her eyes dry as she left. Hopefully she remembered to pack the vibrator.

There’s already a groundswell of support building for her to be the next Bachelorette.

It was time for another cocktail party and rose ceremony. The women seemed friendly and contented. They figured the drama was behind them. And then Heather showed up, got stuck in the revolving door, smiled and waved at the women as she walked past them, and interrupted Matt with Pieper.

Matt laughed so hard when Heather walked in I figured maybe he’d heard a clip of her saying she was ready to fall in love with Matt and get engaged. As if.

The other women were not laughing. As my Toronto girl Serena P put it, “If she gets a rose tonight I’ll be rageful.”

Next week, yes, there’s definitely some ragefulness and some tears and Heather complains that people are being mean. Like, what the hell did she expect?

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

Watchable the week of February 8, 2020

February 8, 2021 / Debra Yeo

Clarice (Feb. 11, 10 p.m., Global)

Rebecca Breeds as Clarice Starling in “Clarice.” PHOTO CREDIT: Brooke Palmer/CBS Broadcasting Inc.

The opening scenes of “Clarice” — an artful collection of flashbacks from the Buffalo Bill case as Clarice Starling, in soft focus, recaps the events for a therapist (and the audience) in her distinctive Appalachian accent — suggest an aspiration to prestige TV.

But it reminds me a bit of what killer Hannibal Lecter said to Clarice in “The Silence of the Lambs” about her “good bag” and “cheap shoes.” Behind the gloss of a psychological drama is a fairly standard police show.

By the way, don’t look for any mention of Lecter here. Due to rights agreements involving the source Thomas Harris novels, “Clarice” doesn’t mention the iconic serial killer character by name (just as NBC’s “Hannibal” never mentioned Clarice).

The action is set in 1993, one year after the events of the Oscar-winning film that starred Jodie Foster as the FBI trainee and Anthony Hopkins as Lecter.

Serial killer Buffalo Bill is seen and referenced, and the victim whose life Clarice saved, Catherine Martin (Marnee Carpenter), is a recurring character as is her politician mother, played by Jayne Atkinson of “24” and “House of Cards.”

In fact, it’s Ruth Martin, who’s U.S. attorney general now, who sets the series’ plot in motion when she summons Clarice (Rebecca Breeds, “Pretty Little Liars”) from her hideaway in the behavioural science unit at Quantico to Washington to help with another serial killer case.

That case, which is more complicated than it initially seems, will presumably stay in play throughout the season, although the second episode veers off into a completely unrelated investigation that superficially echoes the siege at Waco.

My issue with “Clarice” is that it doesn’t dig in a particularly deep or nuanced fashion into either its cases or its namesake’s psyche, at least not in the three episodes I saw. The inner turmoil she keeps hidden is represented by flashbacks and hallucinations of the death’s-head moths that helped her catch Buffalo Bill.

Things move at a brisk clip here, probably a factor of network TV’s preoccupation with grabbing and keeping eyeballs. Clarice is something of a criminal whisperer, able to quickly and effortlessly coax confessions out of her targets.

Clarice’s male co-workers are predictably hostile, led by Deputy Assistant AG Paul Krendler (Michael Cudlitz of “The Walking Dead”). Just as predictably, she finds an ally among the threatened men (Lucca De Oliveira of “SEAL Team”). Devyn A. Tyler (“The Purge”) plays her roomie Ardelia.

The series was shot in Toronto, so Canadian actors pop up in small roles, including Shawn Doyle as Clarice’s therapist, Kris Holden-Ried as a murder suspect and Dalmar Abuzeid as the husband of a victim.

The show’s not bad, but it’s no “Silence of the Lambs.”

21 Black Futures (Feb. 12, CBC Gem)

Lovell Adams-Gray in “The Death News,” part of “21 Black Futures.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC

The futures imagined in the 21 “monodramas” in “21 Black Futures” range from the next day, as a preteen girl contemplates how she’ll present herself at school, to a time when a series of viruses has wiped out much of life on Earth.

What all of the short theatre pieces have in common is that the protagonists, the people deciding what those futures will be, are Black. Each is written by a Black playwright, staged by a Black director and performed by a solo Black actor.

Some have post-apocalyptic settings as in “Cavities” by K.P. Dennis, in which a woman (Alison Sealy-Smith) seeds the soil with her teeth and her rage before deciding to pass on joy to the next generation instead; and “Emmett” by Syrus Marcus Ware, in which a survivor of “the fall” (Prince Amponsah) decides he’d rather stay and try to heal the Earth than colonize Venus, where life has just been discovered.

Anti-Black racism is an undercurrent in all of the stories but not the point of them; they’re about Black people taking control of their realities.

So in “The Death News” by Amanda Parris, a Black man (Lovell Adams-Gray) prerecords his own obituary rather than let media dictate how he is remembered. In “Umoja Corp” by Jacob Sampson, a Black man (Pablo Ogunlesi ) is freed from jail on the condition he help other Black people navigate the system. In “Sensitivity” by Lawrence Hill, a Black woman (Sabryn Rock) treats her firing after a racial sensitivity seminar gone wrong as an opportunity rather than a failure.

This first batch of seven dramas, which includes “The Death News,” “Sensitivity” and “Jah in the Ever-Expanding Song” by Kaie Kellough, debuts Feb. 12, with another seven on Feb. 19 and the final seven on Feb. 26.

I found the ones I sampled by turns touching and thought-provoking and worth watching.

If you’d like to know more about Black visual artists, at least in the United States, HBO has “Black Art: In the Absence of Light” (Feb. 9, 9 p.m.).

If you’d like another series that falls outside the white gaze, check out “Gespe’gewa’gi: The Last Land” (Feb. 13, 7 p.m., APTN), a docuseries about the Mi’gmaq fishing community in Listuguj, Que. It’s certainly a timely topic given the ongoing conflict between Indigenous and non-Indigenous fishers in Nova Scotia.

Belgravia (Feb. 14, CBC Gem)

Tamsin Greig as Anne Blanchard and Alice Eve as Susan Trenchard in “Belgravia.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC

“Downton Abbey” was such a sensation that anything Julian Fellowes did as a followup was bound to pale in comparison (although I still have high hopes for “The Gilded Age”).

His “Belgravia” is a respectable addition to the period drama catalogue but not one that will inspire “Downton”-level devotion.

For one thing, it’s not what it might at first appear. It opens in Brussels in 1815, just days before the Battle of Waterloo. The focus is on an ill-advised romance between Sophia Trenchard (Emily Reid), daughter of the man who supplies provisions to the British army, and the aristocratic Lord Edmund Bellasis (Jeremy Neumark Jones). They rendezvous at a ball held by his aunt, the Duchess of Richmond (the ball really happened) but, before a scandal can erupt, the British march off to confront Napoleon. Soon it’s 26 years later, Sophia and Edmund are both dead, and we’re in London, in the upper-class neighbourhood of Belgravia.

The story shifts to the older members of the cast, which is not a bad thing given that the main protagonists are played by two formidable actors, Tamsin Greig and Harriet Walter. They are Anne Trenchard, mother of Sophia, and Lady Brockenhurst, mother of Lord Bellasis.

They share their grief as well as a secret emanating from the long-ago relationship between their children but have opposing views of how to handle it.

Anne’s husband, James (Philip Glenister), has an appetite for social climbing that she finds distasteful — an ambition inherited by their lazy but entitled son, Oliver, and his acquisitive wife, Susan.

Lady Brockenhurst and her husband the Earl (Tom Wilkinson) have greedy relatives of their own to deal with, including a brother with a gambling problem and his boor of a son.

There’s also a new pair of socially mismatched lovers, Charles Pope (Jack Bardoe) and Maria Grey (Ella Purnell).

“Belgravia” takes a sharper look at class differences than “Downton” did, with the Trenchards and Brockenhursts on either side of the new/old money divide.

Another way that “Belgravia” differs is that it’s harder to invest in these characters. Many of them are unlikeable, including the servants, a bitter and venal bunch with little if any loyalty to their employers.

Still, “Belgravia” is lovely to look at and there are enough plot twists to keep the six episodes interesting.

Short Takes

The Cecil Hotel in L.A. has a reputation as a scene of death and violent crime.
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel (Feb. 10, Netflix)

Netflix’s latest true crime entry takes you down a disturbing and sometimes weird rabbit hole. It concerns the disappearance of a 21-year-old Canadian, Elisa Lam, at the infamous downtown Los Angeles hotel in 2013. Note though, that although Joe Berlinger, the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated producer/director behind crime docuseries like “Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes,” lays out the Lam case in painstaking detail, it’s a misnomer to call it a crime. I won’t spoil the series if you want to watch for yourself by telling you what happened to Elisa and why, but be warned that there’s a bait-and-switch going on here and that the very title of the series, “Crime Scene,” is grossly inaccurate. And while the violent history of the hotel itself is interesting (if you watched “Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer” you’ll be interested to know that Richard Ramirez stayed there) it has nothing to do with the sad story of Elisa Lam. The series also gives undue weight to the community of web sleuths and conspiracy theorists that has sprung up around the Lam case. Some of the theories are truly bizarre, completely ungrounded in reality and have harmed people’s lives, notably the death metal musician who was falsely accused of murdering Elisa. Netflix also has the new funeral home comedy “Buried by the Bernards” and the rom-com sequel “To All the Boys: Always and Forever,” both on Feb. 12.

If you devoured the most recent season of “The Crown” and especially its Charles and Diana storyline you might be interested in “Diana: The Interview That Shocked the World,” debuting on BritBox Feb. 9. The interview itself, between Diana and BBC journalist Martin Bashir in November 1995, is sprinkled sparingly through the documentary, which mainly features commentary on how the interview came about, the effect its revelations about Diana’s failing marriage had on the royal family and the public, and whether it set in motion the events that led to Diana’s death in 1997.

I ran out of time before I got to preview “Little Birds” (Feb. 14, Crave), but it sounds like it’s worth a look. It’s set in 1950s Tangier and stars Juno Temple (“Dirty John,” “Ted Lasso”) as an American heiress trying to find freedom in a colourful setting stocked with eccentric characters, including Yumna Marwan as a Moroccan dominatrix.

A couple of Canadian shows debut new seasons on Valentine’s Day. “The Great Canadian Baking Show” is back for its fourth edition (Feb. 14, 8 p.m., CBC) with new hosts Alan Shane Lewis and Ann Pornel. And the comedy “Second Jen” starts its third season (Feb. 14, 8:30 p.m., OMNI 2) with Jen (Samantha Wan) trying to deal with a social media troll and Mo (Amanda Joy) having to endure a conflict resolution seminar at work.

CLARIFICATION: I edited the item on “The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” on Feb. 15, 2021 to reflect my revised opinion on the series after I watched the entire thing.

The chickens come home to roost for two Bachelor ‘antagonists’

February 2, 2021 / Debra Yeo

Matt James and friend on a farm-themed group date. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos, Craig Sjodin/ABC

Matt James brought out the Swiffer on Monday night, but what he needed was a heavy duty mop.

The Bachelor, tipped off to all the toxic nonsense swirling around the women, decided to clean house — and it almost worked.

Once Queen Victoria and her mean girl protege Anna had been sent packing, it seemed like something approaching civility might be restored among the contestants. When nice girl Rachael got a one-on-one date nobody called her “slutty” or a “ho.” Sure, the other women were disappointed it wasn’t them, but a few of them even clapped for Rachael.

Even the goat she was trying to milk didn’t want anything to do with MJ.

The goodwill didn’t last, though. MJ, who managed to avoid the purge that eliminated Victoria and Anna, got outed on the group date as an “antagonist” by Jessenia. The episode ended with the pair of them on an instant two-on-one and MJ gaslighting so hard it was like she was Charles Boyer and Jessenia was Ingrid Bergman.

I’m going to go out on a fairly sturdy limb and say that Matt won’t swallow MJ’s balderdash about spreading harmony and peace next week. But, in the meantime, let’s relive the fall of Queen Victoria.

After Katie tipped off Matt to the bad blood between the new women and the so-called OGs, it was fairly certain that a couple of troublemakers were headed for the SUVS of Shame.

Anna with Matt in the proverbial “happier times,” at last week’s rose ceremony.

First up was Anna, who you’ll recall gleefully spread a false rumour that newcomer Brittany was an escort back home in Chicago.

Matt heard the tale firsthand from a tearful Brittany. “This is on national TV,” she said. “My mom watches this show and this could ruin my entire life.”

Anna apologized to Matt, but her tears and her explanation of how horrible she felt weren’t good enough for a reprieve. And it was amazing how contrite everyone else got after they watched Matt walk Anna out of the hotel. “Kiss-assery” was what Serena C accurately called it, although she should have been kissing ass right along with the rest.

Queen Victoria’s reign finally came to an end and not with a rose, like last week.

Victoria even apologized to Catalina for taking her Miss Puerto Rico crown the night she arrived and then she sucked up to Brittany, but it was newbie Ryan who laid the groundwork for Victoria’s dethroning by telling Matt, “She told me to my face that because I’m a dancer, she flat out stated that I was a ho.”

The best part was that Victoria seemed to think she could bullshit her way out of it. She told Matt that her comment about Ryan being a ho was taken out of context, to which Matt replied, “I’m just curious, like what context would calling somebody a ho be acceptable to be taken in?” Yes! Thank you Matt.

Victoria just looked at him and played with her hair, but she had plenty to say to whichever producer had been babysitting her.

“Ryan, she’s the shadiest bitch and I hope I don’t get sent home because of that,” Victoria whined, loudly enough for Ryan and some of the other women to hear.

“Literally, there’s no one here he can marry besides me . . . I’m the only one with a working brain in this room. I’m not even being rude, I’m being serious. If he’s gonna believe some idiot over me he’s not my person.”

Holy delusional, Batman. I can’t wait to see that clip replayed on “Women Tell All” and hear Victoria’s spin on it.

When Victoria finally did get sent home, along with Catalina, Lauren and Mari, she had the nerve to tell Matt, “I honestly feel so sorry for you that you would listen to hearsay and not all the facts behind this situation.”

In reply, Matt just looked at her, which was the perfect response.

So Victoria declared that Matt was no longer her king but a jester, which to my mind is not a bad thing. It means he gets the last laugh.

Rachael plays dress-up inside one of the hotel shops.

The next day, Rachael got the “Cinderella” date. Since there presumably weren’t any swanky stores open nearby (or none they’d break quarantine in the resort for), Rachael was taken to one of the shops inside the Chateau at Nemacolin and gifted with a bunch of designer dresses and a pair of Louboutins.

The dinner conversation was mostly standard talk about Rachael having self-doubt and being afraid to open up. The most significant thing was that she said she was falling in love with Matt and he said it back to her, and I do believe that’s the first time he’s said that to someone.

Imagine how pissed you’d be if you’d just watched Rachael come back to the suite with her arms full of bags of expensive clothes and you had to go on the group date and shovel poop. That’s what Serena P, Bri, Katie, Pieper, Serena C, Ryan, Michelle, Brittany, Magi, Abigail, Chelsea, Jessenia and MJ got to do, as well as milk a goat named Frenchie (who did not like MJ much at all) and gather eggs.

MJ thought she’d be cute and flirty and chase Matt after he threw an egg that broke in her hand, but he ran straight into Pieper doing an interview and began sucking on her face. Awkward.

Hey Matt, remember your first impression rose recipient, Abigail?

Put MJ aside for a moment while we talk about Abigail. I’ve been puzzled that the first impression rose winner has not yet had a one-on-one, which was also weighing on Abigail’s mind.

She told Matt she was afraid she would disappoint him, chiefly because he wants a family and there’s a good chance her children will be deaf like her and her sister. She also confessed her fear of opening up in a relationship after her birth father walked out on the family when Abigail and her sister got their cochlear implants. Matt, himself the son of a single mom as we all know, treated her confessions as fuel for a future together and gave her the date rose. So don’t count Abigail out just yet.

When MJ’s turn for a chat came, things weren’t quite so cordial. Matt told her that some of the other women had identified her as an “antagonist” in the house. MJ claimed to be shocked and hurt, and then promptly proved her bona fides as an antagonist by getting up in Jessenia’s face. Jessenia had told Matt how MJ referred to the original women in the house as the “varsity” squad and the newer women as “JV” or junior varsity.

I mean, I’d rather be called JV than a ho, but I see Jessenia’s point, which was that it made the newer contestants feel unwelcome. MJ claimed she’d “never been involved in anything,” which anyone who’s watched the season from the beginning knows is a bunch of hogwash.

Anyway, enough about MJ. It was time for Kit’s one-on-one. I confess on Night 1 I had Kit pegged as perennial group date fodder and perhaps a sparring partner for Victoria. But Matt had Kit come to his place to bake chocolate chip cookies and smooch a lot.

Kit talked about how growing up in the public eye as the daughter of designer Cynthia Rowley made her keep her emotions hidden and her walls up, but she was being really vulnerable (yes, that word again) for the very first time. She said she was starting to fall in love with Matt.

Matt didn’t say it back, but he said he was happy to have Kit on the journey and gave her a rose.

And just like that it was rose ceremony day again and a card arrived for MJ and Jessenia, telling them to meet Matt at the cocktail party ahead of the other women.

I won’t bore you with the full extent of the she said, she said.

Jessenia said MJ was a liar for not owing up to her part in the toxicity in the house. MJ said all she was doing was preaching peace and harmony (if by harmony you mean saying things like, “The new girls aren’t gonna try to, like, get to the front of the line. Let the varsity squad go in first,” then yes, very harmonious).

Jessenia, who I am totally re-evaluating due to the cool way she parried MJ’s BS, said, “You’ll find out the truth when all this airs and so will he.”

And then Matt walked in, looking grim, and the promo rolled for next week.

We know that Pieper will be pissed, Abigail will be angry, Serena C and Katie will clash, Tyler Cameron will put in an appearance and, lord help us, Heather Martin will make her long awaited (or is that dreaded?) return to “Bachelor” land.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

Author: Debra Yeo (Page 21 of 29)

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The Bachelor sends home a favourite and lets in an interloper

Watchable the week of February 8, 2020

The chickens come home to roost for two Bachelor ‘antagonists’

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