You should see what the losers were wearing. PHOTO CREDIT: Craig Sjodin/ABC
Welcome to “The Bachelorette,” the “naked edition.” If you want to be with Clare prepare to get bare: either your feelings or, in the immortal words of Demar, your “man goodies.”
Yep, it was that kind of night.
We started with Clare getting touchy feely with the fellows on a group date, segued to a one-on-one that was more of a therapy session and ended with another group date that must have used up a full season’s supply of ass-covering black bars.
Regardless of what happens with Dale Moss — don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about him — Clare Crawley is definitely blazing her own trail through her “Bachelorette” journey. I’m not sure we’ve seen a Bachelorette who cuts to the chase as quickly as she does.
When self-described “Italian stallion” Brandon couldn’t give Clare a reason for wanting to be with her other than “You’re so beautiful” Clare speedily gave him the boot. When she had to coax the guys on the first group date into asking for one-on-one time, she told them straight up, “You guys all want to hang out with each other you can do that and I can go home and go to bed.”
When Canadian dude Blake Moynes broke the rules (again!) by stealing alone time he wasn’t entitled to, Clare rewarded him with an early rose.
No doubt, we’ll soon see Blake disappointed along with everybody else as Clare and Dale get closer, but she at least made an effort with some of the other men, judging by this episode.
Things kicked off with a kind of cheesy group date about “love language.” Clearly, with everybody in quarantine at La Quinta Resort, we’re not going to see the wide-ranging and varied dates of the BP (before pandemic) era. So we had Riley, Jordan, Yosef, Ivan, Ben, Bennett, the two Zachs and Dale having to make lovey-dovey speeches to Clare, “Romeo and Juliet”-style, as she looked out a fake window.
Dale’s was the longest. To sum up, he told Clare he was committed to giving her everything he had, physically and emotionally. He started to make good on the physical part in an exercise in which Clare was blindfolded and each of the men, also blindfolded, had to touch her while the other dudes watched.
In theory, this was about regaining the touch that everyone had been deprived of in the COVID-19 pandemic; in reality, it was about stirring up jealousy as the men watched other guys getting handsy with Clare, none more so than Dale.
Dale got to do a little more touching, and kissing, at the date cocktail party during which Clare confessed to Dale that her feelings for him scared her. But he didn’t get the date rose. It went to New York lawyer Riley, who also shared smooches with Clare and a “prom” slow dance (did somebody on production tip him off that Clare never went to her high school prom or what?).
The date also exposed a condescending attitude on Yosef’s part toward Clare. When Clare told the men they had hurt her feelings by not stepping up for alone time, Yosef — claiming to speak for all of them, which pissed Riley off — told her, “You’re crazy to think that we didn’t all come here for you.”
That doesn’t sound like love language to me.
On the one-on-one date, meanwhile, the language sounded more like therapy than love speak.
Clare warned former pro footballer Jason they would be sharing deep parts of themselves, which had Jason terrified. Clare, or more likely somebody on the production team, had discerned that Jason was using his sense of humour to compensate for a dark past, so during their evening together Clare and Jason did a little primal scream therapy, read inspirational letters to their younger selves, and busted slates covered in negative words that other people had used to describe them.
Clare, doing her best imitation of a therapist, got Jason to admit to witnessing unspecified painful things in his childhood, which he had kept hidden by pushing other people away and hooking up with multiple women — all of which Clare insisted didn’t scare her.
In one final bit of exorcism, Clare burned the dress she wore during the “Bachelor” finale in which she told Juan Pablo Galavis to get stuffed. It remains to be seen whether other garments will follow on other therapy dates, perhaps a “Bachelor in Paradise” bikini or a “Bachelor Winter Games” parka.
And then came the final group date, a.k.a. “Clare’s Extreme Dodgeball Bash,” a.k.a. “strip dodgeball.”
Because it wasn’t humiliating enough for the “blue team” of Blake, Kenny, Brendan, Garin and Demar to lose every game of dodgeball to the “red team” (Eazy, Brandon, Joe, Jay and Chasen) — thus forfeiting extra time with Clare — they had to walk back to their suite starkers or very nearly so. A couple of the guys kept their jock straps on; the rest just covered their bits with their hands.
“She might see my man goodies tonight,” Demar said prophetically before the game started. That she did and a few others besides. The date card said she wanted a man with some balls: I guess she wanted proof.
Anyway, Blake — belying the myth of the polite Canadian — got dressed, combed his beard and wandered over to where Clare was partying with the winners, interrupting Jay right in the middle of a scintillating story about wanting to open his own gym.
Clare let him hang out for a few minutes — despite Jay and the rest of the red team returning to stare him down — and told him she appreciated him coming but did some dodging of her own when Blake tried to kiss her.
The date rose went to Chasen, with whom Clare bonded over the fact they were both considered losers in high school.
We never got through the rose ceremony, probably because the inevitable blow-up with Yosef is being saved for next week. Yosef told the other men the strip dodgeball game was “classless” and that he was going to let Clare know his thoughts — because no doubt she’s just dying to hear them, as are we all.
We saw Blake get his rose and the kiss he’d been denied the night before, and then Clare pulled Dale away so they could talk and do some hot and heavy smooching; like, seriously, she looked like she wanted to devour him.
Next week, Yosef tells Clare he’s “ashamed to be associated” with her and it looks like resentment over Clare’s relationship with Dale will start to build.
“The Bachelorette” airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on Citytv. Feel like chatting about “Bachelorette”? Come visit my Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter @realityeo
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