Shanae is tackled but not ousted as the Bachelor drama continues

Houston, we have a problem.

Not only did Bachelor Clayton Echard not send Shanae Ankney home at Monday’s rose ceremony, which was expected, he continued to be oblivious to the BS she was laying down throughout the episode.

After the contestants moved on to Houston, Texas, two more women came forward to tell Clayton that Shanae couldn’t be trusted. And what did he do? Fell for more of Shanae’s nonsense — hook, line and sinker.

Judging by the way Clayton hoisted Shanae up onto a bar so he could apply suction to her mouth, with hand planted on her booty, we could be dealing with a simple case of thinking-with-his-dick-itis.

But that doesn’t negate the fact that Bachelor Nation feels like it’s taken a few of Teddi’s football tackles after a third week of pointless drama revolving around one insecure, vindictive contestant.

I don’t want to call Clayton names or insult his intelligence, but dude, what were you thinking?

It’s one thing to have the mean girl stuff happen where you can’t see it, which was the defence Clayton mounted on a recent episode of the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast, but Shanae’s nastiness was on display during a sit-down between her and Elizabeth and Clayton and, not only did Clayton not see it, he turtled.

Decided he didn’t want to deal with the conflict, walked away, cancelled the cocktail party, and then gave a rose to Shanae and sent Elizabeth home, to the horror of the other 14 women who remained.

I mean seriously: it seemed like a good idea to give a rose to somebody who spent several minutes whining that she was being bullied because nobody wanted the stupid plate of shrimp she brought out to the hot tub?

As Elizabeth sensibly pointed out, “Why was that my responsibility?”

It wasn’t, it isn’t, regardless of whether she was in the hot tub that day or not. And for the record, Elizabeth was in the hot tub, not upstairs having a shower as she told Clayton, but it doesn’t bloody matter! It’s a tempest in a teapot, or in a shrimp pan, if you will.

As Jill said, “I lost brain cells because I listened to Shrimpgate” and Jill is all of us.

That Shanae walked back into the mansion carrying a plate of — you guessed it — shrimp was the producers messing with us. Let’s move on.

So Elizabeth and Kira and Melina got sent home, and we were forced to watch Shanae gloat about how she won and nobody should fuck with her, and the next day everybody flew to Houston. And then we had a pointless interlude where a man named Clarence, one of Clayton’s football friends, came to visit Clayton in his hotel suite just to further drill into our heads that Clayton wants a family.

Because Clarence has a wife and a child, he is a shining exemplar of Bachelor #goals. Pssst, did you know Clayton wants kids, y’all?

Mind you, we knew we were in trouble because Clayton told Clarence that he expected to be hung up on two, “maybe three, possibly four women” at the end of this. Which I guess explains all the promos about him telling three women he’s in love with them.

Will Rachel be one of those three? It seemed like a possibility after their one-on-one date.

They went horseback riding; they dropped in on some poor family and ate their barbecue; they whispered — literally whispered — sweet nothings to each other on a picturesque dock.

At dinner, there was a minor fakeout when Clayton said he was confused and had questions for Rachel, but what he wanted to know was how “a woman as beautiful as you with this badass job” ended up on “The Bachelor.”

The badass job was the short answer. Rachel, who’s a flight instructor and a pilot, described being in a relationship with a man who didn’t support her career. She told Clayton she wants to get married and have kids, but she also wants to keep flying.

He assured her he would “never, ever hold you back from doing something that you love.”

After that they got serenaded by — what else? — a country band called Restless Road, and Clayton gave Rachel the rose and they kissed a lot, and he told her, “I’ll never dim your light.”

That’s kind of sweet. It’s the kind of thing that might give me the warm fuzzies if it wasn’t for the fact I can’t get excited about seeing someone as lovely as Rachel end up with a man who got bamboozled by Shanae.

Come to think of it, can I steal the name of that band to describe this season?

Time for the group date, but first Sierra, Genevieve and Gabby had a conversation in the hotel suite in which Sierra suggested the group date contestants warn Clayton about Shanae’s character, or lack thereof, in an effort to get her sent home. Of course, Shanae, who was napping in her room — a mark of a true villain as Corinne Olympios can attest — overheard them and I have questions.

Did they not realize that Shanae was within earshot? Why didn’t they whisper? It’s just so convenient.

And then, fancy that, the group date was a tackle football game, because the franchise is an equal opportunity provider of chances for contestants to get violent.

Sarah, Eliza, Teddi, Marlena, Jill, Susie, Mara, Sierra, Hunter, Lyndsey, Genevieve, Gabby and Shanae were split into two teams, coached by Houston Texans Jonathan Greenard and Kamu Grugier-Hill.

Shanae was on the — wait for it — Shrimp Stampede team, but the Purple Punishers had Olympian Marlena to run touchdowns and also an ace tackler in Teddi, so they beat the shrimps 21-0. And that meant they won extra time with Clayton at the after party.

(As an aside, the “Bachelor Bowl” commentary from host Jesse Palmer and sports anchor Hannah Storm made me miss the late Fred Willard, who used to team up with Chris Harrison, but I will give Jesse credit for one good line about Jill, “an architectural historian, also a vegan, Hannah, and she just ate grass.”)

At the after-party, Sierra put Operation Sink Shanae into effect. Both she and Genevieve told Clayton that Shanae wasn’t to be trusted. “We believe that if you have the full story you wouldn’t want somebody like that to be your wife,” Sierra told him, while Genevieve said, “She just can’t get along and she’s lied and she can’t apologize for what she’s done.”

Clayton was frustrated that the Shanae drama hadn’t been squelched and “Shanae seems to be involved in all the conflict.”

I believe the correct expression would be “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” But Clayton was more interested in the sparks generated when he and Shanae put their lips together.

He halfheartedly confronted Shanae when she crashed the after party — because of course she did — but she didn’t even have to lie this time to wriggle off the hook, telling him how she’d overheard Gabby, Genevieve and Sierra plotting against her.

After Clayton’s and Shanae’s smooch sesh, she walked over to where the other women were sitting, said, “Genevieve and Sierra, keep my name out of your fucking mouths,” picked up the Bachelor Bowl trophy, threw it in some bushes and stormed off.

“It’s Shanae Show, not The Bachelor,” smirked Shanae. And she’s absolutely right, it is, and it’s ruining what was already shaping up to be a lacklustre season. How much longer will we have to put up with her is the question.

There was no “to be continued,” but the promo for next week showed a two-on-one date with Shanae and Genevieve. Confusingly, the promo for later in the season also showed both Shanae and Genevieve. Surely, Clayton won’t go on a two-on-one and keep both the women.

We’ll find out next week. It airs Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo