Let’s be honest, the relationship we care about the most this season of “The Bachelorette” is the one between its two stars, Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia.
But there couldn’t be a more apt metaphor for the shit that’s gonna get shovelled their way than host Jesse Palmer scooping up horse dung after beautiful Blanca, who carried in a shirtless dude named Jacob, dropped a load in the mansion driveway.
Mortgage broker Jacob pulls a Fabio with the help of Blanca. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC
Gabby pretty much called it, “Boys are dumb.” Or at least indecisive. It looks like she and Rachel will relive a version of the nonsense they endured from Bachelor Clayton Echard, who you’ll recall — and I’m sorry to conjure up the memory — strung them both along with sex and protestations of love, then dumped them simultaneously.
The good news: Clayton’s shenanigans couldn’t tear these best friends apart so I’m guessing none of this season’s dudes will either. We saw plenty of tears in the season promo and both women talking about wanting to quit; we never saw them turn on each other and if ABC had that kind of footage don’t you think they’d be gleefully promoting the hell out of it?
Still, Jesse promised “the most shocking season of ‘The Bachelorette’ yet” and that’s not a good thing if you’re more interested in seeing mature adults fall in love than divisive drama. But really, what did we expect?
Gabby and Rachel weren’t made dual Bachelorettes because Mike Fleiss and his team knew how much fans loved them both and wanted to make us happy. No, having two women choose from the same pool of men is about trying to pit them against each other. Just imagine the possibilities if they fall for the same guy!
But we’ll save the angst for later. Monday’s season premiere was a pretty congenial affair with a generous tone set by its two lovely leads, Gabby, a 31-year-old ICU nurse, and Rachel, a 26-year-old pilot and flight instructor, who supported each other every step of the way.
So much hugging and hand-holding and squeals of joy! I’m here for it.
It was almost enough to appease us for losing Kaitlyn Bristowe and Tayshia Adams as “Bachelorette” hosts — almost.
As for the 32 suitors, they were well behaved. No excess drunkenness, no trash talking, no playbooks on how to get screen time, no blatantly misogynistic remarks.
I wasn’t keen on Logan manhandling a couple of live chicks just so he could make a lame joke about Gabby and Rachel being “cute chicks,” but one of them got revenge by pooping in his hand — the chickens, not Rachel and Gabby.
Logan introduces Gabby and Rachel to Marybeth and Alejandra. Call the SPCA!
Cringiest limo exit was a tie between investment banker Jason and life coach Quincey. The former said that, like Clayton, he was in love with three women: his mom, his sister and his dog, and ewwww. Quincey said he hadn’t had sex in over a year to show how “intentional” he could be and, like, why did they need to know that?
Software developer Jordan H, meanwhile, had the cleverest shtick, bringing along wireless, noise-cancelling headphones so he could talk to Rachel and Gabby individually without the other one listening in. Props also to venture capitalist Spencer for bringing chairs so Gabby and Rachel could take a load off their high heels. And wedding photographer Alec, besides being a natty dresser, brought along a quartet to sing a song, the gist of which was “Clayton sucks.”
Alec brings his own musical accompaniment.
Aside from the hokey limo entrances, who are the standouts so far?
To be honest, with that many dudes it was hard to get a handle, which is why Rachel and Gabby chose to forgo a rose ceremony and keep 29 men into next week.
They made magician Roby disappear, along with 24-year-old twins Justin and Joey. Being the only three guys singled out for elimination must have sucked hard, but it was a fair call.
Luckily, our Bachelorettes chose very different first impression rose winners and didn’t swap spit with the same men. In fact, there was very little kissing considering the precedent set in other seasons.
Mario got Gabby’s first impression rose and her first kisses of the season.
Gabby’s first rose went to Mario, an affable personal trainer who danced his way out of the limo, but holy hell, did their kissing look awkward! Rachel’s smooching with Tino, a contractor whose forklift-driving skills she admired, was more palatable. He got her rose.
Gabby also kissed real estate analyst Erich, who also considered kissing Rachel, seemingly hedging his bets to get a first impression rose.
“I can see how this is gonna get complicated very quickly,” he said. Ya think?
Gabby also had good chemistry with investment director Ryan and she couldn’t stop looking at Jacob’s pecs, the Fabio wannabe with the horse. That’s just as well; paying attention to the list of attributes he was reading for his future wife might have otherwise bored her to tears.
Rachel had a sweet interaction with “leisure executive” Hayden, who made a hand-written card for her recent birthday. But she couldn’t figure out why neither sales exec Aven or drag racer Jordan V went in for a kiss. There was a fleeting knee grab by the first and the second held her hand, but that was it.
She and Gabby were both attracted to chick guy Logan, who hugged Rachel and bonded with Gabby over sneaking snacks into the cinema (hopefully nothing as big as the meatball sub that “meatball enthusiast” James brought with him).
But yeah, there’s still a lot of wheat to be separated from the chaff with this group. We’ll get another shot at figuring out who’s who next week.
It airs Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.
“Bachelor” host Jesse Palmer with Rachel Recchia and Clayton Echard. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos but screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ ABC
Let’s tell it like it is Bachelor Nation: we are in an abusive relationship with the Bachelor franchise.
On Tuesday night — which really was the most dramatic Bachelor finale ever — we got emotionally pummelled watching Clayton, and the show, completely disrespect his final two.
Then, after the catharsis of seeing Gabby and Rachel call out Clayton’s bullshit, we had to watch him get the happy ending he didn’t deserve.
And then ABC pulled out the equivalent of a makeup gift and made both Gabby and Rachel the new Bachelorette.
You want to talk about a journey? That was a seriously messed up roller-coaster ride. It was insidious and infuriating, and we all know we’ll be right back in front of our TVs come the new “Bachelorette” season.
We began the night in Iceland, where Clayton had decided that Susie Evans was the woman for him after all, making an absolute mockery of his claim to love Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia too.
And it wasn’t just Gabby and Rachel who were disrespected. When Susie was summoned by host Jesse Palmer to meet with Clayton, she had to do it at his parents’ rented Airbnb. Like, Clayton didn’t have a hotel suite they could use?
Luckily, Susie and Clayton had their conversation outside. Also luckily, she didn’t mince words telling Clayton how he made her feel when he angrily and coldly dismissed her after she objected to him having sex with Rachel and Gabby, and telling both of them he loved them.
“It was humiliating if I’m being honest,” Susie said. “I felt like a stray dog that had come into your home and you were shooing me out.”
Clayton was so sorry, he didn’t mean what he said, he was just scared of losing her, it was out of character, blah, blah, blah. He asked Susie for another chance and she told him she had to think about it.
So let’s take stock. Just days after breaking up with Susie and essentially begging both Gabby and Rachel to stay — in Gabby’s case, against her better judgment — Clayton was about to break up with them because he now knew his heart was with Susie.
Are we seriously supposed to believe that his heart wasn’t with Susie in the days leading up to fantasy suites? How was Clayton just coming to this realization now?
All season he’d been acting like a kid in a candy store, except instead of sweets he was gorging on women. Were fantasy suites about getting his fill before he had to pick just one?
Rachel and Gabby react to Clayton telling them his heart belongs to Susie.
To add insult to injury, Clayton broke up with Rachel and Gabby simultaneously, which surely wasn’t all his idea.
Yep, he walked into their hotel suite, told them he meant it when he said he loved them both and saw a future with them both, except “I realized it’s not feasibly possible for me to be in love with three women like I said I was.”
So in other words, he didn’t mean it.
Gabby grasped that right away.
“You asked me to stay because you were pissed and your pride was hurt because Susie left,” Gabby told him.
When Clayton protested that he did love Gabby, she snapped, “That is bullshit.”
She also scorched him for breaking up with her and Rachel together, saying, “You don’t give a fuck about us.”
When Clayton said he was sorry and asked to walk her out, she made a face like she’d just smelled something awful and said contemptuously, “No.” You could see the studio audience applauding and Grandpa John nodding in the inset at the bottom of the screen and it was glorious.
And then, in another demonstration of how much disrespect producers had for these women, Rachel’s exit was left hanging as the show cut to L.A. and Gabby was brought onstage.
There was a beautiful moment when Grandpa John got up to hug her, with tears in his eyes, and then she sat down to answer Jesse’s ridiculously obvious questions.
Gabby tells it to Clayton like it is on the live part of the finale.
When Clayton came out, Gabby did a marvellous job of cutting through his nonsense — “I’m incredibly sorry,” “I had love for you all,” etc. — by pointing out he was the opposite of transparent when he didn’t fess up to having told Susie he loved her the most, which would have been a deal breaker for Gabby.
“When you say you love someone you’re assuming responsibility to protect them, to care for them and to not hurt them, and you didn’t do any of those things,” she said as the audience applauded.
Like I said, glorious.
Back to Rachel in the Reykjavik hotel room. She was crying so hard that tears were literally dripping off her face, but the shoe dropped for her too. After Clayton, conspicuously dry-eyed, handed her into the SUV with the same stock line about being so sorry, she said, “I was in love, but he was never in love with me.”
Rachel cried again in the studio watching the footage, but she assured Jesse it wasn’t because she had any lingering feelings for Clayton. She had been blindsided and robbed of a chance to stand up for herself, she said.
She sure put that to rights when Clayton came onstage.
Rachel did not take one bit of crap from Clayton, not even a little bit.
“I became collateral damage in your journey for love,” Rachel told Clayton. “That was the most completely selfish journey.” Bang on, again.
Clayton sounded like he was reading off cue cards when he gave her a variation of the “I’m incredibly sorry” speech.
“I just don’t believe you,” Rachel retorted to applause.
Like Gabby, she blasted him for leaving out the part about loving Susie the most in his double declaration of love for Rachel and Gabby, asking him point blank, “Did you tell me you were in love with me because you wanted to sleep with me?”
Clayton said no, but you can draw your own conclusion.
And what of Susie, still in Iceland in our timeline?
After Jesse hand-delivered a syrupy letter from Clayton — “Without you I am nothing and with you I have everything” — Susie put on her glad rags and met Clayton in some house in the countryside as rain spit and wind whipped.
He showed her the diamond ring that was burning a hole in his pocket and vowed to prove his love to her if she gave him one more chance. And Susie said no thank you, basically telling him he was more into her than she was into him, and she was leaving Iceland alone and it was over, like over over.
Look, I don’t hate Clayton and I don’t get off on seeing people in pain, but it would have been a slap in the face if Susie had said yes. A man who can’t tell the difference between love, like, lust and lies — or worse, was following a script set out by reality TV producers — doesn’t deserve to get engaged.
So it was a shock and kind of a bummer to learn that Susie had gone back to him.
Susie and Clayton reunited and no, it doesn’t feel that good.
Clayton was blathering on to Jesse about how everything he did was because he was following his heart and he had become a better person because he learned so much. Maybe he even meant it, but I never got the sense he truly understood just what he put those women through.
But Susie said she loved him, and she’s a grown woman who can make her own decisions, even though I think her boyfriend is a tool.
Mercifully there was no surprise engagement, even though Jesse kept drawing attention to Neil Lane being in the audience, but Clayton did give Susie his final rose. And yeah, OK, fine. But if you’re expecting happy tears over that, you’re SOL.
I did, however, have happy tears over the Bachelorette announcement.
The most beautiful thing to come out of the shit show that was Part 1 of the finale was seeing the bond between Rachel and Gabby. So yeah, even though I have no idea how it’s going to work, I am totally cool with them sharing the next “Bachelorette” season.
Unfortunately, we don’t know what the franchise is going to throw at them, i.e. what kind of dorks it’s going to cast in the name of drama. But Rachel and Gabby have proven they’re capable of cutting through the BS, so fingers crossed they’ll be OK.
This has been a horrible season. Clayton was the worst Bachelor ever, no contest, and ABC had no business casting him. Was his lack of insight and self-awareness part of his charm for the producers? Or did it really come down to casting him because some grade school kids liked him?
It’s Door No. 1, I’m sure, but it’s basically a moot point because our collective outrage has only fuelled interest in the show.
Clayton, by clownishly claiming to love three women at the same time — so basically doing exactly what the format plays at — has made it blindingly clear just how ridiculous the format is. But I have no expectation that will lead to any substantial change. Unlike Clayton, the franchise hasn’t even said it’s sorry.
Oh, and one more kick in the pants: we learned that Kaitlyn Bristowe and Tayshia Adams are out as hosts of “The Bachelorette” and Jesse is coming back.
But yes, more fool us, we’ll watch anyway.
That’s it for me, recap-wise, until “The Bachelorette” starts on July 11. But I’ll still be posting my weekly Watchable lists. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo
Michelle Young on the beach in Mexico on proposal day on “The Bachelorette.” PHOTO CREDIT: All photos except screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC
SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHO MICHELLE PICKED ON THE BACHELORETTE FINALE, STOP READING NOW!
You could say Michelle Young’s season finale was a textbook end to a “Bachelorette” season in the sense that she dropped the guy who seemed perfect for her and kept the one who was raising red flags.
That producers made it look like Brandon Jones stood a chance of getting the girl is another feather in their caps, I suppose, although it did seem inevitable that someone so heart-on-his-sleeve sincere was bound to be disappointed.
And oh boy, was he disappointed. On a scale of one to 10, the emotional brutality of that breakup was like a 20.
It always seems so pointlessly cruel to let a dude walk up in his best suit, an engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket, give a flowery speech declaring his love and then have the Bachelorette tell him sorry, I’m just not that into you.
You have to assume she knows where her heart lies before she hits the beach, or wherever the proposal happens, so why not head off the unlucky runner-up at the pass?
Well, for the drama, that’s why. And on Tuesday, we got to watch a solid eight minutes of agony, both his and hers, as Michelle told Brandon — just after he told her she was the “missing piece” he’d been searching for his entire life — that her heart had taken her in another direction.
But don’t worry, Brandon told host Kaitlyn Bristowe on “After the Final Rose” that he’s doing good and that he wants Michelle and Nayte Olukoya to be happy, and he seemed like he meant it.
As for Nayte, yes, I was as skeptical as the next person. How does a dude who claims never to have been in love before, who comes from an emotionally constipated family, make a lifetime commitment to someone he’s known for mere weeks when no one else seems to believe he’s ready for it?
Well, Michelle is a really smart woman and if she says Nayte is in it for the long haul, who the hell are we to doubt her?
In any event, the producers seem to have so much faith in the relationship that they gave Michelle and Nayte a $200,000 down payment for a house on “ATFR” — in Minnesota naturally, you think she was going to move for a guy?
Let’s just hope they patronize a different grocery store than the one used by Joe Coleman and his family.
Anyway, let’s backtrack and recount how Michelle got to her happy ending.
If you’d tuned in just for the “meet the family” part of the finale you would have been shocked as hell that Brandon lost.
Has a family ever loved a member of the final two as much as Michelle’s family loved Brandon? It seems unlikely.
They had already met him, of course, during that one-on-one in Minneapolis when her parents “surprised” Michelle and Brandon in the hot tub in her folks’ backyard. And Brandon charmingly brought dad Ephraim a pair of swim trunks to replace the ones he’d borrowed that day.
Brandon couldn’t have answered his and mom LaVonne’s questions any more agreeably if he’d had somebody from production coaching him on the sidelines.
No, he wouldn’t be threatened by Michelle finishing her master’s degree and becoming a school principal. “My mom in my family is the powerful woman.”
Yes, he was in love with Michelle, “the most incredible woman I’ve ever met in my entire life.”
Yes, he’d be thrilled to move to Minnesota. “I just want to marry her so bad.”
LaVonne Young bestows a welcome-to-the-family kiss on Brandon Jones.
LaVonne bestowed not one, but two cheek kisses on Brandon and beamed, “I would be so happy if you’re here in the end.”
Brandon was the “best friend” that Mom and Pop wanted her to marry.
And Nayte’s time with the Young fam? Awkward, at least the way it was edited.
He was vague about moving to Minnesota, telling Michelle’s sister Angela, “The thing about me is I’m all about the adventure. I’ve moved so many times in my life.”
To LaVonne, he said things like, “My mind and heart are definitely pointing at Michelle,” not exactly a declaration of undying love.
LaVonne told him point blank she didn’t think he was ready to get engaged and shared that sentiment with Michelle, which had Michelle saying she had to “reassess” things with Nayte.
Naturally that meant that when it came to the final dates with the final two, Brandon got the chill zooming around on Jet Skis date and Nayte got the uncomfortable “sacred ritual to make you spill your guts” date.
Brandon got the sun, fun and surf date; Nayte not so much.
There’s no point rehashing all the smiles, smooches and declarations of Brandon’s true, true love on his date. The most significant part — other than Brandon gifting Michelle with the sweatshirt he’d been wearing when they had their fantasy suite food fight — was her telling Brandon she was in love with him too.
Up till that point, the fact Michelle was already “in love” with Nayte but just “falling” with Brandon made the ending seem like a foregone conclusion.
I would never accuse Michelle of telling a fib — she seems far too principled for that — but what a gift to production! Despite Nayte having been the clear favourite for weeks, maybe Brandon did have a chance of being the last man standing or so it seemed.
Raul guides Michelle and Nayte in telling each other how they feel.
On their date, Michelle took Nayte to a “sacred place” where a shaman named Raul got them to waft smoke on each other and share their innermost feelings, although he sensed a “blockage” in Nayte.
Well duh, the man had already confessed to being raised in a home where emotions weren’t expressed and “I love you” wasn’t said. It takes more than sacred smoke to counteract that. And I get that you have to go beyond platitudes if you’re planning to marry somebody, but this show makes almost a fetish of the concept of “vulnerability.”
Michelle said in her voice-over that if Nayte stopped trying to pull down his walls it would be a “deal breaker.” Dunh dunh dunh.
Luckily, Nayte was more forthcoming when he and Michelle were alone in his suite. “All I do, all I do is think about life with you, that’s all I do,” he told her. “I think what’s scary is just looking at you right now knowing like, hey, I might wake up tomorrow and just never be able to see you again, you know? That’s scary as hell.
“So as crazy as it is for me to get down on one knee, I am more than ready to do that with you because I want this to be forever, you know?”
She did know. She left Nayte’s room saying, “I think my heart is telling me that this is my person.”
So Brandon was a goner then except, conveniently, there was a letter from Brandon waiting when Michelle got back to her suite — and I don’t blame the conspiracy theorists out there for suspecting production wrote it for him.
It talked about how “a world without you is a world I fear to face” and how he’d always place her happiness above his and he’d love her forever and he’d always see her, etc. Just the sort of thing you want to read the night before you dump someone.
So the narrative the next day, as Nayte and Brandon picked out engagement rings, was that Michelle was confused and her heart torn.
Production threw one more red herring our way by having Michelle say in voice-over as we watched her walk barefoot across the sand to the proposal platform that she was following her heart and was “never going to feel unseen again,” a clear callback to the words in Brandon’s letter.
But of course it was Brandon’s SUV that pulled up first.
Michelle and Brandon tearfully embrace after she dropped her bombshell.
There were so many heartbreaking moments to choose from as Michelle broke up with Brandon, while reassuring him that she still loved him — at least the ones we could hear since the crashing waves drowned out much of the sound, leading viewers to scramble to turn on closed captions.
“Giving you my heart was worth it. It’s something I’ll never regret,” said Brandon while struggling to hold back tears. But tears there were, many, on both their parts.
“I’m just so broken,” he said and there was nothing fake about that.
Michelle had dried her tears by the time Nayte arrived, vowing to make sure she was “always chosen first, seen now and today, tomorrow and for the rest of our lives.”
“I love you with my entire heart,” Michelle told him, adding that her soul mate “is definitely standing right in front of me.”
Yes, of course Nayte proposed to Michelle.
Nayte got down on one knee, pulled out the pear-shaped Neil Lane sparkler he’d chosen, and they were engaged and giddy with happiness.
“This is my soul Nayte,” declared Michelle.
A mariachi band serenaded them, and Kaitlyn and Tayshia Adams ran down the beach cheering to congratulate them (I must say I always get a kick out of that part).
So are they still happy and in love?
It sure looked that way on “After the Final Rose,” which Kaitlyn hosted solo since Tayshia had been exposed to COVID-19.
Michelle reassured Kaitlyn and everybody else that not only was Nayte continuing to let his guard down in their relationship, “he’s more vulnerable than me.”
“I really can say I’ve never been with somebody who makes me feel so beautiful truly inside and out,” Michelle said.
Perhaps, most importantly, mom LaVonne and the rest of the Young clan had fallen in love with Nayte too. And LaVonne was now “besties” with Nayte’s mom. They were in the live studio audience, which went from unmasked to masked about 40 minutes in after viewers complained about the lack of COVID precautions on Twitter.
So simmer down, doubters. Nayte might not have been your pick, but he and Michelle seem as happy as any couple who got together on a dating show can be. Plus he’s Canadian, so I have to support him, eh?
Now, for Brandon. And I apologize for the length of this recap, but damn you to hell three-hour finales!
Brandon and Michelle reunite for the first time since their breakup.
He was gracious while speaking with both Kaitlyn and Michelle, saying he’d always love Michelle but was thankful she’d found her person.
The only hint of frustration came when he said he felt “like a little bit my love was overlooked” and found it confusing that “you really had to push Nayte to that point . . . you never had to push me.”
Maybe we’ll see Brandon again on “Bachelor in Paradise” next summer, although part of me feels like he’s too pure for it.
Speaking of seeing people again, Kaitlyn also brought out the next Bachelor, Clayton Echard, “a man who does need an introduction because nobody knows who he is.”
That’s not true, though. We all know who Clayton is, at least on a surface level. We just don’t understand how he got to be the Bachelor.
Kaitlyn had Clayton read mean tweets about himself, some of which viewers thought were fake.
I will say that Clayton was a good sport. “I kind of wanted this too,” he said in response to the tweet “All I want for Christmas is for Rodney to be the Bachelor. #SantaSucks.” And he laughed really hard at one that read, “I hope Clayton uses protection in the fantasy suites, otherwise 9 months later there are gonna be a lot of baby Shreks running around.”
We also saw the steamy, bitchy, tear-filled promo for Clayton’s season, the one that gives away all the drama by revealing that he told all of the final three he loved them and was “intimate” with at least the final two.
Who am I kidding? I may not be excited about it the new season, but I’ll be recapping it, starting with the Jan. 3 premiere. So check back here Jan. 4 and, until then, have a safe, happy holiday.
From left, Nayte Olukoya, Joe Coleman and Brandon Jones await their fate on “The Bachelorette.” PHOTO CREDIT: Craig Sjodin/ABC.
Sorry Chris Sutton, but you know who sure seems to have it in the bag after Tuesday’s episode of “The Bachelorette.”
Michelle Young and her final three — Nayte Olukoya, Joe Coleman and Brandon Jones — went to Mexico for fantasy suite dates, but she told only one of those men she was already in love with him. That would be Nayte.
And yes, you’d be forgiven for thinking this takes the mystery out of next week’s finale, in which she’ll chose between Nayte and Brandon. Michelle’s feelings for Nayte were clearly more advanced, notwithstanding that she told Brandon she was “falling in love” with him.
Still, we’ve been promised a “shocking conclusion you’d never expect,” so I guess those of us who aren’t up on the spoilers will wait and see.
Her choice is between a man who says he’s never been in love before and whose own stepdad doubts he’s ready to get engaged, and a man who says he’s so ready you feel like telling him to slow his roll.
Brandon got the first date on Tuesday, which he interpreted as a sign of favour from Michelle. And he couldn’t wait to “literally rip out my heart, throw it on the table and say, ‘Just do what you want with it, because it only beats for you at this point.'”
Obviously, he didn’t “literally” do that, but figuratively? Oh yes, indeed.
That night, after their daytime horseback riding and beach smooching, he told Michelle he loved her three times before they’d even cleared the dinner table.
“I’m just so sick of keeping it in because I want you to know I will always, always put you first, always till I take my last breath I will put you first,” Brandon said.
That seems pretty intense for an “I’m still one of three guys left” date, but Michelle wasn’t put off by it.
She reiterated that she was falling in love with Brandon and told him she could see a future with him. “I’ve never met somebody who has made me feel so safe, has made my heart feel so safe. I’m really excited about that, I’m not gonna lie.”
Brandon feeds Michelle an empanada in bed.
They were still on the same page the next morning, even though Brandon shoved an empanada practically up Michelle’s nose, leading to a food fight in bed (ugh, the poor cleaning staff).
“We’re playful, we have so much fun together whether we are kissing, have empanada sliding down our faces or are having a heart to heart: this relationship seems like it has it all,” Michelle said.
One thing Brandon didn’t count on in his glee at getting the first date was the stress of having to sit in the hotel on the nights that Michelle had her other dates, picturing what she was up to with the other two men.
It’s a particularly mean tradition to have the final three all stay in the same suite so they can watch each other roll in the morning after they’ve spent the night with the Bachelorette.
Luckily, none of the men went into the gory details, but you could cut the tension with a knife. “Now we kind of went from bros to foes,” said Nayte.
Joe was the next bro-foe up for a date.
The narrative going in was that Michelle had to learn more about Joe to decide if she could picture a life with him. I’m not entirely sure how ziplining helps with that, but Michelle dug the fact that the normally reserved Joe screamed as he was doing it and showed his “goofy side.”
“Today was, I think, a big day for me because I saw the energetic, upbeat Joe; I saw the relaxed, adventurous side,” Michelle said. If you say so. She also called Joe a 1,000-piece puzzle “and I like puzzles.” Hmmm.
If nothing else, it was the most picturesque date. How can you beat the image of them smooching as the sun sets with a hungry horse nudging them?
Joe and Michelle seemed to vibe at dinner over their shared desire to make a difference in the world, which seemed like a good thing — until you recall she had a similar conversation with Matt James on their “Bachelor” date and they didn’t end up together either.
While Joe and Michelle were bonding, Brandon was back at the hotel quietly freaking out over the fact his woman was out with another man: “You kind of get into your head, thinking ‘Oh, maybe she’s already got the person picked out she wants to be with.'”
Well, yeah, duh, of course she does. The fiction that she’s still trying to decide between three men at this point is just a ridiculous requirement of the format.
Brandon might have taken comfort from knowing that when Michelle woke up with Joe the next day she told him, “I hope you know how much I care about you and how much you mean to me.” The thing is: Joe was already on the L-word train; Michelle was still on the platform.
Nayte, meanwhile, had correctly surmised that it was better to be last than first in the date order. “I would want, personally, my closest connection to be the last guy,” he told Brandon.
Nayte Olukoya was No. 1 in the soul-mate stakes.
Michelle validated that, as they enjoyed cruising on a catamaran, by saying in her voice-over, “When I’m with Nayte I feel how you’re supposed to feel when you’re with your soul mate, when you’re with your favourite person.”
But were her feelings for Nayte stronger than his were for her? Was he ready to get engaged?
Never one to beat about the bush, Michelle told Nayte at dinner, “So falling in love is one thing, being in love is another thing and then engagement is another thing. Which of those are you ready for?”
“I mean, all three,” Nayte said. “I know I trust myself, I trust you and I trust that I’m really falling in love with you.”
Good enough, off to the fantasy suite.
Nayte upped the ante the next morning, telling Michelle, “I’m falling in love with you, I’m in love with you.”
“I am definitely in love with you too,” Michelle replied.
After that, it was no surprise that Nayte was cocky as hell going into the rose ceremony — annoying but not surprising.
Brandon, on the other hand, seemed hella nervous, enough to pull Michelle aside before she could start handing out the roses.
It played well into the production tricks suggesting Michelle was going to send him home. In her voice-over she said she was going to break the heart of “someone who continued to put me first,” basically taking the words right out of Brandon’s mouth. And then she wiped tears from her eyes as Brandon told her, “I will be here for you regardless of what happens to me.”
We were also supposed to think that Brandon’s “Hail Mary,” as Nayte called it, had changed Michelle’s mind about who to send home. Not a chance. If you parse everything she said to Brandon and to Joe on their separate dates it was clear the latter was a goner.
And go he did, expressing his shock.
Michelle told Joe she was still falling in love with him and really had seen a future with him, and she cried an awful lot after his SUV drove away. So much for her “little slice of home.”
Next Tuesday, it’s the three-hour finale (ugh), with the promo suggesting that Michelle’s dad is worried about Brandon becoming jealous and her mom doubting Nayte’s readiness for an engagement, but you know how deceptive those promos can be. We’ll see what’s what next week.
You can tune in at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo
Nayte Olukoya, Joe Coleman, Rodney Mathews and Brandon Jones wait to learn their fate on the hometowns episode of “The Bachelorette.” PHOTO CREDIT: Craig Sjodin/ABC
You could say the hometowns episode of “The Bachelorette” came down to an apple vs. a guy in orange shorts. Michelle Young tossed the man who will forever be known for dressing as an apple on Night 1 while the man who donned orange swim trunks on their date, the one we were meant to think she was having doubts about, maintained his frontrunner status.
I mean it’s hard to drum up drama when you have a final four that seems this benevolent, and not a mean brother or rude mother in the bunch among the families that Michelle met.
The closest we got to hometown conflict was when Nayte’s stepdad expressed doubt that Nayte was ready for an engagement, which set up the narrative that Michelle was “struggling” as she went into the rose ceremony with the fear that Nayte would break her heart.
But there was no way she was going to send the season’s frontrunner home; ditto for Brandon, since Michelle told him she was falling for him. And was she really going to ditch Joe after he threw her a prom?
So that left Rodney Mathews, the down-to-earth, good-natured fellow who wormed his way into viewers’ hearts.
I always figure you can tell a lot about a man by how he makes his exit. “I’m always gonna care about you, Michelle, like forever,” Rodney said. “You’re amazing Michelle, so thank you.” And he kissed her hand before he got into the SUV.
That’s class. And I don’t want to belabour the point, but like a lot of other people I’m wondering why we couldn’t have had Rodney for a Bachelor instead of Clayton Echard, whom ABC finally confirmed as its next male star.
While I had hoped we might get actual hometown dates this week, instead the men’s families came to Minneapolis.
First up was Brandon, who hails from Portland, Oregon.
Michelle gets a skateboarding lesson from Brandon Jones. My apologies for the crappy screen grabs, but ABC’s photo selection for the episode was really paltry.
The less said about the skateboarding part of the date the better. Whatever skills Brandon had gained from skating with his whole family deserted him with Michelle around and yes, it did make him look 14.
Skating around Brandon’s mother Carmen, father David and brother Noah was way easier. Noah was playing the skeptic of the group, but Michelle told him she could 100 per cent see herself with Brandon. She won David over by talking fishing and basketball. And she assured Carmen she could see who Brandon really was “and that’s why Brandon is still here, because I truly love who that person is.”
Speaking of love, Michelle told Brandon, “After today it is very clear to me that I am falling for you.” Combine that with the fact there was so much goodbye smooching that they were still lip-locked as Michelle sat in the back of the van and Brandon seemed like a shoo-in for a rose.
Next it was Rodney’s turn to take Michelle spiritually if not physically to Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., but they picked apples and Rodney fed Michelle apples blindfolded, callbacks both to the first night and their one-on-one date.
Michelle was clearly the apple of Rodney Mathew’s eye during their hometown.
If you didn’t know any better it would be easy to think Rodney stood a real shot at a rose. Michelle leapt on him and kissed him and told him she missed him. She said Rodney could be the “best friend” her parents had told her she should end up with. We never heard Michelle say she was falling for him, however.
When his mom, Carrie, asked Michelle if she could create a life with Rodney outside “The Bachelorette,” the best Michelle could come up with was that Rodney was the type of person she’d want to be stuck in an airport with for five hours if their flight got cancelled.
So yeah, I get why Carrie was fearing the worst for her son with three other men in the running, but Rodney told her Michelle was worth the risk.
Perhaps Joe, on the other hand, already had a leg up, since he shared his hometown of Minneapolis with Michelle, but he had the best non-family date activity hands down. He took Michelle to prom at his old high school complete with fancy clothes, snacks, balloons, dancing, a photo booth, king and queen sashes and crowns and, with no chaperones, all the smooching they wanted.
The prom do-over that Joe Coleman (and production) planned made Michelle happy.
This was a callback to Michelle’s group date spoken-word poem in which she said she was the last picked for prom, as well as the fact Joe had never gone to one.
“You’ll always be first with me,” Joe told her.
“Joe really sees me and understands me,” Michelle said.
The tough cookie at the family meet-and-greet was meant to be Joe’s sister-in-law, Hanna, but once again the family was putty in Michelle’s hands.
She told Hanna Joe was her “little slice of home away from home” and Hanna decided that Michelle had the kind of strength and energy that Joe needed in his life. Although she also said, “I hope this works out because we will see her in the grocery store.”
The last supposed obstacle was that Joe hadn’t told Michelle how he felt about her yet, but he rectified that: “I am falling in love with you and I feel like you’re that special person for me.”
Finally, it was the turn of Nayte, a Winnipeg native who now calls Austin, Texas home.
Nayte Olukoya put on the orange swim trunks that Michelle said she liked for their date.
The paddleboarding was an entertaining enough diversion for Michelle, but the main event was meeting Nayte’s mom Leanna and stepdad Charles, who were divorced but had come together just to support Nayte — or Nathaniel, as they called him.
Nayte had warned Michelle that his family wasn’t into talking about emotions — “no heart to hearts, no I love you’s” — so it was pretty remarkable to watch Nayte and Charles do both those things, apparently for the first time ever.
Charles, who had come into Nayte’s life when he was in Grade 9, told Nayte what an amazing journey it had been to watch him “grow up to be you.”
“Never doubt that I’m proud of you . . . never, ever, ever doubt that I love you and never doubt that I’m here for you,” Charles said.
Nayte thanked him for everything.
“I’m gonna have a family one day and I want to be who you were to me for them,” said Nayte, with tears in his eyes.
“You’ll be even better than me,” Charles replied.
If nothing else ever comes of Nayte meeting Michelle, that’s a moment to treasure right there.
But for purposes of plot development, the important conversation was between Michelle and Charles when she asked if Nayte was ready for an engagement and Charles replied, “I don’t know if he’s gonna get to that point.”
Then again, who knows if that answer actually had anything to do with Michelle’s question, given the magic of editing, although Nayte himself told his mom he wasn’t quite there yet.
The day of the rose ceremony, Michelle had an extraneous visit from her former “Bachelor” mates Bri Springs and Serena Pitt, which boiled down to Michelle telling them it was going to be tough to send one of her final four home since they were “the best guys I’ve met in my entire life.” And maybe she’d get her heart broken at the end. Well, duh.
When the time came, Michelle handed roses to Brandon, Nayte and Joe and you know the rest.
Next week it’s back to a Monday night schedule with “Men Tell All.” ABC also promoted Clayton’s “Bachelor” season for the first time, which starts Jan. 3. My assessment, based on the clips, is that they’ve brought on some mean girls to compensate for what would otherwise be the deadly dullness of the season.
You can tune in next Monday at 9 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo
Michelle Young gets milking lessons with Nayte, Rodney, Martin, Olu and Joe on “The Bachelorette.” PHOTO CREDIT: All photos but screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC
Michelle Young, who’s just the fourth Black lead in 43 combined “Bachelor” and “Bachelorette” seasons, picked her final four in Tuesday’s episode and they’re all men of colour for the first time in franchise history.
It’s just too bad that milestone is being overshadowed by the choice of yet another dull white guy as the next Bachelor.
The good news is that on Tuesday Bachelor Nation finally got its first clue as to why Clayton Echard got the call (still to be officially confirmed by ABC). The bad news is that either ABC is letting fifth graders make its casting decisions or it’s manipulating children.
The kids — four students who’d been taught by Michelle — had the task of choosing one of the remaining eight men for a one-on-one date and they picked Clayton.
No sense getting down on the kids. Clayton did build them a fort out of sheets, pillows and overturned furniture. And as student Luke said, “Clayton has really big muscles. He’d be really good at carrying the groceries in” — definitely a useful skill in a husband.
The kids were also perceptive about who didn’t deserve Miss Young’s time.
“I don’t really like Martin,” said Kelsey. “I don’t know how to explain it. He’s trying to show off. I don’t know if he’s the right one for Michelle and he wears too much cologne.”
Well, that’s bang on.
The kids, if it was indeed the kids, also planned one of the best dates we’ve seen all season, sending Michelle and Clayton to the Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota for a real-life Night at the Museum — minus the exhibits that come to life.
Unfortunately for Clayton, fort-building skills and making up his own animal mating call weren’t enough to snag him a rose and a hometown date.
Clayton Echard and Michelle spent the evening in a natural history museum.
Let’s be honest though, that was a given. Sure, he earned the group date rose on last week’s episode, but with guys like Nayte, Joe, Brandon, Rick and Rodney in the running for hometowns Clayton had an insurmountable amount of catching up to do.
Michelle said he checked all the boxes as far as desirable qualities, but “giving out this rose means I’m ready to meet your family and I don’t feel that I’m able to get there with you in time.”
So what made the producers fall in love with him? His muscles? His earnest confession about being ready to settle down and have a family after five years of focusing on his job to the exclusion of all else?
They key moment in the campaign to win fans over to Clayton came after he’d been eliminated and he got letters from two of the kids urging him not to be sad that Miss Young didn’t choose him, which made him cry and vow he’d do whatever it takes to have a family of his own.
Thoughts: why only two letters, was the vote for Clayton not unanimous? (Ahmed, for instance, seemed partial to Rodney and his shaved nipples.)
These letters seemed about as genuine as the wishes that Michelle and Rick pulled out of a wish box on their date but, even if they were real, Luke and Kelsey wouldn’t have written them without guidance from production.
Jayleen and Kelsey, two members of the Bachelor selection committee.
“You will probably meet someone else and fall in love and have lots of kids and be a great dad,” wrote Kelsey, stopping just short of “And you’ll be the next Bachelor.” Just to hammer the point home, the end credits showed Jayleen, impressed that Clayton let her paint his fingernails red, telling a producer, “He’ll be the next Bachelor.”
Yeah, OK, we get it.
Time to move on to what the point of the season is supposed to be: Michelle finding a husband.
To that end, she took Rick, Rodney, Nayte, Joe, Martin and Olu on a farm date, ostensibly also picked by the kids, on which they milked cows, bottle fed calves, churned butter and shovelled shit.
But the real poop got flung around at the after-party. Martin — still pontificating about his “miscommunication” with Michelle over his sexist comment that Miami women were high maintenance — told Rick and Olu that Michelle had not been paying attention, which was “why she perceived everything a little bit incorrectly.”
“There’s a lot of things that have made me question what she really stands for, I guess,” Martin said. And then he mentioned Michelle’s group date poem, the one in which she shared her hurt at being the “token Black girl” at school, and said it showed there was “something deep inside her that maybe she hasn’t worked past and I think that’s immature.”
Michelle in one of her final conversations with Martin Gelbspan.
Martin, of course, despite his boast that he was brutally honest, didn’t share any of that BS with Michelle but just blah blahed about how she was an amazing woman and he wanted to introduce her to his family and friends.
But Olu spilled the tea — “I just want that right man for you,” he said and I believed him — and Michelle confronted Martin.
Martin at first denied the “immature” comment and then tried to spin it as being about the “difference between being insecure and having insecurities,” which doesn’t even make sense. And he kept talking over Michelle, then apologized for “maybe speaking over you” when she called him on it.
I doubt Martin would have got a hometown rose even if Olu hadn’t spoken up, but it was nice to see Michelle put him in his place before showing him the door.
The real Martin came out in the SUV of Shame. Michelle was making a mistake, he said, but “at this point I wouldn’t even care to give her a shot . . . like a woman like that does not deserve my time.”
Can’t wait to see you get your misogynistic ass handed to you at Men Tell All, dude.
Both butter and Michelle were putty in Nayte Olukoya’s hands.
In any event, the only man who was getting the rose on the group date was Nayte, and it wasn’t for his butter churning or the fact he put his back out on manure duty. He told Michelle he was “definitely, seriously, strongly falling for you” and she replied that she was “really tumbling down a hill so fast falling for you as well.”
So if he wasn’t before, Nayte is now the man to beat.
Next up was a one-on-one with Brandon, the main event of which was Michelle taking him to her childhood home while her parents were out.
Brandon Jones and Michelle before her parents “caught” them.
We’re supposed to believe that Michelle’s idea to hang out in her parents’ Jacuzzi, with Brandon in a borrowed pair of her dad’s trunks no less, was spontaneous and that it was a complete coincidence that her folks surprised them there mid-smooch. As if.
To be honest, I’ve always found Brandon’s intensity when it comes to wooing Michelle a little unsettling and, on Tuesday, he dialled it up to 11 by asking for her folks’ permission to marry her — like, bro, you didn’t even know yet if you were getting a hometown date!
The sentimentality continued at dinner, where Brandon talked about how much he wished Michelle could have met his late grandfather, who was his best friend, and gifted her a bracelet that his mom made for him to give Michelle “if I truly think that you’re the one.”
“Michelle Ann Young, I’m falling in love with you,” he declared.
Michelle handed over the rose, obviously, telling Brandon “I can see you being my best friend.”
She also said, “It’s very possible that I could fall in love with Brandon,” but she won’t and man, is he going to be crushed when he gets sent home.
All that was left to do was hand out the other two roses, which Michelle did after cancelling the cocktail party, a move that’s always supposed to come as a shock but never does.
Obviously her fellow Minnesotan Joe Coleman — of whom she said after the farm date, “Clearly Joe knows how to handle tests” — was a lock for a hometown. I figured it was between Rick and Rodney for the final rose and it was Rodney’s.
Despite how much Bachelor Nation loves Olu — and they’ve been lobbying for weeks for him as Bachelor instead of Clayton — he never had a one-on-one with Michelle, a clear indication he wasn’t her guy.
When Michelle said letting Rick and Olu go was her “most difficult goodbye yet,” you believed her.
On to hometowns — and will Michelle actually go to their hometowns? — and an assortment of skeptical family members.
You can tune in next Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo
Did the producers have it in for Chris Sutton, fifth from right? He had the most ridiculous costume on a Viking-themed group date. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC
Has there ever been a more perfect visual metaphor than Chris S dressed as a horse’s ass on Tuesday’s episode of “The Bachelorette”?
I’m hard pressed to think of one considering Chris spent his portion of the episode acting like a posterior.
Let’s review. Last week, Chris disrupted the cocktail party by telling Michelle Young that some guys, i.e. Nayte, thought they had it “in the bag,” primarily because Nayte commented that it wasn’t a question of if he got a one-on-one date but when.
Well, duh, Nayte was right: the first impression rose winner got Tuesday’s second one-on-one (Michelle’s fellow Minnesotan, Joe Coleman, got the first, more on that later).
The minute Chris realized that Nayte wasn’t on the group date card, he looked like he’d swallowed a lemon.
“I went out on a limb for her and told her the honest truth, which is what she wanted to hear and asked from everyone else in the house,” he told the producer-enabler on the other side of the camera, self-righteously tapping out his points with one of his fingers.
“Everything I said fell on deaf ears. The way things played out I feel like I got the short end of the stick.”
Well, he definitely got an end on the group date.
Chris, Casey, Rodney, Martin, Leroy, Rick, Clayton, Olu and Brandon met Michelle at the home of the Minnesota Vikings football team — yes, the group had relocated from Palm Springs to Michelle’s hometown of Minneapolis — where instead of the NFL Vikings they met three older dudes dressed up as ancient Vikings.
The date participants had to put on costumes and do things like yell really loudly, throw logs, eat disgusting fermented herring and arm wrestle. But all the guys except Chris got to dress more or less like Vikings; Chris, the least physically imposing man in the bunch, wore horse’s legs and hoofs with an inflatable horse rear end.
Chris Sutton in a tug of war with Casey Woods. Go ahead, try not to laugh at that silly image.
I’m thinking either the producers were having a laugh at Chris’s expense or trying to compound his humiliation so he’d go off the deep end. Having him arm wrestle the absolutely ripped Olu undoubtedly helped with that mission.
By the time the group segued to the after-party at the historic Semple Mansion, Chris was in full brood mode over the fact he didn’t get the one-on-one despite all the “good information” he’d given Michelle about Nayte. And he claimed he really wanted to talk to her about that but made no attempt to do so.
This was no doubt all part of the evil production plan, although Chris mouthed the word “Wow” when Michelle announced she was wrapping up the party despite not having spoken to Chris. (Clayton, who’d hulked his way into being declared a “true Viking” earlier in the day, got the date rose for telling Michelle about his admiration for his parents. As you know, Michelle is really into parents.)
Absurdly, despite having had a whole evening when he could have grabbed a few minutes of Michelle’s time, Chris decided to wait until the next day and interrupt her date with Nayte to say his piece.
Well, perhaps decided is the wrong word. He couldn’t have known where Michelle and Nayte were having dinner without production being on side, so whether he was goaded into living out his white saviour fantasy or was following a villain script (he is reportedly an aspiring actor) it obviously wasn’t entirely his idea.
Michelle and Nayte had been having a pretty deep discussion, with Michelle telling Nayte about a past relationship that was so toxic she couldn’t eat and thought she had a disease. They had just shared a kiss when Michelle looked over Nayte’s shoulder with a WTF expression on her face as Chris walked up to the table.
She agreed to step outside with Chris, who basically told her he was pissed she’d chosen Nayte over him, although he didn’t put it exactly like that.
“I came here to say I warned you and I don’t want you to make the wrong decision,” i.e. give a rose to Nayte, Chris told her.
With eloquence and far more patience than Chris deserved, Michelle told him she could make her own decisions.
“I do appreciate you wanting to look out for me but also, at the same time, I can speak for myself,” Michelle said. “And I want a man who’s going to stand and support me when I speak and not a man who’s going to speak for me.”
Also, “as a female of colour there’s a lot of situations where people speak for me and my voice isn’t heard.”
She made herself heard in this case. Telling Chris she didn’t see their “relationship” progressing, Michelle walked him as far as the top of the escalator and then returned to give Nayte the date rose, saying their chemistry “is undeniable, unlike anything that I’ve ever felt before.”
“I’m very crazy about Nayte,” Michelle said, adding that he was starting to feel like her person.
Nayte Olukoya cemented his frontrunner status after his date with Michelle.
Besides, Nayte had already been approved by people with way more cred than Chris: Michelle’s two best friends. They joined Michelle and Nayte earlier in the day on a boat ride on Lake Minnetonka (note: Michelle, as she has all season, did the driving) and asked him allegedly hard questions. The first question was clearly a plant from production: “Is there anyone here that you think could be here for the wrong reasons?”
That gave Nayte an opening to talk about Chris S and explain that he didn’t really think he had it in the bag; he was just confident because he knew “there’s something going on” with Michelle.
Michelle’s friends clearly agreed, gushing about Michelle’s and Nayte’s “amazing natural chemistry.”
“I love the way you guys look at each other,” said Allie.
Let’s backtrack a bit and talk about Joe, the season’s other frontrunner.
For their date, Michelle took him on a walk down memory lane — after they’d stopped by a Minnesota Twins game where she threw out the first pitch and kissed Joe for the Jumbotron — visiting her old high school, where they smooched while towering over her old locker, admired her photo in the trophy case and played one-on-one basketball in the gym (yeah, she beat him; in a dress, she pointed out).
“I feel like Joe would have been my crush in high school,” Michelle said.
The main event came over dinner where Joe told Michelle how a college football injury had led to a couple of operations, getting seven screws and a plate in his left foot, and anxiety, depression and thoughts of suicide when he couldn’t perform the same way on the basketball court and had to eventually quit the sport.
Michelle and Joe both shed tears.
“You give up so much for the sport that you love. To have something take you out of it before you’re ready to be taken out of it is a pain like not everyone will understand,” said Michelle, herself a former college basketball player.
Naturally Michelle gave Joe the date rose, saying her feelings for him had grown tremendously.
They finished the night with a smoochy Ferris wheel ride.
Joe Coleman was rewarded with a rose for opening up to Michelle on their date.
There were three roses already spoken for and five to give out going into the rose ceremony — yes, if you’re keeping track, we’re five for five in the rose ceremony to episode ratio.
The only thing you really need to know is that Martin had another bout of foot-in-mouth disease that I thought for sure was going to get his butt sent home.
First, he mentioned hearing Michelle give compliments to other men and wondering if she meant the ones she gave him.
“Do you think I would blow smoke up your ass?” asked Michelle. Uh, no.
Then Martin started yapping about women in Miami being high maintenance for allegedly expecting men to do everything for them.
Men, he said, don’t usually “go into a relationship saying ‘Hey, you’re gonna take care of me,'” which made Michelle laugh.
Excuse me, Martin, do you know any men?
And, then as the realization dawned that he was digging himself a hole, Martin told Michelle he knew she was different. Not exactly a convincing recovery.
Alas, he collected a rose along with Rick, Olu, Brandon and Rodney. Casey and Leroy went home.
I’m not entirely sure what next week will bring since the promo was about the rest of the season, but it looks like the other guys aren’t done targeting Nayte. Leave the Canadian guy alone, eh?
You can tune in next Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo
Michelle Young with “Top Gun: Maverick” actors Glen Powell and Jay Ellis. We all know who the Top Gun is this season. Hint: it’s not the dudes. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos except screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC
Welcome to AP “Bachelorette.”
Your teacher for this advanced class is Michelle Young and she’s schooling all our asses on how to run a season.
For instance, if you find you’ve got a troublemaker in the bunch you don’t keep him hanging around so he can stir up more drama. You walk him to the elevator and send his butt home with nothing more than a polite “Have a good night.”
That’s how Jamie Skaar got his comeuppance on Tuesday’s episode.
To refresh your memory, Jamie caused a brouhaha at last week’s rose ceremony cocktail party by telling Michelle that unnamed men in the house were questioning her authenticity because of a rumour that she knew Joe Coleman before the season started. She did not, other than exchanging a couple of texts with him a few years ago. And the only man who seemed bothered by the possibility was Jamie himself.
Michelle got upset enough about Jamie’s revelation to cancel the rest of the cocktail party, which had the confused men wondering who’d been telling fibs about them. Jamie didn’t own up and probably would have kept his mouth shut indefinitely (or at least until “Men Tell All”) had Michelle not outed him to Rick, who told her that none of the men had been questioning her character.
When word got out at this week’s cocktail party that Jamie was “the rat,” to use Casey’s term, Jamie still wouldn’t fully own up, dancing around the question of what he’d actually told Michelle and then, bizarrely, suggesting he’d been worried about speculation by people watching the episode at home.
I’m with Nayte: “Why the fuck are we talking about episodes?”
Also, “Come on, man, you suck.”
Jamie Skaar just before Michelle Young gave him the heave-ho.
Which was essentially Michelle’s verdict on Jamie, although she put it more eloquently.
“I’m very hurt by you right now. I don’t trust you at this moment and I have to be done with it. I think it’s best that I walk you out tonight.”
Boom.
One wonders if she would have had more to say had she heard some of Jamie’s other on-camera pronouncements.
His arrogance going into the second group date was already galling, but when Brandon got the date rose instead of him, Jamie pulled a producer aside to complain that Brandon was “not even fucking close” to being in his league.
“I really felt like it would be a stronger group of guys. It was a nationwide search, where they at?” he sniped.
And then, “The challenging part with Michelle right now is she’s basically just in fucking spring break mode. It’s a little bit of a turnoff.”
You want to know what else is a turnoff? Men who act like they’re god’s gift to “Bachelorette”-hood.
Jamie wasn’t the only one stirring up crap on Tuesday.
Peter, the “pizzapreneur,” couldn’t shut his piehole on the first group date, which involved the men going through a bunch of “Top Gun” challenges in aid of promoting the “Top Gun: Maverick” movie.
That included a G-force simulator, one of those contraptions that spins you around really fast until you feel like puking (or so I imagine, thankfully never having been in one).
That scared the crap out of Will — a.k.a. Little Willy — who was apparently prone to motion sickness. Plus the men were supposed to tell Michelle how they felt about her while they were spinning around, which could be tough if you’re keeping your mouth closed so you don’t blow chunks.
But Will managed to tell Michelle he wanted to grow old with her in Spanish without barfing. That majorly pissed off Peter — a.k.a. Dough Boy — who told Michelle essentially the same thing in Italian.
So of course Peter and Will were paired up in the final challenge, which had the dudes “dog fighting,” or rather muscling each other off a mat with things that looked kind of like padded battering rams.
Jay Ellis confirms that “Dough Boy” Peter, right, got his ass kicked by Will in the dog fight.
Will dominated Peter and, given that and his puke-defying G-force ride, he was named the “Top Gun,” given a spiffy aviator jacket and got to drive around with Michelle in a vintage car from the new movie — although note that she did the driving.
That Peter would continue the feud at the cocktail party followed as naturally as cheese on pizza.
Peter was all “You’re a bully,” blah blah blah, and “See the cheques that I cash and then you call me a pizza boy” and “We’re gonna change lives one slice at a time” and really?
And then, because he’s a sore loser and a dick, Peter took Will’s new jacket and threw it in the pool, which made Will cry when he found out. But he didn’t snitch about it to Michelle because he didn’t want to ruin her mood (although how the hell her mood wasn’t already ruined by the noise of Peter and Will yelling at each other is beyond me).
Poor Will didn’t even get the date rose as consolation. That went to Martin because he’d taken a few minutes during the Top Gun exercises to pull Michelle aside and ask how she was feeling. So Martin got to dance and smooch with Michelle as a string quartet played “Take My Breath Away” — the big song from the 1986 “Top Gun” movie — while Will fished his soaking wet jacket out of the pool.
Onwards!
I’ll be honest, I would have pegged Rodney — a.k.a. the guy who didn’t know a Granny Smith from a Delicious apple — as perpetual group date fodder, but he got the week’s one-on-one. Still, was this going to be one of those dates where the lead figures out she’s just not into a bro and sends him home?
Most of the activities seemed as friendly as they were romantic, like Rodney feeding Michelle different foods while she was blindfolded — there was a can of whipped cream involved, but it ended up on Rodney’s face rather than being sucked off his big toe, a la Riley and Maurissa on “Bachelor in Paradise.”
They also had to open giant boxes full of balls and balloons while handcuffed together in search of the key and, the most entertaining, Rodney got naked and streaked through the lobby with just a throw cushion covering his man bits, while hosts Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe and the other men watched, hooted and hollered.
Yes, we can attest that Rodney Mathews is as naked below the belt as above.
“It’s pretty bad when everyone sees you out in your birthday suit and it ain’t even your birthday,” said Rodney in perhaps the line of the season.
But another funny thing was that the more we saw of Michelle and Rodney together, the more adorable they were together. By the time they got to cuddling and smooching on Michelle’s bed, Rodney had definitely passed from the friend zone to the relationship zone, as Michelle put it.
They also bonded at dinner over their admiration for their moms: Rodney’s had to work three jobs to support him and his brother after his dad left when he was 6, while Michelle talked about her white mom standing up for her Black dad.
She also shared a story about having the N-word directed at her in a grocery store and her white boyfriend at the time essentially forcing her to justify why she was upset. “I just felt that same way with my ex,” said Rodney.
A tear rolled down Rodney’s cheek when Michelle told him, “I really do not see you as an underdog. I see your heart.”
But then she said she would “apple-lutely love it if you would accept this rose.” Hee.
Michelle got confessional on the second group date, featuring spoken word poet Rudy Francisco.
The one-on-one wasn’t Michelle’s only reference in the episode to the challenges of being Black or mixed race in a white-dominated world.
On the second group date, the men were introduced to spoken word poet Rudy Francisco and asked to write poems that focused on their own stories, which they performed in front of the non-date men.
Chris G from Halifax was so excited he looked like he was going to pass out, clutching Leroy for support and covering his mouth with his hand. “He’s the poet who got me hooked on spoken word,” Chris said excitedly.
None of the men embarrassed themselves, a nice change from the usual group date cringe — although Romeo, uh, “Romeo, Romeo, where’s your Juliet?”
But Jamie, who kept banging on about how there was no competition between him and the other men, ignored the assignment and just told some dumbass story about a girl getting lost in the woods and guided back to the path by her guardian angel. And . . . sorry, just dozed off there for a minute.
Michelle, meanwhile, shared heartfelt verse about being the “token black girl” at school who “got invited to all the big parties as long as I followed the basic white trends . . . I was never the girl invited to cute dates at the apple orchard in the fall. I was the girl picked last for prom but the first for basketball.”
She promised herself, she said at the end, to be a role model for “young brown girls.”
The men gave her a standing ovation, which like, duh.
At the cocktail party, Brandon, who is also mixed race, told Michelle how much her poem resonated with him, recalling that he too was a late romantic bloomer in school, and how he was told he wasn’t Black because of his light skin or that he had to choose a side.
Michelle told Brandon she was attracted to his mind although the attraction was also clearly physical given all the kissing they did. In his voice-over, Brandon said he was falling in love with Michelle.
Michelle also smooched Jamie, who looked over her shoulder at the camera, presumably to make sure his masterful kissing skills were being recorded for posterity. “I’m looking at a person who’s staring me back in the eyes and I can tell that she’s, like, captivated,” boasted Jamie in his confessional.
That kind of makes my stomach feel like Will’s must have felt on that G-force simulator.
Anyway, we’ve already covered the downfall of Jamie.
There was a rose ceremony. I feel the need to point out that this is the third rose ceremony in three episodes, none of the usual “To be continued” nonsense. I mean, I doubt Michelle got to sit in on the editing, but is she schooling the people who put the show together too?
Anyway, she gave roses to Joe, Rick, Leroy, Nayte, Casey, Chris G, Chris S, Clayton, Olu, Romeo and Will. Along with ones already bestowed on Martin, Rodney and Brandon, that leaves 14 men in the hunt for the final rose.
And oh yes, Peter was one of the men shown the door. Later Dough Boy!
But you know, villains are kind of like whack-a-mole. Yes, Michelle cleared out two of them this week but, according to the promo for next week, Chris S is going to step up as agitator in chief and get into a dust-up with Nayte.
You can tune in next Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo
Katie Thurston on the season finale of “The Bachelorette.” PHOTO CREDIT: Craig Sjodin/ABC
SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want to know the outcome of “The Bachelorette” season finale, stop reading right now.
Congratulations are in order after Monday’s “Bachelorette” season finale: oh sure, to Katie Thurston and her fiancé, but I was thinking more of the show’s producers, who pulled off yet another masterful bit of misdirection after last week’s shocker of an episode.
If you watched that brutal breakup between Katie and the man who many of us assumed was the holder of her heart, Greg Grippo, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Blake Moynes and Justin Glaze were destined for disappointment, that Katie couldn’t possibly get engaged to one of them when her “number one” had sent himself home.
But once we all took a breath, it was clear how unlikely it was that a) Katie would actually abandon her quest for love; b) that she and Greg would get back together, since she essentially accused him of gaslighting her on Instagram or c) that she would end up with no one, especially with three hours of finale air time to fill.
On Monday, not only did Katie choose one of the final two; she did it barely 40 minutes into the episode. Despite her insistence that she wouldn’t say “I love you” to anyone but the last man standing — a decision that seemed to have played a role in Greg’s departure — she spilled the L-word to Blake Moynes on their fantasy suite date, the first (and only) one she went on.
The only logical conclusion is that Katie didn’t love Greg after all; that if she truly did want to go home after he walked out on her it wasn’t because she couldn’t imagine carrying on without him but because his abandonment had shaken her faith in her own lovability. And that makes perfect sense to me.
But Katie did find love and she found it with Canadian contestant Blake, and they seemed just as smitten with each other on the “After the Final Rose” portion of the finale as during the proposal.
Katie and Blake on the “After the Final Rose” part of the finale. PHOTO CREDIT: Eric McCandless/ABC
For those who still think Katie picked him just so she could walk away engaged, I’d say you’re not giving her anywhere near enough credit. If Greg really had been “the one” for her I believe she would have left rather than pretend to have feelings for Blake or Justin. Just compare and contrast her reactions when first Greg then Blake said they loved her.
When Greg said it, she smiled at him and told him she loved looking at him. When Blake said it, she quickly broke her own rule about not using the L-word before the end and told him, “I fucking love you so much and I couldn’t be happier that you’re here.” Like “Greg who?”
And she kept saying it to Blake in the fantasy suite. And in case we didn’t get the point, Katie told co-host Kaitlyn Bristowe later, “My heart officially belongs to Blake.” (She also told her, ahem, that her night with Blake left her “plenty satisfied, many times.” Sex positive, indeed.)
Justin with co-hosts Kaitlyn Bristowe and Tayshia Adams. PHOTO CREDIT: Eric McCandless/ABC
Unfortunately, that meant no fantasy suite date for Justin. Katie let him down as gently as she could, but he was crushed. It was even more heartbreaking to see him struggling to hold back tears as he met Katie in the studio for the first time since their breakup. Katie reassured him that they’d had a real connection despite his feeling he’d ended up in the final two by default (although if we’re being honest, he had; Greg and Blake would have been final two I’m sure if Greg hadn’t vamoosed).
Luckily, the mood was lightened by a highlight reel of Justin’s facial expressions — he said he hadn’t been aware he was making them while, yes, making them. Plus, Justin has to be on the short list for next Bachelor after what we saw of him on Monday night.
But with one man left standing, the producers had to try to keep the drama going by pretending that maybe Blake wouldn’t propose.
If anyone stood a chance of derailing Katie’s and Blake’s cross-border relationship, it would have been Katie’s Aunt Lindsey. Katie called her a “tough cookie,” but she was kind of like Peter Weber’s mom Barb and Desiree Hartsock’s brother Nate rolled into one — in other words, terrifying.
“You’d better be secure as fuck coming in our family,” she told Blake, “because at the end of the day you’re here because we want you here, not because we need you here.”
She interrogated Blake on how he planned to handle marriage when it got hard. When he said he and Katie would do anything to make things right, Lindsey replied, “Yeah, that’s not how it works, I mean cute, but ultimately that’s not how anything works.
Luckily, Katie’s mom, Rhonda Lee, was more welcoming, crushing Blake with a hug when he walked in and tearing up as she told him how happy Katie seemed to be.
Nice try, producers, but a surly aunt didn’t deter Blake.
I won’t bore you with all the details, but Blake obligingly did several voice-overs expressing doubt about whether he was ready to propose. He even took a walk away from the table to frown and worriedly rub his hands together while co-host Tayshia Adams, filling in for an absent Neil Lane, was helping him choose an engagement ring.
There was one final fakeout during Blake’s proposal speech when he told Katie, “I can’t give you what you came here for” — long pause — “because you deserve a lot more than that.”
Yes, Blake proposed, no surprise despite producers’ best intentions. PHOTO CREDIT: Craig Sjodin/ABC
Of course he got down on one knee; of course he pulled out a honking big diamond ring. Katie simultaneously laughed and cried after she said yes. And then Tayshia and Kaitlyn came running over to help them celebrate, which made the whole thing more endearing. (Katie gave them heartfelt thanks on “ATFR,” telling them “I truly would not have gotten through this if it wasn’t for the support of you ladies.”)
But hold those warm and fuzzy thoughts because after the commercial break, Greg joined Kaitlyn and Tayshia in the studio and then Katie came out, pointedly walking past Greg without a hug or even a handshake, and it was a downer.
They rehashed the breakup with Katie chastising Greg for how he treated her.
Katie and Greg rehashed their breakup on the finale. PHOTO CREDIT: Eric McCandless/ABC
“You were never ready for an engagement,” she said. “You spoke down to me. You didn’t even bother to say goodbye. You say you love me, but I don’t even think you know what love is.” She also accused Greg of using her to get acting practice, and of being “a confident, cocky boy from Jersey who knows he’s hot shit” rather than the shy guy he portrayed on the show.
Greg was gaslighting her, she added, by making her feel “like I did something so horrible you had to leave.”
It just went on and on and on, extending past another commercial break.
The bottom line, I think, is that Katie felt if Greg had really loved her he would have stayed; and Greg felt if Katie had loved him she would have said something to convince him to stay, and I think they’re both right about that although I totally get why Katie felt disrespected.
The skirmish ended with them wishing each other, however insincerely, “nothing but the best.”
And then Blake and Katie reunited for their first time together in public as a couple.
Blake said he knew he was in love with Katie when they played hockey on their hometown date, which Kaitlyn said was “very Canadian” of him. Katie said that Blake coming back on “The Bachelorette” to be with her, and risking looking dumb if she turned him down, was “probably the most romantic thing somebody’s ever done.”
But Blake (or at least some producer) one-upped himself by having audience members stand up holding boomboxes John Cusack-style while the country song that Blake and Katie danced to on their first one-on-one played in the studio and they danced and kissed onstage.
Maybe Aunt Lindsey is right and things will go to hell in a hand basket for them, but they looked like a couple who were head over heels on Monday. Good luck to them, I say.
That’s a wrap on “Bachelorette,” but I’ll be back in this space next week for the premiere of “Bachelor in Paradise.”
Tune in next Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo
This date with Michael, Blake, Andrew and Justin (and artist Jacqueline Secor) was supposedly inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe. It felt more like “Sex and the City.” PHOTO CREDIT: All photos, Craig Sjodin/ABC
Well, whaddaya know? “The Bachelorette” can still surprise us. Monday’s episode was about an hour and 40 minutes of “yeah, duh” followed by 20 minutes of WTF when a favourite got sent home, then appeared to come back but went home for real in the end.
First for the “yeah, duh” part. Katie Thurston had seven fellows still hanging around when the episode began, but two of these things were not like the others. Mike the Virgin and Brendan hadn’t had one-on-one dates. In fact, Brendan hadn’t even talked to her at the rose ceremony or the group date before that but, bless him, he was chatting with the other guys about hometowns as if he had a chance in hell of getting one.
His already flimsy hopes became even sketchier when Greg became the first dude to get a second one-on-one (more on that later). And when the episode’s other one-on-one went to Mike (more on that later too), Brendan asked the question that all of Bachelor Nation had been asking week after week: “Why am I still here?”
Give him points for going straight to the source by heading to Katie’s suite. I think in his mind he was going to tell Katie how much he wanted her to meet his family and drink beer with his dad and she’d be all “That sounds awesome!” In actual fact, Katie was still drying off after her date with Greg (yes, I’ll explain) and looked like even she couldn’t remember who Brendan was when he knocked on her door (after an emergency swipe of lip balm).
Since you might be wondering who Brendan is, this is him in a previous episode with Katie.
Bottom line: Katie gave Brendan the standard you’re-a-great-guy-but speech and sent him home on the spot. He departed with minimal fuss, stopping to say goodbye to fellow Canadian Blake Moynes first.
Now back to Katie and Greg.
All you really need to know is that they showed up wearing a similar shade of green shirt, just like on their first one-on-one way back at the beginning of the season when they wore matching plaid shirts over hoodies.
Other things to know: they threw large fish at each other in an approximation of what happens at the famous Pike Place Market in Seattle, Katie’s hometown. They also shucked oysters together, badly, and shared a bubble-gum kiss in honour of the famous Seattle Gum Wall, which I have to say is kind of gross (the real wall, not necessarily what Katie and Greg were doing).
Katie and Greg blow bubbles in front of an imitation of the Seattle Gum Wall.
I don’t get the people who tweet that they don’t think Greg is that into Katie because, if so, he has me fooled.
There was talk of Greg’s difficulty with the “Bachelorette” process, the fact he sometimes felt insecure and that Katie sometimes worried that he’d leave, but he told her, “I honestly feel like the luckiest guy in the world. You just amaze me in every way. If we do move forward into next week I am really excited to show my family the girl I’m falling in love with.”
“I hope you know how I feel,” answered Katie before handing over the rose and a guaranteed hometown date.
To complete the Seattle theme, Greg and Katie kissed — and kissed and kissed — and got soaking wet under torrents of fake rain. “I think that I’ve found the love of my life,” Greg said in his voice-over.
“Flowery with a twist”
For the final group date of the season, Katie took Michael, Justin, Andrew and Blake to an “art exhibit,” but all the canvases were of flowers that looked like lady parts, or “flowers that aren’t just flowers,” in Justin’s words. “Flowery with a twist,” was how Blake put it.
Although it wasn’t stated in the episode, the paintings were supposedly an homage to Georgia O’Keeffe, the famous artist who made her home in New Mexico, where the season is being filmed. Truth be told, they reminded me of that “Sex and the City” episode in which Charlotte is invited to sit for an artist who paints vaginas. But I digress.
Michael and Andrew ponder art and life on the group date.
The guys had to make their own art: Michael sculpted a replica of Katie’s butt; Justin painted a rose and what looked like little ghost people; Andrew painted, um, sushi, except one of the pieces had teeth and a tongue; and Blake painted something that apparently was so dirty it had to be blacked out.
With that bit of silliness over, it was on to the after-party and, with only four guys on the date, everybody got conversation and kisses.
Blake told Katie that he wasn’t in love with her, “but the way that we’re going it’s fucking inevitable.”
Michael worried throughout the episode whether Katie would fit in with his son, James, and his former in-laws, whom he “takes care of,” but she reassured him, “If it’s us in the end, that’s all that matters and we’ll figure it out as we go,” and also that every rose she gave Michael was also a rose for James. “I can assure you that no one can love you like I can,” Michael told her.
Justin gave Katie a painting of butterflies and a blue rose, and she said she felt “110 per cent myself” with him.
Andrew recreated his and Katie’s one-on-one date with strings of lights and a suspended pink envelope. The note inside said, “I’m falling for you.” And Andrew added, “I really am.” Based on the way Katie kissed him after he said it you might have thought she was falling for him too. But it was Michael who got the date rose and the second guaranteed hometown.
“At some point every boy has to move on”
You might wonder what the point was of Mike getting a one-on-one date when it was certain that he didn’t stand a chance of getting a hometown rose. All became clear when a woman known as “Cuddle Queen Jean” greeted Katie and Mike in the woods and guided them into various poses that involved bodily contact. Would producers pass up the chance to make the season’s token virgin do something that might make him uncomfortable? Yeah, duh.
Sorry, ABC had no photos of Mike and Katie on the cuddle date. You’ll have to settle for this one.
Indeed, both Mike and Katie seemed rather uncomfortable given all the nervous laughter when they first began hugging and spooning, but then Mike relaxed because Katie is “a nurturer and man, do I love nurturers! She reminds me of my mom.”
Yes, that’s correct, Mike putting his body next to Katie’s put him in mind of his mom’s cuddles.
“Katie’s a better cuddler, there’s no question about it,” said Mike. “My mom’s gonna hate me for saying that, but at some point every boy has to move on.”
Mike even whispered “You remind me of my mom” to Katie while he was lying behind her with his arms around her. To Katie’s credit, she didn’t run off screaming right away, but she did let Mike go before they made it as far as dinner.
I have to say Mike was very gracious in his exit. “I’m bummed I don’t get to experience life with you. It doesn’t mean I’m not gonna be rooting for you,” he said.
“She knows what husband she’s looking for . . . it’s not me”
With Mike and Brendan gone, and Greg and Michael already in possession of roses, it seemed obvious that Blake and Andrew would make up the rest of the final four. Sure, Katie liked Justin, but his one-on-one had come late in the game, and she and Andrew seemed to have bonded over their difficult childhoods.
Greg, Michael, Justin, Andrew and Blake at the rose ceremony.
I actually expected Andrew to get the first rose at the ceremony, but it went to Blake and then Katie gave the final rose to . . . Justin?
With tears rolling down both their cheeks, Katie told Andrew she was building stronger connections with the other men “and you deserve more than what I can give you.”
“It’s bittersweet, but just know that I will forever hold you dear to my heart,” Andrew told her.
It kind of makes it worse when the men are so damn nice despite getting their hearts stomped on.
In the SUV of Shame, Andrew said, “She knows what husband she’s looking for and who that’s gonna be, it’s not me so . . .” wiping away tears.
Katie was a crying mess and, since there were still about 15 minutes left in the episode and she was telling some faceless producer that she wasn’t fully confident about the decision she’d made, it seemed obvious Andrew was going to return.
And return he did, knocking on Katie’s door the next day and telling her he came back so they could part with smiles instead of tears. As they hugged goodbye yet again, Andrew gave her an envelope and told her to open it when he was gone. Inside was a note that read: “If you change your mind . . . I’ll be waiting.”
Cue Katie running down the hall, following Andrew down the stairs and leaping into his arms when she caught up to him, as dramatic music swelled. And she asked him if he wanted to stay a little longer and he said . . . no.
“I want my future wife to choose me and I wasn’t chosen so I had to say no,” he explained.
In other words, no matter what the card said he wasn’t actually waiting for her, so the whole thing was a production trick. At least he and Katie got in one last smooch before he was driven away for good.
Katie, still wiping away a few tears, concluded, “This journey just wasn’t for us at the end of it.”
But given the fact the Twitter campaign has already begun to make Andrew the next Bachelor, his journey might just be beginning.
Next week, we get hometowns and Men Tell All in one episode.
You can tune in Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo
CORRECTION: Man, this is embarrassing. I totally did not realize until I read someone else’s recap that Blake’s painting had been blacked out by ABC and he didn’t just paint a black square and say it was about sex. What can I say, I’m out of practice with my black bars, especially when they cover a whole freakin’ canvas.
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