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Tag: Brianna

Bachelor recap: Fantasy suite night at the museum

Bachelor Zach Shallcross and his dates before the wheels fell off the pool party.
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos but screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC

There were two questions to be answered after Monday’s episode of “The Bachelor”: Is Christina Mandrell a mean girl or a misunderstood girl? And did Zach Shallcross and Kaity Biggar jump each other’s bones during their night at the Natural History Museum?

Well, OK, maybe three questions: If the episode’s musical performer is a cousin of the host does that make them a nepo baby? A nepo cuz, at least?

The episode was bookended by some (manufactured) drama and also saw a couple of women crash and burn — luckily not on the skydiving date — but only one of them decided to burn someone else on her way out. More on that later.

First things first: the “Bachelor” producers apparently have so little faith in their ability to keep viewers interested this season that they opened the episode with both gratuitous shower footage of Zach and a FaceTime call with Sean Lowe, although it’s beyond me why you’d want to keep reminding everyone that your show is 1 for 26 (maybe soon 27) when it comes to your stars actually using the platform to find their spouses. (OK, maybe 24 and a half if you count Jason Mesnick and Arie Luyendyk Jr.)

Next it was time for host Jesse Palmer to stoke the hopes of the 17 women who were still around and immediately crush 16 of them by handing out the first one-on-one date card.

ER nurse Kaity was the recipient and got decked out in a slinky green dress so she could . . . walk around a museum looking at dinosaur skeletons and animal dioramas?

The other women, as much as they were all “so happy for you, Kaity,” couldn’t help but notice Zach’s hand resting on her knee when he came to the mansion to pick her up. Little did they know worse was yet to come.

Zach Shallcross and Kaity Biggar commune in the shadow of a dino.

Kaity herself described the museum date as the only romantic thing she had ever done in her life. And I know she’s only 27, but what?

When she told Zach that after seven years of a toxic, on-and-off relationship she just wanted to feel safe and to find “a good man to treat me right,” you kind of wanted to hug her.

This show makes a fetish out of vulnerability, but some of these women truly are vulnerable as hell.

The mood lifted when Zach — who kept whispering as if he was afraid of waking up the fossils — gave Kaity the date rose, then invited her to spend the night with him in a tent next to the elephant display. There were his and hers animal pyjamas and two camp cots, which they pushed together before zipping up the tent.

I guess what happened in the museum stays in the museum, for now anyway, but the other women were rattled when Kaity came home the next morning, still in her PJs, and talked about how romantic the date was.

“Did you get any sleep?” asked Gabi.

“Nope,” Kaity said.

That was the point, of course, to stress out the other contestants thinking Zach got intimate with Kaity. Why else would you put an overnight date in the third episode?

It was back to business as usual, however, with a football group date, the fifth instalment of the so-called “Bachelor Bowl.” It was the Shall-Crushers against the Ball-Zachs and, honestly, the latter should have won for the name alone.

Ariel, Christina, Kylee and Kat of the Ball-Zachs prepare to kick off Bachelor Bowl V.

Despite an ambulance being called when Anastasia took a dive, there were no injuries unless you count Gabi’s pride when she peed her pants a little on national TV.

The Ball-Zachs did indeed win and got to enjoy an after-party with Zach while the Shall-Crushers slinked back to the mansion. Only two things of note happened.

Bailey, one of the women who first met Zach on “After the Final Rose,” decided she needed “validation” from him, but as soon as she told him things were feeling “weird” to her and “regressing a little bit,” he rapidly agreed.

“I’m just not confident there is a future between us,” Zach told her.

“I do feel, like, if we had more time together, like, we could get there,” Bailey responded.

Like, you’re on “The Bachelor,” sweetie. Even the women he really, really likes don’t get enough time.

Bailey’s departure upset the other women and was the beginning of the end for Christina.

Bailey says goodbye to the other women while Christina makes a sad(?) face in the background.

She had already been annoying her teammates by bringing up her one-on-one date. Sin No. 2 was to describe Bailey’s departure as “sad” but “inevitable.” Strike 3 came after Charity got the group date rose. As the other women told Charity how well-deserved it was, Christina blurted out that she was confused as well as mad that it didn’t go to her, punctuated with a “duh,” all of which appeared to make Charity cry.

Christina defended her faux pas as her “trying to be 100,” but Brooklyn and Kat countered that Christina was making things all about her.

Finally Brooklyn shut down the argument with a line that will live in “Bachelor” infamy — or at least in the highlights reel at “Women Tell All” — “Have you ever considered just literally shutting the fuck up?”

So was Christina deliberately trying to intimidate, and being manipulative and calculating, as Brooklyn said?

I don’t think so. She clearly sucked at reading a room, particularly one of exhausted and emotional fellow contestants, and it seems she never heard the expression “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

Christina’s final reckoning was still to come. First there was a second one-on-one date to dispense with. If you were surprised it went to health-care strategist Aly, well, join the club.

She put on the wedding jumpsuit that the producers sent over and met Zach, dressed in a groom-like charcoal suit and white, open-necked shirt, next to a wedding bower — and I’m sorry, but these faux wedding dates are as boring as the football ones.

Zach to Aly Jacobs: “Will you jump out of this really scary plane with me?”

At least it wasn’t one of those stupid fake wedding shoots; Aly and Zach got dressed up to parachute out of a plane, because that worked so well for Rachel Kirkconnell on Matt’s season.

But you know, Zach is looking for his best friend — which is becoming the overused, meaningless phrase of the season — and, uh, best friends jump out of planes together?

Zach and Aly emerged unscathed to have dinner at the cool-looking Bradbury Building in downtown L.A. True confessions were on the menu.

Aly told Zach that she liked to be in control of everything to avoid the hurt of her past relationships and that she never put herself first in a relationship before, but she wanted to find “a safe space where I could put myself first but still be fully invested in you.”

Zach seemed down with that or at least down with getting to know the real Aly — it is only Week 3, people — and handed over the date rose.

Griffen Palmer gets to enjoy performing on “The Bachelor,” i.e. having the Bach and his date ignore you.

Then he had a surprise: Griffen Palmer was playing a song called “Second Chances.” Who dat? Why Jesse Palmer’s country singer cousin from Pickering. Look out folks, the Canadians are taking over.

Speaking of Jesse, he showed up at the mansion the next day to announce there would be no rose ceremony cocktail party . . . but there would be a pool party so run and put on those skimpy bikinis girls!

It was all fun and games and clandestine smooches until Brianna, a.k.a. America’s first impression rose winner, decided to tell Zach she was leaving.

No surprise here. It seemed obvious to me from Night 1 there was nothing cooking between Zach and Brianna, which I guess is what happens when you let “America” hand out the roses instead of the Bachelor. Yeah, great idea, Mike Fleiss.

But Brianna had a parting gift for Christina. She told Zach that their “connection didn’t get off the ground because of hard things I’ve been going through in the house” and that she felt intimidated by Christina, who made her cry several times.

Brianna Thorbourne has her exit interview with Zach.

So where is the footage of this intimidation? The only thing we saw, in Week 2, were receipts of Christina giving Brianna a back-handed compliment on the first night, which Brianna interpreted as hurtful.

Look, it’s always tricky when a white woman is accused of making a Black woman feel unsafe, but this reeked of production stoking Brianna’s insecurities and then manipulating her to throw Christina under the bus.

Whatever the case, Zach really wasn’t kidding when he told Brianna he didn’t like drama.

Christina defended herself as best she could, telling Zach her “outgoing and happy and loud” personality was rubbing people the wrong way, but she thought her conflicts with a couple of the other women had been settled and it would be a mistake to believe Brianna’s accusations.

And then she went and cried on the stairs.

Quite honestly, I figured Zach would go through the motions of debating whether to keep Christina and she’d get the final rose, and then we’d have a few more weeks of her pissing off Brooklyn and Kat and Kylee.

But nope, Christina was banished as Zach gave roses to Jess, Gabi, Ariel, Genevie — who showed up at the rose ceremony with a cast on her arm? what?!? — Greer, Kat, Kylee, Davia, Anastasia, Brooklyn and Mercedes.

So who’s gonna be the centre of the drama now? Don’t worry, looks like somebody is getting outed as a social media clout chaser next week.

Sorry, Zach, if you didn’t like drama you should have stayed home.

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

Edited because a reader — yay, I have readers! — emailed to point out that Jason Mesnick wasn’t the only one who married his runner-up.

Bachelor recap: Tahzjuan tries to ‘bad bitch’ her way into season

Rapper Latto and Bachelor Zach Shallcross oversee a “bad bitch”-themed group date.
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos but screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC

Where does the “bad bitch” leave off and the “lame bitch” begin?

It seems like a valid question after watching Monday’s episode of “The Bachelor.” And it’s directed at the producers more than the women who are vying to win Zach Shallcross’s heart and/or a bump in their Instagram and TikTok followers.

I’ve got bad news for anyone hoping this episode would rise above the ennui that greeted the season premiere: there were three boring dates on Monday interspersed with several trumped up attempts at drama.

By and large the women who had survived the first rose ceremony seemed to be getting along, notwithstanding some of them comparing notes about whether Zach gave them tongue when they kissed him — nurse Katherine said Zach “likes the big tongue energy” and ewwww.

But obviously collegiality can’t be allowed to continue, not on this show. So a little surprise was cooked up to unsettle the women on the first of two group dates.

On the cringe scale the date was probably about a six or seven. Luckily no one had to sing or write poetry or, heaven forbid, smell anyone’s armpits.

The women — Brianna, Brooklyn, Katherine, Mercedes, Bailey, Davia, Cat, Genevie and Kylee — were driven to what looked like an empty strip club where rapper Latto (currently in the news for selling her panties on eBay) told them she was looking for some “bad bitch energy for Zach.”

So what does bad bitch energy mean in the Bachelor world? Uh, dancing around a bit; putting on funny hats and wigs, and gyrating some; making speeches about a time in their life that they were bad bitches, which the Urban Dictionary tells us is a confident, independent woman. Ironic no? Since “The Bachelor” has a knack for turning women into insecure, hot messes (I see you, Brianna).

Tahzjuan Hawkins, Victoria Fuller and Courtney Robertson with Zach and Latto.

The producers brought in some “bad bitch alumni” allegedly to inspire the group date contestants but mainly because they seem to think we’re all jonesing to see past competitors. So “Bachelor in Paradise” heat hater Tahzjuan Hawkins, “Paradise” villain Victoria Fuller and past “Bachelorette” winner (and skinny dipper) Courtney Robertson showed up to, well, not really do much of anything.

That is, until Tahz crashed the group date after-party, supposedly because she had taken such a shine to Zach — the “full package,” she called him — that she wanted to join the season.

And I’m sorry, but what?

Zach told Tahz he would think about it, a BS manoeuvre to freak the other women out while they waited to hear Zach’s decision. Tahz used that time to insult them, saying it was “painful to watch” some of them earlier in the day and they had missed their opportunity to really connect with Zach.

“You guys aren’t all gonna marry Zach,” Tahz said. Well, honey, you aren’t either.

The producers finally allowed Zach to return and cut Tahz loose. He then gave the group date rose to Katherine for, um, being the best kisser maybe?

That didn’t sit well with Brianna — America’s first impression rose winner — who was in her head about the fact she hadn’t yet got a rose from Zach.

We now know the real evil purpose of that “After the Final Rose” stunt, by the way. You thought it was meant to get viewers invested in the new season; turns out it was a tool to freak out the woman who won it.

Brianna cried in front of Zach and told him she considered going home since she didn’t think he cared if she stayed. He reassured her that he saw something in her and sealed it with a smooch — although considering how many women he was giving his “tongue energy” to, yeah, I’d be worried too.

Christina Mandrell got Zach’s first one-on-one of the season.

Next up was Christina’s one-on-one with Zach and what’s that? Your aunt is a famous country singer, but you’ve never seen a helicopter in person? Whatever.

So to what fabulous destination was the helicopter ferrying them? Zach’s childhood home, you say? A belated birthday party for his mother with 20 of his friends and family? Fine, but can we please stop pretending these early meet-the-family dates have any significance?

Zach’s family seemed nice. Any woman with a pulse and an ability to string words into sentences would have done fine in that milieu.

The real point of the date was for Christina to tell Zach about her five-year-old daughter, Blakely May. We were meant to think this would be a dealbreaker for Zach but, like, ABC, you know we’ve already seen Christina in future episodes in the season promo, right?

So Zach blustered a little about how scary it was and how he didn’t know if he was ready to be a dad, but he gave Christina the rose because she was “showing me signs of someone I really want to spend a long time with.” Ringing endorsement, huh?

Finally, the last group of women — Jess, Charity, Gabi, Aly, Ariel, Greer, Kimberly, Anastasia and Victoria J. — got their date and they got ripped off . There was no daytime activity, at least none that we saw: it was straight to the after-party.

Zach said he wanted to get to know all the women as much as he could, although “get to know” seemed to be a euphemism for smooching them all as much as he could — or at least, that’s how it was edited.

The only in-depth conversation seemed to take place with Jess, who challenged Zach to tell her something only she would know. He confessed that he was born with a condition called pyloric stenosis, which Google tells me is a blockage between the stomach and small intestine, and wasn’t expected to live. That was why he was so close to his mom, Zach said, getting emotional, and why “I feel this crazy sense of, like, purpose; I’m here for a reason.” So don’t pretend you’re surprised that Jess got the date rose.

Gabi Elnicki has her first non-maple syrup conversation with Zach.

The other significant conversation involved Gabi, the Vermont woman who made him drink maple syrup on Night 1, to his evident distaste. It was significant because she had not yet talked to Zach, other than their brief out-of-the-limo interaction, and also because she treated the chat like she was a contestant on “This Is Your Life” instead of “The Bachelor,” word vomiting (her term) as much as she could about herself in a short amount of time.

She also told Zach she wanted to give him a nickname, suggesting Zacharius, Zachy Poo or Zachy, which seemed to go down about as well as the maple syrup. She also didn’t get a kiss, so it seemed Gabi would soon be back to visiting farmers markets and cooking with her mom.

But nice fake-out Bachelor! During the rose ceremony cocktail party, Zach and Gabi talked again. Zach told her she gave him “giddy butterflies in my stomach”; she then gave him peanut butter cups, which they attempted to eat “Lady and the Tramp” style, resulting in a chocolatey peanut butter smooch.

So, with Gabi sorted, it was Brianna’s turn to spiral.

She said she hadn’t slept the night before because of anxiety. But rather than blame Mike Fleiss and his henchpersons for giving her America’s curse of a rose, she focused her unease on Christina, saying Christina made a “mean comment” to her on the first night and “I didn’t realize how much it hurt me until now.”

Brianna, hun, take a breath. Christina’s “mean comment” was actually a compliment. She said, “You look beautiful and I hate you, JK,” which means just kidding. Which producer put this nonsense into your head?

Brianna confronted Christina and said the comment made her feel like “I didn’t know if this was gonna be a safe environment for me, not only to find love but to make friends” and I am really trying to keep my eyes from rolling.

Christina apologized, but Brianna still went to Zach and complained that someone had made her uncomfortable, without naming names. And Zach, who said he doesn’t like drama, didn’t want to know the name, but he also told Brianna she seemed to have “a lot of walls up,” and his conversations with her had felt “very strict and serious” rather than fun. Ouch.

So the moral of the story, ladies: if they offer you a chance to meet the Bachelor on “After the Final Rose,” say no.

Brianna Thorbourne finally gets a rose from Zach instead of America.

Of course, this all meant that Brianna’s was the last name called at the rose ceremony, even though we all knew she was going to get one.

Zach also gave roses to Brooklyn, Genevie, Greer, Aly, Charity, Kaity, Gabi, Ariel, Anastasia, Kylee, Davia, Mercedes and Bailey, so 17 women are still in the hunt.

Alas, Cat went home, so we will be deprived of her wide-eyed facial contortions until “Women Tell All.”

Next week, Zach goes skydiving with someone; there’s a football group date and an overnight date (what, already?) with Kaity at a museum; and the house apparently gangs up on Christina.

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

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