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Tag: Joe

Fantasy suites turn bros into foes and The Bachelorette is in love

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

An apple falls right out of the tree on ‘The Bachelorette’ hometowns

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

Nayte gets one-on-one, Chris S gets bum’s rush on Bachelorette

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

A tropical storm is the least of the drama on Bachelor in Paradise

The cast waits for a long-delayed rose ceremony on “Bachelor in Paradise.”
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos but screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC

On Tuesday’s “Bachelor in Paradise,” the word love was being spread around almost as liberally as Kenny and Mari were drizzling each other with sour cream at their all you can eat off each other taco buffet.

It was an episode steeped in both the ridiculous (see: tacos) and the sublime, when bonds were strengthened, at least one heart was (re)broken, new connections were formed, others jeopardized, and a tropical storm that supposedly threatened to pull couples apart turned out to be a tempest in a teapot.

It ended with a different kind of disturbance as Aaron and Ivan went toe to toe over Chelsea and all of Bachelor Nation was left asking the question “What the hell did Ivan get up to in the hotel?”

Before we get to that part, let’s rewind to the start of yet another action-packed instalment.

So OK, Kendall. Maybe we can all agree that coming back to the place where you met your ex-boyfriend of two years for, um, “closure,” especially when said boyfriend had moved on to someone else and was romancing that person right in front of your eyes, wasn’t such a great idea.

Kendall Long was still pining for Joe Amabile in Paradise.

Kendall sort of twigged to that reality after watching her ex, Joe, and his new love, Serena, having a smooch fest on the beach, but she wanted to take one last kick at the can because “I’m not letting Joe’s relationship with Serena get in the way of my happiness anymore.”

Am I the only one who thinks Kendall got in the way of her own happiness when she broke up with Joe?

Kendall told Joe she never stopped loving him, and he was kind and supportive, holding her as she cried, but he told her he’d come to Paradise “because I knew it was over between us.”

So Kendall went home in tears and Joe went back to Serena, who then comforted him for feeling bad about his ex. Age difference be damned, I really like these two together and I’m glad Kendall isn’t around anymore to try to muck things up.

The next day, guest host Lil Jon claimed he was about to “turn this place upside down,” but he just meant that two new cast members were arriving, so business as usual.

The newbies were Ed Waisbrot from the Clare and Tayshia “Bachelorette” season — who will forever be known as the dude who had a date with Chris Harrison when he got lost trying to find Tayshia’s room — and fellow Clayshia contestant Demar Jackson.

Ed Waisbrot and Demar Jackson up the abs and pecs quotient in Paradise.

They arrived shirtless and ripped. Aaron quipped that Ed’s legs looked like “two thick Christmas hams. They’re absolutely massive. They would feed a whole village of cannibals.”

After a brief tease during which we were meant to think that Demar might be a threat to Riley’s and Maurissa’s relationship — he was not — he and Ed settled on Chelsea and Natasha for their double date.

It feels like the dates this season are focused either on food or people getting naked (or in some cases both). In this instance, Ed and Demar stripped down to briefs so Chelsea and Natasha could paint them, both figuratively and literally, as in spreading paint on their semi-nude bodies.

Natasha was enjoying Ed’s piercing blue eyes, his sense of humour and his depth, and I guess we’ll take her word for that last part.

Luckily for her, Ed did not seem to have an attachment to Brendan Morais, the dude who did her wrong, unlike her previous date, Dr. Joe. So there was plenty of laughing and kissing and, as Natasha put it, “Hallelujah, the vibes are here!”

Natasha Parker took the measure of Ed Waisbrot and liked what she saw.

Next up, it was Kenny’s and Mari’s turn to go on a date. At first I thought it was a cooking class since the chef who greeted them handed them aprons, but it was more of a build-your-own taco feast using their naked bodies as plates.

Mari and Kenny took turns disrobing and, their genitals covered with giant, fake leaves, lying on a table while their bodies were topped with tortillas and fillings and sour cream, which they spread on each other’s legs, arms, chest and stomach.

What made it even weirder is that the chef stayed in the room while they slurped chicken and beef and guacamole off each other’s body parts.

Mari Pepin-Solis and Kenny Braasch before the clothes came off.

It should come as no surprise they worked up enough of an, er, appetite to head to the boom boom room at the end of the date. But first they had what passes for a deep conversation in Paradise, avowing that they were falling in love with each other — something 40-year-old Kenny claimed to have never said to anyone other than his dog. So good luck with that Mari.

Speaking of deep conversations, Maurissa was desperate to have one with Riley because, despite how happy she said he made her, she worried that he wasn’t expressing his feelings.

Riley got tongue-tied trying to explain how he felt about Maurissa because it reminded him of his difficult relationship with his father and how his father had messed things up with his wife and kids despite how much he wanted a family, which was what Riley wanted too.

Maurissa Gunn and Riley Christian made it falling in L-word official.

After shedding some tears, Riley told Maurissa he was falling in love with her and vice versa.

So that’s three couples who have used the L-word to date, including Mari and Kenny, and Joe and Serena.

For Tia, it was more about the V-word as she tried to choose between nice guy James and bad boy Blake. James led Tia away for some private time to get to know more about her and her Arkansas hometown, but she lamented that “sometimes you have to just listen to your vagina. Kissing Blake makes my vagina dance and tingle and feel really nice.” But when she kissed James, “I just don’t feel a tingle in my vagina.”

Then Tia directly addressed her vagina for help making the decision. To the best of my knowledge, her vagina did not answer back.

As it happens, her decision was delayed when two men with walkie talkies showed up as the cast was eating the next day and told them a dangerous tropical storm was bearing down on the resort in Mexico and they had to evacuate immediately.

Would they be safe? And even more importantly, would all the couples survive their supposed separation? I mean, we saw the men and women being loaded into separate vans, but surely they were all being taken to the same hotel.

Despite the dramatic footage of time-lapsed clouds and wind and rain and lightning, everybody was back after one commercial break, the couples strolling onto the beach hand in hand. So not even Mother Nature is immune from being manipulated to fit a plot line.

Lil Jon greeted the returnees and told them the postponed cocktail party would start in one hour.

Tia was still trying to decide between Blake and James, but it looked like her lady parts were losing their influence.

Tia decided that Blake wasn’t making enough of an effort to show her she was special — like where the hell was his piece of wood with a stoplight painted on it to represent her small one-stoplight town?

Blake insisted that Tia and their relationship was all he cared about, but he didn’t have an answer when Tia asked why he hadn’t sought her out for a real conversation since their date. “I’m a simple person,” was his lame response.

I suspect Tia’s vaginal dance floor is going to be closed until further notice.

And then there was Ivan, whose prospects weren’t looking good since Kendall left. “Sad boy summer” was Aaron’s pithy description.

Aaron himself was feeling confident about his connection with Chelsea. Sure, she went on a date with Demar, but she rewarded Aaron with kisses when he built a catwalk in the sand in honour of Chelsea being a model and strutted for her.

But suddenly Ivan was leading Chelsea to a beach bed, and they were flirting and laughing and kissing, and walking hand in hand to the bar.

Declaring Ivan a “little snakey bitch bag,” Aaron confronted him. The episode ended with them right up in each other’s faces and the words “To be continued.”

So I guess we’ll find out if any punches get thrown in next week’s three-hour episode and also what the words “Something happened at the hotel” mean in relation to Ivan.

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

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