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 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.
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!”
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.
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.
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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