I’ll be darned, the “Bachelor” producers flipped a switch on the Claytonbot 3000 and Clayton Echard actually made some sensible decisions on Monday’s episode.
First up was sending Mara home. It turns out she probably had a point about Sarah, but the way she went on and on about it ad nauseam was totally annoying and she had to go.
As for Sarah, it seems Shanae wasn’t the only one who was good at fake crying. Clayton decided Sarah wasn’t there for the right reasons, not because she was 23 but because he thought she was making shit up. So buh bye Sarah.
This doesn’t mean the episode was void of annoyances but, when all was said and done, Clayton had a final four. Bring on the hometowns and let’s get this ridiculous season over with.
But first, shall we recap?
We had unfinished business from last week. You’ll recall that Mara, being super jealous that Sarah got a second one-on-one date — and truthfully, the only reason she got it was to piss Mara off — implied to Clayton that Sarah wasn’t ready to get engaged. And Clayton confronted Sarah, who cried copious tears — although I’m now wondering just how real they were — and they kissed and made up and she got a rose and marched back to the hotel to confront whoever had thrown her under the bus.
It didn’t take long for Mara to fess up that she was the one who talked to Clayton, although she framed it more as her looking out for him than her being green with envy that she, Mara, 32-year-old self-proclaimed bedroom and kitchen goddess, was being left on the shelf for a youngster.
Was Sarah overconfident? Sure, especially in light of what happened later in the episode. Was all this sniping just another useless detour into Dramaland? Of course.
But Sarah was also correct when she identified Mara’s manoeuvring as “a last ditch effort by someone who feels like they’re going home.” Because guess what? Mara went home at the rose ceremony, along with Eliza.
For the seven who were left — Susie, Serene, Gabby, Genevieve, Rachel, Teddi and Sarah — it was goodbye Hvar, Croatia; hello Vienna, Austria.
Once there, it was time for the ever popular princess date. And I have to say it is nice to see people go places and do things in picturesque locations, and not have fake ass dates that all happen inside a resort.
First Susie got to go shopping at some fancy store called Fisher’s, and production bought her bandage dresses and Louboutins and who knows what else since she walked out of there with at least 10 bags.
Next stop was the atelier of designer Eva Poleschinski, where Susie got to pick out a ballgown to wear to dinner with Clayton at Schonbrunn Palace. And one wonders how much pressure was brought to bear to get her to pick the red dress since dinner was followed by Chris de Burgh (go ahead and google him young’uns) performing his 1986 hit “The Lady in Red.”
Hey, at least it wasn’t country music.
It certainly does feel like Susie is pulling ahead of the pack. And no, I haven’t read the spoilers nor do I care to. Nor have I done a scientific survey of how many women who get the princess or “Cinderella” date also end up with the final rose, but I know eventual winner Rachel Kirkconnell got it on Matt James’ season.
Susie reiterated that she was falling in love with Clayton and I did worry a little when he talked about seeing “so many sides of Susie” and the only ones he mentioned were the funny one, the serious one and the romantic one.
I will, however, grudgingly admit it was kind of sweet when Clayton said that if you took all the fancy princess-in-the-castle trappings away Susie “would still make me smile just as big.”
Doesn’t matter what we think anyway; Susie’s smitten, she got the rose, Clayton’s meeting her folks.
So what’s the opposite of a Cinderella date? How about taking five women to be psychoanalyzed on TV by a total stranger?
Sarah, Teddi, Genevieve, Rachel and Gabby had to endure couples therapy with Clayton, which is pretty rich since none of them are yet part of a couple. It was just another means to get the women to unearth private trauma for our public entertainment.
The most traumatized of all was Genevieve, although it was the therapy session that was causing her pain.
“I don’t like talking about my feelings and I don’t like being emotional in front of people, especially crying,” said Genevieve.
“Try to express what you feel,” said the psychoanalyst, clearly well coached by the producers.
“I want to understand who you are,” added Clayton, promoting the fiction that if Genevieve just fessed up there could be a hometown date in her future.
What utter nonsense. It wouldn’t have mattered if Genevieve spilled every deep feeling she’d ever had, she was never going to get a hometown rose.
Mercifully, Clayton ended the charade and sent Genevieve home, bizarrely thanking her for “making this journey fun,” a real non sequitur under the circumstances.
And then there was Sarah, who said she loved therapy. She happily cried in front of the psychoanalyst while recounting how the other women tried to tear her down. Clayton babbled that his and Sarah’s trust was now “on a whole other level,” so Sarah’s confidence shot to a whole other level, too. Hell yeah, she was getting a hometown date, she figured.
But then the psychoanalyst told Clayton and his dates that someone hadn’t been honest about their feelings: “performative” was what she said.
Dun dun dun dunnnnn.
At the after party, Clayton invited the women to essentially snitch on the dishonest person.
Rachel recounted Sarah coming to her and Teddi after her first one-on-one date to say she and Clayton “were crying together,” which Clayton said wasn’t true. Apparently, Sarah had blabbed so many details about her close connection to Clayton that Teddi and Rachel considered sending themselves home.
When Clayton accused Sarah of being manipulative, she denied everything while doing her best imitation of a crying face.
“I’m just gonna be real with you. I really felt like you were trying to fake cry to me,” Clayton told Sarah, which was spot on.
I guess the difference between Sarah and Shanae was that Shanae had mastered the ability to squeeze actual tears out of her eyes whereas Sarah’s cheeks stayed dry.
Tellingly, her eyes continued to stay dry in the van that whisked her away when Clayton sent her home.
He declined to hand out a group date rose.
The next day, Serene — on her second one-on-one — kicked things off by making sure Clayton was OK after the, um, trauma of sending Sarah home.
Somehow he managed to soldier on as he and Serene toured Vienna’s city centre in a horse-drawn carriage, ate hot chestnuts and danced to accordion music with the obligatory senior citizen couple who gave them a glimpse of their own potential future — yes, that’s right, you too can spend your golden years trying to teach people from some random reality show how to polka.
At dinner later, at the Belvedere Palace, Serene confessed she hadn’t brought anyone home to meet her parents since her high school boyfriend. And she and Clayton compared notes about growing apart from people that you started dating when you were really young and how it can seem like you wasted part of your 20s, but “then I think, no, you learn from every moment that you go through,” Clayton said.
And I’m sorry, but that sounded like an actual line of conversation rather than just a talking point.
Serene told Clayton she was falling in love with him, which made Clayton grin from ear to ear. And he gave her the rose and then they stood in front of the famous Klimt painting “The Kiss” and, duh, kissed.
And then — I can hardly believe I’m writing this — the episode ended with a rose ceremony.
Since Susie and Serene already had roses, and Rachel was a lock for another one, it came down to Teddi and Gabby.
As the first impression rose winner, Teddi might have seemed like a shoo-in but, to be honest, the fact she had her one-on-one so late in the season did not bode well. And indeed, she was the one sent home.
Clayton didn’t seem all that broken up about it, telling her, “It was so nice to get to know you and you’ll forever have a special place in my heart” as he handed her into the van. Not one for long goodbyes is Clayton.
But let’s be honest, he did Teddi — and us — a favour. How nasty would it have been if Teddi lost her virginity to Clayton and then had to suffer through the “I’ve been intimate with both of you” speech that we all know is coming? Consider it a bullet dodged.
Next week it’s hometowns and, if we don’t get tripped up with any special two-part episodes, we just have another four to go and we can all get our Monday nights back.
You can watch next 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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