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The joke’s on Bachelor viewers as Shanae Show gets carried over

Clayton Echard and his group dates in Toronto’s Distillery District on Monday’s episode
of “The Bachelor.” PHOTO CREDIT: All photos except screen grabs John Medland/ABC

Welcome to Toronto. I’m really sorry we weren’t able to get rid of Shanae for you.

Yes, Monday’s “The Bachelor” crossed the border into Canada and featured, among other things, a comedy roast presided over by Russell Peters, but the joke was on viewers.

We were punked, essentially. Last week’s promo promised a two-on-one date between Shanae and Genevieve, and surely this would mean the end of one of the franchise’s most unlikable villains.

But nope. The two-on-one had barely got started when the dreaded “To be continued” popped onto our screens. The Shanae Show will be back next week.

And will Clayton finally smarten the hell up and send her home?

I mean, what is the point of a two-on-one if not to get rid of the villain? Still, the way Clayton conducted himself earlier in the episode didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

It began with the women lamenting Shanae’s behaviour of the night before, when she crashed the group date after-party, cussed out Sierra and Genevieve for talking about her, and threw the women’s football trophy into some bushes (the women said it was a pond, but I didn’t hear a splash). And just writing all that down emphasizes how bonkers ridiculous this manufactured drama is.

Clayton claimed he was going to address the Shanae situation before the rose ceremony and har, har, we’ve heard that one before.

First, though, he had a one-on-one date with Serene, who seems like a nice, normal person.

Clayton Echard with Serene Russell, who went on two dates with Clayton in this episode.

They had the run of the Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier so yes, we were still in America at this point. They went on rides, ate ice cream, kissed a lot, pretty standard stuff.

Clayton said he and Serene had a strong physical connection. “It’s just a matter of can we go deeper?”

Well, she could. Him? Not so much.

I mean Serene shared a story over dinner of losing her grandmother, who was a surrogate mother to her, and a cousin who was like the sister she never had within a couple of years of each other. It was obvious the loss still felt fresh. Clayton thanked her for sharing not once but three times.

And then he rewarded her for being “vulnerable” by giving her the date rose and lots of kisses, naturally.

“I definitely feel like I am falling in love with Clayton,” Serene said. Oh, honey!

It was time for the rose ceremony that we didn’t get to last week, but first Shanae. Clayton took aside the winning team from the tackle football group date to get their perspective on Shanae crashing their party. They recounted her vindictive, trophy-tossing behaviour. Alas, Susie unwittingly provided Clayton with an out by saying “I think she has to just apologize.”

So when Clayton took Shanae aside to address her behaviour, looking suitably solemn — “Throwing the trophy in the pond was not the right thing to do,” he said. Ya think? — he suggested she do just that.

Shanae lunged for the lifeline like Clayton latching onto a pair of lips.

“I want to apologize,” she said, feigning contriteness. “I was heated in the moment and, after going home and actually thinking about it, I should have never done that. That’s not my character, that’s not me.”

Shanae apologizes for trophy-gate, complete with crocodile tears.

She even managed to shed tears when she tried it out on the other women. “I am really sorry and I hope we can get past this,” she told them.

Sierra touched Shanae’s back sympathetically. Susie and Marlena both verbally accepted the apology. Clayton must have been so thrilled. No need to get rid of one of his favourite face-sucking partners. As soon as Shanae told him how “great” the apology had gone, he puckered up.

Too bad he didn’t realize when she said great, she meant her acting.

“That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my entire life, apologize to people that I wasn’t sorry for. I’m not sorry hoes!” Shanae crowed. “I need an Oscar award for that performance . . . This is Meryl Streep and this is Shanae Ankney right here,” she said, holding a hand high above her head.

Something to keep in mind when the inevitable tearful — and just as fake — apology comes at “The Women Tell All.”

Some of the contestants were still hoping Shanae wouldn’t make it through the rose ceremony. Of course, she did. Jill, Lyndsey and Sierra got dumped and since Sierra had been one of the women who ratted out Shanae’s toxic behaviour, Shanae got to boast about how she “sent another bitch home.” At least Sierra warned Clayton, “Don’t be stupid, OK?” on the way out, for whatever that was worth.

It was off to Toronto, Canada, and thank you, Clayton, for calling it a beautiful and breathtaking city, even if that was part of the script.

The contestants took in sights like the Toronto sign in Nathan Phillips Square, Osgoode Hall and the Berczy Park Dog Fountain before checking into the penthouse of Hotel X, where Gabby learned she was getting the one-on-one date.

Apparently Gabby hadn’t been on Clayton’s radar until he saw her hilarious side. And yes, it was kind of funny that she thought Clayton might be feeding her an actual beaver tail when they stopped to sample the fried dough on the waterfront.

They also took a helicopter ride with a view of the CN Tower (for some reason, I thought they did the EdgeWalk, but I was wrong), played street hockey and hung out in the Toronto Music Garden. When Gabby encountered an adorable dog she got right down on the ground to pet it, which made me like her even more.

One of the cute pooches you’re likely to see in any Toronto park.

Gabby said she felt like she was “in a movie like ‘The Notebook'” and that she was falling for Clayton “in a very deep manner,” but she had something to tell him that might scare him away.

What was this deep dark secret? That she had been insecure in past relationships and had felt undeserving of love due to growing up with a mother who withheld her affection. In fact, she no longer had a relationship with her mother but said tearfully she hoped to in the future. “Right now I have a lot of healing to do.”

Clayton said — wait for it — thank you for sharing, also that it meant a lot that she’d opened up to him and he felt he understood her much better now. He handed over the date rose and they did some smooching in the Hotel X rooftop pool.

Then it was group date time for Rachel, Sarah, Serene, Marlena, Susie, Hunter, Eliza, Teddi and Mara, and they headed to the Distillery District — if you ever come to Toronto, make sure you check it out — to meet up with Clayton, host Jesse Palmer and comedian Russell Peters, both of whom are Toronto natives.

Russell Peters with “failed contestant” Jesse Palmer and “his stunt double” Clayton.

Peters was there to help the women roast Clayton and each other and he gave them a sample. “Clayton, he’s from Missouri. This guy is vanilla as fuck.”

Tell us something we don’t already know.

The women were game to take Russell’s advice to be mean.

“Clayton, you’re from Eureka, Missouri, right? Do you kiss your mother with your mouth open or closed?” asked Marlena. She also outed Hunter’s irritable bowel syndrome and compared Shanae to a herpes outbreak.

Mara, the oldest remaining contestant at 32, and Sarah, the youngest at 23, sniped at each other, although Mara veered from roast to straight insult when she ended with, “Just go home you desperate bitch.”

The members of the public who were in the audience, and who would have zero insight into all the drama, must have wondered what the hell they were listening to, especially all the jokes about Shanae, whom Hunter compared to “Jeffrey Dahmer calling himself a victim at his own crime.”

Clayton found it all hilarious. He told Marlena at the after-party she had a future in standup comedy. She was hoping her performance and the fact she told Clayton she’d be “all gas, no brakes” in their relationship would be enough to score the date rose.

But Clayton was feeling feels with Rachel — “she’s almost on my mind at most times of the day” — and it went to her. That was a blow to Susie, who had borrowed a microphone to do an unroast of Clayton, sharing the things she liked about him, two of which were his smiles and his dimples when he smiles.

As hard as it’s been to figure out who’s breaking away from the pack given Clayton’s indiscriminate displays of affection, Rachel is definitely a frontrunner.

In the meantime, Genevieve and Shanae had received the two-on-one date card and there was dread in the air — no, not theirs, ours! There were just 17 minutes left in the episode, so obviously the date would carry over into next week. And you just know the producers will milk that date drama for every drop of Shanae badness.

All we saw was Genevieve and Shanae taking a tense limo ride, meeting Clayton in Queen Victoria Park alongside Niagara Falls and boarding a Niagara City Cruises boat. And just in case we had any trouble figuring out which one was the villain, Shanae was in a black raincoat and Genevieve in white.

Genevieve had the humility to say in her confessional that she was nervous while Shanae boasted about her confidence, comparing Genevieve to a chihuahua and miming throwing her overboard. “This is the last time I’m taking the trash out,” she said.

Back at the hotel, the other women discussed the fact that if Clayton kept Shanae it would affect how they felt about him and it’s hard to believe that Clayton hadn’t already cottoned on to that potential consequence in his eagerness to keep Shanae around. Either the dude is seriously obtuse or he’s a producers’ dream, willing to do whatever they suggest to keep the drama going.

So once again, because I’m Canadian, I apologize. There is more Shanae nastiness ahead. Would it be too much to hope that Clayton not only gets rid of her but that they deposit her on Goat Island for a while?

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

Noah Reid of ‘Schitt’s Creek’ has a message for other men: you can be both vulnerable and masculine

“Schitt’s Creek” star Noah Reid shows off his “Movember” facial hair.
PHOTO CREDIT: Movember Canada

The day that I chat with Noah Reid, a.k.a. Patrick from “Schitt’s Creek,” it’s Remembrance Day, so we’re both thinking about war and how devastating it must have been to live through a world war as compared to our current problems.

But as Noah says, “No matter what you’re going through, you can almost be certain that somebody has gone through the same thing or worse, but that doesn’t mean that whatever you’re going through is not difficult in its own way.”

And that is the point of the conversation: that whatever struggles people are having, particularly men with mental health, they deserve to be brought into the open and talked about — which is why Noah is sporting un-Patrick-like facial hair for Movember, the charity that raises funds for men’s health, in part through asking guys to grow moustaches in November.

Noah, a 33-year-old Torontonian, plugs into the topic of mental health in a couple of ways: his wife Clare is a psychiatric nurse and researcher who’s doing a master’s degree so “conversations around mental health have been a big part of my life in the last several years.”

He’s aware not only of the gaps in the health-care system when it comes to mental health treatment but the statistics that show men have a far higher rate of suicide than women.

There is, he says, “this sort of ingrained masculinity mask that men feel like they need to wear and not talk about, not share (feelings), bottle it up and keep a strong face.”

“As an artist, as an actor and a musician, I feel like a lot of my work and my job has to do with exploring the notion of vulnerability and what people share and what they don’t,” he says.

It should come as no surprise that mental health issues like anxiety and depression have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of Noah’s messages is to encourage people to check in on others in these strange times. “Now that we’re not occupying spaces in the same way, you might not have the same signals that somebody is struggling or having a tough time,” he says. “It’s on all of us to look around in our communities and our social worlds, and make sure that nobody’s feeling left behind and feeling isolated. It’s an easy thing to do nowadays, to just be sort of inwardly focused.”

When the lockdown first hit, Noah was in Chicago, eight shows into a 25-date concert tour, his first one. “We were on the way to Boston to play a show and the word came down that Tom Hanks and the NBA were basically COVID-positive and that sort of changed the game. I think March was a difficult time for a lot of people figuring out what this was going to mean and everybody had to adjust,” he says.

He’s disappointed to see places like Toronto’s Mod Club close because of the pandemic and can’t wait to get back into a venue for a concert or a play or even a movie, but “I’ve been grateful I’ve had a couple of real lovely moments of celebration this year, releasing my second album (“Gemini,” in May) and certainly the Emmys were another highlight.”

You can say that again, considering “Schitt’s Creek” won every comedy award going at the Primetime Emmy Awards (you can read my column about that here), becoming the first comedy or drama in Emmys history to sweep its category.

Another TV writer described “Schitt’s Creek” as perfect pandemic viewing and Noah understands that. “We’re living in a world that seemed to be sort of backsliding into the darkness in many ways and the timing of ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ I think for our audience, could not have been better,” he says. “And certainly, as the show finished up and came out during the early stages of the pandemic, I think people relied on the show to get them through with some light, some laughter and some love.”

The show has been a particular beacon for the LGBTQ community for the matter-of-fact way in which it dealt with the love story of Patrick and David, played by series co-creator Daniel Levy.

Noah Reid as Patrick and Daniel Levy as David in “Schitt’s Creek.” PHOTO CREDIT: CBC

“We would hear from fans all the time about the experience of coming out being approached with a little bit more ease, a little bit more courage. Just knowing that people were sharing this show with their families who might not have the same beliefs, but that was a way that people could get into conversations. And I think that’s incredibly meaningful when a cultural output can impact people in their day-to-day lives,” Noah says. “Those opportunities don’t come around all that often, so I’m incredibly proud to have been a part of such a show.”

(And for the record, Noah has done a bunch of TV stuff that isn’t “Schitt’s Creek,” starting when he was just a youngster, and he’s also an accomplished stage actor. But he laughs when I suggest that he’s now famous.)

Noah’s own way to process life’s difficult moments is through music. He’s been writing songs ever since he was a student at the National Theatre School of Canada; first as a way to explore the characters he was playing, then as a way of “exploring my own character . . . for me it’s been a pretty major way to process my goings-on.”

I ask him, somewhat tongue in cheek, if he’s an actor who plays music or a musician who acts.

“For a long time I thought of myself as an actor playing music as a sort of hobby. Recently that’s changed as I’ve found the experience of writing and playing and recording music so rewarding.”

He likes being able to do both, he says, but when you act “you’re working on somebody else’s creation . . . music has become something for me that is fully mine and I get to decide what that is, and it’s largely based on my own experience, and my own reflections of where I’m at in my life and what I’m seeing happen around me.”

“On my last record I have songs about being away from home for a long period of time and dealing with that, being away from loved ones, not loving the city that I’m in (he’s talking about Los Angeles there), not being able to sleep, dealing with doubt and isolation, and also experiencing love and togetherness and community and the joys of life. It’s definitely always been a major way that I can process what’s going on around me and . . . even when I wasn’t sharing these songs I would just sort of write things to put them somewhere, to say them out loud, to have some container for that idea or that feeling.”

And that brings us back to where we started: the idea that feelings need to be expressed, that it’s OK to be vulnerable.

Noah went to the Etobicoke School of the Arts, which was relatively “free of the kind of traditional trappings of masculinity in high schools.” Even so, “I still had a lot of work to do to figure out that being vulnerable at all was acceptable. And that’s a lifelong journey, figuring out what kind of a man I wanted to be; I’m still involved in that,” he says.

“It takes a lot of reflection . . . to recognize that vulnerability is a major part of masculinity. If you can’t be open, especially in your closest relationships, if you can’t feel like you’re able to share your experiences and the things that are happening in your head and in your heart, then other people won’t share their experience with you and the more that we share our experiences the more connected we feel.

“Once that door opens up, then you start to realize that there’s a little bit more common ground there than you might have thought.”

To find out more about Movember Canada or donate to the campaign, go to ca.movember.com.

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