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

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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