Among the things we learned on Tuesday’s episode of “The Bachelorette”: numeracy and literacy standards appear to be slipping among the contestants.
At this point, somebody should be demanding contestant Bennett’s Harvard transcripts because, for all the boasting he continues to do about attending that prestigious university, he got both the math questions wrong during a group date challenge — and I’m not talking tough stuff like calculus or differential equations, just basic addition and subtraction. Oh, and he can’t spell “limousine.”
And then we have Chasen and his limited vocabulary: the two words he used over and over again were “smokeshow” (which can also be spelled as two words) and “Wolverine”: as in “Tayshia is a smokeshow” and “I’m bringing out my inner Wolverine.”
A more accurate word for what was going on with Chasen would be “shitshow” as in “This constant bickering between Chasen and Ed is a shitshow.”
If you were worried that this quarantine season of “The Bachelorette” — already turned upside down by Clare Crawley’s brief reign before Tayshia Adams took over — wouldn’t get back to normal, relax. It doesn’t get more normal than a couple of guys arguing about which of them is there for the right reasons and both of them getting roses and both of them going on a group date that involves intense physical competition in the hope there will be violence.
Oh sure, Tayshia is looking for a “grown ass man,” but the series continues to revel in toxic masculinity.
The episode’s first group date was literally called the “grown man challenge” and it was presided over by married “Bachelor in Paradise” couple Ashley Iaconetti and Jared Haibon. (Was there a whole shadow cast of “Bachelor” favourites quarantining at La Quinta? Or did they just give them COVID tests and parachute them in? What’s a swab up the nose when you’ve got reality TV fame to maintain?)
Besides the math and spelling questions, the men had to pair off in tugs-of-war and make Tayshia breakfast in bed. Tayshia was alone in bed until Bennett, wearing a bathrobe (what? no cosmetic mask?), crawled in with her and hand-fed her doughnuts, so he won the “grown ass man award,” despite his atrocious spelling and math, and the fact he bowed out of the tug-of-war because of an “old football knee injury.”
Ed was named the “man child” and had to carry around a baby doll, which he named Carlos.
Initially, it looked like the beefing was going to be between Chasen and Bennett. Chasen said Bennett was “classless” for laying a smooch on Tayshia in front of the other men after he won the challenge. And when Bennett tried to talk to Tayshia first during the group date cocktail party, Chasen cut in. But then Ed started blabbing to Bennett about how he didn’t think Chasen was that into Tayshia; Bennett repeated it to Chasen and we were off to the races.
I won’t bore you with the whole he said, he said. Apparently Chasen used the same adjectives to describe both Clare and Tayshia and, golly, if that’s not evidence of fakeness I don’t know what is.
Chasen’s response, besides insulting Ed’s “chicken legs,” was to threaten to bring out his inner Wolverine (as in the Marvel character with the really big claws) and to get in Ed’s face because didn’t he know that when Tayshia showed up Chasen “pivoted”?
Besides, Chasen came up with a new word for Tayshia after he was challenged by Ed: “smokeshow,” which, as Bennett pointed out, is a noun, not an adjective.
If I was Tayshia I would have sent both Ed and Chasen home — I mean, Chasen’s 31 and says he’s never been in love; I’d be red-flagging the hell out of that — but that is not the “Bachelorette” way, so they got the final two of the 13 roses she handed out at the rose ceremony. (Counting the roses given to Brendan and Spencer last week and the one to Ivan on the group date, that leaves her with 16 men.)
A new day at La Quinta meant a new chance to stoke the antagonism between Chasen and Ed, so they both got sent on a group date (along with Eazy, Brendan, Joe, Jordan, Spencer and Ben) that involved wrestling.
There were a couple of minor boo-boos — a scraped knee for Jordan, a cut foot for Ben — but the main event was going to be Chasen and Ed kicking each other’s asses until . . . Ed bowed out because of chronically dislocated shoulders? Funny he didn’t mention that when everyone was training with WWE hall of famer Amy Dumas and UFC champ Tatiana Suarez.
So host Chris Harrison, who was MCing the so-called “Bachelorette Wrestlemania” with “Bachelorette” and “Bachelor in Paradise” alum Wells Adams, asked if anybody else wanted to fight Chasen. And Noah, who was there as a spectator with all the other guys who weren’t on the date, jumped over a fence into the ring and took Chasen on in his jeans. I guess we’re supposed to believe that was all Noah’s idea. I am highly skeptical.
Anyway, Noah lost the match but won an invitation to the cocktail party from Tayshia, which pissed off the eight guys who were officially on the group date. Not just that, Noah scored the first alone time with Tayshia and then he double dipped! And because Tayshia approved of Noah’s fence-jumping, and also because he allowed her to shave off his cheesy moustache (good riddance) and she really, really liked kissing his newly smooth face, Tayshia gave Noah the date rose.
It was especially irksome for Ben, who plotted to be the last one to speak to Tayshia before she gave away the rose but ran out of time.
Noah lost some ugly facial hair, but he gained a a nice big target on his back.
Next week, look for Tayshia to get smoochy with Bennett, Ben, Ivan and Zac, and for tension to brew between Bennett, Noah and — surprise, surprise — Ed. And then Tayshia lays down the law: “If you guys are trying to start drama in the house for no reason I’ll gladly walk you outside.”
I think that’s what you call a grown ass woman.
“The Bachelorette” airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on Citytv. Feel like chatting about “Bachelorette”? Come visit my Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter @realityeo
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