"Costa Rica really is magical," Brad tells us, as we watch a helicopter fly across the pristine beauty of the country, while Brad tells us again about how much he's changed, and how vulnerable he is, and how he hopes Costa Rica provides some answers, which is unfair pressure on Costa Rica.
And then we get lots of crappy video footage of the women saying "Costa Rica!" in stereotypical Alex Trebek accents, and someone wants to get "down and dirty" with Brad in the jungle, and someone says "luscious greenery" when I hope they really meant "lush greenery." The women ooh and ahh at a volcano that unfortunately does not erupt and bury them all in a sea of lava.
The women reunite with Brad at the hotel. "He looked well rested and really excited to be here," says someone, which is just overwhelming in its enthusiasm. We hear about all the amenities of the hotel, like its infinity pool overlooking the volcano. "It just feels so organic," says Ashley H., which is in the running for most eyepoke-deserving statement I've heard this season. Remind me to ask the travel agent to make sure our hotel feels "organic" on our vacation.
And we get to the date card right away for Chantal O. "Close your eyes, hold on tight, love is in the air tonight," it reads, and she's thrilled. Meanwhile, Michelle tells us that she's not sure why Chantal's name was on the date card, although she does hope that Chantal gets attacked by monkeys. "Or apes." But not both, because that would be cruel.
Chantal gets ready for her date, and she tells us that she's freaking out because of how she melted down last time or whatever. I don't really remember because I use a Men in Black-esque memory wipe after every episode. "I feel like Brad is doubting everything and questioning how he feels about me," she says.
I cannot express in words how tired I am of the Bachelor always explaining how "excited" he is for the woman to see the date that's been prepared.
"It's really hard for her to watch me with the other ladies," says Brad, so tonight is all about Chantal, like yeah, that's how dates work.
Back at the hotel, Michelle talks poison about Chantal and how she really doesn't think Chantal will be coming back tonight. Since Chantal is eminently more likable and fun than Michelle, I can see why Michelle would think that a connection with Chantal spells bad news for her, but her failure to acknowledge the fact that Brad likes her makes me wonder if she didn't actually hire, like, jungle blowgun assassins to take Chantal out.
"I'm not going to let anything stop me from falling in love with Brad," says Chantal, as we watch endless shots of the helicopter flying over the jungle canopy. Brad tells us that he thinks Chantal isn't sure what he's got in store, which of course she doesn't, because he hasn't TOLD her.
Turns out they're going on a zipline, and Brad uses some tortured metaphor to explain that this date is all about taking their relationship to new heights. I'd like to point out that usually you zip DOWN but never mind. And then it starts to rain, notes Chantal. "Is it raining? Ooh, it is raining," says Brad. Somewhere, Andie McDowell says, "Oh, terrible line reading."
But they do it anyway, and Brad seems to think it's amazing that Chantal didn't turn into a helpless quivering mess in the rain, like it's not a monsoon or anything. "This is a girl that I could definitely hang out with the rest of my life, no doubt about it," he tells us, but he can't wait to go to a more intimate location a little later.
Alli still hasn't had a one-on-one date, and she's starting to get pissed about all the group dates, so she's trepidatious about the card.
"Love springs eternal. Jackie, Michelle, Emily, Ashley, Shawntel and Britt are going on the group date," and Alli's going to get a later one-on-one date, which she is mystifyingly jazzed about.
Meanwhile, Chantal and Brad are going for a picnic on the beach, and they are drinking wine. "I'm ready to move on and start the chapter of my life," Chantal tells us, which is an easy thing to feel when you've spent the day ziplining and then drinking wine on the beach.
Anyway, then actual rain starts almost instantly, which unfortunately results in maybe the dullest story ever: "We were like, oh my god, what do we do? We gotta get out of here?" says Chantal, and Brad tells us that he's taking the date and the rose elsewhere. Really? You're not going to stay out there?
Back at the hotel, Michelle sees the downpour and assumes that the voodoo she's been using has been effective.
So Brad and Michelle are back at a resort or some house where Brad had been planning to take his dates all along? You know, for the sex? I'm very confused by this house.
Chantal changes out of her wet clothes into a men's shirt, which is a weakness of mine. And then they have a boring conversation about Chantal breaking down, and Brad tells her not to do that anymore. So much for being honest. In other words, I want you to open up but not so much that I feel uncomfortable. Anyway, what woman could resist being told to shut up about her damn feelings? Not Chantal, because thing you know they are making out. "I'm crazy about you," she whispers, which means everyone watching leans in to hear the traditional Bachelor non-committal response that he hopes doesn't make him come across as too much of a douchebag. Brad looks all thoughtful and says, "This could happen every night," he says, like this just occurring to him. Jesus, what a phony. "I want it to, to be with you," she whispers.
Then he gives her the rose and they coo at each other, and she talks about how glad she is that she can be herself with him, even though he just accused her of playing games when she gets emotional, so Chantal is some kind of delusional right here.
The day, Michelle is listing all the things she hates: group dates, rain, Chantal, joy. What a treat Michelle is for everyone. "Brad is not Chantal's man. He's mine," she tells us.
Anyway, today's date is all about "adventure and facing fear" Brad tells us, and constantly overuses the word "ladies" as he talks about how careful he has to be to divide his time equally.
So they're rappelling down a waterfall, and Jackie tells us that she's scared of heights, so Brad tries to comfort her by telling her about how when he and Michelle went rappelling, it felt great to get to the bottom. Meanwhile, Michelle is making her stinkface, because she says that she and Brad made a pact to never go rappelling with anyone else, which is either a) too stupid to be true or b) too stupid to take seriously if it is true.
So one by one the women slowly make their way down the waterfall. "Brad is amazing. He was telling everybody they're going to be OK!" says Ashley, which is one of those statements a woman makes on this show that really makes me wonder what kind of assholes they usually date, that basic human interaction rates as "amazing."
Anyway, Michelle makes crazy eyes while Jackie makes her way down. She says she doesn't want to diminish how hard this is -- because she's still pretending that she actually was scared of heights but now is cured -- but calls the whole thing "quite a production," unlike her own freaking out on top of the building. "It's really annoying to see Brad be so nice to the other girls," she says. Michelle's one of those women who like to watch their boyfriends fight all the other guys at the truck stop, isn't she?
Anyway, she's the last one left, and then we find out that Brad does remember the pact they made, so they're going down together. That makes Michelle cheerful instantly. Brad tells us that Michelle's mood changed instantly, but he hasn't yet figured out that this is evidence of just what a psycho Michelle is. Jackie's disappointed that he didn't go down with her, so Brad's kinda justified in telling us that now he's worried that the other women will be jealous of the attention given to Michelle.
So now they're all going to hang
out in a hot spring, which means Brad will go shirtless."Brad taking his shirt off makes you want to go home and fuck," says Michelle, bleeped out, obviously. Brad hangs out and talks to Jackie, telling her how proud it is of what she did today. "It would have been awesome if we went down together!" says Jackie, doing it in an "I'm just joking around! But not really!" overly bright tone of voice, and Brad sighs heavily.
Date card for Alli back at the hotel: "Meet me at the altar. Brad." Alli says, "Shut up," like she thinks it actually means they're getting married. She is, I'm not even kidding, says it's exciting that the word "altar" is in the card, even though she has no idea what that means.
Anyway, back at the hot springs. "I'm not saying this to be a bitch, at all, but at the end of the day I don't see him with any of these girls," says Michelle.
And now Brad and Emily are talking, and Emily looks awfully standoffish, and she tells him that she tends to sabotage things when guys get too close. "I won't let you sabotage this," says Brad. Yeah, that's Brad's job! Then they start kissing. "It makes me worried that I may get hurt," Brad tells us.
Oh my god, there's a beetle at the hotel. "I'm gonna throw up, I'm not kidding," says Alli, who screeches and screeches when Chantal scoops the bug up on a piece of paper and thrusts it in her direction.
She's so loud that she's audible over at the hot springs. Brad and Michelle hear someone screaming, get a little freaked out, and then instantly go back to their boring conversation about themselves. Michelle really starts aggressively pressing Brad about how he could possibly like Chantal. "Don't just tell me that I wanted to have a sexy date in Costa Rica with Chantal," is a statement that gets uttered, which is too bad, because there are certainly worse scenarios I can think of than a sexy date in Costa Rica with Chantal. Like ANYTHING WITH MICHELLE. "I'm sad because I care about you," she tells him, and he puts the little woman in her place by talking about how his decisions are his own decisions and she needs to trust him.
"I don't like when Michelle gets pissed off at me for nothing," he says. Yeah, bitches be trippin' when you go on dates with other women, huh?
So what happens is Brad gets his mad voice on as he tells the other women that he's so serious about giving the rose to a woman he can marry that he's not just going to give the rose to whoever rappelled first or who overcame her fears or who gave him the best blowjob or anything like that. "Tonight, I'm not gonna hand out a rose," he says.
"I refuse to let myself have second thoughts when giving out a rose, it's important," he tells us, because he can never dial down the "see how seriously I take this?" intensity.
Michelle's annoyed because this means one of the other women isn't going home: "If he can't make a decision, I'll be forced to take matters into my own hands."
Anyway, the day, Alli's looking forward to her date, but especially to coming back with that post-coital glow that all the other women come back with.
She meets up with Brad, and he introduces this date's torture way of relating marriage to whatever date the show has lined up. Brad talks about the altar again, and says this is because the date involves a little bit of fear, little bit of anxiety, but in the end it's all worth it. Of course, the other things you do with altars is sacrifice living creatures on it.
So they're going spelunking. "This cave is over forty million years old," Brad tells her, and "forty million" also seems to describe how many spiders and bats there are, and so we're treated to Alli freaking out again. And it turns out that inside the cave there are natural stone steps that the locals call the "altar" and Alli is all, "So that's the altar" all disappointed like she really did think Brad was going to skip right to the wedding.
And then they have a little picnic in there, because what better place to have a picnic than a dark, dank, batshit-encrusted cave?
Then at some point they're just not in the cave but having dinner like normal people. Well, not like normal people. Like people on The Bachelor. But Brad is finding the conversation a little lacking: "We're in the most romantic setting in the world, and we're making small talk," says Brad, who boasts that he can have a conversation with everybody, which is the kind of non-amazing accomplishment a non-amazing personality like Brad would brag about.
Back at the resort, Chantal is leading the women in a rousing game of "Will the Date Get a Rose Tonight or Not?" and everyone is firmly coming on the side of "not a chance in hell."
And sure enough, at the end of the date, Brad takes that cattle stun gun and sticks it right to her head. "At the end of the day, I think we both know that we have a very strong friendship, but that's where it ends," he tells her. Alli starts to cry as she thanks him for being honest.
Anyway, Brad is such a stud that he hates making anyone cry, much less a woman that he cares about, in yet another entry of Brad Saying Things That He Mistakenly Thinks Will Make Us Like Him.
"I can honestly tell you that I had feelings for him," she tells us as she gets driven off. We all have feelings for him. Hate is a feeling.
Meanwhile, back at the house, all of the women gasp when one of the show's gofers takes Alli's bags away. All of the women except Michelle follow the bags out of the house. Meanwhile, I'm distracted by the fact that most of the women have this front braid running down one side of their heads. Lot of time on their hands in that house. I really wish one of the women would go the full Yulia Tymoshenko, although I doubt any one of them could pronounce "Yulia Tymoshenko."
So Brad comes home and he tells us that he needs some down time to "process" everything that's happened, which is the biggest-crybabyist thing he could possibly say. I don't believe it; I think he just didn't want to say, "I just want to play Xbox tonight." But he's barely in the room when there's a knock on the door and Michelle saying, "Hola," in yet another entry in the Encyclopedia of Twists Ruined by Being Broadcast at Every Commercial Break.
Brad seems pretty pissed but doesn't want to say so, and then they start talking about how much they missed each other, and then they make out.
Then she tells him that not giving a rose to Alli was the right decision, and he sarcastically asks if there are any other decisions that she wants him to make, and she talks a lot about how she wants him to figure things out, which is a lie and he calls her on it, and then she actually outlines the order in which he should eliminate all the rest of the women.
And for the first time, he starts seeming irritated by Michelle's machinations. Of course, he says it in the douchebaggiest way with "Michelle once again starts questioning my decisions," he says. "It feels like I'm literally being pulled in a million different directions," he says, adding that Michelle is definitely the biggest part of that. So... time to send her home, right?
God, I love the cocktail party. It's the time of the show I can see some light at the end of the tunnel.
Anyway, Michelle tells us that when Brad came in, he seemed different somehow. Maybe that's because he wasn't able to have his therapist visit to tell him a few platitudes. But I for one say thank god Christ that Brad doesn't yet have a therapist on call in Costa Rica.
Anyway, he chats with Emily, who's bummed because she's realized that maybe it wasn't a good idea to blather on all about how she sabotages relationships. Then they work it out, or not, I don't care.
Then he has it out with Michelle: "You're scaring me. You're scaring me badly," he says. "I'm afraid of the direction you and I are going in right now," he says, and she actually says, "Thank you for telling me that." Michelle tries to pretend that Brad asked her to pull her Lady MacBeth routine. But that's because she's scare
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d. "I want to be married! I want more children!" Nice to see her not so confident. Looks good on her.But she doesn't seem to realize that he wants her to back off: "I don't know if I'm crazy or if I don't understand the way he communicates. It's really freaking me out," she tells us.
And the other running subplot of this cocktail party is the Blaming of the Woman who cracked Brad's nice-guy veneer and turned him into a sociopath. Chantal wants to figure out who Brad's talking about when he says that someone gave him some grief about not giving out the rose on the group date.
Meanwhile, Shawntel is alone with Brad. And then they play this wonderful game called the silence game, which involves them blessedly KEEPING QUIET, then they make out, and then they go back to the silent game, which she loses by talking first. Brad loves it, says he wanted to relax, and this did the trick. Well, of course it did. This is his position on women getting all emotional on him at its logical conclusion: I don't want to hear you speak. Just kiss me.
Meanwhile, the other women, led by Chantal, who seems to be a bit of an instigator this episode, have figured out that Michelle must have been the one who pissed Brad off last night, despite the fact she played dumb when asked about it earlier.
So Michelle is asked again if she knows who gave Brad grief about not giving out the rose, and she plays innocent again, saying essentially. "Well, last night I went to his house and gave him grief about not giving out the rose, I wonder if that's what he's talking about." And then she just owns it. Talk about the silent game! The other women look like they want to literally murder her. She points out that it's a competition (which is an attitude more of the contestants really need to have every year) and that any one of them could have done the same thing. "I just happened to be the one who did it," she says. "To be honest, this is why I'm here. I'm not apologizing. I'm just trying to keep it real." That last part is usually said by people defending themselves being an asshole.
Time for Chantal now to have an awkward conversation. But this one culminates with, "I'm falling in love with you. I love you." Brad reacts like she just said, "Uh, Brad, did you ever see The Crying Game?" Anyway, that made his night. "To hear a woman say that she's falling in love with me lets me know that this process is working," he says. Doesn't the fact that you didn't/couldn't say it back to her tell you that the process is irreparably fucked? If it doesn't, it should. He just asks what makes her say that, and she says "deep emotional damage," or at least she should.
And now it's time for the rose ceremony, which is unfortunately only going to send one woman home because Alli already got her walking papers. He's got five roses to hand out. He comes out and says he normally practices his speeches, but this time he didn't because he wanted it to come from the heart. When he says something like that, doesn't he think about what he's implying about the sincerity of his speeches at the other rose ceremonies? Anyway, he says it's "humbling" that they all want to do him or whatever.
Ashley. Emily. Britt. Shawntel. So the final rose comes down to Jackie or Michelle, and he gives it to Michelle. After what happened with Michelle tonight, there is no hope for Brad. None. This means one of two things: Brad is a moron, or producer's picks are very real.
Anyway, he takes Jackie out to tell her what a tough decision it was to make, and how she's one in a million, and blah blah blah, and they hug, and he walks her to the SUV.
"I wanted that last rose," she says. She says it really hurts when you actually are in love. "I can't believe he looked at me and said I don't want to be with you. God, it sucks!" And then she talks about what a great guy Brad is, but this must be the Stockholm Syndrome kicking in.
Back at the resort, Brad tells the other women that it was tough letting Jackie go, but they have to move on. Literally, too: they're going to Anguilla. All the women cheer and say, "Yay! I totally know where Anguilla is but will you excuse me and may I borrow a cell phone please?"
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He had never heard of Anguilla either. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
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