Chris Harrison strolls into the mansion full of women and says he thinks things are going "very, very well" here, and I can't help but wonder by which metric is he making that judgment. No one seriously maimed or contracted an STD yet? None of the contestants has slept with a producer (yet)? Not as many sleepless nights wondering how to atone for inflicting this show on our world?
There's a date card for Selma, bumming Leslie out, since she had a "great conversation" with Sean last night, which should at the very least translate into marriage. "Let's turn up the heat," is what the card says. Selma is excited about the date, and then taking it to "the level" and then "the level" and then "having babies," not to get ahead of herself or anything. Leslie is crying actual tears over not getting the date. Better save some of those for later, Leslie.
Sean tells us he's had a connection with Selma (translation: killer rack) from "night one" (as though "night one" is a real phrase). He says some dumb shit about how people judge Selma by assuming she's just a pretty face, and let's just say no one ever holds their breath waiting for a contestant on this show to dazzle us with brains. But please, let's all wait to be impressed with Selma's brilliance over the twenty minutes or so.
They have a private plane waiting for them. Sean thinks Selma assumes they're going somewhere really glamorous. He assumes she thinks this, despite the fact they've got workout clothes on. Meanwhile, Selma seems to be impressed enough just by the fact that they're on a plane, so maybe Sean doesn't have to work very hard tonight.
After what seems like real-time hours of flight, they land in the middle of a desert. "I do not do well in heat. At all," Selma tells us. She's feeling so many emotions! Disappointment! Petrification! They get in a Jeep and Sean has to impress everybody by peeling out really fast (although the credit bloopers tonight will be the lie to his supposed prowess at Jeep driving). They enter Joshua Tree National Park, which is teeming with non-existent crowds. Selma tells us again she doesn't do well in heat. "I feel puffy, so this should be interesting," she says. Oh, if only. Still waiting for her to demonstrate all that substance beneath that pretty face!
So they're going rock-climbing, despite Sean apparently knowing she's not very athletic. Also, she hates heights. Does she like anything? They strap their gear on and get ready to be hoisted a hundred feet up a crevasse to the top.
And just when you start wondering if it's OK to wish for some 127 Hours-type of situation, Selma starts talking about getting some sort of adrenalin and I guess we're supposed to applaud her ability to find inner reserves of strength in order to impress Sean. Eventually -- after many down-shirt shots of Selma by the camera crew who are on top of this unconquerable rock -- they reach the top, hug for a little bit, and then get ready to get lowered back down the side and go for dinner.
And then they go to some sort of themed kitschy RV park which she patronizingly calls "country glam" and they cuddle up under a blanket and Sean regales us with the story of his one serious relationship since college, which ended when that crazy chick started talking about marriage. And where he once wasn't ready for that, now he's ready for that! And isn't Sean growing up!
Sean asks about her family, and she says there's a lot he doesn't know about her family. Well, you try to keep the families of twenty-five girlfriends straight! She talks to us about growing up in a strict, conservative Muslim household. She's not going to kiss Sean because she thinks her strict mom will "literally" have a heart attack -- and she appears to understand correct usage of that word. It's interesting that she thinks her mom will be fine with her boobs hanging out all over the place and cuddling with this man but would draw at actually kissing him.
Back at the house, a group date card arrives for Lindsay, Robyn, Jackie, Catherine, Amanda, AshLee or Ashleigh or Ashley whatever, Sarah and Tierra (Tierra puts a puss on because she doesn't want to share Sean). "I'm looking for a woman who can roll with the punches..." reads the card.
Meanwhile, Sean and Selma are cuddling, and she whispers that she can't kiss him. They talk about her conservative parents, and Selma admits that her mom isn't happy about her doing this at all. To me, that doesn't read "conservative" so much as "sane" and "responsible." She's allowed to date, but in her culture they kind of keep it secret, she explains. "For me to put it on display like to the world, you know, is a big deal to her," she says.
Then there is five minutes of angst from each of them about wanting to kiss each other, due to this show's ongoing fairy-tale-simplistic veneration of the kiss being some sort of magical gamechanger. And then there is an awful, awful song playing while they continue to cuddle and hold hands and Sean kisses her on the forehead by this point Selma might as well blow the guy since she's probably disowned already.
The day it's group-date time, and the women observer the tradition of trying to figure out what "roll with the punches" means. Lindsay, amazingly, focuses on the "roll" part and thinks they're going to get in big hamster balls and go rolling downhill, like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU LINDSAY and naturally everyone watching this show isn't surprised when the activity turns out to be rollerderby, since this show has been teasing that since the first episode.
Sean gets excited when he thinks about the women beating on each other in competition for his favors, and things are getting uneasily close to cracking Sean's veneer and exposing what he's really like. Amanda pretends she's done this before, but it's strictly for intimidation purposes. I like that! Sean continues to get off on watching the women hurt themselves for his benefit.
Naturally, this activity seems a little more difficult for one-armed Sarah -- both in terms of balance and in how much slower she's able to get herself back up when she falls. My heart breaks for her as she explains that this is one of those times she wishes things were normal, because she's in this position of trying to impress this douchebag of a bachelor. AshLee tries to give her a pep talk -- while patronizingly saying that to her, Sarah doesn't have a disability -- because Sarah really doesn't want to do this.
And what does Sean think? Since that's what's most important? Well, his "heart goes out" to Sarah because he knows this is difficult for her. "Part of me wants to say, 'Hey, you don't need to do this.' But the other part wants to say, 'Hey, you should do it, I think you can do it,' because I know she'll feel a huge sense of accomplishment after she completes it."
At this point I think I might have to reconsider my policy of giving every episode of this execrable show an F, because now I need a grade that's lower than what other episodes usually get. This is really making me angry. Sarah doesn't have to do it because she doesn't have to prove anything to Sean, to the show, to anyone. But of course Sean gives her a pep talk and she's all set to earn his approval, and Lord knows how Sarah ever made her way in this world before Sean came along to boost her self-esteem.
And then Amanda faceplants and we go to commercial with the medic en route and everything comes to a halt. The tension that's supposed to be building isn't really, given all the post-rollerderby interviews we saw Amanda doing, so we know she didn't fracture her jaw. But she's carted off to the hospital just in case.
And then instead of the rollerderby death match Sean had in mind, he announces it's going to be a free skate. And of course all the women credit Sean for being really sweet, but I guarantee you this is much more about the producers saying, "You know, Amanda broke her face in practice, so let's not get our asses sued with an actual roller-derby match."
And now it's off to dinner and drinks, and Sean is patronizingly "proud" of Sarah and talks about her self-accomplishment, and he pulls her aside so she can tell him how embarrassed she was today, and he can assure her that she doesn't have to be embarrassed about anything. Which is true, of course (well, apart from being on The Bachelor in general) but it's not like it's Sean who gets to decide that.
Tierra appears to be jealous of Sarah's alone time -- not to mention the attention Amanda got for falling on her face. Not that Amanda's above playing the sympathy card -- in fact, she relishes it, and she shows up at dinner to great fanfare, and Sean pulls her aside and kisses her chin boo-boo and then Amanda jokes to us that should have pretended to also get her tonsils out, and then sticks her tongue out and pretends to either be going in for the sloppiest French kiss ever or to swallow someone's soul.
Back at the house, there appears to be a woman named Daniella there and I don't believe we have seen her before, I think she's new this week. She's annoyed about all these date cards passing her by. "I'm fun, I'm outgoing, we could have romantic time together," she says, adding that she thinks Sean must have something big planned for her. She shouldn't get her hopes up. He's got the same thing planned for all of them, and whether it's big remains to be seen.
A date card arrives, for Leslie H. "Could this be forever?" There's a second part: Diamond earrings. "This is like Pretty Woman!" screams Leslie, who says it's her favorite movie. I could go on about all the ways a movie about a hooker is like The Bachelor, but we've only got a couple of hours.
Back at dinner, Tierra is snapping at everyone else. In one case, it's because Robyn asked a couple of Amanda's teammates how Amanda was doing but not Tierra, which she takes as a grievous and intentional slight. And before we know what's happening, Tierra is asking the producers if she can leave, and she's crying and talking about being tortured and meanwhile Sean's busy making out with -- I'm not sure who this is -- and he's about to get into the pool when he's accosted by Tierra LURKING IN THE SHADOWS so she can whine to his face about how much she likes him but how she doesn't know how hard it is to not spend time with him, and he comforts her, and tells her to wait there, and then he goes and gets the rose -- much to the surprise of all the women, who seem to have a sense of what's going on -- and brings it back to her, thereby sealing his fate as one of the dumbest Bachelors ever to appear on this show, even though he didn't have the benefit of seeing the evil smile that spread over her face when he left her to go get the rose. "The more she's around, and the more I see her doing these things, the angrier I get, because she's like a plague of bad energy," says Robyn.
I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to take another hour of this tonight, but let's see. Anyway, Leslie H. is "super-duper-duper excited" about the date, so much so that she slept with the earrings under her pillow. "Who gives diamond earrings on their first date?" she gushes. No one, actually, Leslie, and a) there's a reason for that and b) you seem to be under the impression that you're going to get to keep them.
Sean arrives and picks her up and whisks her away in a convertible, and she blathers about having a "hot car" and "hot earrings" and a "hot guy." And Sean is so into her that at one point he calls her "Leslies." And it turns out that Sean thinks it's every "girl's" dream to go shopping on Rodeo Drive, and that "every woman talks about Pretty Woman." Of course, Robyn isn't doing her gender any favors by agreeing wholeheartedly with that.
Anyway, she picks out a gown, shoes and purse, but there's one more surprise: They go to a jewelry store where she picks out a massive diamond necklace. "Sean has totally taken control and made me feel more like a woman than I've ever, ever felt in my whole life," says Leslie, which sums up this show as accurately and as discouragingly as any sentence ever uttered. She says when she looks at Sean she sees her future husband.
They're having dinner in what looks like an old bank that they have to themselves. Sean says it's the most romantic date he can imagine being on -- which is why I guess it keeps getting compared to a movie about a hooker -- and he hopes something clicks with Leslie.
So what's more romantic than talking about your relationships? That's what happens here. Sean also demands to know how she envisions her family "being built" and she declares communication to be "humungous," so that's the level of discourse we've got going on. Sean's starting to feel like the connection just isn't there. He sees that Leslie possesses several wonderful qualities, and that's what makes it so frustrating for him.
So he picks up the rose and tells her he didn't feel it click today, but naturally presents it as a magnanimous gesture on his part to prevent her from continuing on in this sham. "You really don't see any romance at all?" she asks, as he walks her out to the limo. She takes off the necklace, warns him about the women who aren't there for the right reasons, and gets into the limo. And we were supposed to watch them dance and listen to Ben Taylor -- who sings anyway, not leaving much doubt about whether he's related to that Taylor -- and as usual, when the dudes arrive at the mansion to pick up the vanquished woman's bags, the women in the house gasp as though someone has been executed.
Cocktail party! Sean comes out holding Leslie's severed head as a warning to the rest of them. "There may come a point where you question decisions that I make," he says. I presume they dubbed in the part where he advises them to come talk to him about it, and that what he originally said was, "Questioning the decisions I make will not be tolerated."
The first to make supplications is AshLee, who "doesn't let the other girls get to her," and Sean loves that about her. And then Robyn tries out pickup lines on him, which involves her offering him a chocolate and asking if he likes the taste of chocolate and then asking him WHICH CHOCOLATE he wants to taste.
So while Robyn is requesting oral sex from Sean, Tierra is talking about how the other women are always talking about her, and then she pulls aside Robyn and Jackie talks about wanting to clear the air, which involves a token apology from her but is mostly about offering them a chance to apologize to her and for Tierra to appear to be playing nice. "I am too strong of a woman and too independent to let high school pity stuff get in my way. I came here to win this," she says.
Of course, the other women aren't fooled at all, although they'd best be served by not peering over at Sean and talking about how "gross" he and "Tierrable" look together (as admittedly awesome a nickname "Tierrable" is). At that moment, Tierra is trying to convince a gullible Sean that just because she stalked him in the shadows and broke down crying, she hates "drama." Oh, and of course, "For some reason, girls have a hard time accepting me for who I am." She claims to be very guarded and just wants to focus on her and him. Her façade almost cracks when he says he thinks she's her own worst enemy. "Yes and no," she says, and manages not to say, "All the other bitches are my own worst enemies." Sean tells her to be confident, because yeah, her problem is that she's NOT CONFIDENT ENOUGH.
The other women talk about how Sean doesn't see the same Tierra they see which is equal parts a) true and b) utterly unimportant. "Tierra always has this way about her that draws the attention to her, but there's a point where you can be too distracted," says Catherine, who confesses to being too distracted. But not any more! She's going to press lipstick on some paper and tuck it under the hem of her skirt for him to pull out. She talks about how attracted she is to him, and he reciprocates, and she pulls him out to the courtyard for a little kissing session. "I have such a crush on you," she burbles.
Chris Harrison comes in to announce that the culling is about to begin, and Sean gives a lengthy speech about how he wishes he could continue to keep his sexual options open with all of them, but he's going to have to let a few of them go soon. Of course, Tierra's got a rose, but that's not going to stop this show from playing a who-knows-when-it-was-recorded clip of her boasting, "I'm so smart. I'm ahead of everybody. In life, I get what I want, always," she says. I realize this show has to be edited to provide every season with a villain, but not every contestant gives them so much material to work with, right?
Rose ceremony! Sean talks about the highs and lows this week -- I can imagine a lot of the lows. Maybe the high involves Amanda getting painkillers for her faceplant? Here come da roses!
Catherine. Des. (SAY HER FULL NAME! SAY IT!) Lindsay. Leslie. Robyn. AshLee. Sarah. Jackie. Final rose goes to Daniella, meaning Amanda -- who went to the hospital because of Sean this week -- is getting the axe. Chris Harrison comes out and says, "If you did not get a rose, etc. etc," which seems particularly cruel given only one woman in the room didn't get a rose.
And then one of the most awkward partings on this show in some time. Sean: "I enjoyed getting to know you. Thank you so much." Amanda wasn't really expecting it, she tells us. "Right now I'm really miserable. Heartbreak is such a difficult emotion," she says, and she walks out into the courtyard where there doesn't even appear to be a limo waiting -- are they making her walk home?
Back in the mansion, Sean reassures us that he's over the bummer of having to dump Amanda because there are still plenty of women left to tell him his shit doesn't stink. And -- wait, TWO episodes week? TWO? OK, ABC is literally trying to kill me.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. Didn't Sean eject Kacie last week for far less egregious crimes of drama? Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.