A Dude’s Breakdown Of Week 4 Of “The Bachelorette”

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For this episode and every episode of The Bachelor franchise, Touching Base breaks down everything that happened the night before. Subscribe on iTunes and SoundCloud, and listen to their recap of the latest episode.

Alright folks. I don’t know if it was just me, but the past two weeks without The Bachelorette have seemed like an eternity. Maybe time slowed down because of the looming uncertainty of whether the greatest television show in history, Bachelor in Paradise, would be taken away from us far too soon; thankfully Lord Harrison has blessed Bachelor Nation once again and we will not be forced to live in a world where BiP is but a cherished memory. Seriously, if Paradise got cancelled, I’m not sure what I’d have to live for anymore.

Anywho, within about three minutes of the beginning of this week’s episode of The Bachelorette, I suddenly forgot why I’d even missed this shit, because all these dudes are baby back bitches and annoying as shit. This week brings us the conclusion of last week’s cocktail party and Rose Ceremony, as well as a one-on-one date, a group date, and a bunch of dudes in desperate need of a swift kick to the nuts. Even though this episode was the full two hours, I feel like nothing really happened, so anything I say will essentially be the equivalent of polishing a turd. Regardless, let’s break it down:

Cocktail Party, Part II

This week’s episode begins exactly where we left off last week, with Eric frantically screaming “MY NAME IS IN YOUR MOUTH! MY NAME IS IN YOUR MOUTH!” over and over again at Lee. At this point, it’s unclear if The Bachelorette actually had a two-week break or if Eric stood there screaming like a broken record for two weeks and the producers just edited it out. Neither scenario would be surprising. Once Eric was positive that everyone in the house, nay, everyone in the entire world knew where his name had been, he delivered a question to Lee. “So, are you going to apologize now?”

Lee stares at him blankly. “No,” he responds. Eric pauses for a moment before replying. “Okay,” he says to Lee. “Then don’t talk to me ever again.” Glad we’re all adults here.

With Eric’s voice still ringing in his ears, Lee heads out to talk to talks with Rachel. He interrupts Kenny’s conversation with Rachel and gives her a gift. It’s a piece of scrap wood with the word “Enchanted” carved in like some drunken memento of high school love left behind in a state park on prom night. “I used the knife that my grandfather who has cancer gave me to carve that, so you should be impressed and feel sorry for me. Grief is a very powerful aphrodisiac, you know,” Lee tells Rachel. Rachel smiles coyly and tucks the piece of wood into her purse; she knows that she’ll need to keep it since it will probably be subpoenaed as evidence once Lee inevitably snaps and uses that knife on something besides an inanimate object.

While this is happening, Dean speaks his mind about Lee on camera. “Honestly, I think Lee is kind of a bitch. He has issues with certain people…like the kind he doesn’t interact with on a daily basis.” Off camera, you hear a producer’s voice asking, “What do you mean by that?” Dean smirks and answers, “You know exactly what I mean.” Apparently, the dudes didn’t even need to see Lee’s racist tweets to figure his shit out.

Rachel’s next conversation is with fake doctor Bryan, and while she jumps his bones, Kenny jumps Lee’s bones is a less sexual, albeit equally aggressive manner. He asks Lee to step outside for a quick word. As Kenny gathers his thoughts, Lee baits him. “Well, get to it!” Lee snaps. Kenny tells Lee that he feels that Lee took advantage of their friendship to con more time with Rachel. Lee seems completely shocked because he is a douche and also a terrible liar. “I would never do that,” he assures Kenny. Kenny, and the rest of America shout in unison, “BUT YOU FUCKING DID!”

The argument continues, and it’s loud enough for Rachel to overhear while she’s trying to have a conversation with a very bewildered looking Bryce. He seems like a nice dude, but doesn’t seem like he’s playing with a full deck of cards. Is anyone checking to make sure he hasn’t been getting carbon monoxide poisoning at work?

As the evening goes on and the man drama surrounding Kenny, Lee, Eric, and the rest of these manchildren becomes more apparent, Rachel finally reaches her breaking point. She stops talking to the dudes and retreats back into the mansion in tears. She tells the camera “I just feel so much pressure about being a black woman in this position. I get pressure from so many different ways…and I didn’t want to get into this tonight. I know what people are going to say about me, and judge me for the decisions that I’m making, and I’m going to have to deal with that. And that’s a lot.” As a white male in his twenties, I have absolutely no frame of reference to understand what this experience must be like for Rachel; every season we see the lead break down in tears about simply deciding which of their thirty boyfriends or girlfriends they’re going to choose at the end and to add what must feel like the hopes and expectations of an entire race onto that has got to be overwhelming.

As Rachel wipes her tears, Lord Harrison swoops in. “Rachel, we’re all here for you. Just tell us what you need. I can facilitate anything. I am a generous god.” Rachel whispers into his ear and he nods before disappearing into a cloud of rose petals.

Chris Harrison emerges in the living room of the mansion, where the dudes have been assembled. “Alright, fucksticks,” he starts. “Your bitchassness has ruined tonight, so the rest of the cocktail party has been cancelled. Line up to meet your destiny in tonight’s Rose Ceremony. For my sake, I hope you all go home. Daddy needs a vacation.”

Rose Ceremony

Eric, Anthony, and Alex already have roses. The remaining twelve (this season is never going to end, is it?) go to:
– Will – Erkel
– Dean – Rachel is old enough to have been his babysitter, so I’m guessing Fred is projecting some odd feelings towards Dean
– Jonathan – Dr. Tickle Monster
– Peter – You know you have good genes when you can make gray hair and gap teeth look good
– Adam – Puppet master. Unclear how he is still here
– Bryan – Rachel definitely wants to play doctor with him
– Matt – Balding Penguin
– Josiah – Lawyer
– Jack – Jack Stone
– Icky Iggy – But like, why?
– Kenny – Pro wrestler, former Chippendale, currently v emotional
– Lee – Here to promote his new record, “Not Here To Make Friends”

This means that we’re saying goodbye to Bryce, who can go home to fight more fires, Diggy, who can go home to his shoe collection, and Brady, who can go home to his Hooked on Phonics set.

Rachel ends the Rose Ceremony with a passive-aggressive toast, raising her glass and saying, “Here’s to moving forward and leaving the negativity and drama behind us. After tonight, we’re leaving the Bachelor Mansion and heading to Hilton Head, so make sure y’all pack your big boy panties, okay?”

One-on-One Date with Dean

This week’s first date card reads, “Our love is about to take off…” and goes to Dean. The date begins with Dean and Rachel driving a Jeep around buttfuck South Carolina, and while they’re giggling and seem to be having fun, I have a hard time buying into it. They reach an open field, and have a picnic as they sit on the hood of the Jeep. As this is happening, I think to myself that ABC must have really cut the budget on this season, until off in the distance we catch a glimpse of the Goodyear blimp.

Dean sees it too, remarking “Oh wow! There’s a blimp over there! I wonder why it’s all the way out here?” It’s a good thing he’s pretty. Rachel stares at him for a moment, hoping that he’ll put the pieces together on his own. He does not. Eventually with blimp gets close enough for them to read the message scrolling across its built in Jumbotron, which welcomes them to the next part of their date.

Rachel is so excited about going on the blimp that she shakes a champagne bottle so hard it explodes like a dude in the Fantasy Suite; however, Dean is less thrilled. Turns out he’s terrified of heights. Rachel asks if he can handle it, and he winks, saying “As long as you hold my hand the whole time and don’t let go.” Nice recovery.

The blimp float to the ground and Rachel and Dean hop on. “It’s just a giant balloon!” Dean tells the camera. “How can you even control it?” Dean is bringing up a lot of valid points about blimps. As they ascend, Rachel is mesmerized by the panoramic views outside; meanwhile, Dean is mesmerized by the inside of his eyelids as he focuses all his attention on not shitting his pants.

Rachel feels bad for him, so to make things better, she asks the pilot if she can drive the blimp. Dean’s eyes open wide and he prairie dogs for a moment before regaining his composure and clenching everything back down. As Rachel steers, eventually Dean makes his way to the front of the blimp, presumably to see firsthand if he is about to participate in a recreation of the Hindenburg disaster. When Rachel sees him, she encourages him to give steering the blimp a try, and is so impressed with him overcoming his fears when he does it that she takes him back to the smush couch at the back of the blimp for some tonsil hockey and more champagne.

As they float around, the pilot brings them floating past the resort where the rest of the dudes are holed up. As they get close, the dudes venture out of the room, just in time to read the Jumbotron message “Rachel and Dean are in here” and “Rachel and Dean 4eva.” Zero subtly, zero fucks. Master level trolling right there.

For the evening portion of their date, Rachel tells the camera, “I’m going to need to go deeper with Dean tonight. He’s like 19, which is a little outside of my typical age range, and I want to see if he’s mature enough to want a serious relationship. That way I can figure out if I should send him home tonight for being too young and immature, or wait until hometowns to send him home for being too young and immature and really just break his spirit. Time will tell.”

Dean and Rachel sit underneath a replica of the magical Mother Earth tree from Avatar and pretend to eat dinner. Dean asks about Rachel’s childhood, and she talks about growing up in a strict, religious household. Dean tells her that his childhood was similar, up until the point where his mother passed away from breast cancer when he was fifteen. He tells the whole story, and it’s super moving; if I had a soul I would probably be crying. That being said, my dead heart and I took a moment to refill our wine glass and soldier on as Dean and Rachel cried delicate tears. Apparently, that was enough to prove to Rachel that Dean was the real deal and pinned a rose on his chest before planting a kiss on his lips.

However, the date doesn’t end there, friends. Dean is treated to a Bachelor franchise staple – the post-dinner country concert from a performer no one has ever heard of before. Dean and Rachel dance awkwardly on a private stage in the middle of a crowd while Russell Dickerson (haha Dickerson) pretends to privately serenade them while the crowd films Dean and Rachel instead of listening to the music, since this attending this concert is the epitome of “doing it for the ‘Gram.”

Booze Cruise Group Date

The second Hilton Head date is a group date for Alex, Anthony, Peter, Bryan, Jonathan, Adam, Matt, Kenny, Lee, Iggy, Eric, Will, and Josiah – basically everyone that is left besides Jack Stone, meaning he gets this week’s last one-on-one date. Rachel tries to downplay what they’re about to embark upon, telling them “Let’s have a fun day sailing around Hilton Head on this boat!” However, it takes one glance to realize that this is not going to be any ordinary boat ride. It’s the best kind of boat ride. This is a booze cruise.

The last time I went on a booze cruise I got so drunk that I managed to get a flock of pelicans to follow our boat because I insisted upon holding Flaming Hot Cheetos in the air for them to swoop down and eat out of my hand. I proceeded to black out approximately one hour into the three hour trip and am told that upon returning to our vacation house, I stepped out of the cab and promptly face-planted into the front yard before venturing down to the beach, where I played beer pong with my nuts out to “distract the other team.” I finished off the afternoon by getting naked in the pool and offering to wrestle any takers before I passed out at a respectable 6:30 PM. 8.5/10, would do again.

With that experience in mind, I can only assume that these dudes tackled this date with a similar gusto, since within a short time of being on the boat, they’ve got their shirts off and are dancing and rapping for Rachel. It’s basically a giant dick-measuring contest that gets louder and more ridiculous as the egos and BACs continue to rise.

As they stumble off the boat, Rachel lets them know that they’re going to be able to continue their dick-measuring contest in a public forum: a spelling bee. I have to hand it to the producers – getting these dipshits hammered drunk and then forcing them to participate in a spelling bee is a stroke of cruel brilliance. The entire crew rolls up to an outdoor theatre filled with the whitest people I’ve ever seen, and the show begins.

The dudes line up, and one by one have to reenact their fifth grade nightmare as they are called to spell oddly sexual words like “squirt,” “passion” and “boudoir”. One of Peter’s words is “coitus” and when he asks for it to be used in a sentence, Rachel says “If you’re lucky, you will get to engage in coitus with The Bachelorette which is both seductive and oddly sterile at the same time. Also, there is a group of elementary-school-aged girls acting as the judges for the spelling bee, and Chris Harrison keeps telling them to put on earmuffs when words like that come up; it’s just an uncomfortable experience.

One by one the dudes are eliminated, quickly becoming hungover in front of a group of strangers they have been tasked with entertaining. Will and Josiah end up as the final two, and after Will misspells “physiological,” Josiah seals his victory by knowing how to spell “polyamorous,” which may or may not be a good thing on a show about finding a wife. He wins a giant trophy and the respect of no one.

After the spelling bee, Rachel and the dudes head to another cocktail party. Time for some hair of the dog to get this night back on track. Josiah drinks out of his spelling bee trophy as he continues to let his douche flag fly; the trophy reminds me a lot of the TriWizard cup from Harry Potter, and for a moment I daydream about how great it would have been if Josiah’s trophy were also a Portkey and he got zapped to some cemetery to get Avada Kedavra’d by Voldemort. Also, no such luck and we’re stuck watching him on our television screens.

As the cocktail party goes on, Rachel makes her usual make out rounds with the dudes that she’s into. Instead of making any effort at developing an actual relationship with Rachel, Iggy decides to once again use this opportunity to talk shit about someone else. I have never seen someone so deep in the friendzone but also so unaware of his presence there. I mean come one – Rachel has been doling out OTPHJ’s in blimps this week, but as soon as Iggy shows up, all she wants to have is girl talk. He’s a weasel and needs to be gone.

Iggy tells Rachel that he’s very protective of her, which is odd because he is neither her boyfriend nor her father and she is capable of taking care of herself, but we can let that slide. He describes Josiah as a pariah in the house, which makes me wonder if he knows what pariah means, or if he was just going for an insult that rhymed with Josiah. Considering I refer to Iggy as Icky, I can’t fault him for taking the easy road on that. Rachel seems mildly concerned and not in the slightest bit aroused.

As Icky headed back to the other bros, he decided to announce to everyone that he talked shit about Josiah, because he’s a fucking moron. He also said that Rachel asked him about the house dynamic, which is not exactly how that conversation played out. This dude is a real piece of shit, and I’m already excited for the bloodbath when he takes the hot seat on Men Tell All.

The episode winds down with more of the drama between Kenny and Lee – after overhearing their argument, Rachel asked Lee what had transpired. He told her that Kenny was very aggressive towards him, and in her mind that made sense given she could hear him screaming. When Rachel confronted Kenny about this, he couldn’t really defend the yelling, but did suggest that Lee was typically less than truthful. Kenny freaks out because he felt like Rachel’s body language suggested she believed Lee over him, and I freak out because of how fucking stupid this entire saga has become.

The episode ends with Kenny asking Lee to talk outside and hints that next week we’ll see them throw down with fisticuffs, but I suspect that’s just a cocktease. We will get to see them have a two-on-one date during one of the two episodes that ABC is subjecting us to next week, so stock up on wine and free time now. See you then. .

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Crick Watson MD

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