Welcome to Wednesday folks!
We have good news and bad news – the good news is that we have scores. I REPEAT, WE HAVE SCORES! We have the ability to watch people fall from grace, underdogs come out of the woodwork, and, most importantly, the beginnings of trash talk.
And then we have the bad – the show was VERY DEPRESSING this week. I don’t mean that necessarily in a bad way, since important topics were covered, but wow. I’m not saying I cried, but I am saying that there was a moment where I was thinking I might. ALSO, I want to call out that this recap needs a trigger warning for alcohol abuse and sexual assault because despite what ABC thinks, it’s not that hard to warn people before talking about serious topics.
We start the show where we left off: the rose ceremony. Everyone is freaking out about Karl being the worst and the producer in charge of him clearly is cackling to him or herself for getting a bonus for manipulating him into being the season’s villain, but the true hero we need to give a raise to is whoever is in charge of documenting Justin’s facial expressions.
Katie is feeling all kinds of sad from being gaslit by Karl, so walks into the group of guys and says that she is canceling the cocktail party. This is a terrible move for a Bachelor/ette considering combined they get to spend maybe 18 hours with their final picks before they get engaged and taking this time away is not going to help you have a long-lasting relationship. BUT! We aren’t here for that, we’re here for 20 some men melting down over whether or not they are attractive enough to make up for the fact they don’t have a personality and Katie for sure doesn’t know their names.
Katie goes off to cry or something and Greg goes to check on her. This is supposed to be a touching moment and everyone on the Internet is like oooo look at Greg following her when no one else did and it’s like c’mon, do you think just ANYONE was allowed to go after her? No. Our producers have favorites and they are playing them now. Anyways Greg gives her a pep talk and gets his screentime for the evening.
We go back to the guys arguing which is now just repeating the same things back and forth (although Tre shouts “you worm” at some point to Karl and remains safe in my favorites list for it). Karl at some point leaves while the remaining guys talk shit and we get video of Karl shadowboxing while talking about how he’s going to take the other guys down.
The rose ceremony starts. Roses are called for David (I have no idea who this is), Hunter, Connor Not the Cat, and Mike P when something interesting happens! We were promised “something that has never happened before” which feels as fake as “the most dramatic season ever” but it’s actually true this time! Mike P accepts his rose and then tells Katie that he and the men have unionized and have, as a collective, decided Karl is trash and needs to go.
Katie has a wonderful moment where she freezes and weighs her options. On one hand, she clearly can’t stand Karl but was told to keep him because ABC loves nothing if not a villain edit. But on the other, if she continues to keep him she’s going to look stupid. But on the other, other, hand, does this set the precedent that the guys can just decide who is going to stay and go? Because this is her show and when later, more attractive contestants are being voted off the island, does she want to have to cut them loose? THIS ISN’T CBS, THIS IS ABC DAMMIT! You didn’t tune into Survivor! You tuned in for LOVE!
Katie, weighing all these options, runs off-screen to talk to Tayshia and Kaitlyn to see if she’s contractually obligated to keep Karl because her distaste for him clearly overwhelms all the other options. They tell her to listen to her gut which clearly means cut him but in return you have to keep another dude we can make villain, and Katie comes back.
Roses continue to be given out. Michael gets one, followed by Connor the Cat and Quartney. We begin to get a voiceover of Karl talking about how he is totally getting the rose, will need to be removed by the military to get him to leave, is going to stay week after week, blah blah blah, which indicates that Karl will not be getting a rose this evening. We continue with Tre, Justin, Andrew M, Christian, Josh, Brendan, James, and Aaron getting roses.
This leaves us with John, Karl, Kyle, and a redhead man I don’t know the name of getting eliminated.
Now I’m sure everyone’s day is made with Karl leaving, but it feels like we had to sacrifice John in order to get it to happen.
Now that John is eliminated I can also talk about the hilarious F1 fake spoiler involving John! Approximately a month or two ago, Katie posted a photo of her in San Diego. Whatever right? WRONG. She was at a bar, a bar she did not tag the location of, a bar that John apparently works at. How do we know this? Because people on the Internet are scary and were able to match the type of chairs in her picture to his place of work. Therefore everyone assumed John had won and Katie was just bad at not spoiling her season. And everyone bought in. Cosmo and Elite Daily were writing articles about it. Spoilers were posted all over the Internet. Fan accounts were made. AND IT WAS ALL A SCAM. Katie (and I presume John) were just screwing with everyone so that they wouldn’t spend as much time trying to figure out who really is F1 (which is still a mystery).
And then she taunted the Internet like the queen she is:
We will miss you John.
But back to “real life.” A bunch of guys get a date card that emphasizes how Katie is looking for honesty. The guys are stressed because she didn’t sign it <3 Katie (lol) and show up for a date that is essentially torture. Nick Viall, the former Bachelorette contestant (x2), Bachelor in Paradise contestant, and Bachelor comes to lead a date where the men are supposed to talk about the ways they’ve been shitty in past relationships. I’m sure they brought him on for a reason but all I’m hearing is that he’s an expert at being a terrible boyfriend/fiancé/other.
Also I know everyone was like “Clare and Tayshia’s season had such a small budget” and then Matt’s season had actual events and we assumed ABC was back to funding this show, but may I enter this date as proof of penny-pinching.
This date is a little bit of a “who has the best worst story to share on TV to win the emotional Olympics” but we role with it. Hunter goes first and talks about his divorce and how he feels so bad that he’s put his kids through that, a few other guys talk about some general ghosting and being bad partners, and then we jump to Thomas.
Thomas very clearly misunderstood the assignment. Rather than talking about how he has grown from previous relationships, Thomas talks about how he is here for the wrong reasons. Or, technically, WAS until his ten-minute conversation with Katie and now he’s here for her. In fact, he is so surprised because he just wanted to build a platform! He even went on a date the week prior to leaving!
My man. Why are you volunteering this? Just talk about how you slow faded your ex like every other dude and move on. No one thought you were a bad guy! Why are you painting a target on yourself!!
We finally end his monologue and go to Connor the Cat who talks about how he was struggling with alcoholism for a period in his life and he would blackout and be cruel to his friends and girlfriend and how he cheated on her at one point while drunk. And that’s obviously terrible. But Connor. The way you frontloaded that story? It sounded like you murdered someone. Like he set up that story as though he was going to announce he had LITERALLY beat his girlfriend to death. Obviously cheating is still bad, but jeez I went on an emotional rollercoaster during his speech that made me RELIEVED the story ended in cheating – what a plot twist.
Katie then talks about how impressed she is with the guys for sharing things and wants to share something herself. She talks about how she a few years ago was in a situation where consent was not given and how it has shaped her relationship with sex and, most importantly, herself. She gave an interview with Glamour that does a much better job shining light on her experience as well as highlighting how she coped with the incident. This is also the time to plug RAINN, the largest anti-sexual violence organization, and share the helpline if you ever feel as though you need to talk: 800.656.4673
We then go from sad TO MORE SAD. A bunch of the bros not on the date are sitting around talking while working out and Michael A. talks to two guys about his wife who passed a few years ago from breast cancer and how that has impacted his life and how sad and life-changing that was and how hard he’s worked to get to a place where he wants to date and it’s so sad and yet the guys are so emotionally supportive. The fact these dudes are having heart to hearts outside of the mandatory therapy dates blows my mind too and I love normalizing men talking about their feelings with other men.
Flash back to the torture date. We are at the cocktail party, where everyone is grabbing time to talk to Katie. Thomas goes first and calls out how he wants her to look past his red flags and she’s like cool what are they and he dodges the question something fierce and it’s an absolute disaster of a conversation for everyone, including us at home, involved.
We cut to some other dudes talking, but what matters most is when Aaron is talking about SOMETHING THAT WE DON’T GET DETAILS ABOUT THAT APPARENTLY CAUSED HIM TO QUESTION HIS OWN MORTALITY Thomas is stalking back and forth in the corner. And rather than continuing the conversation about Aaron’s apparently life-changing moment, Thomas interrupts to try his conversation over again.
Thomas this time takes the approach where he tells her that the reason he’s a cluster is that he’s falling in love with her and he can’t use his brain cell when talking with her and it’s still a trash conversation but Katie doesn’t care because he’s cute and they make out, putting us all out of our misery of having to listen to him more.
Katie goes to give out the group date and Connor the Cat gets the rose for providing the most emotional fodder for the evening.
We get some conversation between Aaron and Thomas where Aaron is trying to continue his streak of going after guys he deems useless (Cody, we won’t miss you) and while I want to hate Aaron he’s so funny. Aaron asks Thomas why he would interrupt, Thomas gives a non-answer, and Aaron is all “do you think your time is more valuable than mine?” and Thomas answers YES which is amazing. I have decided that the issue with Thomas is that he’s too honest. Like bro I know you want to be the Bachelor, that doesn’t mean you should say it out loud.
Back at the house, we find out Michael A gets the date card so we can learn more about his trauma on camera but it’s cute because he’s so happy and sweet.
Their 1on1 date is riding what I can only imagine is a Polaris vehicle (as is every non-traditional motor vehicle in my mind). Which is fun until pre-date Katie is practicing and flips the little dune buggy. She’s fine so it’s funny, but I am curious why they dressed her in ALL WHITE for this date where she clearly is going to get dirty. Or dusty? I don’t really understand what adjectives are properly associated with the desert dirt.
Michael and Katie then talk about how Michael is a widower and he is precious and must be protected at all costs. He talks about how he knew he was ready to try to find love again because his wife would have wanted him to try to be happy once she was gone and he wants to be a good example to his son and show that he can go on adventures and invest in his own happiness and it’s honestly so sweet I can’t even hate on it.
They then have their dinner where they talk in more depth about how Michael thought everything was perfect in his life, he met his wife when they were just in college and they got married and they had just had their first kid when seven months later she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Two years later she passed and he’s since been trying to rebuild a life without the person he thought he would grow old with and if you want to know more, he has created The L4 Project, a non-profit dedicated to helping cancer patients and their families build support networks to help them through treatment and recovery and I DARE YOU TO READ THIS AND NOT CRY OR WANT TO CRY.
Michael obviously gets a rose and he and Katie sit up on the roof and make out while stargazing. In the credits they give us some more footage where it is apparent Katie would not beat a second-grader in an astronomy test as she calls Orion’s Belt O’Brien’s Belt, implies Saturn is a star, and gets into a fake fight with Michael over Pluto not being a planet. It’s cute and funny and a nice end.
But wait! Before we go! We obviously aren’t going to get another rose ceremony and we don’t have a natural close, so we get a standoff circle of a bunch of dudes telling Thomas he sucks as though this is news to anyone including Thomas. Hunter calls him out in particular for wanting to be the Bachelor and tbh, we should be calling him out for being so bad at pretending he doesn’t want to be the Bachelor. You all want to be the Bachelor! WHY ELSE GO ON THIS SHOW?? If you’re willing to compete with more than 20 dudes for a single woman’s affection for free, then you FOR SURE are down to get paid $100K to have 20 some women (both in quantity and age…) fight over you.
According to next week’s preview, we get another torture date (this time, physical!), more Thomas hate/men fighting, and the return of Blake (because as the saying goes, the third Bachelorette is the charm).
If you are competing in the bracket, feel free to also select your picks for next week also!
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