[Publisher’s note: In last week’s blog, Mr. Linder suggested Stronger by Kristine W. as a song to describe the newly empowered Clare. We regret his poor choice as clearly the Britney Spears song Stronger was a much better fit – But now I’m stronger than yesterday/Now it’s nothing but my way/My loneliness ain’t killing me no more/I, I’m stronger. We have dealt swiftly with Mr. Linder’s malfeasance and trust he will be more diligent in maintaining the high standards of song choices our readers expect.]
Clare the Chaos Queen. Yes, that is her name now. It’s exactly why I’m staring at a page full of random observations trying to find a theme, when actually, the theme is her. Like I said last week, I always try to like Clare. She’s so sincere and means well. But she creates so much chaos and drama. Tonight’s episode was hard to wrap my head around. So perhaps I’ll just list what jumped out at me.
The ridiculiciousness of The Bachelor franchise can best be summarized by two sequences. On the one hand is Clare the Chaos Queen (CCQ) sending Brandon home because all he knew about her was how attractive she was which felt so superficial to her[1]. On the other hand, Clare has the guys getting buck-nekked in a game of strip dodgeball [cue Britney Spears Get Naked (I Have a Plan) with her changing the rules so that the winners would have to drop trou, too. Shallow is a two-way street, apparently, even without all the sophomoric jokes about balls.
In stark contrast to the superficiality of Brandon and strip dodgeball, we had CCQ’s one-on-one therapy session date with Jason which I found heavy and odd. While CCQ was expounding on how she’s finally living her best life [cue Shannon The Best Is Yet to Come], Jason was spewing out all kinds of heavy baggage [cue Ray Charles Drown In My Own Tears]. All this on a first date with a guy you literally don’t know. Does she want to be a life partner or her mate’s therapist? [cue Mary J. Blige Therapy]
We have to talk about The Blake Incident. Blake was on the losing dodge ball team but felt it necessary to crash the winning team’s party. “Didn’t you lose?”, said random guy on winning team when Blake walked into the group date. All the other guys be like:
The winning team guys gathered en masse to confront Blake (which was ironic since there was an earlier incident where the guys were upset about other guys speaking for them when they could speak for themselves LOL). Said display of en masse manhood was quelled by the empowered CCQ. She also repelled an even brasher attempt by Blake to go in for a kiss. Dude, slow your roll.
And what did Blake’s brash breaking of the rules get him? SHE GAVE HIM A ROSE BEFORE THE ROSE CEREMONY!!!!! What the %$#^&? The guys were thrilled. #ChaosQueen
Also worth mentioning was CCQ’s little hissy fit at none of the guys jumping for the chance to pull her aside at the first cocktail party. It was quite the awkward pause. So awkward I wondered if it were orchestrated. I mean with “so many chiseled jaws in the room”[2] with one of those jaws declaring, “Rose hunting season is officially upon us”[3], we’ve never seen nobody rush to be the first to grab the Bachelorette for a convo. That was odd.
The love language group date was clever. That said, for the Receiving Gifts language, all the guys gave gifts that were about them until it got to Dale. And that whole Gift of Touch thing with him was pretty intense, too. The guys were thrilled to watch that.
Ah, yes, Dale. [cue Clare humming Dusty Springfield I Only Want to Be With You] Does he always know exactly the right thing to say or do? Basically the whole season so far is this:
Oh. Long-time blog reader C.S. asked me to “please don’t forget [Clare’s] clothes, they are really bad.” I’m not sure what specifically prompted that but I would have preferred something more subtle than this.
P.S. Tonight’s viewing wine: Quinta das Carvalhas Tinto Douro, 2015
See you next week.
[1] Was he supposed to do a background check on her prior to the show?
[2] My Daughter Diandra quote.
[3] The unabashed trophy-hunting competitiveness of the guys on The Bachelorette cracks me up every season. “Hey, I may not win the championship but it’s fine if I pull down a Player of the Week award along the way.”
Ray's Musings 
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