“I’m so mad at this season. I want to sue for damages for my lost time” – My Daughter Diandra (MDD).
So this is what it’s come to. A retread from Colton’s Bachelor season balancing pizza on her head while she’s quarantining.
This season of Bachelor in COVID is so bad. And with Chris Harrison reminding everybody that hometowns are just two weeks away, has there been even a shred of romance, randomly dropped L-words notwithstanding?
We began tonight getting off of the cliff that MJ and Jessenia had us on. MJ, lying through her teeth as always, said she leads by example for the fifty-leventh time and also threw in a new one, something about her having preached harmony and peace.
Matt makes the supposedly hard call to send MJ home.
Once again, a cocktail party was canceled which I knew would make my friend KM nuts and I did get a text to that effect. Going straight to a Rose Ceremony, Matt only needed to send Serena home to rid us of The Mean Girls but the producers needed her to stay so they could extend the DRAMA between her and Katie [cue Sly and the Family Stone If You Want Me to Stay[1]]. Instead, a very tearful Ryan goes home.
Then we got the DRAMA dialed up really high with a shouting match between Serena and Katie. Serena is ridiculously obsessed with her and Katie keeps asking her really legitimate questions that Serena seems to have no answers for except to shout louder which makes Katie’s questions louder and Serena’s answers louder and the girls can hear them arguing from another room and I said to MDD that Katie is being set up to go home this week. The good folks over at @Bachelordata Instagram have shown that Katie, while quite popular in Bachelor Nation, has been cast in a lot of negative scenes and I’ve been feeling this was intentional.
“Out of nowhere” Heather – she of the Never Been Kissed rep during Colton’s season – shows up in a white minivan[2] demanding to see Chris Harrison so she can barge onto the show. Dang, now that she’s had a taste of kissing, she must like it a LOT to fly to rural Pennsylvania, drive several hours in a minivan, get multiple COVID tests, and quarantine for a couple of weeks!
Either that or she was invited.
Chris acts shocked and tells Heather that he can’t make that decision by himself. The Evil Genius Producers (EGPs) working for Chris be like . . .
Pieper with the great hair gets a 1-on-1 date and at dinner they talk a lot about expressing themselves and she expresses the L-word [cue The Staple Singers Express Yourself]. They also got a private concert from the up and coming band Temecula Road who I’ve actually heard of. The girls in the band are sisters and the guy is a long-time friend. I feel like Pieper is a strong candidate for hometown but I don’t have any sense of conviction about their chemistry.
The Group Date was next and Katie’s name was left off the list which meant she was going to get a 1-on-1. This was the EGPs kiss of death in my mind and again I told MDD so. The girls went bowling for their Group Date and when Chris Harrison showed up, you knew things were about to change even though he allegedly can’t decide these things alone. A competition was declared pitting the rival gangs Pink Petals (PPs) and Blue Bombshells (BBs) against each other. The winners get time with Matt while the losers spend the rest of the evening without him. The PPs got out to what seemed an insurmountable lead which shrunk quite rapidly when the mail-in scores got counted. 🙂
The PPs hung on to win their time with Matt except the EGPs saw an opportunity for DRAMA by letting the losing BBs show up to the afterparty, too.
Which brings us to Katie. I knew it was looking bad when they brought in Matt’s BFF Tyler C. for the “1-on-1”. And with Tyler being the focus of the “date”, my Spidey senses were tingling. When Matt finally decided he couldn’t give Katie the date rose, MDD said to me, “You called it.” This lit up the interweb with demands for and rumors of Katie being the next Bachelorette. More DRAMA!!!!! (although I’ll cosign those demands)
Now That She’s Been Kissed Heather shows up unannounced and looking quite spectacular to the cocktail party and somehow knows how to go straight to the room where Matt and Pieper are having some alone time. Matt’s laughter cannot hide his delight at this development and Pieper cannot hide her dissatisfaction at this clear diss, which she lets the girls know with an F-bomb and “I’m literally shaking.”
The cliff we were left hanging on is the anticipation of how Matt and the Girls of Nemacolin deal with Here to Do Some Kissing Heather. Good grief. Did anybody ask for this? Was there an outcry of “We Want Heather”? Did I miss the Change.org petition? And I can’t wait to see the @Bachelordata on how much screen time she got QUARANTINING!!!! (And since I started writing this, the data is up! Only Matt, Katie and Pieper got more screen time than Heather.)
MDD’s closing words were, “Good luck with the blog. You got nothin’ to work with.”
This season is a real chore, people. In a recent article MDD sent me The Bachelor Has a Bachelor Problem, VanityFair.com wrote this:
“The Bachelor and its various offshoots are at their best when they strike a balance between outrageous behavior and what feels like a halfway realistic, human partnership. Lately, that balance has tilted too far towards the former.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/02/the-bachelor-matt-james
I could not agree more. The struggle is real.
P.S. This episode’s viewing wine: Parcelica Grande, a delightful Spanish blend of Monastrell, Garnacha and Merlot at a great price point.
[1] If you want me to stay/I’ll be around today/To be available for you to see.
[2] A minivan?? Seriously? Like all the good cars have been rented out in the middle of a pandemic? In rural PA?
Ray's Musings 
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