Demi Does Damage

“Looking forward to the chaos.”

“No one is safe.”

“Welcome to Paradise.”

These were actual lines uttered by Paradise participants. Nothing describes this show better than that. All we need is some music. Mr. DJ, how ‘bout some Temptations Ball of Confusion?

I’m not even going to try to build a chronology of events for something that literally has no story arc. To be sure, there are stories, as evanescent[1] as they may turn out to be, but they get buried within the chaos. So, since I’m an ESPN fan, I’ll just go with SportsCenter-style highlights.

Love her or hate her, the Demi-God is always an attention-getter, and she got the most screen time. Her arrival in whatever she was wearing best sums up Demi: hot girl that comes in an awful package.

She likely has as many people on the interwebs that love her as detest her. The producers know that this math is TV magic, so I’m betting they made James choose her in the Rose Ceremony to keep her around another episode or two.

The Demi-Drama was sparked by Brandon [cue The Gap Band You Dropped a Bomb on Me] telling her in the middle of their date that he thought they should be open to seeing how they feel about other people. That led later to this great exchange:

• Demi (giving advice): “What you gotta do is give him sexy eyes.”
• Victoria the Goddess: “Well, it didn’t work for you no offense.”

The other “star” of the evening was Victoria P., who I don’t even recall from Peter’s season, although apparently, she was the source of a lot of drama that I don’t recall, either. She was vibing with James despite not being able to remember his first name. Honestly, why is this a big deal? It’s Paradise. I don’t remember anybody’s first name, either.

Her bigger sin, though, was coming to Paradise despite allegedly having a boyfriend at home. After multiple serial denials, she voluntarily left and eventually admitted it in the Limo of Rejection. But we knew that she was lying about not having a boyfriend because the said boyfriend is described as “an aspiring country singer,” which is totally on-brand for both the Bachelor franchise and aspiring country singers everywhere.

Question – is Brandon a player now that he’s “a more free, more at peace version of himself?” He sure is getting the Blake Stagecoach edit [cue Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels Too Many Fish In the Sea].

I’m guessing my friend KMD – if she was watching – was wondering if we were ever going to have a Rose Ceremony, which we finally did after three hours and fifty minutes of the season. Wells called the guys’ names who were the most boo’d up [cue Ella Mai] first: Ivan and Jessenia; The Rehabilitated ex-Villain Noah and Everybody’s Girlfriend Abigail; and Grocery Store Joe and Serena P. We grit our teeth as we apprehensively await these relationships to be set ablaze by the Paradise summer heat.

P.S. Tonight’s viewing wine was this consistently highly rated Spanish red, a blend of Garnacha and Tempranillo.

P.P.S. I will be a few days late with my review of Tuesday’s episode. [cue Nirvana All Apologies and Guns ‘n Roses Patience].

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[1] If you don’t know why I chose this word instead of, say, “fleeting”, or “short-lived”, or “transitory”, then we can’t be friends.