A Midi Dose of Mini Dramas

This week, your Friendly Neighborhood Muser is coming to you from Petaluma, California. [cue The Village People San Francisco (You’ve Got Me) and Dionne Warwick Do You Know the Way to San Jose because I don’t know any songs about Sacramento]

Once again, with so many guys still here, it’s hard to find a thread of an over-arching narrative at this point. The Evil Genius Producers (EGPs) foreshadow the usual promises of drama, of course. Some of those will be the empty promises of manipulative editing. And some will be real but will have to wait until the stakes are high, and it’s way too early in the game for high-stakes drama.

What we have is 29 guys living together under one roof. That level of testosterone is a total non-starter for me even if The Bachelorette is Aphrodite. On every adult retreat I’ve ever been on, I paid extra to have a room alone.

Next up on Bachelorette Things Ray Would Never Do was the Speedo Pageant. Gabby and Rachel included a performance element, and I would have liked information from the girls about what the weighting was between 6-pack abs and performance creativity. I liked whichever brother spun the basketball – I used to be able to transfer the ball to all five fingers, bounce it off my knee and catch it on my finger while still spinning, real Globetrotter stuff. But none of the guys came with music? Nobody connecting their phone to a speaker and working in Thong Song or Baby Got Back was a real missed creative opportunity. And Chris’ bad singing should have been an immediate disqualifier. He got his comeuppance later, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Question – speaking of sound production, what is with the close mic’ing on the kissing? It’s annoying.

We did get a mini-taste of drama – foreshadowing? – with Logan who was one of the Pageant winners and both girls like him. The girls do a good job (for now?) negotiating and decide that Rachel will give him her Date Rose.

Despite Drag Racer Jordan’s earlier faux-pas giving Rachel engine stats instead of a kiss, she gives him a 1-on-1[1]. Like him, I am terribly terrified of heights but I think I would have enjoyed bouncing around uncontrolled in a zero-gravity environment in a confined space. But despite him checking all her good guy boxes, for reasons she couldn’t explain, Rachel couldn’t check the “I’m feelin’ it” box and he was sent packing. And the one time the EGPs get some big-ish name country singers for a private concert (Ashley Cooke and Brett Young), they were left with nobody to sing to!

Question – do they ever eat on dinner dates?

There was another mini-taste of drama when bad-singing Chris shares his Fantasy Suite exit strategy with some of the guys, i.e. “I’m not here for my future wife spending quality time alone in Fantasy Suites with other guys”. They understandably think this is a very arrogant and premature evaluation of his chances but – HELLO CHRIS – why go on a show with your dealbreakers when the show is designed to break your deal??? I swear the EGPs cast such people intentionally.

Gabby[2] gives a 1-on-1 to Nate who has a daughter. It goes well but perhaps the seeds of a breakup have been planted as Gabby wonders if being an immediate mom is the journey she wants to be on.

KMD, WE GOT A ROSE CEREMONY!!!! Mario grabs Rachel for some canoodling which is problematic because he got Gabby’s First Impression Rose (FIR). Gotta respect him exploring his options, though. There was some mini-drama at the ceremony surrounding Chris and his Fantasy Suite dealbreaker. Several of the guys agreed that the girls needed to know, and Life Coach Quincy appoints himself as the messenger. In a rare moment of the messenger not getting shot[3], Rachel is angry enough at Chris to tell Gabby and the two of them read him for filth right to his face. They send him packing, he comes back to confront his accusers, he gets sent packing again, and we get vignettes of guys complaining they didn’t get 1-on-1 time with the girls (and you took a swig of your adult beverage of choice, right?).

And finally, we got to roses. For this round, the rules were that BOTH girls had to agree to give a guy a rose. This brings us back to double-dealing Mario. Although we weren’t privy to the negotiations this time, both girls agreed to give him a rose – the last one awarded[4] and it was from Rachel. Again, it’s too early in the journey to let the connection triangles get messy. But clearly, the EGPs are dropping hints that mess will ensue at some point. And that’s what we’re here for.

See you next week.

P.S. Since I watched this episode in the afternoon prior to a meeting, there was no viewing wine. But the blog was written with the help of a delightful Elouan Chardonnay.

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[1] And by “she”, I mean most likely the EGPs.

[2] And by “Gabby” I mean most likely the EGPs.

[3] The EGPs are finding creative ways to clear out the surplus of guys.

[4] We see you, EGPs.