Welp, the New Evil Genius Producers (NEGPs) done did it.
This week was The. Best. Episode. Of. The. Season.
This week was The. Most. Confusing. Episode. Of. The. Season.
As sports TV personality Mike Wilbon loves to say, “More than one thing can be true.”
Moreover, the NEGPs also managed to make us experience a wide range of emotions, from outrage to even more outrage.
We began with a new game – Secret Rendezvous – that, again, made absolutely no sense when Jessie explained it, but became clear once the Paradisers started playing the game. There is zero chance that the two outcomes of this game were not pre-ordained by the NEGPs:
- Jonathan and Lea were declared the most compatible “couple”, guaranteeing that the two people NOT in a relationship would stay in Paradise. With (up to) a half-million dollar bag and NO relationship at stake, these two are free to connive and strategize how to get the bag without concern for their non-relationship.
- Brian and Bailey were declared the most compatible male and female, and awarded the opportunity to have a secret rendezvous. Brian tells Bailey, “Consider it.”
While the former pre-ordained declaration will play itself out over the dash for the cash, it’s the latter pre-ordained declaration that was the jumping off point for this week’s mayhem.
Thanks to the EGPs’ fabulous foreshadowing, we’ve known for some time that there was a loose end to the tale of Jeremy. This tale began when Jeremy secretly did Bailey dirty by trying to get Susie back to Paradise in a Hail Mary effort to explore things with her, and included in “things” was a marriage proposal. Said Hail Mary fell incomplete, so he continued the relationship with his girl Bailey, and since nothing happened with Susie, in his mind, there was nothing to discuss with Bailey. If he were Dale, he might say he “deaded it.”
Ah, but this is Paradise, and alcohol-filled and sleep-deprived people are in constant close contact with each other, and this is the raw material that the NEGPs can use to produce max mayhem.
What we came to learn was that some girls knew about Jeremy/Susie – let’s call this thing “Jeusie” (see what I did there?) – and no one told Bailey. We already knew that some of the guys knew about Jeusie, and none of them told Bailey, either.
So Brian decided that he was going to tell Bailey. Was it to do Jeremy dirty and increase his and Parissa’s chances of staying in Paradise? Or was it out of his concern for his dear friend Bailey? Except that doing Jeremy dirty would surely crush the hopes and dreams of his friend Bailey.
Nice Hobson’s Choice, NEGPs.
Per the Secret Rendezvous game rules, Brian writes a note to Bailey saying that he wants to meet for a secret rendezvous.
A perplexed Bailey is a no-show but tells her roommate, Brian’s girlfriend Parissa, that she got invited to a secret rendezvous.
Parissa pushes Bailey for the name of her secret rendezvouser. Bailey folds to the pressure and admits it’s Brian.
And now Parissa is WTF.
Brian is forced to tell Parissa that the rendezvous is not for a clandestine hookup, but to rat out Jeremy. But now that Parissa knows that her boyfriend Brian is the secret rendezvouser, Bailey decides she needs to find out what Brian’s wanting to put down.
So Bailey confronts Brian. And he stumbles his way through telling Bailey about Jeusie.
And all hell breaks loose.
I think I could re-watch the last hour a dozen times and still not make sense out of the mayhem that followed. But I can summarize it. Leaving out the people who knew nothing – basically the Goldens – everybody got in a rush to tell everybody else what they knew and when they knew it about Jeusie. EXCEPT EVERYBODY TOLD LIES!!!!!
It was one giant Paradise CYA. Nobody wanted to be in the position of knowing about Jeusie and not telling Bailey. In gender-stereotypical fashion1, the girls didn’t want to hurt Bailey, and the guys thought Brian broke the brocode by getting involved in a bro’s relationship. The truth is that everybody was telling a story that justified their not telling Bailey about Jeusie.
Everybody’s hands were dirty, but because Brian broke all the supposed codes, his were deemed the dirtiest. This put him and Parissa at risk in the Rose Ceremony, where a group vote would determine which male and associated lady would have to leave Paradise.
In the Rose Ceremony, the NEGPs naturally made sure that Brian was in the last two men without a Rose, along with Heart Monitoring and Horny Captain Kim. And because we still have mayhem ahead of us, the Captain got the boot, and Brian was spared.
By the way, Bailey had her I heard it through the grapevine moment (cue Marvin Gaye) with Jeremy, and he lied and withheld information, too! But she bought what he was selling, and they’re good, again. Ugh.
It’s the mayhem that we want. It’s the mayhem that we deserve.
See you next week.
P.S. This week’s viewing wine was a Justin Cabernet, a non-vintage sold at a nice discount at Costco.
- If we’re being honest, the franchise leans into and depends on our tacit approval of gender stereotypes. ↩︎
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