Say what you will about The Bachelor, but it is responsible for what are surely some of the most exciting scenes involving luggage in all of TV history. The women gasp in horror when a production assistant hauls Taylor’s suitcase out of their hotel room, meaning that dastardly Corinne is the sole survivor of the two-on-one date.
Taylor may have been rejected, but having revitalized her powers through a voodoo ritual of an unspecified nature, she confidently storms into the middle of Nick and Corinne’s dinner date. She tells Nick he’s being manipulated and lied to by Corinne; he tells Taylor he appreciates her sincerity. But Taylor’s realness isn’t real enough to deter Nick from smooching Corinne over their (uneaten, of course—this is television) food. Corinne lives to nap another day.
“Cats have nine lives, and bitches have two,” she proclaims. I can’t say I understand her math, but I do appreciate her enthusiasm.
The women arrive at the cocktail party (held at a mansion, but sadly, not last week’s haunted mansion) in what appears to be a combination horse-drawn carriage and city bus. After a weird tracking shot from behind, seemingly intended to briefly convince us that Chris Harrison is Nick — are they grooming him for a homegrown season 22? — our host announces that there won’t be a cocktail party after all. Nick already knows what he needs to do. Cue the all-too-familiar sounds of synchronized hyperventilation.
After Whitney (Who-tney?) receive the the night’s last rose, Josephine, Jaimi, and Alexis are told to pack their love-knives and go. Personally, I do not feel ready to move on from Alexis. Alexis is perfect. I hope she finds someone who adores dolphins as much as she does and bears absolutely zero resemblance to Nic Cage. She deserves nothing less.
And then there were nine. And then they were off to St. Thomas. “I love the island living,” explains a beaming, tank top-clad Nick. After spending a full minute crowing about their hotel room (#sponcon!!!), the ladies wave to the Bachelor as he passes their balcony in a seaplane.
Nanny enthusiast Corinne has a meet-cute with a resort employee by the name of Lorna, whom she recruits to press her wrinkled dress and serve her snacks poolside.
Jasmine, Kristina, and Whitney are the only women left who haven’t had one-on-one dates. Nick choses Kristina for a romantic seaplane jaunt and they fly away, leaving Jasmine teary and frustrated on the shore.
Over beers at some ruins — can this date be haunted too, please? — Kristina reveals that she is one of eight siblings (she was adopted), not counting a biological sister in Russia. He asks her how to say “kiss me” in Russian, but hardly bothers to try repeating the phrase before making out with her. It is almost as if he is not really interested in learning to speak Russian at all.
At dinner, Kristina shares more about her childhood. She grew up poor (like, lipstick-eating poor, which I for one did not realize was an option) in a small town in Russia, where she lived with her mom. Once, at the age of five or six, Kristina infuriated her mother by disobeying her order not to eat anything all day. Her mother told her to “get out,” so she did, and found herself in an orphanage. She remained there until she was 12, when she chose to come to America with her adoptive family. Her biological mom, who never visited her at the orphanage, has since died.
Holy shit, Kristina. I have no idea how to process actual tragedy and heartbreak in the context of this garbage television program, so I’ll just say this: Nick gives her a rose, obviously. Could you imagine a world in which Kristina did not get a rose after that story? Nick would go to prison.
Ask not for whom the group-date bell tolls, it tolls for thee — if thee’s name happens to be Rachel, Raven, Vanessa, Corinne, Danielle M., or Jasmine, anyway. Those selections suggest that Whitney and Danielle L. have a nerve-wracking two-on-one date coming up. While Whitney certainly has a “does she even go here?” quality about her, this doesn’t reflect well on Danielle’s standing either, given that she already had a coveted one-on-one date.
For the group date, they travel via catamaran (passing the time with thought-provoking questions like, “Halloween or Christmas?”) to a secluded beach. Before long, a tipsy Nick breaks out his baby dinosaur impression, the universal sign of a good party. (Stray observation: I love how clumsily attached everyone’s mic packs are to their swimsuits.)
But the festivities soon devolve into a drunk, aggressive volleyball game. Corinne wanders off to do a shot and take a nap. Jasmine, the only woman in this group who hasn’t had a one-on-one, pushes Corinne to the ground. Almost everyone in attendance ends up feeling salty (sandy?). Despite all the misogyny and gaslighting that’s baked into this show, it’s somehow volleyball that pushes the cast too far.
Over drinks on yet another beach later on, Nick tries to smooth things over, with limited success. Future Bachelorette™ Rachel explains that she felt like she was out of her element on the group date. Her anxiety gives him anxiety. His anxiety gives me anxiety, so I eat some ice cream. Jasmine is more upset than ever about feeling ignored. “I’ve been to St. Thomas. I don’t need to be here,” she complains, in a perfect pair of sentences that I want printed on a T-shirt.
When she finally gets time alone with Nick, Jasmine lays it on the line. What starts off as a frank discussion of her insecurities takes a sharp left turn when she expresses her desire to “fucking choke [him] so bad” and repeatedly grabs his throat. He says goodbye to her that night.
Raven gets the group-date rose, but unless I’m mistaken, we don’t actually witness this happen onscreen — we just hear about it from Rachel after the fact. Bizarre. Guess we’re really shoehorning in the drama this week!
For their two-on-one date, Danielle L. and Whitney join Nick for a helicopter ride to (you guessed it) a beach with (you probably didn’t guess it) a bed smack in the middle of the sand. After what seems like 90 seconds of sweet but not particularly interesting conversations with both women, he wastes no time in dumping Whitney, abandoning her with the beach-bed.
Nick and Danielle L. “dine” in an old fort (again: haunted?!). As she tells him she’s falling in love with him, Nick looks uneasy, and sweats more than is to be reasonably expected, even in this climate. He doesn’t return her feelings, you see. Danielle L., alas, is donezo.
In a strikingly vulnerable moment, Nick shows up unannounced in the women’s hotel suite, tears streaming down his face. He explains what happened on the date and his fears about continuing on The Bachelor. Is he doomed to never find love? And while we’re at it, does Lorna have any more nachos?
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