This week on The Bachelorette, we get a showcase of three contestants' boring home towns and a stop in a Denver suburb. The guys all make the perfunctory profession of love for a girl they've known just a few weeks, and surface-level chatter is hilariously confused with deep, personal conversation – all Bachelor staples.
We do hear some shocking details about a school shooting in one contestant's past, and the dating history of another comes back to bite him.
Let's get to it.
The math against Garrett
We cut right to the chase this week, diving into the riveting date in Garrett’s hometown of Reno, Nevada. He takes Becca on the back of a giant machine to plant three or four tomato plants before abandoning the project to talk about their families. I imagine the dude driving the giant machine is annoyed he’s gonna have to do it all over again.
Garrett’s “deep conversation” with Becca revolves around his ex-wife, because nothing says “marry me” like a failed marriage. He tells Becca that his family values “didn’t align anymore” with his ex just two months into the marriage, implying that he never realized that in their seven years of dating.
Some simple math on the topic: Garrett has been dating Becca for eight weeks. He dated his ex-wife for roughly 364 weeks. That means he had about 4,500 percent longer with his ex-wife to figure out they weren’t compatible long-term.
This should be waving more red flags than a communist convention, but Becca decides to believe him when Garrett says the two of them align. She's focused on all the right things, like the fact that "he'd be a hot dad."
Garrett’s mom talks a big game about being a “mama bear” because her son previously endured a breakup, but she folds and pretends Garrett will be ready to propose to an acquaintance in a couple weeks.
Wingin' it
Becca then heads to Buffalo to see Jason, which is hopefully a case of ABC showing the dates out of order, because going from Nevada to Buffalo before returning to Colorado for two dates makes zero sense.
She and Jason go to Anchor Bar, the home of the original buffalo-style chicken wing, for a wing-eating contest. Making the gluttonous consumption of chicken parts the first impression of his hometown was questionable planning on Jason’s part, but Becca seems to dig it.
They head to a hockey arena to ice skate and play some good, old fashioned one-on-one hockey. He shows off some tricks that any 10-year-old in the northeast can do. This somehow makes Becca “see him as a partner in life.”
Their “adult conversation” includes Jason’s egregious use of the term “guarded,” which is his cliché of choice for why he hasn’t shared his deep affection for Becca after a couple dates. The two of them establish a false equivalency between their relationship and Jason’s brother finding a husband – both “unconventional ways to fall in love,” according to Becca – to justify the prospect of a future.
Jason’s mom tells him she can’t tell if his girlfriend of two months is falling for him. His brother and brother-in-law ask him why he hasn’t professed his love. He can’t produce a good answer, because logical thinking is frowned upon on this show.
Alas, he tells Becca that he’s “insanely, wildly in love” with her in a cringe-worthy monologue in the snow. I vomit through the ensuing commercial break.
Betty who? Betty Who
Becca is back in the western half of the U.S. for a visit to Blake’s home town of Bailey, Colorado. She tells the producers that Blake is in love with her and that the feelings “are reciprocated.”
In an unsurprising move, Blake takes her to his high school to relive his days as an athlete. They meet with his football coaches, even though he put up pretty marginal numbers on the gridiron as a senior at Platte Canyon High School and actually appears to have been a much better basketball player.
In the school’s library, Blake shares the story of the 2006 school shooting at Platte Canyon, when he was a senior. He spares some of the graphic details of the horrific shooting, which was really a hostage situation-turned sexual assault spree that ultimately took the life of one 16-year-old girl. Surviving the shooting changed Blake’s perspective on life, he says.
Then, there’s a stark mood change, as Blake takes Becca to the school auditorium for a performance by Betty Who – an artist Becca claims is her favorite but who I think was just there to prove that there is, in fact, someone out there with worse fashion sense than Becca.
At the house, Blake’s dad asks him some very reasonable questions, like how Blake thinks he could be ready to marry the stranger he’s brought home to Bailey. He points out what has to be a critical flaw in Bachelor relationships: the fact that traveling the world on a TV network’s dime and going on like three dates over a 10-week span, with camera crews always present, is not reality and that an actual relationship will have real challenges.
Becca tells the family she’s ready to be engaged “with the right person,” as if anyone has ever anxiously awaited an engagement to the wrong person.
Tia tees off
Last but not least is Colton’s hometown of Parker, Colorado, only about an hour away from Bailey. Colton pulls a power move and takes Becca to a children’s hospital where he volunteers. Dad muscles fully flexed, they hang out with some cute kids and bring them gifts. Nice move.
Colton’s dad grills him on why he hasn’t asked about Arie Luyendyk and the humiliation he caused Becca on national television a few months earlier. He doesn’t have a great answer.
His mom seems cool, due in part to the fact that the look in her eyes says she knows the whole thing is BS. She’s a nice mom, though, so she supports her kid. She handles the conversation about Colton’s sex life – really lack thereof – with grace.
After all the dates are over, we get to pretend that Becca’s fellow contestants from Arie’s season of The Bachelor are her best friends. She meets all of them on the top floor of a Los Angeles skyscraper – a natural spot for a casual rendezvous.
Tia rocks some RJF – resting jealous face – for Becca’s whole story about the hometown dates. She asks for a few minutes to chat with Becca and reveals now (weeks after their first conversation about this) that she now still has feelings for Colton, with whom she went on one date a few months prior.
This sends Becca into a tailspin of doubt that ultimately ends in Colton’s ousting from the show and the announcement that he’ll appear on Bachelor in Paradise with Tia later this summer.
ABC works in not-so-mysterious ways.