Bachelor Ben Episode 2: Something Smells a Bit Fishy

Well hello, Readers.  Here we are in week 2 of our favorite waste of time and in case you’re wondering, yes, I (intentionally) missed most of the College Football National Championship game to watch the show.  I suppose that says something either about my affinity for The Bachelor or about my lack of interest in the two teams playing in the final game.  If your team won, congrats.  At least Nick Saban is earning that $60 million dollars he’s getting paid.

We mosied into week two, fresh off what was a relatively innocuous first episode.  Granted, there were the standard “spontaneous” limo exits featuring horse heads, rose hats, and a few terrible plays on words, but overall the show was about as predictable as the L.A. sunrise and about as eventful the morning dew drying on the grass.  While I was mildly entertained, I found the entire episode to be . . . well . . . unlovable. 

Fast forward a week later where I sat on the edge of my chair in breathless anticipation of Episode 2.  Let’s get to it.       

We begin this episode with the predictable Bachelor cornerstones:  expansive vistas, sunny LA skies, a rented sports car, and a not so subtle shot of our Bachelor’s underwear-covered junk being slipped into a pair of jeans after a shower.  

However, some major foundation pieces are conspicuously absent this time around.  We didn’t hear about this being the most (insert provocative adjective) season of The Bachelor ever and Harrison has been especially light on his “he had is heart broken last season but is here to try one more time to find love” chatter.  We haven’t seen Ben jog down a deserted beach and no one’s husband has died . . . yet.  I’d say we’re off to a slow start.  What’s her face should bring that Shetland pony back.      

As the girls kick it around their new digs in the a.m., the first date card arrives.  Jubilee, Lace, Amber, Lauren B., JoJo, Becca, Jackie, and Jennifer draw dreaded First Group Date duty.  If history is any indication (and it was), the First Group Date is usually the most globally humiliating.  Granted, the second Group Date wasn’t far behind, but this one was up there.   

After a brief champale toast in the limo, it’s off to “Bachelor High” to meet Ben for some old fashioned “science experiments.”  Incidentally, I think Ben selected the girls for this date by ranking them from highest to lowest in order of having a stripper’s name. 

Try this with the first three names on the date:

“Gentlemen, ten dollar table dances, this song and this song only, feast your eyes on the middle of the room while one hand clapping against the other makes the perfect sound to welcome our next dancer, (insert name here), to the center stage.” 

Cue up any AC/DC song, throw in a ten dollar Miller Lite, and a three dollar ribeye and you’re at a strip club in Anytown, USA fumbling for a dollar bill and praying you won’t get bilked out of a $100 glass of champagne after tacitly agreeing to some “company” from the aforementioned center-stager.  At least you’ll go home smelling like infant detergent and sparkling with glitter . . . or so I’m told.    

Back to Ben.

Ben meets the denim short, flannel shirt around the waist sporting girls on the steps of a local high school.  He's seemingly embarrassed by what he has been informed is about to happen. 

The girls are given white mall cosmetic salesperson counter-girl coats and forced to compete against each other in a fourth grade science experiment in order to make “Ben’s volcano explode”.  Subtlety is not this show’s strength.

JoJo tells us that she’s “never been this turned on in a high school.”  Of course she hasn’t.  That sort of thing usually occurred behind her high school in the back seat of a Camaro.  Lace tells us she hated school.  I’m sure she did.  It probably didn’t look at her enough or pay enough attention to her. 

I think we all know she’s F-ing crazy.  It got to a point this week where it was almost disturbing to watch.  She’s clearly got some real issues and a reality television show isn’t the proper venue to sort them out (see Padded Room). 

Bobbing for Apples.  Again, far from subtle and also disgusting.  I hope they all got their trenchmouth vaccination shots prior to that event.  Jennifer tells us that Jackie is “not great with her mouth.”  I suppose that’s a matter of opinion and I’d wager that Jackie has an ex-boyfriend or two who may feel differently.  We should give her the benefit of the doubt.  After all, they weren’t bobbing for bananas.  Word has it that’s next week. 

“Find the state of Indiana”.  Granted, Becca is a product of the Louisiana public education system and I can even forgive her for misplacing Indiana a tad bit to the East.  However, confusing Idaho with Oregon and putting Indiana sideways on the map calls for some serious remedial Geography lessons.   Oh, and the fact that putting it there was a team decision is even worse.  Good Lord.  She’s no Magellan. 

Mandi loses her rose hat and takes Amber to the house in a foot race for a Mustang ride with Ben.  Throw in some green slime falling from the sky and I’d have thought I was watching You Can’t Do That On Television. 

Cocktail party. JoJo is hot, he knows it, and she’s a top 3 finisher.  I’d bet on it.  Let’s talk about Lace.

She started out with such promise for the drunk girl who survived the first cocktail party out of the kindness of Ben’s heart, the fact that he hated other girls more than he feared one crazy one, and that the Producers smelled ratings gold.

Last night “I was a little too emotional.” 

Good start.  Go on.

“I had a little too much to drink.”

Ok.  The Germans were a little too aggressive in 1939 too, but continue.

“F*ck these b*tches.  I’m going to talk to Ben again.”   

. . . .aaaannnnd scene.

Becca gets some one-on-one time to play one-on-one and does a good job.  Like I said, she’s pretty, she’s cool, and she’s relatively dull.  The more I see Ben, the more I feel the same way about him.  Dynamic, he’s not. 

Jennifer gets an awkward lean in kiss from Ben because he had to start sometime.  Oh, and we still haven’t found out what her “small business” is, but I hear Ben is trying to get three people below him to move some product so he can earn $5,000.00 a month without ever leaving the mansion.

Olivia with no makeup didn’t look like Olivia with make up.  In fact, she didn’t look like any person I’d ever seen . . . ever.  It was like looking at the barrio with no graffiti.  Amazing.  It’s amazing what a coat of paint can do, isn’t it?  She went from Michelle Pfeiffer to Ricky Schroder in one episode.   

And why can she not close her mouth?  I rewound to make sure she wasn’t on the bobbing for apples date just to be sure she didn’t contract lockjaw.  Regardless, she might want to look into a tetanus shot before that gets any worse.    She looked like the freaking clown at a putt putt round…up until Caila got the date card.  Olivia was none too happy.

Lace, still starved for attention tells us that she’s “not that person” who got drunk and super needy on night one.  First of all, what people really mean when they say, “I’m not that person” is “I can’t believe I’m that person.”  Owning the behavior is the first step toward ensuring it doesn’t happen again.  Lace appeared a long way from owning anything but the string of profanities pouring out of her needy little mouth between sips of chardonnay. 

In another attempt to distance her perceived self from her actual self, Lace begins to speak in third person.  Lace is happy that Ben is holding Lace’s hand.  Granted, he held it because he was likely making sure that hand didn’t have a knife in it, but I won’t steal away her only victory of the evening.  Lace needed to take Lace’s meds and stop Lace from drinking Lace’s white wine in order to avoid the synergistic side effects of mixing the two.    

Jubilee interrupts for some one-on-one with Ben in his plaid Moose Lodge Jacket to tell him that she is an orphan.  Dude, a woman with daddy AND mommy issues.  Run, Ben.

JoJo gets the Date Rose after he talks to her about her “attitude, energy, and bubbliness” and unwittingly rubbed it in the rest of the girls’ faces by teeing it up in front of the group first. 

Mansion.  Caila gets dressed for her big one-on-one date. 

For some reason  Kevin Hart and Ice Cube show up to ridicule them on their date.   What happened to Ice Cube? 25 years ago he was a founding member of N.W.A. and now he’s an angrier Tyler Perry in a Yankee’s cap?  Remember when it was a good day he didn’t have to use his AK?  He’s gone from “F*ck the Police” to hanging out with Peter Brady and Webster on The Bachelor. 

Caila deserves an award for putting up with that nonsense. Ben shows off his Fonzie jacket.  She gets a rose.  She was low key, intriguing, not a child, and relatively articulate.  I think we’d all agree that fireworks didn’t ignite, but they had a nice date.  She’s pretty too.    

“Ben and Caila” sits conspicuously on the theater sign.  They enter to find Amos Lee on guitar.  Half of America had no idea who he is and the other half didn’t care (except for www.ihategreenbeans.com Lincee Ray).   Caila acts like she knows who he is and Ben fights the urge to wrestle Caila’s rose away from her and give it to Amos Lee.  I suppose Jeffrey Osborn was booked.

. . . on the wings of looooove . . . 

Amanda calls home to Facetime her kids.  She’s a top 3 in the looks department but her kids will be her undoing.  She’s not going to stick around waiting her turn to talk to Ben behind nutjobs like Lace and “bartenders” who have no particular place to be for the next 30 days.  As nice as he was to her about her kids, Ben is not interested in inheriting a family.  That is perhaps unfortunate, but understandable nonetheless.   

Knock knock knock.  Date card.  Emily, Shushana, Sam, Olivia, Haley, and Amanda get Group Date 2.

Olivia wears white pants.  Told you.  (Google White Pants Theory).

They set forth for The American Cement Building, which sounds like something you’d find in an Ayn Rand novel.  For some reason, the “Love Lab” is located within the building's confines and it’s fully staffed by a “doctor” and his assistants. 

Samantha uses the word “like” like way too many like times for someone with her education and the twins admit they’re both dumb, which—let’s be honest—is like Carrot Top admitting he has red hair. 

That whole “scientific” exercise was demeaning beginning with the white see through outfits and ending with the smell my hips test.  Olivia “won” and Samantha and her sour-smelling nether regions “lost.”    

Shushana spoke English.  What?  You didn’t think she could speak another language aside from Russian?  

Shush. 

Her name sounds like a Jewish holiday.  "My friend Moise is going to miss school tomorrow because he and his family will be going to the synagogue to celebrate Shushana."

Cocktail party.  Four Seasons.  Hoodie and a sport coat.  Yes.  You read that correctly.  Ben has on a grey hoodie and a grey sport coat.  Oddly enough, the Farmer turned Perpetual Hanger On wore a similar twin set on the after show.  A hoodie and a sport coat?  That’s the black socks and sandals of the hipster generation.  It looks like something that would happen if you were forced to go and check the mail in the middle of winter.  Odd.    

Wine and a toast.  Olivia had her face on and looked great in pink.  She gets to see the Bachelor room.  Samantha melts down.  Many of the women were consumed by emotion, which gave way to irrationality.  The one who keeps her head on straight does the best.  In Brad’s season, that was Emily.  Last night, it was Olivia. 

One of the Haley's leaves with Ben and busts his balls a bit and Ben apologizes to Sam for being honest about the way she smelled below the waist.  

Shushana may be a male order bride.  We should probably make sure her basement-dwelling, glasses-wearing, Star Trek fan of a first husband's bloated corpse isn’t in a deep freeze inside a storage unit in northern Ohio before giving her a rose next week.  Sure, he meant well and probably didn’t deserve the arsenic she put in his donut but she’ll be damned if she’s going to spend another harsh winter in Russia and she’ll do anything to not have to endure two weeks in a tanker’s cargo hold trudging at 15 knots across the ocean again.    

Olivia gets inside the other girl’s heads but eventually gets into her own.  She needs to tap the brakes a bit.  She’s clearly got Ben interested but it’s going to take more than a pair of white pants, a passing score from “Doctor” Love, and the Date Rose in order to run away with the Neil Lane ring.  My prediction is that she’ll become her own worst enemy.  She’s this season’s Icarus.  If she’s lucky, she’ll get a chance to emerge from the ashes.

Speaking of being her own worse enemy.

Lace talks to Ben . . . again.  To say that the conversation didn't go well would be like saying that Pete Best's career as a drummer was slightly inhibited when the Beatles replaced him with Ringo Starr.    

“I have a bold personality.” 

Translation:  I'm boorish and inconsiderate.

“I’m hard to handle.” 

Translation:  No one likes me.

And my personal favorite, “I have a part of me that I’m working on.”  

Translation:  My therapist wants to see me for a very long time. 

Lace becomes . . .well . . . unlaced.  She got a rose because she’s not done being useful to the show, but she clearly needs Dr. Jamie to make a triumphant return.  After all, look at all he did for Brad Womack.    

One of the Haley’s starts to cry.  LB cracks a bit but keeps it together long enough to get a rose and then summarily hand it back to Ben on her way out the door.  Amber starts to  . . . whatever.  Ben gives Lauren B, the stewardess, a picture of the two of them from their first meeting.  I’m telling you, she’s a sleeper.  She’s not the best looking but she’s sweet, unassuming, and easy to talk to.  Like I said, she’s uncomplicated and he likes that.  She’s the tortoise to Olivia’s hare.  She’ll jog right past a sleeping Olivia in a week or two.    

After Ben goes on his reassurance tour we get to the Roses. 

Rose Ceremony.

Amanda (beautiful, but she’ll miss her kids)

Caila (solid showing on the date)

Olivia (gorgeous, but ego driven)

Jubilee (the woman, not the celebration)

Lauren B. (sleeper)

Leah (event planner)

Rachel (quiet week, but still in the hunt)

Lace (Lace needs to tell Lace to relax)

LB “can I talk to you”

Becca (good showing this week)

Jennifer (got a kiss and moved some hand soap down the pyramid)

Emily (One of the Haley’s)

Jamie (did enough)

Laruen H. (did enough)

Shushana (spoke English)

Haley (the other of the Haley’s)

Amber (on her way out soon)

Adios

Sam (nice person, but needs to mature)

Mandi (nuts, but she got a tiara as a parting gift)

LB (went home because she wasn’t feeling it)

Jackie (will have to stick to studying old people)

Well, there it is.   Episode 2.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Comment below or twitter me @someguyinaustin.  If you need me, I’ll be smelling my pheromones.  DP