Bachelor Nick Episode 6: A Real Beach Fest

Hello, Readers.  Well, it’s week 6 but it sure feels a hell of a lot like weeks 1-5, doesn’t it?  Aside from Nick crying more than little girl on the playground with a scraped knee the season has been rather uneventful.  I suppose it’s a good thing that Nick hasn’t (yet) defiled anyone (as far as we know), but that might change next week if Corinne and her (allegedly) platinum “vagine” have anything to say about it.  Good Lord.  This is what passes for entertainment these days. 

Fresh off last week’s highbrow lecture about “emotional intelligence” Taylor literally and figuratively heads out in a bit of a different direction.  You’ll recall she was left to the mercy of a chanting voodoo tribe after being dumped like a load of hot mulch in the swamp when Nick chose Corinne over her on the dreaded two-on-one date.  “It’s “absolute bullshit that I’m going home,” she whines as she walks through the woods to the heretofore unannounced location of Nick and Corinne’s dinner. 

“Absolute bullshit.”  Man, you have to love a lady.  By the way, did anyone else wonder how she knew where to go?  Maybe the tarot card lady told her or maybe the Queen of Cups foretold the dinner location?  I didn’t see a compass.     

Regardless, Taylor shows up braless and fresh off the voodoo ritual to cock block Corinne at the victory dinner.  “What the f*ck is she doing here,” wonders Corinne aloud.  Again, you have to love a lady.  

Look, I’m no puritan and Lord knows I have a foul mouth but both of these women could use a few etiquette lessons from Henry Freaking Higgins.  I was going to say from Emily Post but I read her book recently and she lost all credibility in my eyes.  An entire book on manners and there’s not one chapter on farting. 

Back to Nick.   

Nick looked so over it he could barely prevent himself from rolling his eyes and sighing.  Corinne occupies herself as she always does:  by pounding flutes of free champagne.  Taylor takes him outside for . . . well, I’m not sure why she took him outside.  

As Whitney would find out later in the show, Nick’s decision was made the first time he told her to go home and the answer, not surprisingly, was still “no” when she wandered back from the malaria infested swamp seeking redemption.  She confirmed what we were all thinking last week:  that she’s hardly emotionally intelligent. 

Boooorrrriiinnggggg.    

Let’s face it, Nick deserved a little taste of the medicine he’s been doling out on the past 4 reality shows but we certainly didn’t.  Taylor didn’t do herself any favors and eventually wanders off camera to begin filling out her Bachelor in Paradise application.   Corinne barely manages to keep it cool but can’t resist a “what happened” when Nick sits back down.  Corinne gloats.  Why not?  She earned it.    

The girls get a carriage ride to the Rose Ceremony after getting more dressed up than a sore finger.  Sternums abound.  I haven’t seen so much exposed sternum since my last Hasselhoff concert.  I immediately lamented turning down an opportunity to invest in double-sided boob tape a few years ago.  They must have that stuff by the case laying around the mansion.   

Jaimi opines that every night is “im-poor-int”.  Apparently not im-poor-int enough for a cocktail party. Harrison shows up to announce that Nick knows what he wants.  Translation:  This show has a limited amount of time and a lot of dates to pack in.  No drinks.    

Roses

Corinne

Rachel

Kristina

Raven

Vanessa

Danielle L.

Jasmine

Whitney

Danielle M.

  

Gone

Josephine

Alexis (time to dry clean the dolphin/shark suit)

Jaimi (dumped in her home town)

The remaining bunch is headed to St. Thomas. 

Vistas of St. Thomas via sea plane followed by vistas of Nick’s junk in his short shorts, tank top, and bright white tennis shoes.  He was dressed like a 12 year old girl on her first day at cheer camp. 

The girls go with denim shorts and loose fitting tops and we learn that not unlike every other post-continental U.S. location in Bachelor history, St. Thomas is indeed the “perfect place to fall in love.”  

The sea plane pulls a Maverick and buzzes the tower.  I was looking for Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villachaize to waive it into the dock.  Dressed like a 12 year old girl on her second day of cheer camp, Nick shows up in  pastel short shorts, white shoes, and a tank top.  The only thing he was missing was a matching bow and a set of pompoms.  

Kristina immediately gets the one-on-one and Jasmine melts down on the dock and complains as he ferries Kristina away in the sea plane. 

Nick heads to the Annaberg Ruins with Kristina for beers and the most horrific broken family story we’ve ever heard on this show.  How freaking sad was that?  Eating lipstick, getting kicked out of the house at 6 years old by her mother, living in a Russian orphanage, being forced to go to America and leave her sister behind.  It went on and on. 

Props to her for not breaking that out at the first cocktail party.  She seemed reluctant to “use” it and that made it all the more credible and, frankly, a lot sadder.  I had visions of Oliver asking for more porridge rather than Little Orphan Annie jumping playfully from bed to bed with the other orphans.  

Her childhood was straight out of a Dostoyevsky novel.  That explains why she hasn’t bitched about living in the house with 26 other women all of this time.  She gets a rose.  Frankly, I can’t think of a Date Rose that was more well-deserved than that one.        

Corinne—whose roughest moment in life likely occurred when she was forced to eat caviar without her favorite crackers--is going to drink champagne rather than pout all day.  Good for her.  Lorna, the local nanny, is there to assist her in everything she needs.  That producer stunt fell flat.  I think I speak for us all when I say I’m sick of Corinne.  We get it.  She’s a millennial brat.  Move on.    

Group Date.  Love’s a beach.  Rachel, Raven, Vanessa, Corinne, Jasmine, Danielle M.   

I think we’d all agree that this date was as painful to watch as it was to be on.  In light of that, I’ll paraphrase. 

Catamaran ride.  Bikini time.  Raven has her Taylor Swift bikini on.  Poor choice.    

Corinne is drunk . . . again. 

Rachel and Jasmine melt down.  They’re all drunk and demeaned.  They all quit and go sulk.  You know they all skimped on breakfast because it was a bikini date.  Top off low blood sugar with the booze and the 3 hours worth of producer-mandated volleyball and it’s time to sulk.  Poor Nick.

Nick backtracks with each girl at the dinner party.  Jasmine snaps, and I mean snaps.  As our current President would put it, she snapped big league.     

In what would prove to be a foreboding comment, Danielle L. tells us that she “doesn’t know where Nick’s head is at.”  We, of course, do know where: his ass. 

Rachel sees the Jasmine writing on the wall and cringes as Jasmine crosses from a calm, rational women into a ranting lunatic at warp speed.  Don’t get me wrong, being honest is good but incessant complaining and talking over Nick while he at least attempts to empathize is not. 

I actually yelled at the TV “let him talk” during her alone time with him.  She fumbled well before she got into the red zone.  And then the cherry on the sundae:  “I want to choke you so bad,” actually slips out.  He did everything he could to not run away in fear.  He sent her home instead.  Epic.  

She literally talked herself off the show.  Still oblivious, Jasmine actually gave him a bitter “good luck, dude” on the way out.  I don’t know if it will be her or her family who cringes more when they watch that episode.  Granted, for the most part she handled herself well, but she truly lost her mind at the end there. 

Let the pouting continue.  To be fair, I don’t think we’ve seen one evening cocktail party or Rose Ceremony that hasn’t ended in a sunrise.  They haven’t slept for weeks and I’d imagine that the flying that far East didn’t do wonders for their states of mind. 

We cut to Kristina, Raven, Rachel in bed—just like back at the Russian orphanage. 

Me:  Now we’re talking

Mrs. SGIA:  Whatever.    

2 on 1 date.  Danielle L. and Whitney.  Frankly, I was surprised by this date and I refused to admit that one (or both) of them could be headed home.  In my mind, these are two of the most attractive women left and he had a great first date with Danielle L.  She was also a top 3 pick of mine (damnit).  Danielle L. had the edge in my mind but I wanted to see if Whitney could turn the corner and show some personality. 

After Kristina’s lipstick lunch story I was surprised to hear more talk about how tough their free week filled with helicopter rides, free booze, and volleyball games has been.  They continue to whine, including Nick. 

 

Vanessa, who has up to this point been an oak, teeters over the edge a bit.  She and her Lululemon athletic wear need to keep it together.  She’s likely a top 3 if she can tap the brakes a bit, but the down time and the travel was clearly a factor.  

Whitney basks in the wonder of the beach cabana while Danielle and Nick talk.  Nick puts her on hold and goes back to Whitney.  He dumps Whitney.  Bummer.  Like Jasmine and Taylor before her, she tries to hang on without getting sent home. 

Pay attention ladies.  There is some brilliant male perspective relationship advice headed your way.

As Whitney complains about Danielle L. by questioning Nick if he believes she’s ready for a relationship, I threw my arms into the air and before I could get my thought from my brain to my lips Nick stops Whitney with, “For me this isn’t about Danielle.  It’s about you and I.”  Ouch.  Poor grammar aside, that statement is extremely pregnant with wisdom. 

In other words, it’s not her, it’s you. That’s exactly the point.  No woman in the history of this show, or any other for that matter, has ever been sent home because of something another woman did or didn’t do.  It has nothing to do with Danielle L.’s glorious cleavage or her delicately manicured eyebrows and it will have nothing next week to do with Corinne’s (allegedly) “platinum vagine.”  Jasmine, Taylor, Whitney, and ultimately a clearly blindsided Danielle L. all got sent home not because Nick saw himself with another woman but because he didn’t see himself with any one of them.  Big distinction.    

We saw more of this faulty reasoning back at the resort when Vanessa and her Lululemon outerwear wondered what Nick was thinking.  "Why can’t they focus on themselves and overthink what he’s thinking," I wondered.  It’s infuriating from a man’s perspective.  This tendency to overthink things, indeed, is the female psyches’ greatest strength while simultaneously serving as its greatest weakness. 

Nick has dinner at an old fort with Danielle L.  I was surprised Taylor didn’t come back to try and ruin that. 

Nick starts to sweat.  Uh oh. 

Nick’s “heart is telling him no” about Danielle L.  and he abruptly sends her home.  Normally, I am not this far off in my predictions, but I admit, this one surprised me.  Either he’s an incredibly decisive person or based on his age and perpetually single status it is more likely that he simply can’t commit. 

The English/Philosophy degrees in me made me think back to a book called The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.  There is a scene in the story where its main character compares her life to a fig tree whose branches stand for the different paths her life may take.  She sees each fig as a metaphorically different possibility for her future. 

She writes,

“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Granted, I’m sure the irony of me using Sylvia Plath to draw a comparison to a womanizing guy dating 27 women simultaneously while supposedly trying to find a wife, is not lost on my fellow English/Philosophy majors, but, irony aside, I think it fits.  Most of these women have nice sets of figs.    

Nick seems intent on trying to find the perfect woman and he’s paralyzed himself with an inability to choose.  Ergo, hasty, poorly considered dismissals and loads of indecisive tears to a group of remaining women who sit there wrinkling, going black, one by one, before plopping to the ground at his feet. 

Gone:  Danielle L., Whitney, and Jasmine.  You think they met at the St. Thomas International Airport Chili’s Too and killed a few margaritas before their flights?

Rachel, Danielle M., Corinne, Vanessa, Raven, and Kristina remain.  Top 3 now that Danielle L. is gone?  Hmm.  I’m sticking with Raven, Vanessa, and I’ll go with Kristina over Danielle M.  I still think Corinne makes it to hometowns so the show can mock her.  I can’t wait.

There it is.  Thoughts?  Comments?  Feedback?  Until next week, take care of yourselves.  In the meantime if you need me, I’ll be playing volleyball while I wonder just what Nick must be thinking.  DP.