The Bachelorette ~ Episode 3

Is it just me or do we have the shiniest cast of Bachelors ever?  Maybe they’re just sweaty…not sure, but there is quite a bit of glistening on this show.

The episode opened up to Princess Emily being served breakfast in bed by her mother.

To wake up in full make up and a cute up-do is really a special thing.  My house on any given morning does not look like that…

Meanwhile back at the Bachelor mansion, Chris Harrison goes over the week’s schedule…2 one-on-one dates and 1 group date.  We hear how Sean thinks he deserves a one-on-one, because they share some intangible connection…or something like that.

But Chris (Gerard Butler) ends up getting the date card, that reads, “Love is a steady climb”. Of course we know, as Bachelor/Bachelorette aficionados that this is going to involves some type of “scaling”…either a mountain, a bridge…whatever.  What ended up happening was Chris and Emily having to Spiderman up a wall for their supper.  Which is really great for Chris because he has been wanting to use some “climbing” cliches since he arrived in North Carolina.  I mean, love does really start at the bottom and climbs higher and higher.

Chris ALSO used this opportunity to give America a sneak peek into his inner freak commenting on how “unbelievable” Emily looks in the harness.  Umm, sure, guy.

Of course at the exact moment that they are set to scale the building it begins to thunder and lightning outside…the ABC producers decided to chance it and continued on letting the couple race to the top.

I have to say that Emily didn’t seem super thrilled about the climbing. I sensed that because she squealed, cried and grunted repeatedly through the coarse of the climb.  Luckily they were able to dodge the lightning and make it to the top of the building where they proceeded to eat dinner in a wind and lightning storm.  I am not sure if the producers are just getting lazy, or really hoping to jump start Emily’s personality with a literal jolt.  Either way, we were all let down.

As they pretend to eat, Chris tells Emily that he is 25 years old, to which Emily gasps and asks him if he still uses a binkie.  Emily has never dated a younger man before, and those 3 months make a HUGE difference for her.  She continues to look on nervously, but decides that since he does look so much like Gerard Butler she will keep him around until he decides to start talking with an accent.  Chris gets a rose.

He and Emily are allowed to take the elevator down from dinner and decide to take a stroll through the streets of Charlotte hoping they might stumble across an impromptu concert.  Lucky for them Luke Bryan had decided to plan a street show that very night and Emily and Chris were able to show off their not-at-all-awkward swaying dance moves in front of a large crowd of Carolinians who gathered around.

Back at the mansion the group date card arrives and it reads, “Let’s Play”.  The men are really astute deciphering this to mean that they will be…wait for it…”playing a game”.  I really hope that there isn’t a Survivor-type of challenge on this show with a puzzle, because that might be the longest episode ever.

Emily leads the men to a park where she is standing with a football.  Ryan instantly thinks he owns this date and jumps right in grabbing the ball.  Emily decides to take a quick stroll to the other side of the park where she has also gathered her girlfriends.  She decides to surprise both her friends and the men with a spur of the moment interrogation/Q&A.  They both respond pretty much the same way… like they just smelled a big vat of stinky cheese.  I don’t think either of the two groups were super thrilled about meeting the other.

Here are some highlights:

Ryan ~ When asked if he wants kids…he nervously starts looking around, maybe for some hair product because he has formed so many beads of sweat on his brow that he’s nervous his man-bangs are frizzing.  Also Ryan tried to sidetrack the ladies with his killer push-ups.  He says he sleeps in push-up position.  Cool story.

Egg guy (Travis) ~ Emily’s friends tell him to lose the egg…which he has unfortunately named “Shelly”.  I take clear offense to this.  Her friend Wendy straight up tells him the egg is disgusting.  Thank you Wendy.  We could be friends.

John “Wolf” ~ First and foremost I am happy to see that no one on this show is calling him Wolf. Second, homeboy makes a major slip and tells Emily’s friends that his “girlfriend” told him he would be great on the show.  Ummmm…her friends obviously catch this slip and say, “girlfriend?” to which he backtracks and says it’s just a girl that’s his friend.  Here’s the thing:  no man calls his female friends, “girlfriends”.  It doesn’t happen.  Look it up.  The women seem to take it for what it’s worth, but I am calling foul on that one.

MC Stevie ~ He tries to wow the friends with some killer robot dance moves…and fails.

Tony ~ Does the worm.  Talks about his kid.  Almost starts crying.

Sean ~ The women nearly fall over at Sean’s beauty.  They go on and on about how hot he is and blah blah blah.  They convince him to take his shirt off and he ALSO does push ups.  They love him and want to end the show right now.  I am not denying that Sean is attractive, but I think he must be one of those guys who looks better in real life.  I don’t mean that to be insulting, honestly, it’s just on the show he doesn’t come across as super hot.  Whatever.

So Emily can get the scoop from her friends, she has employed a few dozen kids to keep the men busy.  Ryan, typically, ditches the kids in order to get some alone time with Emily.  He tried to break up the girl talk and fails miserably.  The conversation turns to after they get married what if Emily gains weight?  I’m not sure how they got there, but my ears perked up when Ryan answered.  Oh, how he answered.  In front of all her friends.

He says he would NOT be ok if she gained weight and although he would still love her he wouldn’t want to “love on her”.

Please leave now Ryan.  Emily’s friends will always hate you for that comment.  America’s female population hates you for that comment.  You are arrogant and not even that attractive.

After the park, Emily takes the men up to a rooftop or somewhere and Sean lets her know he is in it to win it.  Doug decides to tell her his sad story…his dad died young, he has no mom and from there spent time with foster families.  Pretty touching, actually.

BUT despite the foster family talk, Sean’s blondness wins the rose of the evening.

Tony, on the other-hand, is a mess.  He misses his kiddo and you can tell he really wants to go home.  Emily let him off the hook (maybe when she heard him talking baby-talk into the phone) and told him he could leave.

The other men were happy that another bit the dust.

The final one-on-one date card comes to the house and it’s for Arie.  “It’s a wild ride”, it reads and Arie of course believes that the date will consist of something race car related.  Dolly Parton was the furthest thing from his mind…ahem.

Emily lets us know she loves Dolly Parton and used to spend time as a child at Dollywood.  Arie seems a bit reluctant and by reluctant I mean he dances a jig when they get there.  They decide to go on a roller coaster together and again, Emily is a big old scardy-cat and grunts, whines and moans, much like she did at the wall-scaling with Gerard.

After the roller-coaster they decide to write a song together and lucky for us, it was just a ploy to bring in THE Dolly Parton to sing an original ditty.  Emily about dies when she sees Dolly.  I know this because she tells us she is about to die 465 times.

Arie and Emily dance on stage, and then Dolly wants to have a little girl-talk with Emily.  Since she’s an old-pro at the marriage thing she informs Emily that she has a good eye at spotting love.

At dinner later, Arie tells Emily he is ready to be a dad and Emily’s pretty happy, because she knows race car drivers have a busy schedule and she will still have her own space.  She likes relationships, but what she likes most is when her man is far away but still thinking about her.  Hmmm, interesting.

Emily decides that Arie is rose-worthy and decides to play a super funny joke on him and lead him to believe he’s going home.  The joke failed, but Arie still took the rose.

Next up was the rose ceremony.

Emily gets a a chance to talk to Kalon, who didn’t go on any dates this week.  He was so upset about not getting a date that he forgot to wear socks!  And in one of the most hilarious lines of the night, she really wanted to talk to him because she can tell he’s really “genuine”.  Oh Emily…poor, poor Emily.  She asks him about stepping into parenthood with Rickie, to which he replies that it wouldn’t be his “ideal” situation.  That caught Emily off-guard so she interjected, but Kalon doesn’t appreciate being interrupted, since he has had all week to prepare his speech.  He tells her, “I love it when you talk, but I’d wish you let me  finish first.”  Emily didn’t appreciate his condescending tone.  If she plans on keeping Kalon around I think she had better get used to the condescending tone…just sayin’.

After her talk with Kalon, she needed to let a little aggression out, so she decided to take Travis up on his offer to smash the egg, aka Shelly.  She launched the egg square onto the pavement and  there was a giant mess of yolk left for someone to clean up.  I paused my dvr and had a moment of silence for the egg, and my namesake.

The men toasted the egg’s demise and I’m just glad for that chapter to be closed.

Finally Emily decides to talk to Allesandro, the grain merchant.  This. Was. Awkward.  Allesandro wanted to let Emily know that he wold be compromising having Rickie in his life.  Emily gave him the benefit of the doubt, thinking there was a language barrier between them, but he assured her no, that he really felt that having her in his life would be compromising his current groove.  He wouldn’t be able to travel, due to all the compromise.  Knowing Emily’s thoughts on traveling spouses this probably would have been ok coming from anyone else, but I believe that Emily got a little back-story from her friends on Allesandro.

Apparently when they were “interviewing” him, he let them all know that his last significant girlfriend was also his cousin.  Not only that but he has also cheated and had one-night-stands in his past as well.  Most likely with other cousins.  So I am thinking when he told her about the compromising she was doing a little happy dance on the inside, so she wouldn’t look like a “judger” for kicking him off because he likes to date extended family members.

She gladly walked him out and sent him on his way back to Brazil.

At the rose ceremony MC Stevie was left hanging.  He had to grapevine his way out the front door to the limo with no rose.

So this week we said so long to Tony, Allesandro and Stevie.

Things are moving along.

Next week looks like a good one where Ryan gets a little aggressive towards nice-guy, Sean.

The Bachelorette airs Mondays at 8/7 Central on ABC