Foiled Again! The Bachelor recap

One of these two people is totally in love

Okay, so I had a DVR malfunction and only caught hour 2 of The Bachelor last night.

My apologies. (Blame Gossip Girl and House—two shows long past their expiration dates that I nonetheless can’t stop watching. Old habits die hard, people.)

The first thing I caught was Courtney doing some sort of double reverse sneak attack on the group date and winning the rose.

I don’t even know how she did it, but I do know that she non-ironically likes to utter the phrase “winning!” which is so fitting because—from a mental health standpoint, at least—compared to her, Charlie Sheen is Tom Brokaw.

(Don’t you just love the way Courtney touches herself all the time—sometimes with a rose in her hand and sometimes without? It’s so deliciously cray-cray: It’s like her narcissism manifests in actual self-touching.)

Anyway, so yeah, I missed how Rachel got her rose. Did she have a solo date with Ben? If so, I can only assume it went something like this:

Rachel and Ben do some vaguely daredevily thing that he weaves into an elaborate metaphor about their future together:
“If we go-cart down a mountainside we can go-cart down the mountainside of life together.” Or somethin’ like that.

Then, lots of kissing.

Then, a romantic dinner, with Ben confessing to the camera that the connection he feels with Rachel is so real and so right and a little scary because he can totally see himself with her and she fits into his little Ben world like the missing piece of the little Ben world puzzle.
Then, more kissing.

Then he ambles off to the get the rose, she pretends to be surprised to get it, more kissing, and she floats home with the smug confidence of a woman who believes that she and Ben are in ♥ 4Evah! and 2Good2Be4Forgotten and all the other girls give her death stares from the couch.

(Am I anywhere close?)

All I know about the group date is that it seemed to be going one way—Kacie perhaps?—and then Courtney broke out the big guns—crying? threatening to leave?—and Ben was helpless in the face of her master manipulations. Poor sap.

Now onto what I did see:

Ben’s next solo date is with the guileless Jennifer. I worry a lot about Jennifer, because she seems so sweet and innocent and fragile, like a little lamb, if a lamb sported Colorsilk Luminesta 150 Red Permanent Hair dye by Revlon and killer abs.

So he and Jennifer go repelling into a crater (yeesh, is this The Bachelor or Fear Factor?) and Ben has a metaphor at the ready:

“Relationships are all about trust and diving into the unknown.”

Then they go swimming in the swampy, sure to be super sanitary crater water—once again, congratulations on those bodies, kids—and kiss a lot.

“Nothing can ruin this date!” gushes Jennifer. Cue the monsoon.

But they run through the monsoon together because they can “weather the storm of this monsoon they can weather the storm of life.” (Okay, Ben didn’t actually say that, but probably just because it ended up on the cutting room floor.)

Meanwhile, back at the house, Blakely is dying Emily’s hair—with foils.

First of all, I thought Blakely was a VIP cocktail waitress. This behavior is not befitting a VIP cocktail waitress. Second of all, even if she moonlights as hairstylist on the side, who the hell brings foils on a vacation? (Did she also pack a waitress tray and cocktail glasses?) Third of all, if you were competing in a reality TV show for the love of a man, would you let your competition anywhere near your hair? One false move with those foils and Emily looks like, well, Jennifer.

Back on the solo date, Jennifer is having the “best night of her life” (uh oh). “I’m falling for Ben,” she says. “I would be the perfect partner for him for life.” (Double uh oh.)

Once again, there is some sort of awkward concert with a semi-famous musician—Clay Walker—and once again, the bachelorette thinks Ben actually set this whole thing up himself.

“It makes me feel really special that Ben would set this up for me!” she says.

And by Ben, she means Next Entertainment Telepictures, the production company that produces The Bachelor (sometimes nicknamed “Ben.”).

Cocktail party time.

All the girls are sitting on the couch bad mouthing Courtney and when she enters the room, they go silent.

It’s actually hilarious. No one is even smart enough to even pretend that they weren’t all just talking shit about her. No one even offers a half-hearted, “Oh, Jamie was just telling us the funniest story. About somebody else. Who is definitely not you.”

Instead, they’re all exchanging looks like, “Awkward!”

And damned if Courtney doesn’t just slither over and sit on the edge of the couch and stare them all down, calm as you please.
Love that crazy bitch.

Meanwhile, Ben has asked to spend some quality alone time with Monica.

The whole Monica thing has been a bit of a bust, to be honest. I thought she was going to be a salty, feisty wise-cracking lesbian—the kind of character who would be played by Stockard Channing in the summerstock production of The Bachelor—but she’s really just receded into the background. She’s filler.

Anyway, Emily breaks up their one-on-one time, because she needs to tell Ben something very, very important—namely how wrong, misguided, and flatout dumb he is being about Courtney. (She’s not doing it for herself, people, she’s doing it for Ben.)

Hey future bachelors and bachelorettes of this world, can I give you a little unsolicited advice? Don’t be that guy. Don’t be the “so and so is totally different around the other bachelor/ettes then he/she is around you” guy. It never works. Never. You just seem like a narc and it kinda puts you in the friend zone and you’re also, indirectly at least, calling the star of a show a fool who’s being duped.

Ben even tries to give Emily an out.

First, she starts talking in generalities—although she has every intention of narc-ing on Courtney. (Her secret desire is that Ben will demand the name of this scheming infidel and immediately banish her from the house!)

“There is one girl who is very different around you than she around the rest of the girls,” Emily starts.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about. And I don’t expect you to throw anyone under the bus,” Ben says.

It’s not too late, Emily! Run away! Run away!

“It’s COURTNEY!” Emily says.

And, in fact, Ben does take a  little offense. He’s basically like, “You do Emily and I’ll do Ben, m’kay?”

And she skulks back to the couch in shame.

“I think I just screwed up,” she says. Ya think?

But her mensa moment continues. She starts bitching about Courtney to Casey, the Paris Hilton lookalike, who also happens to be Courtney’s best (and only) friend in the house.

When will these girls learn? The Queen Bee always has a sidekick, someone who is pretty, but not as pretty as she is, and who will blindly obey and worship her.

So Casey immediately goes and tells Courtney about Emily’s tattling to Ben and Courtney FREAKS. OUT.

“I’m a nice person,” she says. (Oh, that's rich.) “But don’t f**k with me.  Emily should watch herself. I’ll shave her eyebrows off in the middle of the night. I just want to rip her head off and verbally assault her!”

(Just a suggestion, Court-Court: Reverse that order. Because once your head has been ripped off, the verbal assault stings a lot less.)

So Courtney marches up to the couch and confronts Emily and it’s really like Emily has brought a butter knife to a gun fight. She’s not even in Courtney’s league.

And Emily’s little face begins to screw up and her lip begins to quiver in a somewhat unattractive way and Courtney just laughs that crazy, maniacal, Glenn-Close-in-Fatal-Attraction laugh and says, “Good look, Emily! Winning! Winning!!!”

And I just want to get on my feet and applaud.

So rose ceremony dram-ah. Will he deep-six Monica or Emily?
It’s Monica—who actually cries in the limo.

“It sucks when somebody doesn’t feel the way you feel,” she says. (She’s talking about Blakely, right?)

Then Ben announces to the remaining girls: “We’re going to Vieques, Puerto Rico!”
And they’re all squeeing and jumping up and down except for Courtney, who says with a bored eyeroll, “I was just there two months ago.”

And if I were doing the Bachelor music, I would totally play the sad trombone sound, because it is such a perfect buzzkill. (Have I mentioned how much I love that crazy bitch?)

Next week, Ben goes skinny dipping with  . . . well, do I even have to say who?

And I promise to work out my adventures with digital video recording technology.