Two Mean Girls, Smart and Dumb: The Bachelor recap

This is your juicebox on drugs

 

Two episodes in and I finally figured out what's wrong with Bachelor Ben: He's a dude. I mean this with all due respect to the less fair sex—my motto in life has always been “hooray boys!”—but let’s face it, they don't always do their thinkin’ with the thinkin’ part of their anatomy . . .

Ben had three early roses to give away and he totally botched two of them. He managed to give one to the psycho “VIP cocktail waitress” (let’s just assume there are always skeptical air quotes around her job title, just to save me future key strokes) and another one to the psycho model, who is so calmly cruel around the other girls and so eye-battingly sweet around Ben, she’s almost a parody of a mean girl. As for Kacie? Okay, she can stay.

That being said, I still love the guy. Of course, he has a perfect little Jack Russell terrier named Scotch, who trots alongside him off leash and howls fetchingly on command (my dog, by way of comparison, bolts the minute I let him off leash and only howls when I’m trying to sleep.) And of course he drives a cool vintage Ford Bronco—although he loses a few points for tricking it out (our Ben is a bit of a fauxhemian, huh?)

The girls have settled into a house in Sonoma Valley and, in case you didn’t catch it the 185 times Ben said it, he wants to show the girls where he grew up to make them feel comfortable and show them how seriously he’s taking his journey and give them more pieces to the complex jigsaw puzzle that is Bachelor Ben and zzzzzzz. . . sorry, dozed off there.

He picks Kacie for the first date.

Okay, people. Help me out here: Who does Kacie remind me of? Physically, she somewhat resembles Minka Kelly (BTW, did you hear that she’s back with Derek Jeter? Is she insane or is she just in it for a fresh supply of gift baskets?), with a touch of Sandra Bullock thrown in for good measure. But that’s not quite it. . .If anyone can tell me what I'm thinking, I would greatly appreciate it.

So Kacie and Ben walk around Sonoma Valley and duck into a toy store where Kacie buys a baton—apparently she was some sort majorette in a previous life. And then they do the most wholesome and stomach-churningly cute thing ever—they march down the street (cobbled, natch) twirling that damn baton. It’s like a scene they cut out of The Music Man because it was too corny.

“It’s like we’re the only two people on the street right now,” gushes Kacie.

(That’s either because they’re sooo smitten they’ve blocked out the world or because the producers cleared the street, hard to say.)

Then they go into a movie theater, where Ben’s proposal to Ashley is playing on a constant loop. Just kidding: It’s something almost as humiliating! Baby home movies.

After I recover from the fact that Kacie was a toddler in 1989 (ugh, pass the Geritol) . . .I watch the movies. First, it’s Kacie, cute and curly as a toddler, then all drum majoretty as a teen. Next it’s Ben. We see his little baby Ben butt, which the producers have inexplicably blurred (anyone who saw the season promo has already seen Ben’s adult butt in glorious high-def—to which I say, thank you Bachelor promo department). Then we see Ben’s father, who died a few years back. So Ben cries and then Kacie cries and then I cry and it’s a big ol’ blubbery mess.

A few sweet kisses are exchanged. And Kacie gets the rose. (If the rest of the show were this wholesome, it would be presented by the Church of Latter Day Saints and I wouldn’t watch it . . . and neither would you.)

Luckily, Courtney and Blakely exist!

Group date time!

Ben tells the ladies that they’re going to be performing in a play.

The girls all have visions of amateur porno films dancing in their heads, so their faces fall when they meet the playwrights: A bunch of cheek-pinchingly adorable 11-year-old kids.

But these kids have obviously been spiking their juice boxes with LSD, because the play is some sort of trippy fever dream that involves dragons and hippies and weasels and Ben as some sort of male stripper prince in a lamb suit.

But first, the auditions, which prove that 11-year-old boys have a lot in common with 28-year-old men.

“Can you jog in slow motion?” one little boy asks Blakely who, coincidentally, is wearing the exact same thing I’m wearing at work today— a striped micro-romper with a skin-tight bodice!

Blakely does the slow run—as Ravel’s Bolero plays in the background.

“That girl with the. . the like. . the. . .I wasn’t a fan of her,” says the most awesome little girl ever

“She did good,” says one of the little boys. (Heh.)

She gets the role of “Gingerbread Man,” prompting Samantha to quip: “What do you get when you cross a gingerbread man with a hooker? Blakely.”

Oh the hits just keep on coming.

They do the play in front of an audience of Ben’s friends and family (in case you hadn’t heard, Ben grew up in Sonoma) and it’s cute and all you need to know is that Ben makes a very good prince lamb stripper.

They retire to a pool and Jennifer, the cute redhead, boldly grabs the first one-on-one time with Ben (go Jennifer!) and they have this season’s first hot tub makeout sesh.

But Blakely will have none of this.

“Being a Scorpio, we’re super passionate and great lovers,” she explains.  So she grabs Ben and then they make-out in the hot tub, too (and possibly have Scorpio style sex. . .) and poor Jennifer has to witness the whole thing and she is shocked, shocked, shocked that Ben is macking on more than one girl.

All I can say is, I hope they are chasing their appletinis with penicillin this season, cause Ben is swapping spit with everyone.

“You seem super grounded,” Ben says to Blakely in the pool.

(Uh, what? She’s the opposite of grounded. She’s a freakin’ floatation device.)

Then he asks about her outfit, which is the most awesome outfit in the history of outfits, as far as Ben is concerned.

“I just thought it was cute,” she says of her micro-romper.

“I’m blessed in some ways. Cheers to being blessed.”

(Yes, boys and girls, she’s toasting to her boobs. )

It’s time for Ben to give his second rose.

“I’m giving the rose to the girl who owned the day and the night. Made the most of her time with me in terms of  . . . conversation.” (So that’s what they’re calling it now.)

And damned if he doesn’t hand the rose to Blakely.

Me at home (Nancy Kerrigan style): Whyyyyyyyyyyyy?

“Blakely pulled the wool over the sheep’s eyes,” says Emily. (Recapping is so much easier when these girls are coming up with all the good one-liners for me.)

So anyhoo, back at the house, Courtney is just sitting around idly tormenting Lindzzzi and Erika and Kacie like they are her playthings.

“I have a connection with him,” she says.

Mail arrives from Ben: “Courtney, let’s spin the bottle-Ben,” reads Kacie, who is sweet enough to actually be happy for Courtney.

“How’d that taste coming out of your mouth?” replies Courtney. (See what I mean? Almost too magically deliciously villainous to be true.)

“She’s purposefully doing this to get under our skin and it’s working,” groans Erika. (Be the change you want to see in this world, ladies.)

So Ben takes Courtney on a date in the woods with Scotch and those glorious red maples and Courtney has to pretend that she likes:

a. communing with nature

b. dogs

c. Ben

So Ben is totally smitten with Courtney because he can see into  her soul and can tell she’s a marvelous human being. *Barf*

“Courtney’s almost too good to be true,” says Ben. (Remove “almost” from that sentence and you’ve nailed it, buddy.)

He gives Courtney a rose. Later, she talks about it on camera. And you know that sort of eerie, faraway humming that crazy people always do in movies that are set in insane asylums?  Courtney does that, all while sort of smearing the rose on her face. It’s the greatest thing ever.

Time for the final cocktail party and rose ceremony.

Basically, Blakely doesn’t follow Bachelor protocol which is: Once you have your rose, back the hell off.

Instead, she keeps dropping in, boobs first, on all of Ben’s one-on-one time.

“Jugs just came in,” Samantha groans. Love. Her.

So all the girls are getting a hate-on for Blakely, which is apparently even more fun than one-on-one time with Ben, because when Ben swoops in and asks Jenna the Blogger for some alone time, she seems vaguely annoyed.

“Can’t you see we’re being catty here?” she seems to say, slumping her shoulders and trudging after him.

Meanwhile, Blakely overhears the girls griping about her and can’t believe what meanypants they all are! It’s not like she has spent the whole day trying to sabotage their dates and steal their man or anything. . .oh, wait.

So she decides the best course of action is to go hide in a corner with the luggage, rocking back and forth.

Outside, Jenna the Blogger is trying to explain herself to Ben. (I love the Hitchcockian crazy music they play whenever Jenna is on screen.)

As always, it’s essentially like Jenna has put a series of words in a blender and now she is just arbitrarily spitting them out.

“I don’t want you to think that I’m not. . I might appear that I’m not. . . it’s hard that it’s only you. .  .” she says. Ben nods understandingly.

Then someone else comes to break up their date.

So Jenna nearly ugly cries, but instead only ugly grimaces and saves her crying jag for the bedroom. (If you’re keeping score at home: This is two cocktail parties and two bedroom crying jags. I’m pretty sure she could’ve shattered the record, had she stuck around any longer.)

You have to wake up pretty early in the morning to fool Ben—at least before 11—so he’s beginning to suspect that not all is harmonious in the house.

“Some of these women are starting to unravel,” he says. “I had no idea it had gotten this bad this early.”

The mansion at this point is like a house of horrors: Wherever Ben turns there’s a crying girl.

First he stumbles across Crying Corner Girl, aka Blakely.

“Uh, what are you doing?” he asks. And you can tell he’s torn by two thoughts:
a. Ohmygod, I gave the rose to a crazy girl.

b. Her tits look really good in this corner.

Now he wanders into the bedroom and sees Jenna crying.

“Jenna? Hello?” he says. "Are you okay?"

Oh, poor bastard.

So, the rose ceremony. The only big loss is Jenna, who is finally put out of her misery.

“I’m in shock,” she says. (Really? Because that last conversation where you belched out some incomprehensible sentences went so well?) 

Then she begins hugging herself.  Hey, someone’s gotta hug her. (Too soon?)

Next week: Ben’s ex shows up. Could it be. . . Jennifer LoveHewitt?