Czech please! The Bachelorette recap

Can this woman tear Arie and Emily asunder? (Spoiler alert: no)

Don’t ya just love when Chris Harrison thinks he’s breaking the “fourth wall” of the show, by turning to the camera and saying, “Hi, I’m Chris Harrison”?

Dude, there IS no fourth wall. This is reality TV. It’s not like Harrison is some sort of shadowy figure we’ve only heard in voiceover. (Ahhh, so THAT’S what Chris Harrison looks like.)

Anyway, the big drama this “Chris Harrison” fellow wants to share with us is that Arie, like, once held hands with one of the show’s producers or somethin’. Seriously, they dated briefly (and obviously meaninglessly) 10 years ago. Not quite sure why Arie didn’t just tell Emily about this but it is legitimately possible that it SLIPPED HIS MIND. That’s how not-big-dealy it was.

Nonetheless, Emily is trying to get him to come clean. It’s like watching  a really frustrating game show where we know that the password is “I dated the producer” but Arie doesn’t.

“What do you value most in a relationship?” Arie asks, sensing Emily has something on her mind.

“Honesty,” says Emily, leading the witness.

“Me too,” says Arie. “If anything, I’m honest to a fault. I’m overly honest.”

Emily glares.

“What else do you value in a relationship?” Arie asks, because it’s clear there’s more to be said.

“Complete and utter openness,” Emily says.

“Those are synonyms for honesty,” Arie says (Okay, he didn’t say that, but I wish he had.)

“You want complete openness?” he says.

“What the fuck do you think we’re talking about here?” Emily says (or something to that effect.)

“Okay,” says Arie.

And here we go:

“I used to have a tattoo of my ex girlfriend’s name on my arm.”

Bwah!

So then we go to a commercial and Chris Harrison is back.

“I’m Chris Harrison,” he says.

I knew that dude looked familiar!

“I’m here to tell you that all the interesting stuff happened off camera.”

So apparently, Emily and Arie made up and are cool with each other and proved this by continuing to swap spit like they were at some sort of spit swap meet.

And then Arie tells Emily that he loves her and then actual fireworks go off.

There are many reasons why relationships formed on the Bachelorette are doomed to fail. But the number reason? Fireworks.

Once you tell a girl you love her and actual fireworks go off (over some shimmering lake in Prague, no less), it’s all down hill from there. 

This shit isn't real, people!

You may think that a pot of gold is waiting for you at the end of the rainbow, but as my Uncle Richard proved in this disappointing but profoundly important video, it’s actually a Staples office supply store.

Okay, so the next one-on-one date is with John, aka “Wolf.”

First of all, has anyone called him Wolf on the show, like, EVER? Just because you wish and hope that “Wolf” is your nickname, that doesn’t make it true.

(This just in: A Google search reveals that his last name is “Wolfner.” Okay, I get it now. . .) (Also, he’s a “data destruction specialist” What the hell?)

Anyway, old Wolfy was totally getting the boot last week until he broke out the dead grandparents card (literally), which saved him for a week.

But his complete and utter lack of personality might still prove to be problematic.

So Wolfy comes back from his date, and he’s on Cloud 9 (well, let’s say Cloud 7. . .I don’t think Wolfy’s personality goes all the way up to Cloud 9) because the date just went THAT WELL.

This makes Chris even twitchier. (More on Chris’s insane-in-the-membrane meltdown later, needless to say.)

But first, one of the most ridiculously fake, embarrassing segments in the history of the show. Yes, I’m talking about Sean’s Stanley Kowalski moment.

So Sean decides he’s a man of action. And men of action don’t just sit around waiting for the Bachelorette to come to them. They go to the Bachelorette.

He has a plan, almost brilliant in its caveman simplicity. He will wander the streets of Prague, shouting Emily’s (first) name, UNTIL HE FINDS HER!

It’s so crazy, it just might work.

So off goes Sean, roaming the streets, yelling, “Emily! Emily!” like he’s searching for a lost poodle.

Then he sees a woman in an alley, in the shadows.

It’s all very Hitchcockian.

Who will it be?

a. Some random blonde who is not Emily

b. A transvestite who will “have to do” for the night

c. A vampire

d. Actually Emily, cause lurking in alley’s in Prague is “her thing”

If you guessed d, well, bravo. You give the show less credit than I do and. . .you are right.

    “Emily, what are you doing here by yourself?” Sean asks.

Really, show?

“Just hanging in Czech alleys, as I am wont to do,” Emily says. “Can we make out now?”

“Boy, can we!”

And . . . scene!

"Czech out my tongue"

Next day, the group date with Chris, Sean, and Doug.

The saga of Doug, the man with no game, continues.

He and Emily are alone in a little nooky, romantic window sill of the castle they’re visiting. This things is so romantic, it may as well be nicknamed “makeout sill.”

And yet, his arms are folded, defensively.

His body language screams, “You can look at Doug, but you can not touch Doug.”

Then, his leg accidentally brushes against hers.

“Sorry!” he blurts out, mortified.

“Doug’s body language is that he doesn’t want to sit with me, much less put his arm around me and give me a kiss,” Emily says in voiceover. Preach, sister.

She decides it’s time to cut Doug loose. She starts her exit speech . ..

“There’s such a thing as a slow mover, but then there’s NOT MOVING AT ALL,” she says.
And with that, he reaches out and gives her quite possibly the most furtive, most bloodless, least romantic kiss in the history of kisses.

“Thank you,” Emily says, as though Doug was a waiter who had just dropped off the check. And then she goes back to breaking up with him.

“I think my girl radar is just totally broken,” he says, as the limo takes him away. (Ya think?) And then he cries. Don’t worry, Doug, there are lots of pretty girls waiting for you at the Celibates Without Partners support group.

So back to the date, which has now gone from a three-on-one, to a two-on-one.

“Dates like this make me want even more to be with one guy for the rest of my life,” Emily says.

(Awkward syntax aside, she does realize that 2 on 1 dates don’t actually exist anywhere outside the little Bachelorette bizarro bubble, doesn’t she? It’s not like, when people finally get engaged, they wipe their brow and say, “Whew! Thank God the awkward two-on-one portion of my dating life is finally over.”)

She gets some alone time with Sean and I become obsessed with the fact that both his hair and his skin have the exact same pigment. He’s like one big, pinky flesh-toned hunk.

Meanwhile, Chris is going bananas. He’s beginning to realize that he hasn’t had enough time with Emily—and it might come back to haunt him.

He twitches.

He sits.

He paces.

He lifts a glass, puts it down.

He crosses his legs, uncrosses his legs.

He twitches some more.

Finally, Sean and Emily come back and Chris pulls her aside.

“I am a little upset with you.” He says it in a playful, flirty way, but we all  know that he’s one chainsaw away from complete massacre mode.

He proceeds to tell Emily how upset he is that he hasn’t gotten a one-on-one date lately. She soothes him with her magical kisses and the crisis is averted—for now.

Nonetheless, he is not totally placated, especially when Sean gets the rose.

“If I don’t get a hometown date, I’ll be scared for anyone around me,” he says.

Next up, Emily’s date with Jefffffff.

They wander into a marionette store (aside: We get Build-a-Bear in the mall. Czechs get quaint little marionette shops, run by Gepetto.)

Then there’s an awkward moment where Jef and Emily act out their love via marionettes.

I can’t say it any better than a woman named Abby Zidle (aka @AbZurdity) did on Twitter:  “This date has taken a weird “show me on the doll” turn.” (A+)

It’s particularly apt because Jef really is such an adolescent. In real life, Jef kinda gazes at the floor, chucks Emily on the arm and says, “You’re swell.” Through his doll, he makes smoldering eye contact and says  “I’m 1 million percent in love with you.” (This segment brought to you by the American Psychiatric Foundation.)

Then they discuss home town dates.

“My parents are in South Carolina—they won’t be there. They’re  . . . committed to some stuff for a few years,” Jef says.

Committed to some stuff? For a few years? In South Carolina? What could this all possibly be a euphemism for? Are they in prison? The witness protection program? Mobbed up? In . . . a CULT?

“My family is very private,” Jef says ominously. (Then he asks her how she feels about Kool-Aid. I worry.)

Rose ceremony time.

Emily contemplates the photos of her five remaining suitors and… an urn.

Yeah, not quite sure what that urn was there for either—to represent Doug? John’s grandparents? (Okay, bad joke.)

Downstairs, Chris is all sweaty and glassy eyed at this point, worrying that he won’t get the rose.

Luckily, he’ll be able to grab a little alone time with Emily at the cocktail par—DOH!

Some guy named “Chris Harrison” has come downstairs to inform the bachelors that there won’t BE a cocktail party. They’re going straight to the rose ceremony.

“I don’t feel right,” Chris says, bobbing his head and staring at the camera with dead eyes. 

Would you let this man around YOUR child?

“I got this,” says John. “On our one on one date, I knocked it out of the park.” (Sorry, Wolfy, but I thought it a bloop single at best.)

The ceremony begins. Chris stands next to his fellow contestants, positively squirming. He literally looks like he’s rabid. I half expect him to start actually foaming at the mouth.

Emily picks Jef, then Arie, then. . .

“Emily,” Chris interrupts, in a shaky voice. “I really need to talk to you, if that’s okay?”

So Chris pulls Emily aside and professes his love and clearly she can see that the man is unhinged. Dude is tweaking.

Sooooo. . . of course she picks him for a hometown date.

Wolfy, you just got PLAYED.

(In truth, I don’t think she was ever going to pick Wolfy for a hometown date. She had more chemistry with that urn.)

Next week, perhaps the mystery of Jef’s parents will be unlocked! What if they’re Brad and Angelina, you guys?