When it bills itself as a dramatic two night event, you had better brace yourself…
Our episode begins with all of the fellas sleeping off a big one. The house is a disgrace: empty glasses, half eaten raw carrots, and Chad’s meat is everywhere. However, I must have missed the part where the boys had a frolic with the toilet paper, but frolic they must have done, because there it is hanging from every tree,
It’s like they are all awakening from a bad dream; one in which Chad got a rose, called a bunch of them Care Bears and yet still impressed the Bachelorette. Sorry boys, but the dream is true. The man is still there. That’s bad for all of the remaining blokes, except for Daniel (profession – Canadian) who bonds with Chad through conversation about who could dangle more from their coconuts.
Chris arrives early with his date card. There are two one-on-one dates up for grabs this week. The first these is announced and the suspense is palpable. It goes to…
CHA……SE. Darn it.
Before you can say Namaste, JoJo and Chase are at a one of those heated yoga studios where a particularly enthusiastic instructor teaches them all about pelvis thrusting and the ancient art of something she calls “angergasm”. The camera man for this date must have been paid danger money
At least JoJo and Chase get to watch the final throes of this exercise from a safe distance and a sensible angle.
Anyway, we know that it must all be a pretty intensive work out because JoJo has no less than three changes of active wear as a result of the profuse sweating she talks about but we can’t see. Oh to sweat like JoJo!
But it’s not over yet. Although JoJo claims never to have mounted a first date before, she doesn’t seem to have too much trouble when the instructor tells them they are going to align their “third eyes”. Soon their third eyes have aligned so much that they seem incapable of movement and have just morphed into some sweaty, sensual, fixated, immobile being.
Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me? Just give him the rose already, JoJo!
Things are getting pretty sensual back at the mansion as well where the growing bro-mance between Chad and Daniel is intensifying over lifts and grunts.
At dinner, JoJo and Chase talk about their connection (Drinking game: skol every time someone talks about a connection), the word journey starts to be chucked around with gay abandon and as usual, the dinner goes uneaten. Finally, Chase gets his rose. But JoJo claims to have another surprise. She leads Chase into the garden where he is treated to the obligatory serenade by some semi-obscure country artist and Chase and JoJo dance awkwardly. That’s not really a surprise. What would have been surprising was if James Taylor was standing there waving his guitar in their faces.
Back at the mansion, Ali gets to read out the names of the fellas lucky enough to be going on a group date. There are twelve of them, including Chad.
“I don’t want to go on a group date,” whines Chad.
“Where’s a Sharpie?” replies Evan, hilariously.
“Stop talking, Evan,” threatens Chad.
And IT IS ON.
Jordan sticks his two cents worth in and Chad calls him a failed 27-year-old football player (which he actually is). Alex yaps back that Chad is a steaming pile of shit. Chad calls Alex a 25-year-old BLEEP, and unfortunately he hasn’t provided enough semantic clues for me to fill in the blank, so feel free to insert the vulgarity of your choice. Alex responds by making fluttering little gestures with his hands, while Evan sits back smugly sipping on a whiskey, admiring the carnage he has incited.
“Well that accelerated quickly,” observes Jordan, in what could possibly be the understatement of the series.
Somehow they manage to go to bed without throttling one another, and when the new day dawns the group head off on their date, complete with Chad.
JoJo, perhaps intuitive of the drama, has taken them to a theatre. The show is some sort of artsy -fartsy feminist thing where the woman on stage is simulating throwing up a fur ball.
“Do you want to know how I learned to do that?” she asks the audience. No. I assume it’s from sitting at home alone watching your thirty-seven cats throwing up on your carpet.
To Jordan’s abject horror, she goes on to talk about some sex romp she had through Europe and that the fur ball thing was actually a pretend orgasm!
Ali is nervous. He’s sweating, and his beard is growing. And well he should be, because it turns out that JoJo’s grand plan for this group date is for each of the men to tell an hilarious anecdote about a previous sexual encounter. Cringe factor: 957.
Evan’s up for it. He has heaps of rib-tickling stories from his chain of erectile dysfunction clinics, but the rest of them think this is a going to be embarrassing.
Really? As embarrassing as when Olivia jumped out of that giant cake and clomped around the stage dressed as a Vegas show girl? Or that time in The Bachelor: Canada when the poor little virgin preacher’s daughter had to perform burlesque for her potential man? I think you guys got off pretty easily.
The whole scenario makes Chad angry.
“I don’t want to hear about her past encounters any more than she wants to hear about mine,” he explains in a sensitive new age guy moment.
“She hasn’t earned that yet.” Oh. There it is. All the sensitivity of a Neanderthal.
Back stage, Evan tells Alex about his canny plan.
“I’m going to make mine all about Chad,” says Evan.
“Like blows to the face,” shines Alex.
This cannot end well.
Let the show begin. Some of the blokes need to work on their storytelling.
Like Grant. “I’m sixteen. I’ve just met this girl and I’ve decided I’m going to have sex with her.” That’s the sort of talk that would get you into Stanford on a swimming scholarship.
Like Ali, whose beard is again down to his knees. “As I was making out with her, I could feel her moustache.”
And especially like Daniel. “She’s in handcuffs right now. I always carry a knife with me when travelling. What if I were to cut off a lock of her hair?”
WTF? Now we know why he is so pale. He is some sort of Canadian night stalker.
Finally, it’s Evan’s turn. Reminding everyone about his profession, he decides to go on a rant about steroid abuse and its effects on body parts and performance. Chad is right in the cross-hairs an he knows it, brooding in the audience like Bruce Banner. Alex is grinning like a loon and cheering on his guy.
Satisfied with a job well done, Evan returns to his seat, as Chad makes his way to the stage. There is a stand-off where Chad rips Evans shirt. Jo Jo notices the tension.
“I wonder if there’s some sort of beef between them,” she asks. Definitely, and since this is Chad, there’s ample servings of lamb, pork and miscellaneous other proteins as well.
Chad, for his story, calls JoJo to the stage. He tells her that this experience is about their futures not their pasts and goes in for the pash, but JoJo turns her head and it turns in to a bristly peck on the cheek.
Alex is so excited by this turn of events that he looks like he’s going to blow his load. Oh, Alex, you poor deluded fool! He can’t wait to get back stage and start chest-pumping everyone.
Enter Hurricane Chad, who punches a door, shoves Evan in the throat and then sits down to rub his bloody knuckles.
Jordan puts it down to “roid rage.” And that can be terrible. Like that time CP30 turned on R2D2 and told him to shut his fucking condescending know-it-all beeping mouth.
Wow! It’s already been such a huge episode and we haven’t even had the mini-cocktail party yet.
JoJo’s first few on-on-one conversations go OK until Chad tries to barge his way in. Rebuffed, he rejoins the other on the couch.
“Hey,” he says, “I literally don’t start anything.” And there is literally some evidence to back this up. All poor Chad did was say that he didn’t want to go on a group date with a pile of schmucks. It was Evan’s Sharpie comment that forced Chad to insult Jordan and get in a verbal stoush with Alex. And it was Evan who decided to make pointed references to Chad during his stand-up routine, forcing Chad to tear Evan’s shirt, grab Evan’s throat, and punch an innocent door.
Yep. It’s all Evan. The shit-stirrer.
And as proof of that, Evan says something to deliberately rile Chad again. Chad calls Evan a bully and makes some comment about how Evan already has three kids and Evan just gulps.
But the oddest thing happens. In that wee moment, Chad seems just a little less of a prick. Still a prick, just a softer one.
I’d almost forgotten there were still a few fellas back at the house who are oblivious to all of this action. Luke says that if he doesn’t get the one-on-one date, he’s going to cry in the corner. James Taylor gets it. I guess somewhere in the mansion there is a super soggy corner.
Back at the group date, JoJo confronts Chad about the Evan thing.
“It’s about a bully trying to beat up a bully,” he explains in some sort of twisted logic.
“Then stop being the bully,” she replies. Sage advice.
Evan takes that moment to interrupt the conversation. Chad is mad, but is soon distracted by his own reflection.
Evan lays down an ultimatum. “It’s either me or Chad.”
Now as something of a scholar of the genre, this type of thing does not usually bode to well for the one laying down the ultimatum. Like Leah and whichever one of those twins did it the last season of The Bachelor.
JoJo tells Evan that she wants him to say, but she needs more time to make up her own mind about Chad.
“Given that, will you accept this rose, Evan?”
“Yes,” replies Evan, instantly compromising the moral high ground he had only just established.
Chad can’t hide his disgust when Evan emerges with the rose. JoJo tells him he is being disrespectful and Chad pulls his head in like a tortoise into a shell.
Still, on the limo ride home, Chad is pumping his water bottle like he is about to explode.
Next morning, Chad is still sleeping when all the others are in the kitchen. Derek admits that he feels afraid sleeping in the same room as Chad. The come-uppance of this is that a security guard has been added to the mix, and that guard is watching over Chad as he continues to snooze, oblivious. Just a little creepy.
Meanwhile, James T and JoJo are off on their group date where a ninety-two year old woman is going to give them a lesson in swinging.
Oops, I mean swing dancing. That would account for their 1940’s garb.
They have their lesson, then join a swing flash mob, have a lovely conversation about friendship maybe developing into love and all a rose is exchanged.
Things are much more exciting back at the mansion.
Chad awakes from his slumber, notices the security guard and ingests some more protein.
Daniel and Chad sit down for a chat. Daniel gives Chad some bro-mancy advice.
“Say you’re Hitler, ay?” leads Daniel.
“Let’s not call me Hitler,” retorts Chad, chewing on something raw. Good call. Hitler was more charismatic.
“OK. You’re Donald Trump.”
Mumble.
“All I’m saying is, be not so much Hitler. Be like Mussolini, you know, ay? Or Bush, ay?”
Chad just keeps on chewing. I’m busy chewing that advice over as well. At least one of those role models ended up as bullet-ridden corpse, strung-up by the ankles in on public display in an Italian street.
The whole chat hasn’t affected their friendship, though, and the security guard gets to watch them work out. It wouldn’t hurt the security guard to join in.
Chris appears to announce that there will be no cocktail party. Instead, JoJo will be joining them for the WHOLE day for a pool party. There is much rejoicing.
Then Evan grabs Chris and dobs on Chad. Chris pulls Chad aside and tells him Evan has dobbed on him.
“Dude, just go inside and sort it out,” says Chris, wearing his psychologist hat.
“Sure,” says Chad and walks towards the house, thoughts of dismemberment running through his head. There is an impending sense of doom and…
To be continued.
You mean that’s only night one of a dramatic two night event? How I am ever going to last the distance. Watch this space.
friday night with kath 