Dawn breaks on St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. There are only two eyes that aren’t puffy, because last episode everyone was a sobbing mess; the girls were crying, Nick was crying and Corinne was…clicking over the cogs in her brain to see how she could capitalise on this whole sorry mess.
Nick has taken a stroll down the beach and planted his backside on a sinking ship. OK…it was an upturned boat, but that doesn’t have the same metaphorical flair. Who should happen down the beach than Chris Harrison to offer some relationship advice. Well why not? At least he lasted eighteen years before he divorced his wife. Actually, I think Chris might actually be there because at the rate that Nick is ditching these girls and cancelling rose ceremonies, Chris runs the risk of not meeting his on air commitments.
Nick is morose. He reminds Chris that this is his eleventy billionth time appearing on a Bachelor franchise (Please, Nick. No more.) and he’s confused and he’s scared. Chris remains silent, but gives Nick the magic host handshake and all of a sudden the game is back on.
Back at the house, the girls too are worried about Nick, especially Danielle (who is thankfully the last Danielle standing and no longer requires an M):
“I just want him to have Hope. I don’t want him to lose Hope.”
HOPE? Who the hell is she? Just when i thought I had these girls sorted…
Conspicuously absent during all of these “Poor Nick” lamentations is Corinne, but wouldn’t you know it? The second Nick ‘s shadow appears at the threshold she’s there like she’s Elizabeth Montgomery clicking her fingers in Bewitched, all sultry-eyed and twisting of hair.
Nick gathers the girls and reminds them that he has been on this show before (good grief) and he just wasn’t sure if he could go through it all again, and he’d been scared. But…
“I’m BAAAAAAACK.!”
I think Nick’s problem is that he signed on for the wrong reality show. Had he signed on for Sister Wives he could have kept the lot of them. At least then when the women all confide in each other about their love of Nick it would just be creepy, and not irrational.
Danielle is pleased that Nick is back in the game.
“Now I have Hope. I am full of Hope.”
At least now I know where Hope is. Emaciated after a diet of only champagne and rose petals, Danielle has eaten her.
To celebrate Nick’s epiphany, he is cancelling the rose ceremony and shipping them all off to Bimini, a speck of an island which is apparently the Gateway to the Bahamas. The girls are all excited to be going to Bimini, because only a few moments before it looked like they were all going to Hell in a hand basket.
Corinne is especially excited. Apparently Bimini is her dream come true. It must be a wondrous place where macaroni cheese and cucumber slices can be plucked from the trees and clothes never need ironing, and there’s always a Racquel or a Lorna around so your pampered, manicured hands never have to touch anything as distasteful as toilet paper or a spoon.
At the villa, the girls are all huggy-wuggy besties.
At least they are until the date card arrives. I suppose it would not be unreasonable for Corinne to assume that she might actually be getting a single date since she technically hasn’t had one yet. Kristina reads it and the date goes to Vanessa. Corinne is as gracious in defeat as ever though:
“WOW. You. Lucky. BITCH.”
She’s worried because she thinks that Nick wants to get to know Vanessa deeper. Emotionally deeper, not Deep Throat deeper, but that’s still a concern to Corinne. She’s so concerned that she is anxious, frustrated and bloated; quite the trifecta.
While Vanessa and Nick exchange boring banter on the bow of a boat, Corinne, the most superficial contestant ever, bails up Rachel to lament about Vanessa’s lack of depth.
“All she is is a pasta making, family orientated special needs teacher. A SPECIAL NEEDS TEACHER! HOW SHALLOW IS THAT!”
There is nothing more entertaining than a bachelorette on the verge of an implosion, and I’m feeling like there is one brewing that will sink Bimini to the bottom of the ocean like the lost city of Atlantis.
Back at the boat, Nick and Vanessa have taken the plunge and, after harassing some sea creatures, are kissing underwater. This must be the most closed mouth kiss ever with not the slightest hint of tongue or snorkel, because Vanessa says that this is what like love feels like. I assume she means floaty and quite a bit moist and not like you are vomiting up a gut full of sea water and the odd clown fish.
On dry land, with no reason to brush her hair, Corinne has downed a few glasses of shiraz by the time the next date card arrives. It’s another group date and Corrine is less than impressed to hear her name called, along with Raven and Kristina. It’s starting to get very Shakespearean, like all those times (once) that King Duncan named someone other Macbeth as his successor, and well, we know how that turned out.
And in another bit of dramatic irony, over at Big John’s restaurant/bar/bait shop, Vanessa has told Nick that she loves him, and the pair kiss, and the romantic music builds to a crescendo, and then…
…Nick reminds her that he has been on this show before (ugh!) and wants to go slow…
…and doesn’t even give her a rose.
Another day, another boat and about a gallon of sunscreen, most of which is inexplicably applied to Kristina’s inner thigh. Yes. It’s as sloppy as it sounds.
Nick announces that the thigh slapping fun (maybe that’s why) they will be having involves swimming with sharks. Kristina and Corinne are most likely to be eaten, according to Raven. Raven will not be eaten by sharks, because she is not afraid of sharks. There’s probably a good reason for that:
Besides, this is the girl who burst through a bedroom door and smashed her good for nothing cheating boyfriend across the head with a shoe. My money’s on Raven as well.
Sadly, none of the girls get eaten by a shark. Kristina bails out early, a tactic which seems to work as she gains Nick’s comfort, Corinne’s wrath and invokes our first “King-of-the-World” moment:
So the four of them head off to another villa for dinner where the three girls are forced to sit on a couch and stare at the tray containing the only rose that will be given out this episode. Nick takes Kristina outside for a mumble exchange, while inside Corinne self-medicates with cheese.
Raven meanwhile drops a bombshell. She was once in law school but lost interest after her beloved father’s cancer diagnosis. Please Nick. Give this girl a rose. I luuurve this girl!
Anyway, finally it’s Corinne’s turn. She laments that she hasn’t been on a single date with Nick, but he re-assures her that she has more than made up for it on all the other dates where she has exposed her breasts, shoved her tongue down his throat, or a combination of the two. There seems to be a sub-text that if Nick had actually taken Corinne on a single date, she would have devoured him afterwards like a female praying mantis.
But the group date goes to…Raven who gets to be serenaded by a song that’s all about getting drunk, and even better, we get to go to Hoxie, Arkansas!
Next day, Nick and Danielle go on a bicycle ride all the way around Bimini for their singe-date. Ten minutes later, they’ve run out of island, run out of conversation and run out of chemistry.
Nick persists with a tedious dinner where the highlights of their conversation are Wisconsin and dead boyfriends; a carbon copy of the last dinner conversation they had together. Finally, Nick can’t deny that Danielle has about as much personality as a washed up cuttlefish and he tells her she has to go home.
She’s not even granted the dignity of a suitcase ninja (I suppose that’s not a profession that’s abundant on Bimini) and she has to front the remaining five girls who hug her like crazy because they know that with her departure they each have a one in five chance.
Well nothing fuels a desperate bachelorette than watching a bawling elimination right before your eyes, and Corinne is not going to take this lying down. She’ll possibly take it on her knees; she’ll possibly take it straddled across Nick’s hips, but lying down? No way! She’s desperate and it’s time to take action. If Nick isn’t going to bring his love to her, she will take her love to him.
So off she trots to the Bimini Hilton, right up to Room 135 where she plans to blow… the room up.
And she reckons she has the tools to do it.
“My heart is gold, but my vagine is platinum.”
Just like that, win or lose, rose or none, Corinne with the nanny from Florida has managed to place herself firmly into the pop culture lexicon.
But before Nick can experience Corinne’s metal lady bits, he calls a halt. Maybe that platinum was glistening in the moonlight…
Besides, there’s still a date with Rachel to go. She of the First Impression Rose. She who was yesterday named as the next Bachelorette. So good date or bad date, we ultimately know how this will end up. I sometimes wonder about the contempt with which the producers of this program treat their viewers. The winner is ALWAYS leaked (not by this little blogger), but this one is an added slap in the face. I can only think that viewers were starting to find Nick and Corinne so vacuous and girls like Vanessa so compromising of their principles that the producers wanted to inject a little ray of sunshine onto a pretty bleak landscape.
Nick takes Rachel to a pirate bar where no tourists go and they spend the afternoon sucking down a single beer each and writing graffiti all over the ceiling. Now we know why they don’t like tourists there.
Finally, after enduring the same ad for heartburn medication three times in a row (probably fitting) on 9 Life, I quiver in anticipation of a rose ceremony, but something is afoot. Chris Harrison is back, but neither he nor Nick are dressed in a suit. Nick, it turns out, already knows who he is going to send home and that means there will be no rose ceremony. Honestly, either Chris neglected to pack the roses, or Bimini is mighty short on florists as well as suitcase ninjas, but this lack of rose ceremonies is becoming very distressing.
Instead, like the Grim Reaper, Nick appears and beckons his bony finger in the direction of…Kristina.
He takes her outside. Kristina mumbles something. It might have been “You never gave me a chance” or it could have been “Fuck you, asshole”, but the outcome is the same, Kristina is going home.
The girls are pretty bummed and although it’s very sad to see Kristina’s technicolour dream in tatters, I’m excited. For the first time all season I’m really, really excited…
…we’re going to meet Racquel.
Or maybe not.
The Bachelor screens on 9 Life (Australia), Tuesday 8:30 pm
Photo credits: 9 Life, Google maps, Google images
friday night with kath 