A Belated Bachelor recap: The Importance of Being Peter

It's Bachelor catch-up week on These Are The Belated Things! The following recap is for weeks 2 & 3 of ‘The Bachelor,’ with weeks 4 & 5 forthcoming. If Peter makes it to week 6 without clawing his eyes out to symbolically rid himself of his own ignorance like a Sophocles character… you'll be the first to know :)

I was wrong. Please don't repeat that to anyone, and I'll deny it if you do, on account of my pristine track record for being right about everything for 31 years straight, but…I was wrong about Peter Weber.

In the recap for this Bachelor season's premiere, when I said that Peter's main qualities were "nice" and "airplanes-go-up-up-big-fast," I was wrong. First of all, it’s hard to be all that nice when all of their actions are this…unpremeditated. Plus, in episodes 2 and 3, Peter makes it through an entire four hours of television barely even mentioning that he's a pilot. And when Hannah Brown suggests that they hop on a flight—literally his favorite thing to do—and blow this popsicle stand he's all, "Aight, I think Imma head out now…"

It's an offer to which it's seeming more and more likely our Bachelor should have said yes. Because over the course of the first three episodes of this season, and with rumors of what's to come, I've learned that Peter's personality is not dominated by his niceness (an insult) as first presumed, or his ability to fly a plane (a non-entity) as advertised, but in fact, by his earnestness (a threat to my personal well-being and this franchise at large).

There seems to not be a dishonest bone in this man's tall body, and unfortunately, as far as one-sided-polyamorous dating goes, the ability to be a touch discerning with the transparency you offer your early-twenty-something girlfriends is, in fact, a valuable skill.

Peter conducts himself like the single-male-owner-of-a-precocious-pet who thinks that if he just believes the goodness of his cartoon cat enough, Garfield can be left alone in the house with a lasagna. But Garfield can't be left alone in the house with a lasagna, and these women can’t be penalized for coming on this show for the Wrong Reasons if those Wrong Reasons are being interested in the opportunities that come along with coming on this show.

Leave a lasagna on the counter; a lasagna-loving cat is going to eat it. Date on a show that guarantees Instagram followers to its contestants; contestants interested in Instagram followers are going to come on the show to date you. It doesn’t mean the cat is bad; it means you have to work around the cat’s proven behavior, and if Peter can't figure that out, he is well on his way to Jon Arbuckling this thing aaaaall the way into his own personal hell.

Peter is just a man clueless enough in his own skin to say things like "I see your heart" over and over and over, and not really care that his words mean nothing if he says the same thing to 20 people in a row, some of whom were actively bathing in virgin-blood and, like, applying their lipstick with an oozing sea creature like Ursula in The Little Mermaid seconds before he entered the room.

All it takes for Peter to see someone's heart and trust that they're a good person with good intentions is to just…see them. And all it takes for Peter to think that maybe they're not a good person with good intentions is to just…hear that idea spoken aloud. And then all it takes for them to convince him once more that, no, they are a good person with a clearly visible heart who only occasionally steals the voices of teenage mermaids is to…say that to him.

It's becoming clearer and clearer that Peter has perhaps…never made a decision before? That he was just born one day, found out his dad was a pilot and his mom was a nice, fun-loving gal, filmed a Sylvan Learning Center commercial, and then thought: I will become a pilot and I will find a nice, fun-loving gal to be my next-mom-I-mean-wife. But maybe everyone in Peter's life has always been so nice to him that he's never actually had to assess what it means for someone to be nice and fun, versus just being a (hot) woman who exists.

His ability to discern the difference between what he personally witnesses and what other people tell him is reality is…concerning.

And listen, Peter is adorable. He has a lot going for him—or actually, he has one thing going for him, and that thing is that he is adorable. Look no further than the Sylvan Learning ad above to see that this is a person so sweet, the mere existence of his squishy little bitmoji cheeks makes me want to cry. Also a mitigating factor in making me want to cry: knowing that the tween shown above who worked so hard to learn how to read or whatever is about to get absolutely walloped by the tiny, sexy n' sentient Hot Wheel cars of chaos ABC has assembled to date him this season.

Never has there been a hotter group of women assembled on this show; never has there been a meaner group of women assembled on this show; never, ever has there been a Bachelor less equipped to counterbalance his predisposition to assume the best in people with the undeniable fact that:

• a handful of these women are Bad Place demons wearing Emily Ratajkowski skin suits…

• the majority of these women have modeled their life after that Keeping Up with the Karadashians scene where Kim hits Khloe with her purse while Khloe eats Chipotle and mocks her…

• and maybe two of these women have made it through their whole lives without cyberbullying someone to tears.

Peter has seen their hearts, and reader… he loves them! Every single one of them! Equally! If this man knows the type of person he would pair best with for the rest of his life, he is keeping it close to the Delta vest.

He likes peppy girls like Alayah and Mykenna who would die before they'd stop grinning in front of him. He likes feisty girls like Sydney and Kelsey who are so ready to pop off at all times that they set hourly alarms at night just to wake up and make sure they don't miss anything that could possibly annoy them. He likes smart girls like Kelley, and bold girls like Natasha, and quiet girls like Victoria F who choke at even the slightest hint of pressure…

Hey Peter! If you can't put your finger on what it is you like about them: you like that they're hot. And if you keep liking some girls because they're nervous and some girls because they're confident and some girls because they unhinge their whole jaw to smile every time they talk to you, some recappers—less generous recappers—might start to suspect that you're just trying to Dr. Frankenstein a Hannah Brown together out of spare parts and molars…

SEE YA, WOULDN’T WANNA HANNAH B YA

And speaking of Hannah Brown…were we ever so young? I know it's been weeks since Hannah B finally left our Bachelor screens in a cloud of glitter and chaos, but the thing about Peter's season is…I can't just not cover something once I’ve missed it, because drama simply does not togo away with Pilot Pete at the reins. It just festers and festers until someone is screaming, "I DIDN'T BULLY YOU, I CALLED YOU A FAKE BITCH, THERE’S A DIFFERENCE!!!”

And we'll get to all that, but first, the easy stuff: Hannah.

After a prolonged, confusing run-in where Peter and Hannah both seemed to realize that their feelings for one another didn't disappear, and perhaps had even increased with the addition of a patented DWTS tan and what I'm starting to suspect are highlights in Peter's hair, it turns out that vague interest does not a commitment to rekindling make.

Hannah…likes attention. That's not a bad thing, it's just a a proclivity that one benefits from being self-aware about — like knowing that you tend to overextend yourself, or that you need to take alone time after a big social gathering.

Enjoying attention is why Hannah was so good at being the Bachelorette (even if Hannah was, y'know, bad at being the Bachelorette). It's also why, once Hannah sensed that Peter still had feelings for her, there was never any chance she wasn't going to lean into that to find out just how much pull she still had over him. It's nice to be wanted; it's not exactly nice to drag that want out of someone when you have no intention of getting back together with them and they actively have 12 women waiting to date them while scribbling down embarrassing sex stories at your instruction.

I don't think Hannah was intentionally trying to distract Peter or lead him on, but I do think she was getting a painful thrill from the realization that they both still liked each other…

Riiiiight up until Peter ever-so-softly lobbed the idea of her coming back on the show to date him and she realized how embarrassing that would be and that while she would still very much like to make out with this guy, she was not down to embarrass herself for him. And Peter finally, finally gets to an understanding of just who’s been willing to do what in this relationship. He points out to Hannah that that it's a little suspect that she would say she didn't reach out to him after her breaking up with Jed and asking Tyler out on national television because she "thought he wanted to be the Bachelor."

In what I assume will be his singular good call of the season, Peter tells Hannah in the very softest voice: "You're the one that said no to me; I've never said no to you." Somewhere, Nicholas Sparks has just cast a hunky Riverdale star to say that line in the film adaptation of the book adaptation of this scene. And finally, Peter tells Hannah that he can't do this…

Y'know, riiiiight after 30 minutes of lap-sitting, and sexy-hugging, and hair-tucking while all of his co-girlfriends loiter around a haunted improv theater wondering where their boyfriend is. Because the thing about Peter is: he can do a lot of damage on his way to eventually making the right decision.

This dummy comes back out to a group of women who have quit their jobs and started sleeping in bunkbeds in order to date him covered tit-to-toe in glitter from Hannah's dress, gathers them ‘round and tells them he's simply no longer up for hearing about the time they got their tonsils stuck on a Prince Albert piercing and had to sing Aerosmith in order to relax their throats enough to not suffocate.

This is one of those moments where Peter's earnest belief that all things should be shared openly, honestly, and in the moment is…infuriatingly dumb. “This is just tough,” he tells his assembled girlfriends: “I know you guys know what I had for [Hannah] was very real.”

Oh, Peter, no. There is never a reason in the world that you should be telling your new girlfriends how tough it is to not be over your old girlfriend who you just happily welcomed onto a date with them. "This was my heart just being really invested her," Peter tells them for some reason. "And that's not just gone away."

Y’know, I like to think there is no reality that exists where I could end up getting out of a limo and asking a strange man to taxi my runway or whatever. But even as I exclaim, "NO NO NO PETER, WHAT IS YOU DOING" to my laptop screen…I am simultaneously watching myself onscreen as Mykenna stretches an orange-slice-smile across her face during Peter’s little pity party in order to make him feel like he hasn't done anything wrong in making them all feel awkward at best, and demeaned and disrespected them at worst.

Because I know—I just know—that's exactly the kind of shit my people-pleasing ass would be pulling in this absurd situation. So I have to thank Chris B Harrison on High for people like Natasha who do not spend every waking moment thinking about how they can make other people comfortable, and allow a few seconds in the day to think about how others have made them uncomfortable.

After Peter tells them how hard Hannah being there has been for him because his "heart being really invested" in her hasn't gone away, everyone titters uncomfortably. Everyone except Natasha who casually pipes up: "I mean, she hasn't gone away."

You can audibly hear Peter gulp. Was everyone not on the same page as him??? Does everyone not think exactly what he thinks at all times??? Was saying, "because I know you guys all know what I had for Hannah was very real" a misstep???

"She's been here since the first day," Natasha continues. "Every day I've seen you, I've seen her, pretty much—which also sucks for us."

This is…one of my favorite things that's ever happened on this series??? A real-time request for accountability??? Your gritty HBO thriller could never shock like this. Natasha has been on this earth 31 years; that is long enough for her to know that perception is reality, and Peter can't run around the ABC promos saying how ready he is for love, and then come to them looking like he's seen a sexy ghost, telling them how hard it is for him to be in the situation that he has willfully put himself in.

It's not Peter's fault if production brings Hannah in twice — but only he can account for how he handles to it. And, like…maybe 10 minutes of sexy hugging would have been enough?

To give Peter the smallest amount of credit, he's at least far too earnest to be defensive, so he immediately agrees that Natasha is correct and this hasn't been fair to them. Will he learn any lessons about maybe giving his decisions a little more thought before he blasts them out into the 20-girlfriend ecosystem in the future? Reader…

He will not. And it's almost like this complete clusterfuck of a group date sets the tone for the rest of the season which is turning out to be…well, a months-long, international-waters clusterfuck.

CHAMPAGNEGATE

This is one of those dramas I might otherwise try to sweep under the rug of my own tardiness, but I can't. Because, against all odds, it is proving to be a driving force of Peter's season.

You see, it all started at the second cocktail party where Kelsey had brought a bottle of champagne all the way from Iowa to share with Peter. Everyone is…really excited about this champagne. "I'm really happy for you, I know how much you wanted to do this," Tammy tells Kelsey as they sit in a large group talking non-stop about this bottle of champagne. "I'm really excited for you and to hear how it goes," Alayah tells her giddily.

But, you guys? It's just champagne she's had for a year—I've had specific intentions for leftover Chick-Fil-A sauces for longer than that. And she didn't even buy it, she got it for her birthday from someone not important enough to her to mention by name. Now, the bottle of champagne is very clearly Dom Pérignon, which is a nice champagne, but they're obviously not allowed to say the brand on the show, and Kelsey still manages to spiral plenty over the edge without needing to mention how expensive this specific champagne is.

No, this bottle of champagne is all about what it represents, and what it represents is…childbirth I think??

As Kelsey sets up a cozy little corner for her romantic moment with Peter, she tells the camera, "I mean, I'm a hopeless romantic, I love love—and to me, the bottle really shows my heart and what I want, and like, I want a husband, I want to have a family." [Ed. note: Hey, if anyone knows which inanimate object sends the opposite of that champagne bottle message, please let me know and Imma put it on my Bumble profile, k thanks.]

Unfortunately, after Kelsey gets her fireside bottle set up, Mykenna asks Peter for some time even though she allegedly got a lot of time with him on the group date.

On a different season, Kelsey unleashing on Mykenna — saying that she's disrespectful and her reasons for wanting to speak to Peter further are "bullshit” — might be the drama of the evening. But Peter's season snorted pixie stixx before it started and it's ready to ride this high all the way to the Final Rose. Please enjoy some photos of Tammy listening to this preliminary fight go down, not even knowing what’s still left to come:

It’s worth noting that Kelsey is the one who in her Bachelor bio said that she's had some rough times in the past, but “thanks to frequent Pilates classes,” she’s now in peak physical and spiritual form…

Unfortunately, it seems that there is no Reformer studio in the Bachelor mansion. Because after Alayah has reapplied Kelsey's makeup following her outburst at Mykenna, and after everyone has amped her up again, and just after she's said, "Anyone can bring a champagne bottle and toast, but this is something I've been saving for over a year—like, it's a big deal," Kelsey hears a distant pop.

And then distant shouting…

And completely kamikazes the entire cocktail party. The woman really does wield incredible power.

When they hear the champagne pop, the other women just immediately start hissing, "Don't ruin your makeup," because they seem to innately understand that Kelsey has been without Pilates for six days and she's about to swallow this whole show up into a black hole.

As it turns out, Hannah Ann also had a champagne toast planned for Peter, so when she somehow scooped him before Kelsey, and they spotted a champagne station, she popped Kelsey's dusty ass bottle of champagne. Now, I don’t believe for a second Hannah Ann did this on purpose; I believe the producers proposed the idea of a champagne toast to Hannah Ann on the same night that Kelsey was planning to share champagne that represented wanting to have Peter’s children, then set Hannah Ann's champagne up in a dark, dank corner, and just crossed their fingers that something like this might happen…

What those producers never could have accounted for, was just what terrors these women would turn into once their evil plot played out.

Kelsey and Hannah Ann have two very different approaches to weathering this conflict, but they share one important trait: neither would ever consider that they've done anything wrong in their entire life.

Incredibly, after confirming that Peter and Hannah Ann did indeed pop her champagne, Kelsey chokes out, EXCUSE ME, storms to the bathroom with an entourage trailing behind her like a 7th grader who just got broken up with on the dance floor in the middle of "Country Grammar," refuses Peter when he comes knocking to see if she's okay [ed. note: NO SHE IS NOT OKAY, PETER, SHE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO HEAR "SHIMMY SHIMMY COCOA WHAT" THE SAME AGAIN!], screams, "NO I'M NOT OKAY," at all of her friends asking her if she's okay, then storms back over to where Peter has now rejoined Hannah Ann, still clueless as to what happened, and—finger in the air—hisses, "You know what…"

No winning argument has ever started with, "You know what!" Kelsey could have calmed down, gone back over and laughed, "You guys opened my birthday champagne without me," and totally defused the situation. But she also could not have accounted for just how coldly Hannah Ann was going to respond to her chosen approach of raining down fire right in front of Peter. (Also, none of it matters at all because Peter thinks everything that everyone does has the exact same amount of merit, and I literally have no idea how he is choosing who goes home.)

It seems that while in the bathroom, Kelsey decided that Hannah Ann knew exactly what she was doing when she opened her champagne, and begins yelling "don’t play dumb" at her, and responding to Hannah Ann's protests with "Bullshit, you knew." But before you go taking up for Hannah Ann, let me make it clear that Hannah Ann seems extremely unbothered by the fact that did something that upset someone this much, and just keeps reiterating that she had no idea it was Kelsey's champagne.

Obviously this was just an accident, Hannah Ann. But six months ago, I accidentally got in front of two teens waiting in line at Target, realized it, apologized profusely, but on the way out heard them complaining about it to their other friend, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. What if they thought I overlooked them completely because I am a self-obsessed white woman? What if, deep down, that is the reason I didn’t realize they were in line???

I assume that everyone lives their life like this, but even if there is some super human mutation that makes some people able to banish their mistakes into a mythical abyss, it is pretty common practice to apologize to someone in the moment if you do something to upset them, even if it was an accident.

After being utterly useless for awhile, Peter guides Kelsey to another location to calm her down — and wouldn’t you know, it just so happens to be the location of the second champagne set up. Which, to add insult to injury, is very clearly a $9 bottle of prosecco…

And to add insult to injury to indigestion, Kelsey accidentally knocks the glasses over, so Peter suggest they just take pulls from the bottle…

To which Kelsey coyly responds, "I'm not a classy bitch all the time," and takes a swig…

Oh, it is delicious.

I mean, this champagne goes everywhere; it is more graphic than Hannah humping Tyler C on that massage table. I assume every producer just climaxed right then and there at the hell they hath wrought.

Especially because the impromptu champagne shower did not make Kelsey laugh, showing Peter how easygoing she is; it enraged her to a somehow brand new degree. When Hannah Ann comes over to speak to her once she's alone, Kelsey snaps, "Don't talk to me." Then she whips back around and start telling Hannah that what she did "is fucked up, and I'm not about that." To which Hannah Ann responds:

And Hannah Ann doesn't stop saying that exact statement in response to everything Kelsey says until blood is leaking out of her eyeballs.

It’s a bold move! Kelsey is certainly the one oozing irrationality here, but Hannah Ann is the one being called calculating, and then responding with the same non-apology over and over like a Bratz doll with less personality and slightly more breathing.

"I'm over this pretty princess, perfect bullshit, I'm over it," Kelsey spits. "Okay, I have acknowledged your feelings, and I have apologized," Hannah Ann responds, engaging every component in her circuit board to change those tenses.

Peter keeps them both because Peter lives for drama, but then at the next group date, Hannah Ann has had time to think about it, and tells Peter that she felt bullied by Kelsey after the champagne incident. I respect Hannah Ann not feeling great about being called a fake bitch over and over, but she explains her reason for telling Peter she felt bullied by saying, "It upsets me that Peter doesn't know about that side of Kelsey”…

Which is what actually convinces me that Hannah Ann might be full of shit, because Peter was sitting right there when Kelsey came tearing around the corner like Princess Peach from the depths of hell screaming:

Peter knows what Kelsey is like, and he kept her anyway. It's fine if Hannah Ann wants to further point out that she called her a bunch of rude names, but don't disguise it as protectiveness, sis. Because if Peter can’t protect himself, you’re certainly not going to be able to.

Peter of course responds to Hannah Ann’s accusation by saying it’s not okay that she’s hurt: "I know you're such a beautiful person, I can already see that.” And then turns around to get Kelsey's side of the story, who is more or less like, I called her a bitch because she is a bitch but it’s only because I was mad…

And I guess Peter was expecting Kelsey to be like, Yes I bullied her, because now he is UTTERLY confused by hearing these two conflicting stories even though he is a first-person source for the majority of what happened between them.

But Peter really needn't worry about the "finasco" of Hannah Ann and Kelsey, because the next morning, they basically agree to disagree about who the real victim of their situation was, and besides — Peter is about to have a much bigger fish to fry…

A FISH NAMED ALAYAH

How do we solve a problem like Alayah?

See, the problem is that Alayah is annoying as hell. But there's very little to suggest in these first three episodes that Alayah is malicious. After all, Alayah is the one who reapplies Kelsey's makeup twice when she cries it all off over the champagne that represented her familial bliss. Fake-nice people aren't a lot of fun, but they can be important when balancing out people like Kelsey who are a little too real. But suddenly, in episode 3, Sydney can no longer tolerate Alayah in the Bachelor community.

The editors perfectly set up that Alayah is annoying by showing her sloshing around red wine and talking about being a "pilot wife" [ed. note: barf] in a testimonial, and then deftly switching to what appears to be security camera footage of all the women hanging around the kitchen. Sitting on the counter, clearly a little drunk, Alayah is animatedly saying that everybody thinks that she's "this sweet little elegant proper thing" because she's competed in pageants her whole life, and then someone off-camera cuts in asking if she has a wild side.

Alayah yelps back, "Fuck yeah, dude—bro, I get nasty" with all the false bravado of someone who's afraid they’ve never known real intimacy with another person.

As Alayah is saying this, Sydney is captured eating a half of an avocado with a spoon, shooting daggers in the direction of the kitchen island.

Sydney's knives are out, and I get it—if I had heard Alayah say, "Bro, I get nasty" while wearing a pilot's hat perfectly askew, I may have vomited my spoonfuls of raw avocado right up. But ya know what I wouldn't have done…

Told Peter that Alayah is a fake, because what good can ever come of that?! Even if you're right, even if you really are trying to protect Peter… if Peter wants to keep Alayah, he will keep Alayah. Peter watched Kelsey spew venom at Hannah Ann over a small mistake, then believed Hannah Ann when she told him Kelsey was a bully, and he still kept Kelsey.

If the scene in the kitchen is meant to convey that Alayah is a fraud, it is unsuccessful; if it's meant to convey that she's not someone you would want to hang out with, it should win an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Especially when it's followed up with the reading of the group date card (which of course includes Sydney and Alayah) and Alayah trilling out to Jasmine, "I really wanna know baby girl, how do you feel not getting a date?" I want to be clear to anyone and everyone, aaaaall across the gender spectrum: unless you have seen my bare boobs, we are not on the level where you can call me baby girl and get away with it — and even then, it’s a risk.

Clearly, the reason Sydney doesn’t think Alayah is right for Peter is that she doesn’t like Alayah, and the editors have made a good case for the reason why. But the narrative Sydney ultimately chooses to go with is that Peter needs to be aware that Alayah is there for—dun, dun, dun—The Wrong Reasons.

Coming off of Hannah B's season, Peter is particularly paranoid about The Wrong Reasons. But what he really needs to be vigilant about are his own reasons. I think even Hannah would tell him that the wool wasn't pulled over her eyes by dummies like Luke P and Jed; she just saw what she wanted to see and made bad decisions. Interestingly, Peter seems to be taking the slightly altered approach of pretending he sees nothing, and making bad decisions.

Moments after he's told a number of women on the group date that he has a really good feeling about them, including Alayah, Sydney comes in and tells him that she's having a hard time because "the imagery of all this makes girls not be themselves or put on a façade you might really like in the beginning and then, like, when you're in real life, realize it's not real."

Peter is floored. Some of these women are putting on a façade of perfection in the first seven days of dating him??? "Like, that's such a fear of mine, that I could fall for someone and they're like…fake," he tells Sydney.

Then Peter, bud, maybe this is not the show for you! Façade is the name of the game here, is it not? Does he think these women would be getting in full lashes and sequins, and telling him about their traumatic high school years on the first date if they weren't on TV?? There are going to be women who are interested in being on camera and interested in getting Instagram followers after this because you have chosen to date through basically the one medium in the world that guarantees cameras and Instagram followers.

These things are not mutually exclusive: women who put on a show for the cameras can still like you and want to date you, bb!

It seems like Peter is putting so much pressure on himself to not make the same mistakes that Hannah did, that he's trying to eliminate the possibility for any mistakes, which if course means… he's pretty much exclusively making mistakes. Like coming back out to a group of women who feel like they just had good conversations with him and saying, "I saw firsthand what happened last season, and my biggest fear in this is possibly getting blindsided, and I hate feeling like I might be getting fooled right now."

What exactly does Peter think he'll accomplish by scolding these women? That he'll change the reason they're there with one little speech? That the ones who came there for exposure will suddenly stand up and admit it? Does he not recall that Hannah had like a hundred of these dressing-downs last season, and Jed still never told her that he had a girlfriend? I understand the fear, but I do not understand the response to it.

Fakes are fakes and you can't change that; the only thing you can do is trust your own intuition…

Unfortunately, that is not Peter's specialty. When everyone blinks their big eyes at him after his little speech, Peter turns to Sydney, and I kid you not, says: "Sydney, sorry to kind of put you on the spot, but you had mentioned there were people who maybe are different on camera or when I'm not here, and I trust you, and I want to squash this right now."

I don’t care how sweet, simple, and Sylvan-educated he is, my very least favorite kind of Bachelor is the kind who refuses to acknowledge the incredibly complicated social dynamic they have happily signed up for.

YOU WANT TO SQUASH THIS RIGHT NOW, PETER?! Squash what?! An entire ecosystem of fame and entertainment based on heightened human behavior that ever so occasionally turns out a successful marriage?? You want to squash that right here at this 12-person date in an abandoned antique warehouse???

Just fly your little planes, kiss some women under some waterfalls, and take your chances, my friend!!!

In attempting to quickly squash something that should have only ever been an internal consideration, Peter takes Sydney’s warning public, creating absolute mayhem. With little hesitation, Sydney admits that she was referring to Alayah when she said some women were putting on a front for the cameras. So Alayah asks the other women if they feel that way, and naturally they keep their mouths shut because some people in this season have a little sense.

No, they wait patiently until the next day when Chris Harrison announces, "Good news, Peter's going to come over and join you for an afternoon pool party," which is kind of like saying, "Good news, you have a colonoscopy today" in the Bachelor world.

Nothing good ever comes of replacing a cocktail party with a pool party, especially when Peter seems to be using every single one-on-one conversation to ask each woman what they think of Alayah. The only people this overcast pool party proves fun for are the Bachelor editors who get to waffle back and forth between clips of Alayah proudly telling the camera that Sydney is the only one who feels this way, and clips of every other woman you could identify by name saying that, yes, Alayah seems a little fake.

But I still just don't think this is much of an indictment! Some people are fake, that's their personality. Some people are consummate caretakers; some people are really committed to being free-spirited; and some people just kind of pretend to be happy all the time. That's Alayah's deal. Alayah told Sydney that was her deal at the group date when Sydney sort of lured her into admitting that she's been trained to put on a certain front as a professional pageant-doer.

This was shortly after Sydney accused her of not having a job, and shortly before Sydney asked her if she has any emotions. If Alayah can keep a smile on her face as someone she barely knows suggests that she’s a sociopath without a job, then yeah—high-pitched niceties might just be her personality.

Most importantly, Peter likes that high-pitched personality. Because when they sit down, Alayah provides exactly no introspection as to why the other women might feel that she's fake, simply telling Peter that she "chooses to be happy." She offers the completely convincing argument: "Like, if I didn't feel chemistry with whoever the guy is, or if I wasn't interested, I can't fake it."

And folks, Peter loves it. Whoever the guy is!

Sydney told him Alayah was fake, and so it was reality. But then Alayah tells him she's not fake, so then that is reality. Peter and Alayah walk away from their conversation pleased with the current reality, right up until…

Peter makes the mistake of speaking to another person: Victoria P, who has recently fallen in love with Peter after one date, and who told Peter the saddest story he's ever personally heard about her childhood…

…and therefore whose heart Peter has seen the very most of, and who he now trusts implicitly for character references.

Victoria P tells him that she's feeling a little uncomfortable because she actually knows Alayah from the pageant world, but before they came on the show, Alayah asked her not to tell producers that they knew each other. "I don't wanna lie, I can't lie," Victoria says after agreeing to lie, and actively doing it for a few weeks. She tells Peter she didn't give it much thought when Alayah first proposed it, but now that she thinks about it, "[Alayah] was really open to all the opportunities that will come after this, even if you weren't her husband."

Hi, quick aside from me, your friendly local recapper, popping up to say that if you're not open to the opportunities that come with potentially embarrassing yourself on national TV after your 1-in-300 chances of marrying the Bachelor don’t work out, then you're actually…very, very dumb. Not sticking up for Alayah personally because, again…

She does not seem like my kind of hang, but this idea that you need to be against getting enough Instagram followers to make a couple thousand dollars every time you post about cooking shrimp linguine with just the right amount of ingredients and no pesky clean-up is tiiiiired.

After talking to Victoria P, Peter sits back down with Alayah, and says, "I kind of just hoped we had squashed it…but I just still don't feel 100 percent." Crazy that Peter is unable to squash this feeling that Alayah is fake by continuing to ask her 20 closest competitors what they think of her . But, as terrible at this as Peter is, I must admit the face that Alayah makes when she hears Victoria P ratted her out is as delicious as no-hassle shrimp linguine.

Alayah tells Peter that she was afraid they would get disqualified if the producers found out she and Victoria P knew each other — which is obviously a lie, because the these producers are so thirsty for pageant drama, they're basically Candice Burgen and everybody knows it. But Alayah swears she's not lying, and Peter simply cannot wrap his head around two people telling two ever-so-slightly different stories.

But the idea of making his own decision based on his own emotions and personal observations of his own life experience does not seem to occur to our Bachelor. Chris Harrison informs the women that Peter has fled the pool party, and they won't see him again until the Rose Ceremony…

Where Chris Harrison unceremoniously enters when there are just two roses left and takes one away. Mykenna does this…

And it works! Mykenna’s successfully uses The Force to will Peter into choosing her which means Alayah is going home…

OR IS SHE??? After Alayah offers Peter a surprisingly generous goodbye, he rushes off to his producers and is all, "I don’t know if I want her to leave right now," mere seconds after asking her to get off his lawn forever. Even the producers are like…

Excellent Q, guys — I can’t wait to hear Peter explain why he does the things he does!

See you back here in a few days for another belated Bachelor recap — and if you find yourself wishing these important explorations of human behavior were a little more timely, let me just say…

(JUST KIDDING, I’M REALLY SORRY, I’M WRITING AS FAST AS I CAN, AND I’M STILL SORRY TO THOSE TARGET TEENS!!!)