A TATBT 'Bachelor' Recap: This Virgin Moves Fast
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For those of you playing along at home: Colton is still a virgin; all the 27-and-up women in the house have been sequestered into one room so as not to get their old lady germs on anyone; sexual impurity is still a thing women are led to feel shame about; Demi is the little girl from Problem Child all grown up who spent her hard-earned 90s paychecks solely on the Free People clearance rack. And we, my friends — we remain in a prison of our own making.
With any new season of The Bachelor, I find myself making a few comparisons to sorority life to describe various situations with the women. The seasons are long, these recaps are long, the perfectly curled blonde hair is long; so at some point I'm probably going to mention that Sara T seems like someone who considers winning the run-off for Kappa Kappa Gama Vice President of Recruitment to be her crowning example of overcoming adversity, and she will tell future employers about it in a cover letter application…
But in this season of The Bachelor — this season chock full of virgin punnery and golden birthday excitement and beauty queen feuds and recent college graduates — I find myself wanting to make a sorority analogy approximately every other scene. I mean, just look at this photo from Chi O bid day:
For the record, I was barely in a sorority — we didn't have a house because of that ongoing collegiate urban legend that houses containing more than five women are technically considered brothels in some states, which is not true but it is something we believed, a fun little vantage point on dangerous female sexuality that we will come back to shortly — but watching this season is still giving me visceral flashbacks to my days as a sorority sister, just about the only other time when a group of women this large and this young would ever be grouped together like this.
When the second group date culminated in a literal tug-of-war over Colton's fratty ass, I found myself thinking, tug-of-wars as an adult are actually so hard. Then I thought: Why do I even have that knowledge…? And the reason is: when I was just a year or two younger than many of these women, I competed in a tug-of-war at Sigma Chi Derby Days. Because this season of The Bachelor is basically just a Sigma Chi Derby Days with a lot less sex.
All this is, of course, not to say that age correlates with maturity 100 percent of the time. The budding feud between Demi and Tracy, who both suck in equal measure, is proof that maturity is a spectrum and age is not necessarily the axis upon which it slides. We've got a 31-year-old and a 23-year-old slumming it on the ground-side of this emotional teeter-totter, while high up in the air like the queens that I thus far believe them to be are Elyse, another 31-year-old, and Nicole, a 25-year-old.
What Colton says to Elyse while staring into her beautiful face like a college freshman hoping his English Lit professor is about to risk it all, is true: Age doesn't mean anything…
Except for the times that it does, like: drinking, driving, voting, sexual intercourse, emotional compatibility, Social Security benefits, R-rated movies, renting a car, and getting a senior citizen discount at Waffle House. But are there 23-year-olds who are mentally and emotionally mature enough to commit their lives to another person? Sure! Look at my parents; look at plenty of my friends; look at Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze, Jr., still out there killin' the monogamy game…
It's just that when you put a bunch of early-20-something women in a house together and make them compete for a boyfriend, the youngness really jumps out in a way that i might not otherwise. These women are exclusively calling each other "girls”; they're still throwing around the toxic value judgments they learned at PASSPORT© Christian Camp; they're making loud noises to get attention; they're hand-wringing about other girls "heading upstairs" with boys. And most tellingly: they think being young is somehow superior to being old.
Or, at least one of them does.
Ohhhhh, Demi, Demi, Demi. Only a 23-year-old thinks being a 23-year-old is a net positive. I look back on being 23 and, sure, it was fun to barely need to wear a bra or know the difference between hyaluronic and glycolic acids, but it's only because I didn't know any better.
The thing that Demi seems to be overlooking when she rags on the women older than her is that: good and bad, time rails against all of us. Shaming Tracy and Elyse for being 31 is like a puppy shaming a dog for being a dog. Glenn Close did not cause a Golden Globes upset and make me ugly cry with that speech about her mom for this tart in an Elsa wig to call Elyse "brave" for being "willing to admit" she's 31-years-old.
Oh yes, age comes for all of us, Demi. Your ovaries will lose their viable eggs, and that space between your eyebrows will gain a permanently furrowed pause sign just as sure as Tracy's will. You can only hope you do the hard emotional work along the way so that when your time comes, you're happy enough with where you've ended up to not end up crying on the ground because a sentient My Size Barbie was mean to you during a fake party.
Aaaaanyway, the fish rots at the head, and here our golden fraternity president stands, thinking he really has a handle on planning Beach Weekend this year, not realizing that ABC is about to push him so thoroughly into the virgin-as-personality corner, that the rest of the rich tapestry of emotional turmoil that consumes his mind will surely explode outward in a geyser-like fashion.
If they really wanted to commit to this sorority cosplay bit they've been doing so far, they'd give us that age-old trope about the hot, nice guy you went to college with who never seemed to be interested in the girls that were interested in him, got one step off campus after graduation, moved to San Francisco, and left us all slapping our heads for being so oblivious, but feeling really happy for that hot, nice guy.
Do you hear me, Colton? We would be really happy for that hot, nice guy!!!
FIRST IS WORST
There are a few weird firsts happening in this season of The Bachelor that have nothing to do with Colton (please no, please no, please no) having sex for the first time in the Fantasy Suites Brought to You By Chris Harrison and Throw Pillows™, nor the forced theme of the season's first group date.
No, first, there's this thing where ABC is showing a full preview of the season at every other commercial break, like if we don't see 220 pounds of linebacker haul himself over a gate and Hannah B drawling, "Wut…jest…happind" every 20 minutes, we're going to lose interest in the season.
ABC, if we let you choose a jobless man-boy as the Bachelor and still followed you into the season, one might surmise that you could literally come home at midnight smelling of Clinique Happy with your shirt on inside out, telling us it was a real long night at the office with your co-worker Larissa… and we would still be right here with you through the Final Rose. We have just that much self-loathing.
But no one could have more than Colton who is now a…VLOGGER???
He opens the episode doing, like, a video confessional style that we've never seen from this show before? I'm sure he's giving us a ton of great insight into his current feelings and fears, but all I can look at is how he keeps ruffling his hair like all my most loved and loathed Instagram-Live-ers. What is it about seeing ourselves in a screen that makes us want to continually adjust our hair, and what is it that makes us think no one will notice us touching our bangs every 10 seconds?
Whatever it is, Colton is not immune, and I hope we never have to see one of these bedside vlogs again, nor that this one is ever explained.
Back at the house, the women all sit around looking one splash of water away from a Clearasil commercial, cooing to each other about how "smitten" they are with Colton — which is a coded way of saying that they recognize he is objectively hot, but he also kisses tongue-first and talks mostly about his family and dogs when in a romantic setting. Still, Demi, Bri, Tracy, Elyse, Hannah G, Nicole, Onyeka, and Catherine seem nothing short of elated to head out on the first group date…
Until they spot the stage. Nothing spells more certain death-by-embarrassment than a stage on a Bachelor group date. But these women have lucked out: there stands Megan Mullally (who I would like to point out is 60 years old so gooooOoOoOooo fuck yourself, Demi!) and Nick Offerman, truly a stranger pair on The Bachelor you never did see. They are there to talk frankly about sex and be hilarious, two things that are about as represented in this franchise as blue-collar industries.
Megan and Nick are helping coach the women through what they'll be doing later in front of a 200-person audience: telling stories of their "firsts."
The obvious implication is that you could talk about the first time you had sex, but they could also talk about anything: Your first date, your first day of school, your first international travel experience, your first time doing laundry by yourself, your first road trip, your first time getting drunk, you guys — ANYTHING. As someone who, every four months, is like, OMG I should tooootally do The Moth this month (but then never does it), I think this would be a fun storytelling opportunity…
Reader will you be shocked to find out there is not much capitalization on said opportunity?
Colton, not simply able to talk about being a virgin since him not having a “first” is the whole point of this prompt, instead tells the audience a story about the first time he told someone he was a virgin. And you guys, I think he's just lying??? Like, didn’t he say on Becca's season that hardly anyone knew he was a virgin, and he was so uncomfortable talking about it, and it was something he kept hidden from his teammates because he feared how they might react?
Apparently not! Colton, with big Youth Pastor Energy, is all, “For a long time I had a secret,” going into his frequently told story of feeling like he had to fit a certain mold as an athlete, and feeling uncomfortable "telling his truth,” a phrase that he's really gotten on board with this season. But now this story suddenly includes the time he was chatting with an NFL "veteran" in the locker room, and that grown man casually asked him, "So, how many girls have you slept with?"
Y'know…how real people talk to each other???
Colton tried to think of a believable number of conquests to say in response to this very believable question, until His Truth suddenly came bursting out of his mouth:
And do you know what that football player who had just outright asked Colton how many women he'd had sex with responded?
At this point, I'm not sure where the show wants us to land on Colton's virginity? Is he a martyr? Does everyone actually just think it's great? The women competing for his love and this elderly football player certainly all seem to agree that his inexperience is somehow both wholesome and sexy. But I refuse to let this season convince me that something Colton has repeatedly admitted was basically a scheduling conflict is now some cool, special decision he made.
It’s fine, sure, but it’s not really cool.
Most everyone else just talks about things that happened to them the night before at the first Cocktail Party because their lives didn't truly begin until they met this adult virgin, I guess? Hannah G talks about the first time she got a First Impression Rose, which isn't a thing. Onyeka talks about how she screamed, "Colton, I heard you were drowning in some bitches" one more time because it won her so many hearts the night before. Catherine tells the story of how someone interrupted her with a line about drowning in bitches, and now takes the time to respond that she’s, in fact, a good swimmer…
Which got a good laugh out of me, and I'm sure has made Colton see her as a viable romantic option.
Similarly, Tracy’s story about the first time she dated a virgin, ended up competing with another girl for him, somehow got punched in the face, and ultimately took his virginity was surely very appealing to Colton. Nicole talked about the first time she dated a white guy, which was the only strong thesis statement in the bunch, and finally, Elyse landed over two jokes while talking about the first time she ever dated a younger man — it's right now, with itty bitty Colton!
Elyse ends her story saying she learned a lot in her 20s, and now she thinks she could teach Colton a thing or two. That's what leads Demi — a demon wearing Chloë Grace Moretz as a coat — to tell the camera, “Elyse got up there and she was willing to admit she was older in front of everybody. I thought she was so brave for doing that. It was so bold of her!”
When Demi starts talking like this, you know she's feeling particularly proud of herself about something. Whether it's putting nail polish remover in someone's smoothie, or swapping someone's sunscreen with regular lotion, or in this case, preparing to aggressively pursue Colton in front of all his other co-girlfriends.
Demi gets up onstage and tells a story about how she met a hot guy at a crazy party, but she was too scared to kiss him. And then, like the poorly written ABC Family villain that she is, she stares out to the audience and says:
Colton seems thrilled and not at all terrified by this turn of events.
Demi marches herself off the stage and plants one on Colton — finger crossed — consensually, which gets an amused eye-roll from most of the other women.
Except for Tracy who decides right then and there that this tween is an enemy of justice. She says some variation of "it makes me sick to my stomach" every time she talks about Demi's general existence. So, when Demi steals Colton first during the evening portion of the date, has a completely remarkable exchange with him (except for telling him she's a "total woman supporter"), then comes back to the group and briefly picks up the Group Date Rose off its large quartz coaster, cooing, "Oh, look, it's my rose"…
Tracy looks like her eyeballs might just pop clear out of her head.
Tracy begins spiraling, and after what I assume is a bout of explosive diarrhea, decides she needs to "set [Demi] straight."
First of all, Tracy, how many summer camp counselors, teachers, step-parents, and babysitters do you think have tried to set Demi straight in the past and found themselves with an unsolicited new set of bangs the next day? Second of all, for all the reasonable things Tracy could find annoying about Demi, like her ageism, or the her weird wardrobe, or the fact that she is more fucking transparent than the diamonds Chris Harrison flosses his teeth with — Tracy is most upset because Demi picked up a rose.
"Picking up the rose, it means a lot," she tells Onyeka, surely a reasonable sounding board for this kind of thing. "To even touch it, I think is actually very rude to everyone … It's bizarre she would ever thing that's okay."
Is it, Tracy? Is it bizarre? Is it actually? That she picked up a rose and put it down again? Maybe it's a little annoying, but how about you take some solace in the fact that she isn't going to get that rose, she isn't going to win this competition, and she can't comfortably reach the top shelf in most standard kitchens. Oh, you still think this is an important thing to have a sit-down conversation about? Great.
The thing about this Tracy/Demi feud is that there's no one to root for, and worse, Tracy is so whiny and immature about it, it almost makes you side with Demi! Demi is at least purposeful and focused in her efforts to be a nightmare. And her reception of Tracy's complaints about…touching the rose…are masterfully annoying.
"You know when you, like, picked up the rose?" Tracy says, off to a strong start. "That, like bothered myself…and the meaning of what it stands for…is a lot to everyone. And I think everyone thinks it's Colton's to give…and nobody feels like they should touch it." (Imagine Tracy screeching that last bit out like Gretchen Weiners at her breaking point.)
It actually makes me wonder if Demi does have a small amount of decency inside her that she's able to not laugh so heartily in Tracy's face that she blows through her first layer of concealer…
Alas, it’s just that she’s completely full of it.
Demi just waits until Tracy is done talking, and immediately intones: "Oh, totally sorry about that." She says it with her face so still, there's no way she dislodged any of her thick sheet of yellow hair, but Tracy reaches over and starts fixing it like she’s looking out for her. I see what Tracy’s trying to do — unfortunately, Demi does it better.
"Oh yeah, I got flyaways for days," Demi says, looking dead into Tracy’s eyes:
Tracy has every right to find Demi frustrating — she's demeaning to other women and insincere in almost everything she says out loud. Instead, Tracy stakes her claim in made-up rose etiquette while my girl Elyse is out here SECURING THE BAAAAAAG!
Out of nowhere, Colton has fallen completely in love with this 31-year-old ginger queen. He looks at her like she is a lollipop made out of his father's approval — he wants her bad.
Colton tells Elyse that hearing her talk about how she could teach him a thing or two was so sexy. She tells him that back at the house, all of the women over 27 are staying in one room, and they've been jokingly calling it "The Cougar Den." I briefly die, come back to life, and hear Colton almost successfully flirting: "Oh yeah, what room is that?" he asks Elyse. It makes me trust Colton so much more that he's into one of the seemingly more mature women in the house…
And she will absolutely carve his heart out with a grapefruit spoon. This is not a match, but they do make out like two grown people, and Elyse gets the Group Date Rose.
Demi starts plotting putting a dead bird under Elyse's pillow.
A TOAST TO ALABAMA HANNAH
Oh wow. Oh wow, we haven't seen something this tough in a while, for real you guys.
You remember Hannah? No, the other Hannah, the one with the Disney princess face from Alabama. No, the other Hannah with the Disney princess face from Alabama: HANNAH B. She has a giant smile that she wears when she's happy or nervous, which accounts for 98 percent of the time, except some previewed footage when she's angry, which involves attempting to snarl and smile at the same time. A preview:
It probably should have been clear to Colton from his very first conversation with Hannah B that she has some pretty major anxiety about performing and being perfect, and while that should not negate her from competing for love on a game show, perhaps it should indicate to her shared boyfriend that being put on the spot to go on the very first one-on-one date of the season may not bring out in the best in her…
But Colton says his favorite things in a woman are “eyes and teeth,” and Hannah B has those in spades; I doubt he gave her mental well-being a second thought once he feasted his eyes on those chompers.
No, Colton just had to take Hannah B on a date, and he had to do it on her 24th (24th!) birthday.
On my 24th birthday, I threw a sparkle-themed party in the house I shared with four other girls… so, I guess not entirely dissimilar from this scenario, except that we weren't competing to see who could win the marital rights to the overgrown frat boys who lived next door, we were competing to see who could eat the most vodka-soaked gummy bears. I truly wish Hannah B had been allowed the same autonomy.
Instead, Colton takes her into the desert and demands that she make a toast. I don't really blame Colton for not realizing this would be a difficult situation for Hannah — he thought she seemed so fun and smiley at the first Cocktail Party, so presumably, she would make for a fun and smiley first date in a freestanding desert hot tub. Hannah B is smiley. But she is also riddled with anxiety about doing and saying the right thing.
So when Colton suggests that they both make toasts before getting in the hot tub, she immediately gets flustered.
So, Colton goes first, toasting to: "being open, to being honest, to being true to who we are, and to challenging each other throughout our journey." All the light drains from Hannah B's eyes, while every single one of her adult teeth still remains visible. She exclaims that he stole her toast: "Dangit, I really feel like you took my words!" she continues. "I wish you would have let me go first," she mumbles, making me, and I'm sure Colton, enter into a full-body sweat with the realization that she literally is not going to be able to do this.
She asks Colton how one starts a toast, and he tells to just put a bunch of words together. It's clear that Hannah wants this to be a great, perfect moment so badly that she is turning into the most unexpectedly bad moment imaginable. Or at least, that's what I took from her saying, "I'll put a bunch of words together…but they'll be real words…I'll put real words together."
Reader, she does not. This is what Hannah B comes up with: "Let’s make a toast to— first, it’s my birthday! So to this… amazing day. And, um… Roll Tide!"
They get in the hot tub, and when Colton starts trying to talk about something — anything — Hannah B lunges at his face, allegedly to get an eyelash off. But it's a stubborn one, so when he starts trying to assist in the removal, she screams "WAIT!" and insists on getting it off so that he can make a wish.
I once watched Colton decide if he could tell someone he didn't like them for five days straight, but he made this eyelash wish in a millisecond flat. Even this lunk of forced goodwill can admit this date is not going well. Colton tries to tell Hannah that he can see she’s uncomfortable, but before he can reassure her that it's okay to feel that way, she squeals, "When am I being uncomfortable?! You have to tell me when I'm being weird!"
Hannah. This is Colton. Telling you that you're being uncomfortable and weird. And that's fine — this is an uncomfortable and weird situation. But if you are not the kind of person who can be pretend like an uncomfortable and weird situation is the peeeerfect place to find love, then it's probably time for you to go home…
Except of course, this is the first one-on-one, it's Hannah's birthday, oh and there's that one thing where she has a pre-standing and extremely personal feud with another contestant in the house, and short of agreeing to lose his virginity live on air, the producers would not let Colton cut Hannah this early for anything in the world.
When I think about the moment that the Bachelor producers discovered two women in their pile of applicants who had competed in the same Miss USA competition, and then, after casting them, when they discovered that they had extremely bad blood between them, I imagine a scene something along the lines of Wolf of Wall Street — like, I would bet money that someone ended up with a shaved head from all the excitement.
While Hannah B is smile-torturing Colton in the silent desert, Caelynn is back at the house, cryptically telling us what happened between her and Hannah. We saw them greet each other rather awkwardly at the first Cocktail Party, in a way that implied they weren't cozy pals, and they also truly did not know the other was going to be there. Caelynn's side of the story is that she and Hannah were roommates at the Miss USA competition…
…and they became super close, right up until Caelynn won runner-up to Miss USA, and Hannah didn't place at all. Caelynn says there were a lot of hurt feelings after that: "With Hannah, there's a façade, and then it starts to crumble. Hannah kind of snapped — she like flipped a switch, and then it was a whole new Hannah."
I am literally salivating, y’all. I just shaved my whole head. Give me ALL THIS DRAMA!!!
We can't know if Caelynn is telling the whole truth, but she's not being particularly malicious, and she's also not giving any embarrassing details, so I kind of trust this general framework. Also, I guess my mind does not have to stretch far to imagine Hannah B snapping…
Dammit, Colton, again with the toasting?!
By the evening, Hannah has calmed down, but she also seems to have gone a little numb, like she's sure she's messed this up beyond repair. And I feel for Hannah, I really do. This clearly isn't something she can control in this environment…
But we're sure as hell going to act like it is! At dinner, Colton tells Hannah that he recognizes her desire to be perfect, because it's something he struggled with for a long time too. But he wants her to just be herself, and this is comforting to Hannah. With a new sense of security, she blazes forward into their first real conversation:
Yeesh. This is what Hannah says she wanted to ask Colton earlier when she was being so weird.
But I guess there was a slightly deeper reason because when Colton is done giving his whole spiel (which is starting to include more and more phrases that don't really mean anything like "it's something I hold a lot of weight into"), Hannah rushes to tell him that she thinks it's so great that he's a virgin. See, she made a commitment to herself to remain a virgin until she got married, and then when she got into a serious relationship, that didn't end up happening.
“There was a lot of guilt, and it killed — like, it killed me.”
This is where you hope Hannah B will continue: But then I came to understand that my value is not tied up in my sexuality, which means that both of us — me who has had sex, and you who has not had sex — are both equally worthy of loving, and being loved.
But that is not what freshly-turned-24-year-old Hannah says. "For the person that I want to be with forever, like, I would have loved to be able to have that for them. I don't feel perfect because I can't give that to someone."
Folks. This is some purity culture, toxic trash, mysoginistic nonsense. I want to grab Hannah through the TV — I want to scream at her that she is a clean and whole person, and if she can't believe that, surely she can believe that no man she's going to end up with wants her to give him her virginity. In some ways, this season is amazing, because it is simply a mounting pile of emotional disasters that is guaranteed to explode… but in every other way, it is a regressive, emotionally stunted, self-deceiving trigger-fest.
Even Colton is like, Oh nooooo, that's reeeeally not what I was going for by not having sex, telling Hannah she shouldn’t feel ashamed of any decisions she’s made in the past; he gives her the rose for finally being able to open up (sure, Jan).
I know it's unlikely, but Hannah B, if there's any chance you're reading this, might I offer you the words of the great poet Mary Oliver who passed away on Thursday:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
(A small part of me, of course, fears that upon reading these words, Hannah would whisper a very solemn: “Roll Tide.”)
THIS KISS, THIS KISS — NOT HAPPENING!
The first group date had all the hot messes, while this one contains most of the women Colton actually likes, so all in all it's pretty uneventful except for Billy Eichner being there and suggesting that Colton should really consider giving dudes a try: "Maybe you're the first gay Bachelor and we don't even know!"
Colton briefly chokes on his own tongue. After he recovers, the women compete in a series of camp-style games, and the winning team gets to "stay overnight" with Colton while the losing team has to go home. Back at home, the Hannahs fret that staying overnight is so intimate — "so intimate" — which is absurd because:
Colton has never had sex, and I don't think he's going to crack under the sexy atmosphere of wheelbarrow racing
None of these dummies even try to sneak over to his cabin (where's Demi when you need her?)
And the most exciting thing that happens is when Colton doesn't kiss someone
Heather, who is a 22-year-old, works up the nerve to tell Colton, "I actually — I'm a virgin, but I've also never kissed anyone."
Listen. It is totally fine to make the decisions you want to make about your own body for any and every reason, but at this point, it feels like we're in a full-fledged purity competition. Are they going to bring in a girl in a bubble suit halfway through? Someone who's never been touched by the sun? How far can we take this thing? Should everyone start eating kosher and wearing those Mormon underwear and taking vows of silence????
Okay, I'll calm down. But every time Colton has to reassure a woman that she has nothing to be ashamed of, it feels more and more like we're being told that anything short of worshiping and the shrine of Colton's virginity is the shameful thing. Heather explains to Colton that she doesn't want him to think that she's not ready for a relationship or a commitment, it's actually the opposite:
Which is a fun way of implying that sluts don't take physical intimacy seriously! And Colton assures her he understands by saying:
Which is a fun little way of saying anyone who's kissed someone without weighing the pros and cons for a few years doesn't have self-worth!!!!
And it's true! I've kissed plenty of dudes, and if there's one thing you can probably surmise from my 6,000 words of color commentary, it's that I don't value my own opinion at all!!!! Colton thanks Heather for opening up to him, and then for 10 very awkward seconds, it seems like they might kiss. Apparently Colton is the one Heather’s been waiting for…
But all this talk of self-worth and taking physical intimacy seriously seems to have dampened the mood. She gets the Group Date Rose instead.
INTRODUCING: THE FANTASY CLOSET SPONSORED BY DEMI BROUGHT TO YOU BY CHRIS HARRISON™
Alright, how about we cool off from all that sexual tension with some soothing words from Demi:
“There are 20 women looking for a rose tonight, so I think it's going to get a little aggressive, especially with the older girls. They're all trying to figure out how they're going to get Colton. Because some of us younger girls are already like five steps ahead of them. So I will happily watch their demise."
DEMI! I am here to tell you that the only good thing about being 23 is that you can still eat three slices of pizza 20 minutes before you go to sleep and feel nothing the next morning. You've probably never googled "does insurance cover Botox," I'll give you that, Demi. But to quote my good friend and peer:
I've been your age, Demi: when you're 23, you are just poor and confused all the time, and you don't even have the wherewithal to know it. But it's for that very reason that I can forgive Demi — and most of these women — for being like this.
Onyeka is apparently very confident that props are the way to a man's heart, so she interrupts Colton mid-conversation with an air horn. Sydney, whom she interrupted, however, will not let this stand. She wasn't done with her conversation, so she grabs a metal pan and spoon from the kitchen, and approaches Onyeka and Colton, saying she got some noisemakers too.
Onyeka tells her she can come back in five minutes, which just really seems like the move??? Why don't more of them just say no if they feel like they haven't gotten enough time…
What am I saying? Why use words when you make loud noises instead? This season of The Bachelor is just a series of my favorite Vines strung together, it seems…
But leave it to our Demi to quietly execute her own Machiavellian plan, and then make a bunch of noise about it, like the true evil genius she is.
Demi disappears for a while during the Cocktail Party, reappears in a robe, then silently marches through the house until she finds Colton — sitting with Tracy, of course. She shimmies upstairs with him, saying she’s taking him to her Fantasy Closet, and then…
Kind of sits side-saddle on a table she set up in a literal closet and gives him a massage through his dress shirt that appears to mostly be just sliding her hands around on his back a little?? It is…not hot. And other than her being objectively cute, I cannot imagine Colton is into Demi at all. Colton says he likes a confident woman, but what I think he means is that he likes a woman who's confident enough to chill out a little.
However, Tracy does not see it like this. After Demi took Colton away, Tracy rushed away upset. When Demi comes back down, giving the other women a full, and not at all rehearsed monologue about how she "helped Colton out" upstairs, Angelique asks if she feels bad about making Tracy upset…
And y'know what, she really shouldn't! Interrupting is part of this game Tracy is playing! She is 31-years-old!
She's been my age, I've never been hers, of course, but I'm pretty sure if I asked Ice T, he'd tell me that whining and blaming your bad experiences on other people is not a big part of being 31. Demi doesn't feel bad, obviously, but she is a thirsty elf who lives for drama, so she stomps herself right up to where Tracy is crying on the floor and coos, "Rumor has it you're upset with me."
What happens next is wall-to-wall bonkers. Tracy says she’s been trying to be vulnerable and authentic with Colton, "And then you in a robe…in the middle of me opening up, it just seems … rude and mean."
Demi takes this in for a moment, and responds:
"Well. You are one of the most amazing women I've ever met."
OMG.
"You just keep on doing you and keep being who you are."
What is happening?
"You are an amazing storyteller."
WHAT IS HAPPENING?
It is a wild, wild ride. Tracy frets that she'll be going home tonight "because of something I couldn't control," which is…preposterous???
But Tracy needn't worry because she gets Colton's final rose. Rose-less at the end are Alex, Annie, Erika McNutt, and Angelique. I have no idea what happens next week, but I know I'm going to keep watching until Colton jumps over that fence or Tracy projectile vomits all over Demi, whichever comes first. WHY? Because…
I do apologize for the tardiness of this very important recap, friends; I’m going to do my best to get these out by Wednesday each week! Everyone watch those competing Fyre Fest documentaries this weekend because next week — we talkin’ SCAMZ.