Bri from 'The Bachelor' Is Out Here Living in 3019
The Bachelor franchise has long been known for its gimmicky out-of-limo introductions: there have been cupcake cars and shark suits; there have been grandmothers (okay) and children (not okay); there have been wedding dresses and pregnancy suits (Clare Crawley, the GOAT), horses and hearses, and enough original songs and poetry to fill an open mic night sign-up sheet before the performing arts school kids even had a chance.
While watching a lengthy Bachelor premiere like the one airing tonight, those gimmicky intros might make you want to make a coffee-table-book-sandwich out of your head. But they're still better than any intro that features an earnest declaration of a "journey" (audition process) that brought them "here" (chlamydia-infested stucco bunker) to find "love" (princess-cut Neil Lane diamond with an expiration date). The best possible scenario when introducing oneself to the Bachelor is to be nice, natural, a little funny, and most importantly, the exact kind of hot our salami-of-the-season is into...
Until now. Bri from Colton's season has changed the game.
I assumed that today I would be writing about Sunday night’s Golden Globes cermeony and the various thirst traps therein: Timothee Chalamet's sparkle harness, Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh serving face on the red carpet, Andy Sandberg's Warby Parkers, the Black Panther cast existing, Jamie Lee Curtis bangin' bod making me actually consider eating that digestive yogurt, Rami Malek's permanently-clenched jaw, Chris Pine's salt-and-pepper beard, Idris Elba's salt-and-pepper beard, Tony Shaloub's salt-and-pepper beard, Steve Carell's salt-and-pepper beard… ahem, et cetera, et cetera.
See, I had notes! I was ready. And after all, I had already linked the early unveiling of Bri's fake Australian accent at the end of the last newsletter. I had done my due diligence as a reluctant Bachelor historian. And yet...
I couldn't get Bri's Australian maneuver off my mind. This innovative young woman looked at her resume as a model from Los Angeles who looks exactly like two-thirds of the other contestants and realized she had to do something to stand out from the crowd. And then Bri, a genius, realized there is something you can do to make yourself seem more interesting without having to ride in on a fucking camel — you can lie.
You can just...lie! Anyone who watches this show surely wills themselves into a fugue state every premiere so as to avoid internalizing any limo introduction in which a pilot invites Colton to taxi into her landing strip or whatever. During that time, I tend to use the small amount of empathy inside the reality TV lobe of my brain to try and imagine how awful my own limo introduction would be. My main hobbies are knowing about pop culture, texting with my friends about pop culture, and writing about The Bachelor. So what the hell would I tell a former professional athlete four years my junior if they somehow let a woman over a size four into one of those limos?
I'm not even interesting enough to have an embarrassing gimmick! But you know what I am incredible at?
Lying without guilt because some lies don't matter. And it seems that Bri knows this truth too. My new favorite Bachelor contestant just flew right by "gimmick" and straight to "trick."
A trick is what my five-year-old nephew calls a lie because when you're five, lying has no stakes. It's not like he's going to tell a potential employer he knows how to use Photoshop, and then be in a real bind when he gets the job. No, he's going to tell me he didn't eat the M&Ms in the cabinet while chocolate is smeared all over his face.
That's exactly what Bri, a bobble-headed legend, is doing. She's already on this show. Bri is looking down the barrel of this thing like, BEST CASE SCENARIO I get engaged to this guy and spend six months of my life going to obscure music festivals and wearing sponsored flow-y dresses for whatever "Revolve" is, then we break up just publicly enough that I have to post a screenshot from my Notes app...
So why not go ahead and fake an Australian accent? And a pretty good one, at that! And she doesn’t even technically lie to Colton, saying that the “accent is from Australia,” not that she is from Australia. Bri's effortless switch from coy Aussie lass while speaking to Colton, over to dead-eyed Hadid sister while speaking to the camera made me fear her more than her razor-sharp nose or perfect body ever could. This is a woman who is not afraid do what it takes to get noticed on The Bachelor because, what's the worst that could happen? Colton figures her out?
I don't know how long Bri can pull this off, but I do know that I love, respect, and fear her, and that she has me geared up to meet this group of 23-year-old maniacs who reasonably could have been watching this show since they were in the first grade.
It is ingrained in their DNA to figure out how to stand out, and just look at them: turning up and turning out to win the attentions of this giant job-less man. It is my only hope that many, many other women will attempt to trick Colton with some mostly harmless lies. Two short ones should stack on top of each other in a gown to make a tall one. Or someone could bring one of those PARO therapeutic robot seals for elderly people and tell him it's a real seal — he would believe them! Or you could tell him you're related to a random celebrity Colton would know but not have any access to…
Dammit, if someone doesn't tell Colton that LeAnn Rimes is her aunt, I will lose all this faith that Bri — Margot Robbie's cousin — has built up in me. Let's do this, ladies. Give us the season we deserve, not the virginity-themed season ABC is trying to force-feed down our Australian throats!
See you back here on Wednesday to find out if Bri kept her Australian accent up for the entire THREE-HOUR PREMIERE. Crikey, indeed.