Hello and welcome ladies and gentlemen to your Knotty recap of The Bachelorette Episode 5. I would like to start by saying, that after everything I’ve seen so far this season the only thing that doesn’t shock me about Emily’s hopefuls is that none of them have girlfriends.
Also…
Emily. How are you kissing that face? Please get rid of him soon he is terrrrrrible.
As far as Bambino McPuppypants goes, he hasn’t suddenly become a fan of the show, that’s for sure. He’s the kind that wears his emotions on his paw…
Bambino even seems to have some sort of sixth or would it be seventh? sense for when I’m getting close to recap-time…
OK. LET’S BEGIN.
So I pick up the remote to press “Play” on The Bachelorette and I’m already dry-heaving. I can taste the beginnings of some acid reflux… something I remember experiencing only back when I was watching Ben’s season. F Word.
I press on. Over a period of *too many* seconds, they take me through every single detail of what is going to unfold at different points throughout the duration of the 40 minute show. At this point I immediately consider changing the channel and faking to you guys that I watched it.
The show starts. We hear Emily Maynard’s voice, and then we hear what sounds to be E.T. except it’s not, it’s Ricki, doing an impersonation of E.T.
The manbevy arrive in London at their lodgings. Arie goes to the window and gets excited. He has something to share.
Arie: ”hey guys! check out this view!!
*BUILDINGS*
Weirded out by how much he likes the view of some neighboring apartments, everybody tries to act impressed for his sake but secretly they all begin to distance themselves from Arie immediately following that comment and forever going forward.
Chrisharrison flies in on an angel’s wings. He invites the guys over to have a chat. Just a quick chat. He promises no BC Calculus this time.
He essentially articulates the weight, shape, color and size of Emily’s intentions to find a husband who is not going to leave her or her daughter ever. If the air could be thick with *this is for real* it would be so goddamn thick with it you’d need those glasses that have those special windshield wipers on the lenses, so you could wipe all that thick away. Chrisharrisonface is being overly protective of Emily; very fatherly. There’s an aroma of ‘veiled threats’ in his speech.
… he must have an awareness that most of these guys are fame-hungry dweebs without the capacity, let alone desire, to have a meaningful, longterm relationship with anyone/thing other than their own cockadoodledoos.
It’s time for the contest rules as usual. He explains to them that they are in London right now and that ab + c = q. He goes on to say that 9 to the 3rd power is within the range of all southwest flying birds and gun ranges wherein the guns are brown NOT black, and the number 3 million. Lastly, he emphasizes that not one of those numbers is above the level of interest Emily has in f**king finding some motherf**king real love this time. Not to mention another parent to help carry the burden of her baggage, as some of the men so aptly twisted a certain luxury brand consultant’s words into being.
ONE ON ONE DATE – SEAN + EMILY, LONNNNDONNNN.
Stuff happens. I’m bored so I half-listen all the way through most of it. Though one part that I’m ALL EARS for is when Sean is asked to give a speech on a pedestal in public and he is like, “i’m shyyyyy.” Asked again, he mounts the pedestal and delivers a riveting speech that felt no more than like 98% memorized beforehand. Now, he could have done this and it could have completely flown by me. And that would’ve been fine. Except he was employing some sort of staccato beat system to his cadence and so it came out like a reenactment of a scene from The King’s Speech.
At the end of the date, Emily says “MUH’ KISSES” I think twice and then more previews and then commercials.
At this point I have tallied it up on paper and Emily has already said GTFO 48 times. But I analyze the data and that turns out to include all of the times her cursing was teased before commercial. Not actual times (which is going to be a total of ‘one’; she says it once).
KALON’S LUXURY INAPPROPRIATENESS
Caught being honest and realistic about the situation/life by saying, “Yeah, I hope I get a chance to talk to an exhausted sick mother who has a child at home,” Kalon naturally gets in trouble and he is shocked that he can’t brand consult his way out of it. (Kalon, you don’t say things like that *out loud* you keep them in your truth bank deep inside so that the suppressed emotions can mastesize throughout your body ultimately killing you. Don’t you know how to be a human yet? this is old news.)
It’s commercial time again, and I’ve never been happier that a show has abusively long commercial breaks.
53 minutes in, I’ve fast-forwarded through the entire Shakespeare scene, because I’m a recapper not a martyr. Doug brings us up to speed in his signature Derp-Style of talk and I feel refreshed in my strong belief that he is not right for Emily. Emily likes bad boys who she believes have good inside of them (but secretly wishes don’t because then she would get bored). These good ol’ boys need to cowboy up and be more unreachable and emotionally scarred from childhood if they wanna win her heart.
We’re met again by Emily’s now offensively obvious cold, and it is beyond reproach. The men all start to moan about her being that girl at the office who comes in to work even though she’s sick with a bad cough. Everybody knows that girl, and everybody hates that girl. Emily’s that girl.
This is when I escape for a moment to check Twitter and notice that one of the current top trends being discussed is “Vagina Movie Lines.” I return to the show.
Bambino starts to have a dream about barking at someone or something and that cues me and Honey to pause the show and hone in on the sound of his preciously adorable voice. When he dreams he makes these adorable “bloop!” sounds as if he’s dropping his barks into a bucket of water. So coot.
Anyway, back to the show and we’re only 54 MINUTES IN WTF? Weren’t we just at 53? Damnit. Damnit, ok. Ok. Ok I’m better. We hear Emily trying to talk through the death valley that is the landscape of her vocal cords and we almost feel sorry for her, until we remember again that she is the girl at the office who comes in with a cold and then proceeds to have close conversations with everyone around her.
Next scene we see, there’s a conversation going on between two guys who definitely use the same self-tanner/are boring.
Going off about what Kalon said, Arie says, “if I didn’t want to be here??!!!! If I didn’t!??!! I would just like literally WALK. OUT. OF HERE. like YOU KNOW WHAT AH’M SAYIN BRO??!!!! I’D F**KIN’ LEAVE!”
Single Parent Doug jumps up on cue when alerted by producers that they actually hit the Kalon line early and he proceeds to act genuinely irritated as instructed. He even literally says (while heavily sedated as seems to be his usual routine given that familiar cadence) “hearing that [Kalon] thinks that about Ricki, genuinely pisses me off, as a single parent, I would want to know if someone felt that way.”
Doug proceeds to tell EVERYONE about the Kalon situation including Emily, and this is the point in the show when Emily becomes a real person.
EMILY MAYNARD A.D.
Emily, after hearing from Doug what Kalon said about Ricki being baggage, is insulted by the idea of someone being so callous, and rightly so as a mother.
Emily: “I am so angry right now. I’m trying to think of a way…. my mind’s going a million miles a minute…. trying to think of the most lady like way, to respond to this…. but…. I want to rip his limbs off and beat him with them.”
Hi Real Emily Maynard! It’s so nice finally to meet you after all these seasons.
Emily gets uncharacteristically candid and says she wants to “go West Virginia, hood rat, backwoods on his ass.” And I recall once hearing that Emily is from Carolina but noo, no that can’t be, not anymore. Naturally I assume I was wrong and that it must be West Virginia, because you can’t say “I wanna go West Virginia hoodrat” unless you’re one of two things: *from* West Virginia or currently living in West Virginia. Otherwise, it’s offensive. And it would be hard for me to believe Emily was not the Limited Edition ‘PC’ Barbie I know her to be. Then Honey, suddenly the resident Bachelorette Statistician, says “isn’t she from one of the Carolinas?” and the right side of my brain explodes. Turns out that on a scale of 1 to 10, SHE IS.
She confronts Kalon in a room full of the guys. The guys all act like Tiger Children – they are to be seen but not heard. Kalon takes his best shot at redemption by completely blowing it with brutal honesty. She tells someone to “Get The F**k Out.” It doesn’t matter who she told that; Emily Maynard just said GTFO out loud! On television!! (At Kalon, if you rely on me to keep your facts straight.)
Doug – also known as the reason for all this – tries to comfort her but she says “BACK THE EFF OFF I NEED ME-TIME.”
What Doug doesn’t understand, what ALLLL of the guys don’t understand, is that Emily needed them to have already made an emotional connection with the little girl she birthed who they haven’t met yet, and out of that emotional connection develop the fatherly intuition to have wanted to – didn’t need to be asked; WANTED TO – stand up and defend his daughter(-who-he-hasn’t-met-yet)’s honor.
I get it, I do, but sometimes I worry about women’s expectations for men so early on in the dating process. Honey still needs to be reminded to put his cup in the dishwasher. Men need a little filling in on what’s important in a lot of cases, it’s just a reality.
BACK FROM COMMERCIAL | 1 hour, 15 minutes in. Thank G-d.
Emily and Ricki are exchanging pleasantries, the full extent of their capacity for mother-daughter conversation, when Ricki, aged 6 years old, tells her mother that the king and a dragon inhabit the Buckingham Palace. Her mother tries to nudge her in another direction by saying, “heheh noooo, goose. Hehe you’re embarrassing mommy come come now, COME, it’s the Queen, only. No dragons lol.” Sensing that she’s being challenged, Ricki stands her ground with not a full sentence but a single word, “DRAAAHHHGON.”
We leave them to themselves. But not before learning that someone’s been missing some school.
Emily is still sick. Yuck. The reason why none of these guys have stood up and taken a stand against forcibly being subjected to a walking-talking Contagion movie is lost on me.
ONE ON ONE DATE – EMILY AND JEF; “SCONNNNNNNNES.”
Emily and Jef (aka, WHITTLE BEHBEH BEIBER… yeah still working that nickname out; any suggestions? I’ll start going with my favorite one if you guys can think of any good ones) — anyway so like I was saying they go on a date that is somehow worse than the one before it. Which was in a dungeon where beheadings happened a couple of times. Emily should be an event planner she has a knack.
So, where was this date? Somewhere where an old lady was paid to yap into their ears about everything they’re doing wrong for two hours.
We’re only minutes in and the date is going terribly at best. The secret’s out: Jef doesn’t know the first thing about drinking afternoon tea in Britain and therefore can never successfully execute a make-believe *tea party* between himself and Ricki, Emily’s daughter. That seems to be the test being worked out here. This happens also to be a stirring moment in the show, as we learn more about Jef’s painful past — Jef, being Justin Bieber’s little brother, never got much attention from their mother given Justin’s clearly defined early talents, so as a result Jef never learned even the most basic and commonplace American pastimes; such as having tea at high noon with 100,000,000 diapers worth of gilded fine china, caring about the trivialities of high society’s meaningless rituals, or being able to recite lines from any Shakespeare play upon request. It is a source of shame for him.
Jef brings about full LOLs in my household when he complains in his interview about Jean, and the having of her.
“I just have Jean… I just– I have, JEEAANN… I have JEEEAANNNNNNE.
They bounce early cause it sucks. And they head to some place where Jef says the craziest thing he possibly can — having NOT met Ricki yet, but wanting to differentiate himself from Kalon-Hater-of-Babies — and he goes, “if Ricki’s baggage, then…. then she’s… then she’s a Chloe handbag, that I wanna have forever.” YES. YES YOU DID IT JEF MINUS THE F. WELL DONE BRO. He then holds out his arm and figuratively drops to the floor an invisible boutonniere rose he is assuming is in the bag at this point.
Unfortunately Emily doesn’t know a single straight guy familiar with the brand “Chloe” and so questions his motives for being on the show but arranges to go shopping together either way.
COMMERCIAL AT 1:21 and I hear Dire Straights “Walk of Life” and I’m in a good mood again. But the commercial’s for Burger King and I officially quit red meat yesterday over that old story about the “pink slime” in almost every burger across America and so I become dismayed. Burger King ruined Dire Straights for me, you guys. :(
The next moment that I look up and Emily is saying something about how she likes to “take it slow,” while sitting with Jef in a tiny glass bubble on the London Eye, outfitted with a dining room table, flowers, some food and about 17 crew members. Honey remarks as he continues doing his own work:
“BY THE WAY you can’t be someone who “takes it slow” if you’re on a dating show with 25 guys and you have to make a decision within 8 weeks on who to marry.” … “AND it’s your second time doing it.”
Half-asleep he does some BC Calculus in his head without the presence of BC Calc Adjunct Professor for the show Chrisharrison — so, clearly taking risks here — and he goes, “what’s that work out to, Alison; about 1/3 of a week? on average? 1/2 a week if it’s a 12 week process? to decide if she wants to marry one of them? Seriously now.”
I agree with Honey, and pause the show to write down his thoughts. Unfortunately this means I have to pause it for more seconds than if he hadn’t spoken up, and he immediately regrets his decision to contribute.
Back to the date between Emily and Jef, and Jef starts like really intensely respecting her and just drives home that “I love your daughter” schtick so effortlessly and it’s over; she’s smitten. We’re surprised he’s able to be so emotional given his stunted growth access to learning, a dismal side effect of being the one not named Justin growing up in the Bieber household.
Jef is sliding it on thick until he says something so aggressively contrived that I find myself saying out loud to him, “WHOOAAA WHOA WHOA BRING IT DOWN A NOTCH J-BIEB.”
Jef: “I wanna have a family.” *EYES DARTING LEFT, AWAY, AND DOWN (TELLTALE SIGN OF LYING)*
Emily: “so…. if this worked out, and you came to live with me and Ricki in SLC, Utah, there wouldn’t be Vegas, and dance parties all night, and [states everything Brad did to her]…”
Jef: “oh, no no no, the party would beGINNN, dance parties all night!” referring to the hours-long dance festivals that Emily and by this point spit-pack-ritual blood brothers Ricki and Jef, would totally be having if she picks him which she won’t because he’s five.
These family dance parties he talks about having all night; he acts like it’s his dream or something. Like some asshole.
Disappointingly and unsurprisingly, Emily is impressed and swayed by this and falls deeper in love with his premature and codependent assertions.
But wait, he goes on.
Jef: “… heheh and, and you– you would come home n, n stuff, n me n Ricki we’d be having a dance party and umm, and you’d be happy, y’know when you came home and saw that, and–….”
Jef takes a jackhammer to all the groundwork he has laid by fully full-on’ing her with his desire to be in her and her daughter’s lives. She is kind of over it so she gives him the rose so she can go home and begin her doctor-prescribed 8-stage regimen of drugs and a saline drip before bed. Because mono’s a bitch.
Oh and he kisses her. JEF: Infected.
COMMERCIAL
EMILY, fresh off the set of Dynasty: The Early Years, enters the domicile where the manbevy is waiting for her to talk all of her cold into their faces one last time. She says the cocktail party is about to start, and this is the point in the season where the producers’ decision to name Jeff “Jef” is starting to irritate me. I don’t know why it hasn’t before.
Emily confronts Arie about not stepping up and defending Emily in that scene where Emily totally railed on Kalon about that thing he said about how children are a responsibility and all those other lies.
Arie walks out of the room feeling like on a scale of 1 to 10, he wishes he could do it over again. But on a scale of 1 to 10, he is not infected.
Then comes Ryan. He hacks up some Shakespeare from beneath her window and proceeds to win the physical affection of his fair maiden because she is that shallow it turns out. Wasn’t she lamenting his very existence until he handed her that necklace he brought on the show before meeting her and read off some lines of poetry?
Oh also, Infected.
Then she runs into Sean, Insurance Agent, Dallas, 28, and makes out with him.
Infected from before. Drives home infection more mouthal lovemaking.
Enjoy the mono, everyone. I hope getting to first base all on the same night with the same girl was worth it.
DEDUCED:
Inside of her head, Emily has already married Sean and had three additional kids with him since the show aired. Their names are Emilina, Emilia, and Shawntel. Sean fought very hard to get his name into one of them but he had to take a hit on the spelling and desired gender of the child.
COMMERCIAL
I see 1:47 minutes into the show and I am on cloud nine because it is almost over. ENGAGE: ROSE CEREMONY.
ROSE CEREMONY ENGAGED
Chrisharrison arrives OUT OF NOWHERE and tells them such things as the name of the country in which they are standing right now and how Emily is not f**king around.
At this same time there are some boys outside screaming “f**k you” at each other at the top of their lungs going on 20 minutes now, 20 minutes of yelling f**k you at each other. This is my neighborhood.
Emily announces the first man to receive a rose; it is Doug. Taking a page out of the Courtney Handbook “Winning: You and Roses,” he says “I do” and walks back to all of the friends he came on the show to make.
Emily calls up Ryan, whose walk is to the hit single by the Bee Gees from Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta. He proceeds to accept the rose like a boss.
More people are kept, including The Boring Bros., ‘Arie’ Boring McBorington and ’Chris’ Snooze McSnoringsworth, The Third. Also a guy who wore red pants; I don’t care enough to rewind for his name. That’s how much I know he’s going home next week.
John? I think it was John.
And with that the final nonwhite guy is released from the competition. Emily faked it until she could fake it no more. Her babies will be blonde and blue-eyed, all eight of them. Goals are goals. But it sure was nice of Emily to fake interest in anyone from less than 100% American-grown stock for even a little while. It will not go unappreciated by the execs.
On a side note: the young man is evidently extremely emotionally effected by Emily’s rejection of him, which is a shame because if he had seen the entire episode he would have realized that he was in less than like 5% of it.
He goes out of shot and we forget about him immediately.
The episodes comes to a close, but not before Emily can announce that up next they’re all going to romantic, historic, I’m-sure-it’ll-be-fine Croatia! Having blown their budget last season on helicopter gas (you have no idea how much it costs to fill up the brand of helicopters they use — unfortunately neither did the show’s staff), their options this season are limited to say the least. Hence we can look forward to dates in Croatia, areas of the Middle East and select parts of very rural North Carolina.
DONE. I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know if you’d like me to recap again next week. Your call. It’s like 5am right now and I seriously can’t really tell if this is even funny enough to be put up on the front page of the blog.
Who do you think needs to go and who do you think Emily is connecting well with? Do you find Jef Less An F to be cute, or too young for her? Is he too anxious to impress her? Methinks. And who do you think is the frontrunner right now? I wanna hear your feedback in the comments, y’all!
Ok my mouth, it no can speak no more.
You talk, at me now? Please, yes?
And always remember: peace and love and a rubber glove if you ever find yourself on Bachelor Pad.
xoxo you guys! - Alison