The Bachelorette Ep. 7: Two Men and a Baby
By: Marissa Driscoll
Tags: Television, Recaps, TV Series, TV Shows, The Bachelorette

Bachelor Nation,

I’ll be honest with you — I nearly forgot this episode was on tonight. It’s one of those weeks where every day feels like the day it’s not, and I think yesterday felt like a Wednesday. This whole Bachelorette Tuesday is really throwing off my groove. I have my therapy appointments every Tuesday; I can’t hold on to all this drama for a full week before I talk to a man who cannot care about a heavily edited network reality show. And yet, because I pay for these appointments, he is forced to do so.

I’m obviously kidding. We’re more on a recipe-sharing level. America the beautiful, indeed. Let’s go.

The first group date is with Montel, Ivan, Demar, Ben, Chasen, Ed, Joe, and Bennett. Featuring Ashley and Jared I. (let’s be real, he took her last initial), this was a “Grown Ass Man Challenge,” featuring a spelling bee, mock gym class, and bottle episode of Chopped. Ed, a man I did not know before this evening, “lost” the competition, while Bennett, of Harvard alumnus status and a “lingering football injury” with the same validity as Donald Trump’s bone spurs, managed to win despite his own poor spelling and math. I guess this confirms Bennett was a philosophy major at Harvard thanks to his parents, likely contributors to Operation Varsity Blues (this allegation can neither be confirmed nor denied. It is also based in zero fact.).

Moving swiftly on to the night portion, Ed is forced to carry around a baby he affectionately named Carlos (an homage to The Hangover, which is the favorite movie of every man who shares Ed’s “haircut”), which makes most of the events even more tragically embarrassing for his life and soul. Making a patented Hoe Don’t Do It choice, Ed opts to spend his time with Tayshia trashing Chasen and his perpetually open mouth, doing his best physical impression of Jar Jar Binks.

Naturally, Tayshia takes Ed’s allegations to Chasen, who promptly denies them all then confronts Ed. Chasen stands over Ed, forcing Ed to lift his chin-forward head to finally reveal his neck, which has been hiding in plain sight. He chastises Chasen’s “medium-sized shirt” (pour one out for the last time I was a medium), to which Chasen retorts, “It’s a large.” This entire argument had big end-of-Billy-Madison energy, and blissfully, Tayshia arrives to end the argument and gives the group date rose to Ivan.

It’s time for the cocktail party (literally when was the last time we had one of these) and Chasen comes in HOT attempting to quell the previous night’s drama with the rest of the guys. Instead, in all his glory, he lights a stick of dynamite next to a barrel of gasoline and in the process gives us our Quote of the Week.

C hasen: “I did use one adjective to describe Clare and Tayshia. Here’s my new word: smokeshow. Tayshia’s a smokeshow.” Bennett: *voiceover* “What woman wants to be called a ‘smokeshow’? Give me a break, dude. He had all day to come up with an adjective and came up with a noun.”

Bold of Bennett to assume the rest of the men are well-versed in grammar and the parts of speech. If I said “dangling participle” in front of Chasen, he’d giggle then whisper it to himself before completely short-circuiting.

Putting these two men and their baby aside, Tayshia is courted by the rest of the men in minimally creative ways — and by minimal, I mean not at all. The remainder of the evening is relatively uneventful, including the rose ceremony in which we apparently bid farewell to multiple men who snuck onto this season. Did you know there was a Peter this whole time? Because I most certainly did not. Other men went home. They know who they are, and (you guessed it) I am unaware of their identities. To quote the racist Alabama Keebler elf, “I do not recall.”

Still true.

It’s time for the next group date and it’s Thanksgiving themed! Or at least I think so — that’s the only explanation for why Tayshia is slathering Eazy, Brendan, Joe, Jordan, Spencer, Ben, Ed, and Chasen with salad dressing stolen from the kitchen of an abandoned Olive Garden. It’s time for the Probably Could Be a Lawsuit Unless Their Contracts Were Ironclad date — wrestling! The men get shirtless, practice a little trash talk (which Dr. Joe, He Who Deserves The Most, fails spectacularly), and get ready to toss each other onto what looks to be a very unpadded floor. Nothing’s sexier than the possibility of brain damage.

One by one, the men enter the ring to battle. Joe holds his own against Eazy, Jordan goes for the balls-in-face method against Brendan, and Big Ben draws against Trader (Joe’s) Spencer. But the marquis match is Ed vs. Chasen — or so we thought. Ed, who earlier in the day was doing shoulder-specific exercises with weights the size of a regulation shoe box filled with cement, tells Chris Harrison his shoulders, “regularly dislocate” and he’d “rather not go to the hospital what with the *gestures widely* situation going on.” Ed. Edward. If your shoulders have been randomly dislocating for years, YOU SHOULD GET THAT CHECKED OUT, MY GUY. The human body should be more physically resilient and stable than a f*cking American Girl Doll and there’s a whole hospital specifically for those broads.

When Ed drops out, Noah hops the fence to take his place. Bringing the missing Top Gun volleyball scene energy this season has desperately needed, he loses to Chasen but wins over Tayshia and earns an invite to the evening’s festivities. Here’s hoping Noah’s time on The Bachelorette ends better than Goose’s in Top Gun.

RIP to the legend

At the evening’s cocktail party, Tayshia convinces Noah to shave the ‘stache (bless). And while I wouldn’t say Noah looks better, he also doesn’t look worse. What can I say? He’s just not my type. Though if he wants to grow it back, this could be the opportunity to finally bring Ron Burgundy’s origin story to an Orange County community theater, the way it was meant to be seen.

Moving along from Tom Selleck’s illegitimate child, Tayshia makes her personal preferences clear — she’s all in on Brendan and Spencer, while Ed, Chasen, and the others are being tolerated at best. But poor Ben, who wants to be the last one to speak to her before she bestows the date rose, makes the ill-advised error of waiting too long. Just before Tayshia goes to end the evening, Ben asks if he can steal her away. With ice in her veins, Tayshia replies, “Ben…the night’s over.”

That response was so cold, Ben’s grandchildren felt it. But she’s totally within her rights to do so. It’s her world; these dudes are just passing through. Shoot your shot and follow through, kids — you never know when Lebron is going to sneak up behind you and block what should have been a simple layup in the NBA Finals.

Ultimately, Noah got the group date rose, and some serious shade from the guys who felt he peacock’ed and weaseled his way into the date. I don’t know how many other animal comparisons I can make here, but I welcome suggestions.

This week’s Personal Victimization Award goes to Ben’s U-neck shirt. Sir, you are an adorkable, broad-shouldered man. Don’t do this again.

Next week we’ll see Tayshia continue her reign and the men maintain their absolutely dumbassery. Here’s hoping the episode sends us into this truly strange Thanksgiving season with enough oomph to last through the tryptophan. And a friendly reminder: stay home. Wear a mask. Save lives.

Until then.

XOXO,

Recap Girl