The Bachelor's back, and everything is awful.
The premiere may have been last week, but that was just the first episode. That was the limo arrival episode, where tricks and camels were around to distract us from the pain of what was really going on, and the true personalities of some of the women who have blessed this season with their presence.
Tonight, some of those personalities mixed with some truly awful dates and created a nightmare episode which we often had to pause in order to collect ourselves and remind our brains what silence is like. And while we've been hard on him in the past, Nick wasn't really at fault, except for one strange decision we'll get to in a minute.
The first group date of the season caused more throwing up in our mouths than we've ever felt the need to do before. It involved 12 of the women participating in various themed wedding photoshoots with Nick. There was a shotgun wedding, a "traditional" wedding, a Vegas wedding, and something called an Adam and Eve wedding, which we're 99% certain was a made up kind of wedding that was just an excuse for Nick and Britney to go topless and make out with an apple. Several of the ladies only got to be bridesmaids, which was rude but also hilarious.
We're also pretty sure the sleazebag photographer was an actor hired to say gross things like "Somebody needs a little spanking."
He awarded the "prize" of the day to Corinne, who spent her pool wedding shoot taking off her top and asking Nick to "Janet Jackson" her by holding her "bare bosoms." He didn't seem all that comfortable with it, but he did what she asked anyway, and we felt gross about it.
And listen, we have no problem with nudity. Boobs deserve freedom and women deserve to be free with their sexuality and all that, but this just felt overdone, and all the other women seemed to agree.
Corinne was already at the bottom of our list in terms of the women on this show, and she only made things worse. She got the most time with Nick as a prize for "winning" the wedding photoshoot, and then continuously interrupted Nick's time with all the other women, saying "if you can't handle being interrupted, why did you come here?"
Then, she interrupted Taylor's convo with Nick, and when Taylor interrupted back, Corinne lost her mind, and started referring to herself in the third person.
"I interrupted Taylor, and then she came and re-interrupted me. There's a way to go about things, and the way I go about things is very classy, and not directed towards a character in general. The way she did it was very directed towards Corinne. I'm like, okay Taylor, if you take a direct hit at Corinne, I'm gonna say something."
Despite the fact that Nick didn't seem all that thrilled with all Corinne's interruptions or her wedding photoshoot behavior, she still got the date rose, leaving all the other women to question what Nick is really on the show for. And we couldn't help but question it a little bit too.
Then, Nick went on a very lovely date with Danielle M. They sat in a hot tub on a boat, and kissed, and shared talk of past relationships (her fiancé died five years ago) and then they took a private ride on a ferris wheel after he gave her a rose. It seemed to be a slightly different Nick than the one who just suffered through a Corinne-icane and still handed her a ticket to next week, but that's fine. We'll accept that this guy has different facets to his personality…for now.
For the second group date, Nick took most of the remaining women (including the drama-filled Liz) to the museum of broken relationships, where we once again had to hear about Nick's painful break ups with Andi and Kaitlyn.
Honestly, we're done with this. We know, guys. We remember very well how Andi broke his heart, and then Kaitlyn broke his heart. We don't need to be reminded of it in every episode, or ever again—at least until the finale montage highlighting Nick's journey for hopefully the last time.
Anyway, this is where the disappointingly fake slap comes in, because all the women had to "break up" with Nick in front of a crowd. That included Liz, who unlike the other women, decided to break out her diary and recount the first time she and Nick actually met.
He avoided eye contact like the plague, and was clearly far less comfortable with her realness than he was with Corinne's aggressiveness. Then, he started panicking about the fact that Liz might have told the other women about their past, not knowing she had only told Christen, who is quickly becoming one of our faves.
Nick thought he was off the hook after secretly sort of interrogating the other women on the date, until he talked to Christen. She revealed that Liz had told her everything, and Nick's panic level went up quite a bit.
He decided that not only did he need to come clean to the rest of his girlfriends, he also had to finally talk to Liz about her true intentions, and that convo went very badly for Liz. So badly, in fact, that it ended with her being sent home.
She just couldn't even make a lick of sense as to why she didn't ever try to contact Nick after their night together, and it became clearer and clearer that she was just there to be on The Bachelor, not to be with Nick.
He went back to the group date and announced that he had just sent Liz home, and he had something to tell everyone…which brings us to the season's first cliffhanger, and the end of one of the most painful episodes of this show we've ever put ourselves through.
Thankfully, Liz is over. Her drama isn't, but she is, and we were getting tired of her scary smiles, so we're super glad to see her gone.
Corinne, however, has only just begun, and we're afraid of what that means. We're not sure we could handle even one more group date with her on it before we dramatically and hyperbolically rip out all of our hair.
Extra thoughts:
Jaimi for first bisexual Bachelorette! Could you even imagine the drama of a mansion filled with men and women, all competing for the same badass chef with a nose ring? Come on, ABC!
Alexis is slowly starting to grow on us. Now that she's not wearing the dolphinshark costume, lines like "I feel like Nick and I have a good chemistry. I mean, I have my legs wrapped around his neck," are actually sort of charming. We didn't even hate the birthday party she threw for her boobs in the end tag. It was weirdly cute? Or maybe we're having a Bachelor meltdown? We may never know.
The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.