The Feminist Bachelor Recap, Episode 5: Shit-Talking & Storytelling

This week’s Bach brought Farmer Chris and his clan of ever-more-uniformly blonde ladiesssssttttthhh to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Chris talks up this wonderful city while wearing a chic leather jacket, and one nondescript blonde thinks she is going to actual Mexico, ’cause, you know, girls are dumb.

Welcome to Mexico

The first date is a one-on-one with Cruise Ship Singer Carly, and the date card reads, “Let’s come together.” I know what you’re thinking—simultaneous orgasms with Farmer Chris = every womyn’s dream date! But Carly puts the accent on “let’s” and pretends all ladylike like she doesn’t know what orgasms are… but not for long. Cue “spiritual music” and Farmer Chris and Carly walking into a room where a woman who identifies as a “love and intimacy mentor,” or “love guru” as Farmer Chris prefers to call her, waits for them on a pile of sensual Southwestern blankets. She burns sage and leads the pair in a chant, and it’s all really vaguely racist and cultural appropriation-nation and gross. She encourages them to like, hold their gross open mouths near one another without kissing, and then they sort of start dry-humping, ewwies all around. And also a totally insane first date, since the “love guru”’s goal is clearly to help couples reconnect. Oh yeah and love guru tells Farmer Chris and Carly to take each other’s clothes off (because clothing is different masks we hide behind you guys) but they’re too nervous and can’t do it (thanks a lot, Eve!). At dinner, Carly tells Chris that her last boyfriend didn’t want to touch her and it made her feel like she isn’t beautiful while I ran downstairs to get my sushi delivery. When I got back, Carly was still crying. (I hear her, because I had the same ex-boyfriend, basically.) Chris says he’s scared his farmer lifestyle isn’t good enough to make someone happy, and Carly assures him he’s wrong. Carly is confident and nice and normal when she’s around Farmer Chris. Which makes me almost like her, except that I have to remember her talking shit about/gender-policing Jillian last week. And then I’m like, oh right I live in the real world and Carly is horrible.

When did it become hot to blindfold people and feed them berries?

Next up is the group date, which includes Megan, Jade, Kelsey, Caitlin, Ashley, and maybe a few others, and entails white water rafting on the Rio Grande. Jade falls into the river and goes into hypothermia due to some rare condition she has, but I guess the cure for that condition is Farmer Chris vaguely touching her legs, ’cause then she’s fine. Kelsey continues to be a brat who hates nature and other women. Later, the laddiiiiiiieeeessss wait for Chris in a swanky hotel lobby. But he’s running late because—OMG—drunk girl Jordan has driven from Colorado to try for another chance with Chris! Chris lets her hang out for the group date, the other girls are furious, and then he sends her home. But not before Hot Virgin Ashley—who is becoming less and less hot by the minute due to her hideous inner self—whines about how Jordan is “not wife material” like she is, you know because Ash is a virginity-obsessed virgin who’s still a virgin, and demands that the other girls be mean to Jordan. Whitney trumps Ashley’s “wife material” line with “Chris doesn’t want a mean girl for a wife.” ‘Cause women should only be kind to other women to impress mustachioed Iowan men. The group date’s rose goes to Whitney, patron saint of nice girls.

Chris tells Jordan he too enjoys drinking. That’s weird, I didn’t think he had opinions about things.

Back at home, Britt claims the next one-on-one date card. It says “Sky’s the limit,” and upon reading it she immediately screams “nooooooooo!!!” and bursts into tears, and I burst into tears too. She is terrified that she’ll be forced to scale a skyscraper, or leap from a bridge, or otherwise defy gravity while strapped to Farmer Chris in ways common to the Bachelor franchise, and she wants no part in it. As someone who is fucking terrified of heights, I have waited season upon season for a womyn contestant to flat-out refuse one of these outrageous, weighty metaphor-lewn dates (“taking a leap of faith,” anyone?), because it’s reasonable and fair and certainly not a sign that you’re a commitment-phobe to not want to propel off the side of a building (my boyfriend and I have been together for seven years, for example, and never once have I plummeted into the vast bungeed unknown to prove my devotion to him. I won’t even climb the ladder onto our roof without crying.) But alas, Britt is not our girl, and she is delighted to discover that she’ll be riding on a hot air balloon—the perfect date for everyone’s favorite manic pixie dream girl trope come to life. Oh also, we learn during this episode that Britt doesn’t ever shower, and that she sleeps in her makeup—an excellent skincare combination that I’m sure she’ll be thanking herself for in ten years. When Chris breaks into her bedroom to creepily wake her up for their date, he says, “Britt looks as beautiful in the morning as she does when she’s all dolled up.” One point, beguiling man-trickery powers of cosmetics.

Open your eyes to your own childlike wonder through MY childlike wonder!

While Britt is effortlessly conquering her once paralyzingly fear of heights, the “claws have come out”™ back at the mansion. The ladylike beauties that Farmer Chris knows and loves have transformed into venomous, shit-talking she-beasts. Ashley is enraged that she overheard Britt saying she isn’t in a rush to get married or have kids, ’cause you know, only a fucking monster would say a such thing. Carly chimes in that Britt is “beyond manipulative,” and someone else calls Britt “more sexual than she has depth.” Without fail, this show loves to portray women as two-faced she-monsters who can’t be trusted and care about finding monogamous hetero romance first and foremost, lest we viewers remember the awesome power of things like female friendship, and the feminist movement, and girl gangs, and Salt-N-Pepa, and all-girl Valentine’s Day sleepovers, and find ourselves longing for a world without men. The Bachelor franchise would like us to forget the possibility that women were put on this earth to do anything other than fight over, and ultimately serve, men.

As we are slowly learning, Chic Widow Kelsey is a weird nerd who says things like “it’s time to get down to brass tacks,” which is what she says as she marches to Farmer Chris’ hotel room to tell him that she is indeed a widow. She tells him, and they grossly make out afterward. Then Kelsey says this to the camera: “Isn’t my story amazing? It’s so tragic, but it’s amazing. I love my story.” and then “I’m so glad the first kiss will be written in my story.” Woahzers. That is fucking chillingly terrifying and kind of awesome. Kelsey clearly does not want to marry Farmer Chris; she wants to write her fucking memoir, or maybe just a bunch of epically dark poems, and I encourage her to do so.

These turquoise earrings tell a harrowing story.

Kelsey continues to be creepy as the pre-cocktail party chill-time begins. Farmer Chris greets the women, but then immediately retires to the garden to cry with his BFF Chris Harrison after telling his harem of babez that his convo with Kelsey really hit home. Kelsey yammers on to the other girls about her “story,” and how every day is a gift, blah blah, while Britt studiously plays with her hair like an excellent pixie sidekick. One point Britt for maintaining a charade of female friendship. Farmer Chris cancels the cocktail party to go straight to the brutal, cut-throat rose ceremony. Kelsey leaves the group, cracks like a twig, and falls to the ground having a panic attack, and suddenly she’s surrounded by paramedics. OMG you guys. The episode cruelly ended at this point, flashing “To Be Continued.”… and then faded out with a cameo of blonde-girl Megan wearing a sombrero and saying racist shit about Mexico. To be continued, indeed.