Greetings, Rosebuds! First, I have to confess: after seven episodes, I don't care very much about Nick or his season. I'm much more interested in the "Rachel is the new Bachelorette" story and how it plays out over the next few weeks and then during her season. Still, I do have a few thoughts:
Nick can't leave. In spite of all the dramatic emoting at the end of episode six and the beginning of episode seven, Nick can't just throw up his hands in despair and leave. That ridiculous storyline is an example of one of my biggest pet peeves about the show, i.e., it was totally scripted and completely fake.
How do I know? Because The Bachelor is big business, there's serious money at stake and Nick is an employee with a signed contract. He can't just walk away. Seriously. Think about it. Ask yourself this: What would happen if the lead walked out after filming 6 episodes? Answer: There would be no show. ABC would be running reruns of Dancing With The Stars on Monday nights and we'd all be watching The Apprentice. (And the quitter would be facing a serious lawsuit.) I can't imagine any circumstances, other than an actual tragedy like the death of the lead, under which they would stop filming and shut down production.
On a lighter note, we've already seen the previews of Nick in snowy Finland. That alone tells us he didn't bail in St. Thomas. As you can tell by my tone, this kind of invented (and very badly acted) drama is one of my least favorite things about the show.
No one-on-one for Corinne. For all the attention Corinne has gotten, she hasn't had a one-on-one date. More proof that she is being kept around for her entertainment value, not because Nick is seriously attracted to her.
And then there were four. After Nick sent Danielle M and Kristina home there were four women left, which is exactly the right number for Hometowns, so no need for a rose ceremony. (They may go through the motions and have one in tonight's episode but there's no suspense.) Corinne, Rachel, Raven and Vanessa will get hometown dates, as shown in this promo tweet from the show's official Twitter account:
As usual there will be a strange combination of local/authentic date-type activities, uncomfortable encounters with family members and lots of kissing. According to this advance peek, there will also be, what, swamp wrestling?
Whose idea was this? Not Nick or Raven, that's for sure. The Hometown Dates episodes always include some cringe-worthy moments but this has to be one of the worst. Yuk.
The new Bachelorette. It's been a week since the bombshell announcement and most of the reaction I've seen is positive, which is nice. There's been some fussing about the "spoiler," or in other words, why did ABC make the announcement a few weeks earlier than usual, thereby making it clear that Rachel is not, in fact, engaged to Nick? Here's how Chris Harrison explained it, while co-hosting Live With Kelly last week:
Traditionally,
the next Bachelorette is announced after The Bachelor wraps,
as the lead is usually one of the finalists. Last season, for example, ABC
announced runner-up JoJo Fletcher during Ben Higgins' After the Final
Rose post-finale special.
When
speaking to Ripa, Harrison said the announcement came early due to a
combination of show production schedules and the hope to be able to cast
specifically for Lindsay.
"We
named her the Bachelorette early because, weird TV calendar stuff is that The
Bachelor runs right up to when we start taping The
Bachelorette, we're talking days," he explained of the usual schedule.
"We're done and then she goes further in the show and we're like, 'well we
need to let everybody know that Rachel is our Bachelorette.'"
He
added, "We would like to cast the show for her." (From The Hollywood Reporter, read it here.)
Unfortunately, I believe that "letting everybody know that Rachel is the Bachelorette," and "casting the show for her," translates to "we want to let the men applying to be on the show know that the Bach'ette is black, so the racist jerks can self-eliminate now." In a perfect world that detail wouldn't matter but we're not there yet.
With that in mind, I'm interested to see what the final cast looks like. Will it be mostly white guys with a few men of color, which is the traditional pattern? Will it be the reverse, with a mostly black cast with a few token white guys thrown in? Separate from that, age is also an issue. At 31, Rachel is older than previous Bachelorettes. Will the men be older too? I think that one of the reasons Nick's season feels so strange is the age gap between Nick at 36 and most of the women on his show, who are in their early to mid-twenties. Ideally Rachel's "husband candidate pool" will feature age-appropriate men, but I wouldn't count on it. My guess is that most men who are Rachel's "equal," not just age-wise but also in terms of their professional stature, may not be in a position to take six months off to be on The Bachelorette. (I don't mean to be sexist. What I'm saying applies to 30-something women too, which is why Nick's season didn't feature 25 professional women in their 30s.)
In one of her interviews, Rachel said the show approached her about possibly being the Bachelorette shortly after she was eliminated during filming last Fall. (Hometown dates were filmed Oct. 29 through Nov. 3, with the Fantasy Suites dates taking place the following week.) This is also a change from the usual pattern, and would appear to indicate that producers were looking at Rachel as a possible lead from the very beginning. Last week I wondered if the remaining episodes were being re-edited after the announcement, now I'm wondering if the entire season was edited to showcase Rachel in a particular way. For example, Reality Steve (yes, I've read some of his columns, no I won't post any more spoilers) says that Rachel and Vanessa had a big fight in Bimini, but absolutely none of it was shown last week. If you watched carefully you would have noticed that Vanessa was absent from almost the entire second half of the episode, with no explanation. I'm guessing that's not a coincidence.
Finally, how's everyone doing on Instagram?
Nick: 1 million
Corinne: 323,000
Rachel: 194,000
Raven: 251,000
Vanessa: 335,000
It's almost time for the Hometown Dates, meet me back here soon, Rosebuds, same Bach time, same Bach channel.
