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Welcome Rosebuds! We're back for the 13th season of The Bachelorette, with possibly the coolest Bach'ette ever in the person of Rachel. Thoughts:
Engaged. Rachel has broken the recent pattern and stated that, yes, she's engaged. If I remember right, back in the early days of the show the Bachelor or Bachelorette would confirm their engagement but at some point the show decided to try and create more suspense about the outcome and forced the lead to act coy. Not this time - Rachel's engaged, at least for a while, although I would says there's almost no chance she actually marries her current fiance. It's just not the nature of this beast.
Heartbroken? At the start of the show, as always, Our Host Chris Harrison recaps Rachel's journey, emphasizing how heartbroken she was when Nick sent her home. Nope, not buying it. Rachel may have slipped into the show's version of Stockholm Syndrome and convinced herself that she was in love with Nick, but I doubt it.
And no doubt Nick really liked her, but I'm now convinced that ABC was looking at Rachel as the new Bachelorette from the first moment she applied to be on the show. Again, I'm not saying that Nick didn't care for her, I'm sure he did, within the construct of the show. But I'm almost certain producers strongly suggested he give her the first impression rose and keep her on the show at least through Hometowns. The show has taken enormous heat for its lack of diversity and was almost certainly actively looking for a charismatic black woman who could be the Bachelorette. Plus, in 2016 Channing Dungey, an African American woman, was named President of ABC Entertainment Group. I've never seen it specifically stated but my bet is that Ms. Dungey wanted this to happen sooner rather than later, and voila. All of a sudden there was Rachel, a star ready to be born. She was never going to end up with Nick.
Men to watch. Every season Harrison comes out with a list of five "men to watch." Given that the season has completed filming and the outcome is known, at least to him, are there any clues in the list? I did a little googling and looked at his list of 5 from Desiree, Andi, Kaitlyn and JoJo's seasons. For Desiree and Kaitlyn's seasons, his list of 5 did not include the eventual winner. For Andi and JoJo, it did. An every-other-year pattern? List the winner in even-numbered years? For what it's worth, here's Harrison's List of 5 to watch this time around:
DeMario, Kenny, Bryan, Dean, Fred
The current issue of People, featuring Rachel in the top left corner and with a nice story inside, also has a list of five to watch:
Kenny, Bryan, Lee, Josiah, Peter
Former Bachelorette Ali Fedotowsky and former contestant Sharleen Joynt, writing after viewing the premiere episode, each provided their top four, meaning who they think will win:
Ali's top 4: Bryan, Josiah, Peter, Eric
Sharleen's top 4: Kenny, Bryan, Josiah, Peter
Bryan
Kenny
Josiah
Peter
Bryan, who got the first impression rose, is the only name on all four lists; Kenny, Josiah and Peter are on three out of the four. They may not necessarily end up being the final four, but I wouldn't bet against it. If Rachel is engaged to one of them, is one of the other three first in line to be the next Bachelor? Almost certainly.
Rachel's posse. I liked the gathering of girlfriends from Nick's season. Corinne, Alexis, Whitney, Raven, Jasmine, Kristina and Astrid may not have had the most insightful advice for Rachel but they seem to genuinely like her, and each other. They're probably candidates for BIP too, and a few more minutes in the spotlight can't hurt. (And FYI, Corinne now has 755,000 Instagram followers, Raven has 725,000 and Rachel has 528,000. Nick has 1.3 million)
A Bachelorette blog? In past seasons each Bachelor and Bachelorette (or a ghost writer) has written a blog at People.com. So far I haven't seen one for Rachel. Chris Harrison is still writing his blog at Yahoo but he's just phoning it in, with frothy nuggets of insight like "the first night always has some really fun moments" and "these men are here for Rachel." He also tries to make us believe this:
Rachel
and Copper the dog came into The Bachelorette looking for
someone they could share a life with, and we were equally determined to
make that happen for her, which is why Rachel got to meet 31 men, the most in Bachelorette history!
If this was really all about finding a husband for Rachel, we would never have seen the whaboom guy, the tickle monster and Kyle (who's 26 and got eliminated the first night.) Rachel says she's engaged so the process worked, more or less, but some of the bozos ABC trotted out Monday night are clearly there strictly for entertainment purposes.
I'm writing this on Monday afternoon just a few hours before Episode 2. According to the online episode guide, Peter gets the first one-on-one date, Kareem Abdul Jabbar shows up, some other stuff happens and "one bachelor betrays Rachel." Wow. What could that be???
photo credit: americandisposal.com
That's it for now, Rosebuds. I hope everyone's having a lovely Memorial Day week-end! Meet me back here soon, same Bach time, same Bach channel!
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