overnights

The Bachelor Recap: Courtney’s Slippery Skinny-dipping

The Bachelor

Week 5
Season 16 Episode 5

The Bachelor

Week 5
Season 16 Episode 5
Photo: ABC

On last night’s episode of The Bachelor, Ben and his girls went to sunny, hot Puerto Rico, where just the dripping sweat on their glasses of white wine would make any winter-depressed viewer drool not for Ben, but for summer. It looked like it was 90 beautiful degrees! Which, as Courtney the Model decided, was perfect show-rules-breaking skinny-dippin’ weather. (“I bet Ben’s never skinny-dipped with a model before.”) But first, there was so much crying in baseball.

The gang of eleven women, including one chick (Jamie) we’ve seen almost none of this season, arrives in Puerto Rico, where Courtney has remembered to wear an ironic T-shirt. What a hipster!

Photo: ABC


Nicki gets the first one-on-one date, but they get rained on, so she and Ben go shopping for authentic Puerto Rican clothes. Ben comes out wearing all white and a “Colombian-looking hat,” while Nicki emerges in a dress I’m pretty sure I saw at Forever 21 last year. “I feel like I’ve got a little bit of Latin swagger,” Ben says, but unfortunately we’re going to have to give him credit for his jokey tone on this one. Especially since, moments later, when Ben and Nicki see a wedding taking place, Ben totally straight-up makes fun of the cliché wedding music: “Pachelbel’s Canon,” he scoffs. “The wedding song.” Major respect, Ben, only maybe it was kind of rude to say that when you’re hanging out at a stranger’s wedding with a huge reality show film crew.

Nicki and Ben settle down with their huge glasses of white wine with so much condensation dripping down them that it was nearly impossible to pay attention to their actual conversation, but I’m pretty sure Nicki opened up about her divorce. Something like that. She gets a rose.

Next, nearly all of the girls go on a group date where they have to play baseball, and despite the sudden announcement that only half the girls (the winning team) will get to go on the rest of the date that night, the stakes are still low and someone would have to literally poop her pants on the field for it to be interesting. Know your audience, The Bachelor! The girls who lose cry so hard that the sports war paint they spent more time applying to their cheeks than they did actually playing the game smears down their sad faces. Oh, one good thing happens: Courtney says of (“VIP Cocktail Waitress”) Blakeley: “Who knew strippers could play baseball?” That was a major burn.

Later, Courtney takes Ben out on the beach even though Kacie has already gotten the rose, an apparent violation of the rules, and puts the idea in his mind that she’s going to skinny-dip with him at some point. Then poor Elyse (earlier nicknamed here “Jersey Shore”) gets the one-on-one date and totally flubs it by telling Ben that she gave up her job and her appearance at her best friend’s wedding to go on the show, and that she’s already accomplished everything she wants to accomplish in her life, and that she’s just “tired of being single.” Oof. Later, when she’s sobbing, “What did I do wrong?” on her way home as Ben walks alone along the beach, withheld-rose in hand, everyone watching is like “Um … that!” The whole boring date was worth it, though, just for the long shot of the rose, thrown into the water, drifting out to sea to the tune of that David Gray song. Hey, they have two hours to fill. May as well go crazy.


The big, burly, silent, scary guy comes to the apartment to get Elyse’s purple luggage, indicating to the women that she’s a goner. This part always legitimately scares me! Why can’t he speak to or look at the women, who are all freaking out right in front of him? Why does he have such a mean look on his face? Is he a robot? Anyway, Courtney says, “Maybe she drank too much and her Jersey Shore came out,” which, oops, we made the same really obvious joke. No relation!

Photo: ABC


According to her Master Plan, Courtney breaks a big show rule by running over to Ben’s place with wine and surprising him for “a nightcap.” They soon end up on the beach, taking all their clothes off and running into the water and kissing in the deep water and sliding around, where it’s inevitable that his P touched her V. It’s going to be an uphill battle for the other girls, who can only dangle the eventual prospect of sexual contact before Ben’s Courtney-distracted eyes. Ben is now jerking off three more times per day.

Photo: ABC


The next day, the day of the rose ceremony, Ben says he feels “really crappy about what happened” (so something must have REALLY happened!) and that he’s going to be “more open with the other girls” from now on, because not being open with the girls is the thing he feels crappy about. Right.

Photo: ABC


At the cocktail party, Blakeley tells Ben she had an epiphany the night before and that she now believes she deserves love, Jennifer “the Best Kisser” allows Ben’s huge, fat, gross tongue into her mouth once again, and Emily tries to apologize for dissing Courtney the week before but does that classic thing where you apologize for something and then try to explain why you did it and then get all defensive and do the exact same thing over again, only worse.

Meanwhile, Jennifer innocently initiates a VERY SUSPICIOUS game of “Who here has ever been skinny-dipping in the ocean?” and Courtney raises her hand and drops a lot of hints about slipping and sliding “skin on skin, slippery” all over “a person you really enjoy” but nobody gets it (or remembers that she disappeared with the wine the night before!).

And then we finally get to the first rose ceremony with any real suspense, and we’re so sure it’s Emily who’s going, but it turns out to be Jennifer the Best Kisser, and we’re never even told why!

Next week: Casey S. goes home in a dramatic fashion that requires the emergency appearance of Chris Harrison (the best kind of Bachelor drama!), and reveals herself to be a Claire Danes–level Ugly Crier, and eventually a bunch of girls are going to get together and tell Ben that Courtney = Bad, but it’s probably not going to work because she sealed the slippery deal on that fateful Puerto Rican beach.

The Bachelor Recap: Courtney’s Slippery Skinny-dipping