overnights

The Bachelor Recap: Baywatch of Pigs

The Bachelor

Week Six
Season 20 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating 4 stars
BEN HIGGINS

The Bachelor

Week Six
Season 20 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating 4 stars
Oatmeal. Photo: Eniac Martinez/ABC

This episode opens where last week’s left off, with Oatmeal facing a series of Scylla and Charybdis–like challenges that won’t stop until the episode is over. On one side of the strait is Charybdis — I mean Olivia, who will destroy his entire life with her patented brand of crazy. She’s different. She’s confident. She likes reading books in her room and thinking. Oatmeal is unable to see the swirling whirlpool of Olivia, and decides to let her keep her rose throughout this Rose Ceremony. Homer would have written it differently, but he’s dead.

While the soundtrack from Avengers: Age of Ultron plays, it’s time for the Rose Ceremony. There’s only two non-balayaged brunettes left: Caila and Jennifer. Unfortunately for Jennifer, she hasn’t had a lot of time with Ben, so she is sent home. Caila, Lauren B., Jojo, Becca, Twin, and Leah all get roses. I found myself again asking, “WHO IN THE HELL IS LEAH?” when she was given her rose. That dodo bird must have been listening in my TV, because she certainly answered that question by the end of the episode.

Who is Leah? Leah is Regina George. When Leah was in middle school, she probably created a burn book and wrote that her friend Maddie masturbated with a candle in front of everyone at a sleepover, thus ending Maddie’s social life until Maddie went to college, where no one knew her nickname was Little Match Girl, which isn’t even accurate when you think about it.

That’s who Leah is.

Oatmeal invites the ladytestants to the Bahamas, where they’ll sleep four to a bed, like the Bucket family. Host Chris strolls in and lets the ladytestants know that,this week, there will be a one-on-one date, a group date, and … a two-on-one. The woman who doesn’t impress Oatmeal on the two-on-one date will be sent home, and won’t get to go with the other ladytestants to get those sweet white-girl spring-break cornrows. You know what I’m talking about.

Caila gets the one-on-one date with Oatmeal. They go fishing on a boat and he shoves his hand up her jorts, and the whole date is intercut with footage of Leah weeping and pouting around because Oatmeal hasn’t paid enough attention to her. Leah and Oatmeal speak fluent Hallmark Card to each other. Are they confused enough to fall in with each other, or do Caila’s smiles hide an empty, doll-like skull with eyes that close when you lay her down? Apparently, she shows enough depth, and Oatmeal’s boner is just perplexed and intrigued enough to keep her around another week. She gets a rose. Snooze.

It’s time for quite possibly the worst group date in history. Say this phrase out loud: Swimming with pigs.

Did your nipples get hard? If yes, you should be put on a list. If no, you’re like millions of other women who don’t think feeding pigs is a super-hot date. Ben canoodles with Lauren B. in the ocean while the other ladytestants live some Lord of the Flies waking nightmare. Lauren H. quit her job to be here. Yikes.

Everyone gets jealous, and the date grinds to a halt. Oatmeal doesn’t know what to do, so he asks every single woman what he’s doing wrong. One of the most unattractive things is a man who relies on women to do his emotional labor. “What should I do? I don’t want to be the bad guy? Tell me how to behave! I don’t know!” Get it together, dude. You agreed to be the Bachelor. No one cares that it’s hard to have multiple attractive tiny blondes chasing after your junk. That’s what the job is.

At the cocktail party, instead of trying to get Oatmeal to be into her, Leah takes him aside and makes up some story about how Lauren B. is secretly a bitch. Has this ever worked? Did Leah forget when Amber tried to come for Our Heavenly Sister Jubilee and was swiftly dismissed and then dismissed? Well, it almost works this time. Oatmeal takes Lauren B. aside to find out what is going on while the special-effects department works overtime to provide lightning and thunder. Oatmeal ultimately decides that Lauren B. can stay, and he gives Amanda the group-date rose.

Leah retreats to the bathroom to put on her nude Nars Velvet Matte lip pencil that she clearly got as the Sephora birthday gift. What’s Leah doing? Classic middle-school move — she’s sneaking into the boys’ bunk. But instead of giving her first HJ outside Hemlock Cabin, Leah wants to talk about how Lauren B. is a monster.

Would it have killed Leah to just bang him? If you’re stealing middle-school moves to get a boy to like you, you put on your cutest low-rise flares and glitter baby tee and get busy. (I mean, not me. I carried a metal Sailor Moon lunchbox until I was 15.) Oatmeal’s lack of anything could definitely be improved with some good ol’ fashioned banging. Something!

So, Oatmeal walks Leah out.

It’s time for the two-on-one on the worst day in the Bahamas. Oatmeal takes Olivia and Twin on a speedboat in a windstorm and then just sits on a beach. You don’t have an activity planned? A board game or something?

Both Twin and Olivia take this time to confess their feelings to Oatmeal. Everyone is falling for Oatmeal. He sticks to your ribs.

In the end, Oatmeal pulls the ultimate switcheroo on the most delusional ladytestant: He takes Olivia aside holding the two-on-one date rose, then tells her that he appreciates that she spoke from the heart, but he can’t reciprocate those feelings. Emily basically gets the two-on-one date rose by default. She didn’t earn it, did she? I can’t tell whom this cup of oats and water likes.

Oatmeal and Emily ride off on the speedboat and leave Olivia on the shore crying. The camera keeps flying back farther and farther and — oh wow, they just left her on that island. Cupcake’s elimination, part two.

While the ladytestants at the hotel enjoy their morning box of wine, a PA comes in to claim Olivia’s luggage and deliver it to her on the deserted island because that’s where she lives now.

Oatmeal doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time, so he gets right to the Rose Ceremony. Oatmeal can’t tell if anyone really likes him anymore. Bruh, you’re alone with seven women, and you keep taking them to far-flung locales. Someone is gonna give you a HJ at some point.

Becca and Jojo get roses, and it comes down to the two Laurens.

Lauren B. gets the rose. Lauren H. drives off crying, and she keeps asking when it’s going to be her time for love. Better ask for your job back first, homegirl.

Meanwhile, Olivia is sharpening rocks to enact her revenge once she traps a sea pig to ride back to the resort.

The Bachelor Recap: Baywatch of Pigs