overnights

The Bachelor Recap: Home Is Where the Boobies Are

The Bachelor

Week 8
Season 19 Episode 9
Editor’s Rating 4 stars

The Bachelor

Week 8
Season 19 Episode 9
Editor’s Rating 4 stars
Oh, Britt, ya done goofed. Photo: ABC

It’s the week of the home visits. Before that, however, we have to deal with Britt. Oh, tragic Britt. How the mighty have fallen. From the saucy, flirty vixen with half a Sephora’s stock on her face to the blubbering, self-sabotaging mess … with half a Sephora’s stock on her face, Britt’s fall from hotness was kind of sad to watch.

Britt would be great in a Real World house as the woman who’s secretly banging two of the men living in the house and it all blows up while they’re working at their South Beach gelato shop and Britt has to pick whether she’s gonna keep boning Derek or Chad. Britt would end up picking Derek, but also keep banging some townie. But is she the woman you take back to your hometown of 429 people? No, because I also think Britt thrives on making the other women jealous. She loved stealing Chris away and coming back giggling, “What’s the big deal? We just took a nap!”

Britt has obviously been having fun because she saw herself as the front-runner. She was hot, she gave Chris a BJ in that hotel room, her hair was long and thick like a pony’s — but suddenly other women started to have emotional connections with Chris, and suddenly the game is no longer the make-out fest Britt once dominated. In layman’s terms, Britt wanted to be the hottest and the prettiest and the jump-into-Chris’s-arms-iest, and is now flipping the fuck out that she isn’t the center of attention anymore.

Maybe she thought this was all a vacation with her boyfriend where all his ex-girlfriends were allowed to tag along?

So instead of just accepting that her time is up, Britt wants to force Chris to pick her one more time. Well, she wants to tell everyone that she was packed and ready to go home because how could she bring a man who would validate other women, instead of validating just her, to meet her father? Britt is going to corner Chris at the cocktail party and tell her she’s going to leave.

Except that’s there’s no cocktail party. DUN DUN DUUUUUUNNNN. Britt. Ya done goofed. Ya done goofed hard, girl.

The idea that other women might also want to win never occurred to her. The idea that Chris might not want to hear what she has to say never occurred to her. The idea that sleeping in your makeup is a terrible idea never occurred to her.

Britt’s face in that moment is priceless. I want it tattooed on my arm so I can flash it when I’m utterly shocked. “Your boyfriend broke up with you via text?!” Flash my Britt tattoo. “I got drunk and did what last night?!” Flash my Britt tattoo. “Beck won a Grammy!? Over Beyoncé?!” Flash my Britt tattoo.

So the ladytestants line up for the rose ceremony, and Britt stops everything because it’s all about her (classic Britt!) and takes Chris aside to talk to him about her reservations. (This is a very ninth-grade drama, to be honest.) Chris repeats what Carly told him at the skating rink. (Oh boy, that’s a ninth-grade sentence.) Britt says that Carly has something against her. (God, this is ninth grade.) Chris decides to not sit with Britt at lunch anymore and sends her packing.

He also sends Carly home, because Chris apparently loves the information his ladytestant snitches gives him, but hates snitches.

After this point, it’s relatively drama-free. The four remaining ladytestants are pretty grounded and sane. They’re varying degrees of whimsical, and they have varying degrees of interest in being a mom in a no-stoplight town.

It’s time for the home visits: the wholesome interlude to meet the ladytestants’ families and hometowns!

… Also, Jade’s titties.

Chris has the images he’s built up about each ladytestant in his mind. Despite the fact that Jade lives in L.A. and is going after a modeling career, he describes her as a small-town girl with small-town values. Huh?

Whoever the woman is; whatever she wants to do — she’s still a small-town girl. I once heard Chris describe NeNe Leakes as a small town-girl, with simple tastes.

So when Jade’s family spends the entire home visit telling Chris that Jade is a wild mare who can’t be tamed, that she’s a free spirit, that she’s going to do exactly what she wants to do and needs a man who will let her be free, Chris is shocked. He took her to a football game! She’s from Nebraska! Flash my Britt tattoo!

Jade wants to be honest with Chris, so her big emotional moment this week was showing Chris nude photos of herself. Jade was “approached” to pose for Playboy and the way to tell Chris about this wild and carefree time in her life is to show him her nude photos and her sexy video.

He feels inappropriate and odd to be sitting on a couch fully clothed watching a video where, in his words, she “takes her bottoms off and does a sexy dance.” Chris reacts to the sexuality of the ladytestants like a confused ninth-grader, naturally. “Whoa what … boobies?!”

I look forward to everyone’s women’s studies master theses about the Virgin/Whore complex present in The Bachelor season 19.

Chris meets Becca in Shreveport, Louisiana. In case we all forgot, Becca’s family reminds us Becca is a frigid virgin. Becca’s family tells Chris over and over that Becca isn’t affectionate, she doesn’t get intimate, she is incapable of feeling human love. Chris takes her to a Ferris wheel and it’s the most romantic, amazing thing anyone has ever done for her.

Dang, this girl is a virgin.

Kaitlyn takes Chris to a dumpster so they can record a rap song. Because they aren’t the two whitest humans on earth! One of the lyrics of their epic love song is “Family is everything / Next up is that engagement ring.” Chris is stunned that even though Kaitlyn’s parents are divorced, they created a loving home for her. Later, Chris is also unsure how Whitney’s family works because her mom died. The idea of a family that isn’t a classic American two-parent home never occurred to Chris.

While visiting Whitney’s hometown of Chicago, she takes him on a tour of the fertility clinic where she works. Chris asks if they pick the sperm up “by the tail.” I’ll say it again for the cheap seats in the back: BOY IS DUMB. Whitney also pranks him into thinking he’s going to have to jerk off into a cup.

Whitney’s older sister is a stone-cold boss bitch and lays it out for Chris and Whitney that she can’t give her blessing because she doesn’t want to see her sister as one of four and not the One. I mean, sister ain’t wrong, but again, that’s kind of not what Whitney signed up for. She signed up to be one of lots of women and make out with his dolt over and over again and participate in challenges and live in a house with crazy women and hope he picks her.

At the rose ceremony at the end of the episode, Whitney, Becca, and Kaitlyn all get roses.

Jade gets sent home, but it totally wasn’t because of her nude photo shoot. Not at all. No. What? Nooooope. What patriarchal double standards?

Next week, BALI!

The Bachelor Recap: Week 8