Been almost 9 months, but heading back to California this weekend for some pleasure. And business. First up on the pleasure list? Yes, my inner Star Wars geek is psyched about going to the premiere tomorrow night. I may or may not have bought tix over a month ago. For those asking, no, I haven’t read any spoilers. Nor do I want to. And no, I will not be wearing a costume. Bring my light saber? Maybe. But no costume. I don’t think. Look, when my prime childhood years centered around the release of “Star Wars,” “Empire Strikes Back,” and “Return of the Jedi,” then of course I’m going to freak out when a new movie is released. Only been waiting two years for “Last Jedi.” The business side of the trip? Well, I’ll be recording a podcast out there to run next week. You know how I am about jinxing these things, so I don’t want to say anything yet. It’s happening Friday, and assuming everything goes as planned like it should, I’ll tweet out a photo of the two of us after we’re done recording. No, it’s not anyone from Bachelor Nation. But I’d say she’s a fairly big name in another popular reality TV franchise. This should be fun. She’s had her fair share of news stories to say the least. Can’t wait to talk to her.
Tomorrow I will have your Episode 1 spoilers since it was released online to the media. Sure, I’m technically not supposed to have access to this, but hey, I have my ways. Been able to watch the first episode early ever since Emily’s season and have been able to tell you everything that goes down in it before you watch the premiere. You already know who the 8 girls were who got eliminated the first night, since that was in your spoilers released last week. But I’ll have a breakdown of the episode, who got intro videos (I’m sure it’ll be the same as the ones you saw Monday with longer versions of them), and any all drama from night, so expect that tomorrow.
As for tomorrow’s podcast, dipping into the “Survivor” world as I have my first guest on from that franchise, my friend Eliza Orlins. She finished 4th on the “Survivor: Vanuatu” then was the first jury member on the first season of “Fans vs Favorites.” Known for her shoot from the hip attitude, facial expressions, and her Tribal Council speech on “Vanuatu,” you’ll enjoy my conversation with her tomorrow. I’ve always said “Survivor” is my favorite reality show of all time and that’ll never change. You’ll start hearing more of those contestants on in the future. Since I have an early flight tomorrow, that podcast will be posted a littler earlier than usual tomorrow morning, so look for that.
A few items to get to before we start talking about “Winter Games.” First up, we have Monday’s “Countdown to Arie” show, which was kind a whole lot of nothing. Look, we know why they did it. To remind everyone who he is since he hasn’t been on TV in 5 years. And also to make sure that people are fired up for a season where their lead guy is someone they weren’t even interested in and hadn’t even brought him into the “Bachelor” mix until talks broke down with Peter. They can spin it however they want, but the facts are Peter was set to be the Bachelor, brought out and put up in a hotel room in LA set to be announced on GMA (Fleiss tweets back then showed they were going to make an announcement shortly to which I stated sources were telling me it was going to be Peter), and then no announcement was made for over a week. They wanted him from the get go, he was the most relevant name fresh off Rachel’s season, he’s the guy a majority of the audience wanted to see, they couldn’t finalize the deal, so they scrambled and made a “splash” move by going with Arie. Yes, sometimes I’ll call him Arie this season, and sometimes it’ll be Not Peter. Along with other names like “Second Fiddle,” “Not Their First Choice,” “The Guy Most Recent Fans Have Never Heard Of,” “Jef Holm’s Runner Up,” and so on and so forth. You get what I’m saying here.
And again, as I’ve stated numerous times, this has everything to do with the show and nothing to do with Arie being chosen over Peter. If Peter was the Bachelor, I’d make fun of and rip on him just as much as Arie. I’ve kinda been doing it for the last 15 years. All the sudden I’m gonna stop because the most notorious player in this franchise history got the lead role? Not quite. Whoever the lead is, I’m gonna do what I do. Spoil the show, make fun of it, and give you inside information you don’t get anywhere else. This nonsense I’ve been tweeted about being jealous of Not Peter is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Jealous of what? I’m pretty content with where I’m at right now, thanks. I will thoroughly enjoy banging away at Arie from my keyboard all season, just like I would’ve Peter. No difference to me. It’s not like the show was down to Arie and Peter and they decided after long and agonizing conversations that lasted til the wee hours of the morning to go with Arie. Far from it. Arie wasn’t on their radar until they couldn’t close a deal with Peter. But yet, they’ll pretend like Arie was someone who they wanted from the beginning. Please. That’s what’s funny, and that’s what I will continue to make fun of.
Of course during Monday’s show, my tweets were poking plenty of fun at Not Peter’s expense, and boy did that have all of Second Fiddle’s army beside themselves. You see, one way to weed out all the Jef Holm Runner Up nutjobs is to see who can’t stand the fact I say anything negative about the guy, watch them tweet at me, which then allows me to just take about 3 seconds of my life to hit the “mute” button and, voila! I don’t have to worry about their nonsense ever again. People who got so worked up over my tweets Monday night are the exact reason the mute button is created. Just because you’re a fan of him doesn’t mean what I said wasn’t accurate. It’s hilarious how bothered they get when you say one negative thing about him. You people are gems. Keep it up. Yeah, I’m not a fan of the guy. But I can still be objective. I’m not saying he’s gonna be the worst Bachelor. I’m not saying people aren’t gonna watch. I’m not saying the guy is the worst human being ever. I’m just saying based on what I know, which is a lot, he’s not the least bit interested in marrying anyone from this show, and he did it for his brand. No different than plenty of others before him and after him, so he’ll be treated exactly the same. Sure, I may have more dirt on him that some previous ones, but the show will still continue on and do what they do.
In case you missed it, here’s the season preview they teased at the end of Monday night’s episode:
Exactly the same as every single season preview they’ve ever released before it, just with different people. Starts out with all the women fawning over him, clips of happy times, then goes into the drama of the season, then moves to the end and him talking about his journey and finding love. However, this time they had a little twist at the end where you hear a guy’s voice talking about wanting his woman back and blah blah blah. I was shocked they gave that away in the trailer since I was holding on to that for a later date. Yes, one of the girls exes shows up and causes a scene. I know all the details except for one tiny thing, so until I get that, I wanna make sure I have everything right. I’ll let you know once I get that confirmed. But these trailers are known for showing you something in them that they never show during the season. That won’t be the case this time. It’s a big storyline, you can count on that.
Of course, none of it will ultimately matter because we already know what the end result is this season, that’s that Arie is engaged to Becca Kufrin. You saw me post it on 2 weeks ago, and then Arie spoiled it on his own, TWICE, on social media. For those that haven’t been paying attention, let me fill you in on what he did. On Friday November 17th in Cusco, Peru is when the final rose ceremony happened. On Monday the 20th is when I first heard about who he was engaged to. Sent out that tweet the next day about “posting soon,” then I received the Cease & Desist letter from NZK Productions the next day, so I held off a week before finally giving you the spoiler on Nov. 30th. Lets take what they did most recently and address that first. I don’t follow either Arie or Becca on social media, so this was brought to my attention on Twitter. Arie posted this on his Instagram story:
Then on the same day hours later, Becca posted this to her IG story:
There isn’t much to analyze here. Clearly they are hanging out in the same backyard and this is one of their approved ABC “safe house” visits, or, “happy couple” visits as they’re referred to. Of course Becca tried to be tricky by putting a location of Fort Myers, FL on there, but that means nothing. She wasn’t in Fort Myers, FL and I don’t know why she thought anyone would believe she was. It’s clear they were together in LA and they spoiled it themselves, only confirming the spoiler I gave you. And oh yeah, both of them deleted those pictures from their IG story within hours of it getting out.
If you want to go back a couple weeks before that, one of Arie’s closest female friends, Kristina Hegger (formerly Kristina Owen) posted this on her IG:
The girl to Arie’s left (our right) is Becca. Yes, he thought he’d be slick trying to cover up her face, but it’s her. She was in Arizona that weekend, they tried to be cute, and it backfired. I can’t be any more clear than that. Conspiracy theorists will say that they aren’t supposed to be seen together in public and that’s someone else, etc. I don’t know what to tell you other than you’re wrong – it’s her. She was there. And oh yeah, Kristina deleted that pic from her IG a couple days later.
I’ve been emailed a few times about Arie liking a few of Lauren’s IG pictures since she’s been back from filming and what does that all mean, and my answer remains the same: I don’t know and I don’t care. He can do whatever he wants (clearly he has zero care for social media), and if liking pictures of the girl he didn’t choose on her Instagram is what he wants to do, then by golly, that’s what he’s gonna do. You can read into it all you want and dissect it until you’re blue in the face, but in reality it means nothing because it doesn’t change what happened Nov. 17th in Cusco, Peru. Not to mention, I think him visibly being seen with the girl he chose TWICE since then means a hell of a lot more than him liking some pics on IG. Irrelevant.
Once the show gets going, they will do whatever they can to throw curveballs at the audience, make you think things happened that didn’t, make you think he might be with someone else, etc. But the bottom line is you were told Nov. 30th who he chose, he subsequently followed that up by revealing himself who he chose in social media posts on two different weekends, and there is zero suspense now as to how the ending plays out. Usually when I release the spoiler, I have to wait til mid-March to be vindicated when the finale airs. Not this season. It’s all out there for anyone with two eyes to clearly see. This isn’t some game they’re playing, this isn’t a plant by producers to throw people off, and this isn’t some switcheroo happening here. The conspiracy theorists that can’t accept this are: 1) Arie fans who hate the fact he’s been so careless and spoiled his own season twice already 2) Arie fans who hate the fact that he confirmed my spoiler because they can’t stand when I’m right. I know, sounds like a pathetic existence to get so worked up by my spoilers, but trust me, they’re out there. And they’re not happy. Oh well. Deal with it.
This will most certainly be an enjoyable season to cover. Since there’s no mystery to the end, the enjoyable part will be to see how these women react on social media, the cliques that are formed, who starts their IG shilling career first, and most importantly, who will be the front runners for Paradise this summer. Remember, the “Bachelor” cast every season for the first 4 seasons of Paradise makes up a majority of the cast. Remember there were like 13 girls from Nick’s season who ended up on Paradise, and before that I think it was like 15 girls from Ben’s season that were on Paradise. So just know going in, about half of these girls you see will be on Paradise. Watch the show that way and make up in your head who they can hook up with. Then again, until we see the next “Bachelorette” cast, it’s kinda hard to predict since most of THOSE guys will make up the male portion of BIP. So in closing, I want to give a big thanks to Arie Luyendyk for being so helpful during this spoiling season. It certainly helps my case if there’s ever another lawsuit that comes way which, as of now, still hasn’t happened. I’m sure they’re waiting til right before the season starts to file to garner more attention heading into their season. That’s my guess.
