-Dean’s 1-on-1 date is next. Maybe he thought he was gonna take a party bus on this date. Or awkwardly put a corsage on Rachel. Or have this date chaperoned by his science teacher. Whatever the case, Dean gets to be all alone with Rachel. You never know, that could spell trouble. First they start off with a picnic. Rachel tells us she’s set the bar very high for Dean for some unknown reason. And Dean has set the fashion bar as low as he could on this date wearing shorts that basically could be considered biker shorts with how tight they are on him. Maybe he doesn’t care about fashion, I don’t know. You know what else Dean doesn’t seem to care about? Grooming. Couldn’t someone tell him either grow your full goatee out or shave it all off? That upper lip pube mustache he has going is an embarrassment. Look, I know the guy just started growing his first boy hairs a week earlier, but c’mon. This is national television. Have the decency to not let us watch you go through puberty on your date.
-Rachel and Dean are chilling on their picnic when the Goodyear Blimp passes overheard. Rachel informs us that when she was a kid, she used to call it “Bimp.” Which is ironic, because I think Dean called it that last week. Dean is no doubt extremely nervous to go up in the blimp, namely because he’s afraid of heights. Once again, this show attacks your biggest fears and makes sure whatever you are not a fan of, you will most likely end up on a date that has it. Dean doesn’t like heights, so he gets the Goodyear blimp date. Kenny doesn’t like trolls? He ends up on a 2-on-1 date with Lee. See how this works now? Rachel and Dean both actually end up flying the Goodyear blimp, with the help of a pilot of course. Would’ve been more impressive to see these two navigate that whole flight then land it themselves. Of course, we also would’ve seem them soil themselves if that were the case which would’ve made quite the first date I tell ya’. Regardless, they land the blimp and Rachel and Dean make out. It’s the first of many that night for him and it’s basically like he was just crowned Prom King.
-Back at the resort, the date card arrives and people are hoping they get their first 1-on-1. 13 names are on the card: Alex, Anthony, Peter, Bryan (so much going in alphabetical order), Jonathan, Adam, Matt, Kenny, Lee, Iggy, Eric, Will, and…Josiah. Mr. Jack Stone is getting the second 1-on-1 date in South Carolina, and he is pumped. Others? Not so much. Lee starts making some passive aggressive comments about how much pressure there is on 1-on-1 dates, but if she sends him home, doesn’t mean he’s not a good guy. So really? No one at any point decided it would’ve been a good idea to tell Lee to shut the hell up? No one? Josiah was pretty bummed to not get the 1-on-1 but I guess that just gave him more opportunity to shine. Maybe I’m reading him completely wrong, and yeah he does have a little cockiness to him, but it seems to me he’s just playing it up for the cameras. Like you can tell he’s kind of a ham. I don’t really take what he said seriously because he was going so over-the-top with it, it’s almost like he was breaking the fourth wall. That’s how I saw it, but I certainly could be wrong.
-So Dean and Rachel decide to sit down for a little din din and open up to each other. Well, Dean opened up to her. Rachel just listened, ate her food, then cried because she was so pissed she was going to have to change his diapers later. How annoying to have to do that on a 1-on-1 date you know? Anyway, Dean informs us that his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when he was 9, she beat it, then it resurfaced when he was 14, and she passed away at 15. I thought it was a hard story for him to tell because he broke down at the end, and because he told us it was the first time he ever told the story, but I couldn’t help but scratch my head at how many times he laughed during the story. I get that he’s always smiling and happy, and maybe laughing is a defense mechanism for him, but it was just weird to see laughter come out while trying to tell a story like that. Whatever the case, Rachel seemed taken by his story and gave him the rose. Of course she did. Do you know how disheartening it would’ve been to send a teenager home on a date like that? He would’ve been mortified getting rejected at such a young age. Good girl Rachel.
-Dean and Rachel head off to their night cap with a performance by Russell Dickerson. This show is known for having country “stars” perform on 1-on-1 dates in the past, and granted, I’d never heard of Russell Dickerson before last night. One thing I did find out on Twitter was that he was married, which is good. Because then I would assume he won’t follow in the footsteps of Chris Lane, who performed during Nick and Danielle’s 1-on-1 date last season in Wisconsin, and then proceeded to start hitting up a bunch of girls in Bachelor Nation. To say Chris Lane has an obsession with Bachelor girls would be the understatement of the year. I know of at least FOUR that he’s either hit on, hooked up with, or flat out dated. And if I know of four, then you know there’s more. So Russell, let’s hope you don’t follow in his footsteps and start sliding into the DM’s of marginally relevant reality TV stars, flying them to meet your family, then ghosting them to start seeing someone else from the franchise. Stay classy, Russell. And you stay creepy, Chris.
