Thanks for the update in summer TV!! Appreciate it. Can you have any influence on the producer to cut out the lizards in BIP?? So gross and unnecessary. Thanks for your help.
Comment: Yes ma’am.
Me: (Calls producers) “Hey, no lizards on BIP ya’ hear me. Fans don’t want lizards. Over and out.”
There. Done. Thank me later.
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Hi Steve,
So glad reader emails are back! I’ll get right into my questions.
Did you see anything with the Nayte/Deandra thing? Do you have info or thoughts? No and no. What’d I miss?
What caused Katie to change her tune in regards to Thomas? She tore him to shreds for months after her season and now suddenly she’s back on her anti-bullying high horse. I’m obviously not against anti-bullying, but from her it seems fairly disingenuous. That I’m not sure of. We saw how she let him go on her season. After her season, she went on Nick’s podcast and basically warned any future women down in Paradise to watch out and she feels sorry for them. The next time I ever heard her mention Thomas was this past weekend during that live TikTok when she said he got the short end of the stick. So it’s very possible, and probable, that I may have missed something in between where she regretted and apologized for what she said about Thomas post show. If she did, I missed it.
I’m not really here nor there on Nick Viall, but I did listen to his recent podcast where he discusses the Katie thing. What did you think he said wrong? I thought he was justified to counter what she said about him – the texts from her were telling. I will dive into this in about 5 more questions.
Did Aaron and Genevieve actually hook up when Shenae accused her of that of AFR?
Thanks!
Comment: I haven’t heard either way. I have no idea if she did or didn’t hook up with him when Shanae claimed they did.
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Hey Steve! So glad your columns and reader emails are back, never realized how much I enjoyed reading them and your humor lol. Another Clayton diss I noticed was that when gabby and Rachel were sitting on the bench talking who they kissed blah blah, I think it was Rachel that said something like “we better not fall in love with all 4 of them”. Which is what happened with Clayton. Also I was just super annoyed with Rachel complaining about not kissing guys. I didn’t think she was complaining. I looked at it as more of hoping a couple of the guys would’ve kissed her because she felt an attraction and the guys didn’t act on it. We’ve seen people complain about something on this show. That wasn’t it.
Off topic, but did you make any big bets for baseball or football while you were in Vegas?
Comment: No. It was too early. These next 6 weeks is when I start scouring all the magazines and online reports for both college and pro.
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Last night’s opener was a complete waste of time. Both Bachelorettes have such whiny voices that it’s difficult to take either one of them seriously. Not to mention all of the future promos. Way too much crying! Just hope I can stay tuned.
Comment: Ok.
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Hi, Steve. From what I’ve read in your BIP spoilers, Elizabeth Corrigan is not there, which I found surprising. Do you know if she was not invited or she declined to go? Is there any more to the story? Apologies if you’ve covered this already and I missed it.
Comment: You’re correct. She wasn’t there. No idea if it was because she chose not to or wasn’t invited. But her recently coming out as bisexual could’ve played a role, since maybe there weren’t a lot of options for her down on the beach. While she might be in to both men and women, if other people in the cast aren’t feeling the same, then there really isn’t anyone there for Elizabeth to really connect with seriously.
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I believe that The Bachelorette is copying from Joe Millionaire last season. That was an excellent show – made great by the friendly chemistry between the two leads. If it can work there, they’re thinking, it can work here. What do you think, Steve?
Comment: Oh for sure seeing the success of “Joe Millionaire” played a role in the “Bachelorette” deciding to go with two leads for a full season for the first time. They’re lying if they say it didn’t.
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Hey Steve!
Can you share a bit more detail on this Katie Thurston text drama situation that Blake H commented on? I can’t bring myself to listen to Nick’s podcast or dig into what’s going on. I figured your fans are sending you enough information that you might be able to shed more light on the situation.
Comment: There’s a lot to unpack here. The first thing I’d tell you is don’t go off hearsay. That’s Nick’s one big gripe is someone hears something, then goes running to the other side to relay info, and stuff gets lost in translation. I agree with that. So if you’re really interested, I would go watch the first 20 minutes of Nick’s last podcast. Either the video or the audio. Doesn’t matter. You’ll see what they’re responding to and how they spent 20 minutes on something they said didn’t deserve the time. And I say “they” because it was just as much Nick’s gf Natalie as it was him. She really had a stick up her ass over a :30 clip of a TikTok live that Katie did. It was bizarre.
I don’t like to comment on stuff I haven’t listened to or seen myself, so I watched that first 20 minutes. There is so much to break down there. I don’t want to go through all of it. But you know who did? Dave Neal. Watch this excellent breakdown of it:
So watch Nick and Natalie, then watch Dave meticulously go over everything they said and break it down. Because I don’t think this whole beef can just be summarized in a few sentences. There’s a lot of nuance here. A LOT.
Here’s my thoughts to what I heard:
1) Natalie showed her age in this argument. I don’t think she came across well at all. It was very petty and childlike to get so worked up over something that wasn’t worth it. She had an agenda the whole time of reading those texts, which further proves the hypocrisy here.
2) The hypocrisy is laughable. As Blake mentioned on his IG yesterday which I concurred with, Nick is someone who has absolutely crucified Blake for 4 years now for sharing those texts between him and Caelynn during Paradise that season. Texts that Blake said he was forced to show because, you know, he was being accused of covering up something that he never was trying to cover up. So for Nick to have such a hard on for that for so many years, but then have no problem whatsoever about reading Katie’s text to him over something so not as significant than they thought is pretty laughable. After they read the text I was like, “Ok? And?” They acted like they just laid out some major tea and it wasn’t even that big of a deal. Great. Katie once told Nick she knew Greg wasn’t the one for her during filming and they wouldn’t have lasted post show. She told him that while she was engaged to Blake Moynes. I don’t see the big deal. But boy oh boy did Natalie and Nick think they uncovered the Holy Grail or something. Totally weird reaction.
3) In addition to Blake calling him out for his hypocrisy, I will add this. This isn’t speculation. This isn’t rumor. This isn’t innuendo. This isn’t guessing. I watched the video. This is word for word what Natalie said she had an issue with when it came to Katie:
“I have such an issue with this…I’m just so confused as to why she continues to bring these guys into her life? Why are we still bringing them up? They have moved on, they have tried to forget about that, and you just get bored and decide you want to rope everyone back in, and I think it’s really weird. I have a really big issue with that.”
Verbatim. Word for word what she said. Now, lets dissect that. I will say that if Natalie doesn’t understand by now that fans wanna hear former leads and contestants talking about their season offering any insight, tea, behind the scenes info because it increases engagement (just like her boyfriend does), then I guess she’ll never get it. And if Natalie and/or Nick thought that what Katie spilled on that TikTok live was considered “tea,” then they’re sorely misguided. Or we just have waaaaaaay different definitions of the word “tea.” If she was trashing every guy on her season, calling them all out, being a total bitch to them, anything of the such, THEN I could understand Natalie having the take she did. Did you watch that TikTok live Katie did? Shit was so tame and not tea spilling whatsoever. If anything, it was just insight into things that people maybe didn’t know. Nobody was thrown under the bus. Nobody was called names. She didn’t lay into any of the guys, slander them, etc.
However, for the sake of argument, lets just say people out there think Natalie is absolutely, 100% right in what she was mad at. Which was, Katie needs to let things go. Stop talking about the guys from her season. It was a year ago. Get over it. That’s the consensus, right? I feel that’s what Natalie was bothered by from her quote, no? Ok, fine. But while you may think that Natalie, I just want to remind you that your boyfriend back in 2020 CHARGED HIS LISTENERS on a Patreon podcast to listen to him interview 8-9 women from his season that he dumped, 3 1/2 years after it aired. Let that sink in for second. So Katie didn’t even rip or spill any dirt about her guys, just answered questions about some of them in a TikTok live. Your boyfriend made a whole production of interviewing women from his season that he dumped in Jan-March of 2017 (on TV. He actually dumped them in real time in 2016, but for the sake of argument, I’ll allow that the dumpings happened in 2017). Those podcasts came out in August of 2020. He interviewed them, charged people to listen to it, and LABELED HIS DIFFERENT TIERS OF SUBSCRIPTION AS “BASIC TEA-SEEKERS” ($4.99) AND “PREMIUM TEA-SEEKERS” ($5.99) (You can see that right here).
That’s what I mean when I say I don’t think she gets it. The reason contestants talk about their season, whether they were lead or not, and offer insight, tips, juice, behind the scenes info, is because that’s what a lot of their fans want to hear about. It’s why Katie did it, and it’s why Nick did it with those podcasts. How are you not seeing this considering your boyfriends life majorly revolves around talking about this show and interviewing the contestants? Why do you think he does that? Because no one cares? No. The opposite. Because they ALL care. They WANT to hear that stuff. If they didn’t want to, Nick would go back to working at SalesForce and never address this show again. But that ain’t happening because he knows there’s an audience for it.
So while you may think Katie should stop talking about the guys from her season, your boyfriend did the same thing, only about 10x worse. Three years later. AND profited from it.
There is so much more I could get into here, but I think I’ve made my case. We’re done here. Checkmate, friend.
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Hi Steve!
One thing about the premiere last night that I thought was funny/weird was that Jessie Palmer kept saying “two bachelorettes. How is this going to work? We don’t know!” It just seemed like they had no idea what was going on or any planning about the format pre show. What are you thoughts on this?
Thanks!
Comment: They’re using that as a hook. Get people interested. Thinking it’s something bigger than it is. Of course production had an idea how it was gonna work. They had to plan dates and travel accordingly ahead of time. To act like they had no idea what they were doing and were just flying by the seat of their pants this season just isn’t believable. It’s basically just another way saying “the most dramatic season ever.”
