-Grandpa John in the da’ house! You knew they were bringing him back this season. That was a given. Hell, I’m surprised they didn’t let him host. Erich gets this date with Gabby – and Grandpa John. Probably not the ideal situation, but he fought through it. Not to mention, the first part of their date was some bizarro sound ceremony thing. Never even heard of something like that, and if Erich was being honest, he wanted no part of that nonsense. I mean, c’mon. He put on a good face, but what guy wants to do that for a first date. I’ll tell you who: nobody. Hell, even Grandpa John wanted to bounce and was side eyeing the whole thing. And whatever Grandpa John wants, Grandpa John gets. And Grandpa John wants to bowl dammit! Don’t we all? The answer? Yes.
-If you’ve read me for any amount of time, you know that a bowling date is so much more up my alley than, you know, a sound ceremony to name one. Although nowadays when I bowl, I usually end up sore the next day. I used to take the niece and nephew bowling all the time. Now that they’re both in high school and I’m not cool anymore to them, that’s pretty much off the table. Soooooooo, will someone go bowl with me? I’d rather not go by myself. I’m sure I can fire up a 160-175. Is anyone old enough to remember when bowling wasn’t scored electronically? You literally went to the lane with a giant piece of paper and a pencil lead that was like 10 cm in circumference. Just me? Thanks. I feel old now. But yeah, before all your fancy computers and automatic scoring you actually had to keep score yourself, which was a chore since does anyone really understand bowling scoring? I love math and numbers and I still probably couldn’t keep my own score.
-And another thing, when your ball gets stuck, has a maintenance person ever arrived within, oh I don’t know, a ½ hour to get it working again? Oh sure, there’s that button for help. But I think everyone in the back must just have a good ol’ laugh when that button goes off, because it’s certainly never much of an urgency to them to get out and help you. In the post COVID world, how sanitary is bowling if you don’t have your own ball? Just going up and down rows and sticking your fingers in balls that have been used by 100’s of different people before you. Not to mention putting on other people’s shoes. More questions to ponder: How did we ever bowl without strobe lights and music and giant TV screens? Is the person who decided to have a full menu and waiter service at the bowling alley a multi billionaire now? (They should be). Check back next week when I have more thoughts to ponder when talking about bowling.
-There wasn’t a hell of a lot else that happened on this 1-on-1, so lets move on to the group date. You know, the largest group date in “Bachelorette” history. Wait, huh? Didn’t we just have a 29 person group date last week at the mansion? How is last night’s group date the biggest in history? Last time I checked, 29 > 19. But hell, what do I know? Whatever the case, it was another bizarro photo shoot with Franco. Not only is Franco someone who’s going to appear on a date at least once a season (a la Fred Willard), how many times have we seen a photo shoot date on both the “Bachelor” or “Bachelorette” where they have to dress up in ridiculous costumes? Sometimes it’s more serious, like Tayshia and Zac’s wedding photo shoot, but most of the time it’s stuff like last night. Here, you dress in a fig leaf Jacob. Here, you guys dress in jean cut shorts and do a car wash. Here, you dress like children and pretend you’re a family. Just silliness all around. This date was all about the after party at Sofi Stadium.
-And as we know, all this did was pound home to the audience Gabby’s insecurities of not feeling loved. Or thinking she’s not deserving of love. Hayden takes his foot and shoves it down his throat saying she’s a little “rough around the edges” and Jacob “if you were the only one here, I don’t know if I’d have the heart to continue.” Now to be fair, the editing on Jacob’s conversation seemed very choppy when I first watched it. I never went back to watch it either, but, I think there was more to that conversation. The gist of it still sucked and made Gabby spiral, so, we go with that. But again, that was the whole point of this after party. We see during this after party Rachel make out with: Aven, Tino, Jordan, Tyler, and Hayden. And all we see with Gabby is her struggling and guys telling her they’re interested in Rachel. Quite the butcher job they did on Gabby last night. Well, until the rose ceremony…
-Like clockwork, the cocktail party before the rose ceremony is cancelled and Jesse informs the men, the days of dating both of them are over. Well, except for Logan later on. But he tells them that the women will be having their own journeys now. If they offer you a rose, that’s who you’re moving forward with. If you reject it, go back and stand with the rest of the guys and see if the other woman offers you a rose. So the 3 men who rejected roses from Rachel were: Termayne, Alec, and Meatball. Termayne, Alec and Jacob ended up not getting roses from Gabby and were sent home. Meatball as you saw in the credits changed his mind and accepted Rachel’s rose. So now each of them have 9 guys as they head overseas on a cruise to Paris next week, then Belgium, then Amsterdam. So here are each of Rachel and Gabby’s 9 men:
Rachel: Zach, Tino, Aven, Logan, Tyler, Ethan, Jordan, Hayden, and Meatball.
Gabby: Erich, Nate, Johnny, Spencer, Jason, Mario, Kirk, Quincey, and Michael.
If anybody knew there were guys on this season named Jordan and Michael, please raise your hand. No one? Ok.
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