-We start off with a recap of night one by Go Back to ESPN Jesse (thank you Sonia) after the women come squealing to holy hell while moving into the mansion – even though they were just there the night before. First group date card of the season and since we know Zach just exudes wanting a woman with bad bitch energy, he has enlisted the services of rapper Latto to help him find that. And I really like this. It’s a great pairing. Born Alyssa Michelle Stephens in Columbus, Ohio, she credits going to high school in Clayton County, Georgia to giving her street cred. Was once arrested for theft when she was mistaken for another woman, which led her to write a song “Fuck Rice Street,” which attested to her innocence and anger towards the police. Zach is white boy from Orange County, California that went to private all-boys high school and, I think, once stole a Snickers bar from the liquor store to feel rebellious. Of course he’s going to call on Latto to find his bad bitch energy woman. How could you possibly expect someone else? It all makes sense now.
-The three guest judges are a mix of alumni from this franchise that if I gave you 700 trillion guesses as to who was gonna judge this competition, you wouldn’t have guessed this trio. It’s Victoria Fuller, Courtney Robertson, and Tahzjuan Hawkins. It’s very possible these three were selected by a producer who was blindfolded, spun around, and asked to throw 3 darts at a wall of pictures full of every woman who’s ever appeared in this franchise the last 10 years. It’s really the only explanation. The competition consisted of them walking the runway like a bad bitch, then telling the rest of the group a time where they had bad bitch energy, and then being a bad bitch while also being a bad bitch to a bad bitch. I’m sorry, what was the point of this date? What are they being judged on? Oh yeah, whatever it was, Brianna won, yet the episode showed NONE of her winning. She was declared the “winner” of whatever the hell they had to do and received a bunch of gifts at the end for it. We saw none of that. Recurring theme this episode.
-At the after party, they literally only showed Zach having significant time with two women – Katherine and Brianna. When there’s an 8-10 person after party, and they only show his time with two, those are the only two who have a chance at getting the group date rose. There’s a reason why they only focused on two of them. Everyone else was just a passing shot and we never saw any of their convo like we did with Katherine and Brianna. Katherine said she liked having shared experiences with her special someone who is also her best friend, but then made sure to tell Zach, “you’re not just my friend,” and then they had a little kissy kissy woo woo. Brianna was struggling because after receiving America’s first impression rose, she felt like she didn’t know if Zach wanted her. She broke down to him and Zach assured her he appreciated her being there. I think. I was eating a Hot Pocket at the time and when I burnt the roof of my mouth, I was struggling there for a few minutes so I may have missed something.
-Tahzjuan has entered the chat and she wants in. She felt the women didn’t take the reigns on the group date and missed their opportunity to impress Zach, basically insults them to their face, and wants to be part of this season’s cast in a last ditch effort to challenge Chris Bukowski for most times appearing on this franchise. Yet another thing they never showed on the group date was Tahzjuan getting on the mic and talking about a time when she had bad bitch energy and if I never hear the phrase bad bitch energy again, it still won’t be soon enough. So Tahzjuan interrupts him talking to Cat and tells him her intentions. Cat tells the women, Tahzjuan comes back to the group, and they question her intentions. In the past when we’ve had people enter the season after it had already started, it’s always been met with trepidation by the cast and lead. Usually it’s in like episode 3 or 4, relationships have been established and it’s easy to dismiss the new person coming in by basically saying it wouldn’t be fair to the others. This was the first date of the season. Zach had only met this group 2 days earlier in real time, and some of them he spent zero time with on night one. And he STILL didn’t allow Tahzjuan to join. But in yet another moment of leaving footage on the cutting room floor, we don’t even see Zach rejecting her. He just says he wants to talk to her, then we see him coming back to the group saying “I couldn’t say yes.” We’re literally 30 minutes into the episode, and already three fairly significant things that happened this episode weren’t even shown. Bizarre.
