Steve, been a reader (sometimes listener) since your early days before Jason/Molly. One comment and one question:
1. Comment: Best part of last night was corgis and UB40. And, yes, I wanted to see them awkward-reggae-dance to Red Red Wine. And thanks to Gabi for upgrading King Charles’s former butler to the Queen’s when she was recounting her night to the ladies. I messed Gabi saying that. By the way, is Red, Red, Wine with commas or not?
2. Question: Do you have info to spoil on an upcoming appearance of Puddy, the uncle, this season? Maybe he will appear on ATFR or the final family free trip before the final rose??? Semi-devastated that his puppet show appearance hit the cutting room floor in Ep. 2. Puddy/Kronk all day! Well, we know the lead’s family meets the final 2, so my guess would be Puddy will be in Thailand when Zach introduces Kaity and Gabi. But I have not heard anything concrete about if he’s there or not.
Thanks for your years of service and allowing your spoilers to enable fast-forwarding to juicy scenes. And, yes, I actually have bought a few products from your podcasts. Bark Box was a huge hit with family members.
Comment: I loved Bark Box. I had to stop because the toys starting piling up and my dog is very picky about her toys. But the treats lasted a while.
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Hi Steve,
First time emailing, but love to see all of your spoilers come true every season. You said it was a slow email week, otherwise I wouldn’t even bring it up, but Monday night Gabi was working my last nerve with her beating to death the word “like” in every sentence. I’m sure this has been brought up before, but are these participants not given some type of coaching or best practices when filming/interviewing? Zach wasn’t much better, but wow, mix in some different words please. I also absolutely agree the producers wanted her to come in with all of those items from her date to show off and stir emotions. Also thought it was interesting that Greer just so happened to be sitting right in front of her room crying.
Comment: This isn’t a “Gabi” thing. Go back over any season and you’ll hear so many contestants have that in their speech. It’s unfortunate, but they are mid 20’s, and I think watching the show back, they’ll probably make a better effort to do so.
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Hey Steve,
I gotta know – did Zach legitimately test positive for COVID? Or was this staged and/or scripted by the producers? The shot of him grabbing a tissue and reading a book in his room seemed so fake. If he really had COVID, what was the purpose of having the virtual rose ceremony when they would be at that London hotel indefinitely? There was no need to send anyone home at that very moment. It sure was interesting that they were talking about “next week” happening when he would still have to test negative to travel or leave his room, perhaps conveniently the day after the rose ceremony?
Thanks.
Comment: I think if you read the producers interview with Kristen Baldwin on Page 1, it’s very hard to believe that they just made that whole thing up for a storyline. I don’t see what the benefit would be.
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I usually don’t email and just read but since you said you needed more…
Curious if you know what Charity’s date would have been if they went? Maybe they mentioned in the episode and I missed it, but I think they just let everyone know he had Covid and that her date was cancelled.
Comment: Well, when she came to talk to him on the cocktail party Ipad, he’d given her a replica Big Ben. Didn’t he say that’s where he was gonna take her?
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Hi Steve!
Watching Monday night and knowing the spoilers, I was absolutely CRINGING when Gabi and Zach were kissing. I know you said you thought one of the women got COVID too, but the women were all gathered together as if nothing was wrong.
I’m wondering if you’re still hearing one of them got sick? Gabi seems like the most likely candidate, but who knows? I’m also wondering if any of the crew got it? It’s not as if Zach can go anywhere by himself, so getting it from a crew member also makes the most logical sense.
Would love to hear your take!
Comment: I haven’t heard who did, was just told someone did. I’m still trying to find out. Or maybe it’ll be addressed in the next episode.
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Hi Steve –
Not sure if you noticed but I think Zach is looking for his best friend. Before the Covid reveal, I thought the women were pretty unsympathetic and self-centered. I was surprised no one asked if it was Covid as they inched away from Gabi since she was just with him. In the spirit of Zabi, they should have done a product placement ad for the Covid drug Paxlovid and had Zach say, “If it’s Covid, it’s Zachslovid.” Brilliant.
Do you think Zach overreZachted to Greer’s comment about her sales goals? I was wondering if Gabi told him at the dinner that Greer was having a tantrum and he didn’t have a positive attitude going into her zoom. Hey, you take that Zach! How dare you Zach-use her of doing that. Ok, I’m done.
Does your love of This Is Us inspire you to watch Milo’s new show? Forgot it was on after the show Monday night. Didn’t record. Not sure if I’ll catch up.
The Challenge – Congratulations to Tori and Devin for a well-deserved win and good sportsmanship between Bananas and Devin that was unthinkable years ago. Sadly, the Olivia injury and the Banany puzzle screw up led to an anti-climactic finale. Was the Balls In challenge explained properly? Not sure why Nany kept screwing up. I did keep yelling “Sweep the leg!” Unless I missed it, there was no audience walk through of the final zone. If they asked Banany if they officially quit and declared a winner, it would not have made much emotional difference to the audience.
Comment: I can’t remember how they explained Balls In during the finale to us the audience, however, I listened to Bananas podcast after the finale and he said they knew exactly what they had to do and he could not believe Nany missed the target twice. He thought they were done. He couldn’t comprehend what she was doing. She knew all she had to do was get in the circle. And the reason the rule changed was for safety reasons. Trying to stop someone from dropping that ball in while running by it I guess was too much of an injury liability, so they changed it up.
And no, we didn’t get an audience walk through of the final zone. At least not the last 3 stations. We knew what they had to do on the first one with the spears. But the puzzle, the second part with the sand, and the chains that Devin said took 2 hours, wasn’t explained really at all.
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Hi Steve –
This question may be something you can’t answer/don’t know but I have a question about ads on podcasts. I noticed that since Natasha Parker left Click Bait, they have ran zero ads. The ‘whoosh’ sound effect that used to be played before they went to ads is still there but absolutely no sponsored material. Since CB is an official Bachelor Nation podcast with company players, it seems odd to me. Is that a sign of a faltering podcast? Do podcasts need to have ads to survive? Are the podcasters (I.e Joe) paid off ad revenue? The rest of the official ones have ads ad nauseam (I made a pun) so to have one with nothing is different. Anyways – apologies if I didn’t articulate this well enough and I do click the link to your ads! Thanks for your work
Comment: Yeah, each podcast is kinda different with how they handle advertising so it’s definitely hard to answer that one without knowing the ins and outs of how theirs works. I think BN podcasters do get a flat salary to host and, I assume, make a portion of all ads that are sold. Myself? I don’t work for any network so my income is strictly the ads that run on my podcasts.
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Hi Steve
Is it just me or was the announcement of Zach’s COVID a bit harsh? I can’t remember exactly what Jesse said but something along the lines of “As you know Zach hasn’t been feeling well, unfortunately I do have some bad news for you, Zach has tested positive…..for COVID.”
Don’t get me wrong, COVID has not been a pleasant thing to go through but if I hadn’t read your spoilers, I could have got really worried for a moment there. All for drama effects, of course, but I wonder if the women were told anything prior, to reassure them that the guy wasn’t in the emergency room getting put into a medically induced coma!
Comment: Jesse did say immediately that his symptoms were mild, didn’t he? I think they were pretty aware this wasn’t something where he was being rushed to the hospital. And in Kristen Baldwin’s article on Page 1, producers said that all cast and crew were vaxxed and we know how much that helps in terms of the severity of your symptoms once you do test positive.
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Even Jeff Probst was watching Monday’s show saying Savage that they still eliminated two girls. He has cancelled entire tribal councils for less and Bachelor is just ruthless to those girls. Ouch.
Comment: He was? I missed that. I don’t follow Probst on Twitter but that’s hilarious he’s commenting about the “Bachelor” now.
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Send all links and emails to: steve@realitysteve.com. To follow me on Twitter, it’s: www.twitter.com/RealitySteve. Instagram name is RealitySteve, or join my Reality Steve Facebook Fan Page. Talk to you tomorrow.
