tl;dr recap: “Bring on the men!” JoJo cries. “I’m ready.” But there’s no way, JoJo. There is no way.
Welcome to the Bachelorette! JoJo is here, recovering from Ben’s whole “I’m in love with two women” deal. She gets to sit down with Kaitlyn, Ali, and Desiree. They all mock Ben’s no kissing on the first night rule super hard, so I like them, but they can’t stop shrieking and interrupting each other, so I’m glad when this segment is over.
Now it’s time to meet all these mostly indistinguishable dudes whose names I won’t bother to remember for at least four or five episodes! We get video packages of the home lives of these dudes, so you can expect most of them to get to at least second base:
Grant: hot Bay Area firefighter who makes the “light my fire” joke. Because fire. Do you get it?
Jordan: his big brother Aaron Rodgers is a very fancy quarterback and Jordan is not, so.
Alex: Marine! His TWIN brother is happily married and so there’s some friendly twin-petition over getting a wife I guess?
James S.: defines himself as a “Bachelor Superfan.” (That is not a job, in case you were wondering.) “Being on The Bachelorette is a dream come true.”
Evan: Went from a pastor to an erection therapist. There are a lot of penis puns in this segment. This is hardly-family friendly entertainment! What about the children?
Ali: Persian! I’m sad he probably won’t be able to bring his adorable dog on the show.
Christian: Defines himself as “motivated.” Uses the word “motivated” a lot. He is raising his younger brothers, so that’s nice, I guess.
Luke: Texas. Texas texas. Texas? Texas! Texas Texas Texas. Texas… The show ruins this joke for me by turning to the subject of Luke’s military service and the friends he lost overseas. Thank you for your service, Luke! I feel like this country owes you to NOT have you be on this show!
The men start to get out of the limo. Jordan is out first and JoJo keeps telling him he looks so good. At a certain point, it seems like they’ve met before. Weird. Maintain some chill, JoJo. Most of the greetings are normal-ish. One guy brings JoJo a pair of blue stress balls to squeeze. “Squeeze my balls.” Between this guy and the erectile dysfunction scientist, this show is just missing a urologist to add to its fixation on the male anatomy.
A guy brings JoJo a bottle to drink directly from as an homage to JoJo’s legendary mom. That’s good work – always compliment a woman’s badass mom. JoJo cannot stop telling each guy “You look great!” What did she expect them to look like?
There is a guy named James Taylor (no, really) who plays an original, terrible song for JoJo. He’s no Sweet Baby James. Jonathan wears a kilt, is half-Chinese, half-Scottish, and makes a racist dick joke about himself. Glad to see the issues of race are, as is always the case in the Bachelor(ette) franchise, being handled with the maximum of sensitivity. The toxic masculinity crowd explodes into a mushroom cloud of doom at the sight of Jonathan’s kilt. “We have a mod podge of guys here,” says the guy who just outed himself as a crafter. “What other crazy stuff are guys gonna do?” Well, one dresses like Santa. The toxic masculinity is thick in here! But I agree, dressing like Santa is memorable in the bad way.
The best of the worst is Brandon, whose job title is “Hipster.” A radio host brings the actual group All 4 One to actually sing “I Swear” and my middle school heart goes pitter-patter. A guy rides a unicorn, another guy rides a motorcycle.
The men are pretty quickly getting drunk and mean to each other, and they’re also nervous because JoJo is hot. JoJo has a kiss she enjoys from Jordan and one she did not enjoy. Right now I’m paying a lot more attention to the weird commercials during the show because all this testosterone is b-o-r-i-n-g. All 4 One is still hanging around to serenade JoJo and the guy who brought them, and now it’s just weird. Let All 4 One go home. This is mean.
An unfunny Canadian comedian is drinking a lot and acting insecure, so he explains “Damn Daniel” to JoJo in a horrifying way that reminds me that the internet is bad and we should all go home. He decides to take his clothes off. Good for you, unfunny guy, nothing says “I’m not insecure” more than taking your clothes off on TV.
“Daniel is ‘white Canadian wasted,’” one guy says. I’ve been white American wasted, but never white Canadian wasted. He dives into the pool.
Drunk dudes are now breaking in on JoJo’s one on one interviews. JoJo, so, so sober in comparison, is obviously not thrilled with all the dudes who have obviously been plied with alcohol by producers who clearly want this to happen.
Jordan gets the first impression rose. I think it’s Jordan. Honestly, they’re all pretty much out of Handsome Bot 5000™ so. But Jordan has super floppy hair, and his hair flops even more as he gets the rose.
Time for the rose ceremony. Suddenly, as JoJo’s about to hand out roses, a wild guy appears! He’s former Bachelor Jake Pavelka, he’s “almost like a brother” to JoJo, and she has no idea why he’s here. He’s here to give her advice! Also to make the other dudes almost wet themselves in fear.
The rose ceremony ends with JoJo ditching kilt dude for drunk unfunny naked Canadian, AND SHE PICKED THE DUDE WHO DRESSED AS SANTA, so while I understand that the producers pick these dudes for her to stir up drama and specifically to upset me, I am upset anyway. JoJo, they’re not here for the right reasons! COME ON!
It’s fully dawn as the dudes discuss their rejection and feel sad. Damn, JoJo. At it again with the punishingly long filming sessions.
Coming soon on “The Bachelorette:” dudes fighting! Dudes bleeding! Dudes making JoJo cry! The possible breakdown of my marriage over watching this show? STAY TUNED!