Dollywood - Blog Posts
The Bachelorette - Episode 3 Recap!
We are three weeks into the thrilling slog-fest that is the Bachelorette, and I expect some men to start breaking ahead of the pack this week. We open on Emily being brought breakfast in bed by her Harvey Fierstein-voiced mother. Emily is ready for the week ahead!
Chris Harrison gives the men the run-down. We get it. No rose = bye bye. Chris from Chicago has the first one-on-one.
Quick jump to the date with Chris and he's in a nice cotton henley and jeans. While we all know how much I love a man in a Henley, I find this guy utterly plain looking. He has no upper lip and a huge neck.
And with him begins the series of increasingly difficult date challenges as metaphors for relationships. They are scaling a building to get to dinner. Emily is reasonably freaked out by hanging from a building with an impending lightning storm. Chris hopes he might steal a kiss, assumedly before they die like two hanging fried squirrels.
Once they make it to the summit, the wind keeps picking up on that rooftop, and Emily keeps gushing about how cute this guy is. I really don’t get it. HIS UPPER LIP IS NOT THERE.
They have the standard first date talk she's given all the guys so far. When Chris reveals he is only 25 and thus, younger than she, she is taken aback. Red flag?! Wuh-oh!
Cut back to the Man Palace, and Tony is having a generic conversation with his kid! He misses him, d’awww. But he is quickly falling into the trope of “single parent who misses their kid too much.” Dun-dun-DUNNNN!
Date card! Group date! There’s like a million of them on this group date! The message is, “Let’s play”. She really is quite the coquette. I just think these notes should be more like a Tyra-mail and rhyme and be super confusing and ultimately misleading.
Back to the stormy rooftop! Thunder! Wind! Chris is a MAN. He assures Emily that he’s ready for the responsibility of being a father. She gives him the rose with very little fanfare or speech giving.
Oh God. We have yet another private concert where I’m sure they will awkwardly close dance to a medium tempo song by this Luke Bryan guy. You can tell the producers have kept the masses at bay, too, just at the edge of the shot waiting to descend when cued by Mr. Bryan.
Chris is blown away by this moment, and as he’s mentioned about 47 times, he REALLY wants to kiss Emily. So he asks her permission, which I bet she just ate right up, and boom! First kiss. Pretty tame. Like two grandma-at-Thanksgiving-pecks. But Chris feels like this “is the start of something good”, and Emily seems to like him. So we’ll see where they’re headed in the weeks ahead.
We are at a park for the group date! Sean - 28 is there! They share his commentary a lot even though I don't recall a single interaction he's had with Emily. He’s not aggressive and I like that! But on this show that could be trouble.
Stevie the Party MC is also there, and his black t-shirt is ridiculously tight because he is a grown-ass bar mitzvah dancer and lacks all common sense and I hate him.
Emily brought her girlfriends to the park to screen and grill the men. I really love this idea for both practical and entertainment reasons.
Tony talks about his kid. Jef is quiet and composed. Doog refers to his kid as a “little one” again. They are all “absolutely” ready to be dads. Travis still has his ostrich egg from episode one! He’s named it Shelley. John “Wolf” gets a little flustered. Stevie pops and locks, and I almost poison myself.
They tell Sean - 28 he’s cute! He is! His family is centered on faith, and he’s a lovely human. But Emily’s friend Wendy is getting a little frisky with him and makes him strip and do push-ups with her on his back and everyone’s really uncomfortable.
As if they haven’t been through enough already, a hoard of children is called forth with whom the men shall prove their fatherliness. They mostly do really well, but Ryan kind of makes a boo-boo when he says that if Emily got fat after they got married he “would still love [her], but might not love ON [her] as much”. The women are yikes-ed out, but he’s still extremely confident.
Sean - 28 and Doog are the standouts from the interviews and kiddie-time date. Sean - 28 talks again about his great family. Doog has a truly sad story about his mom leaving them, his epileptic dad dying, and going through foster care. After all that, he’s a solid dude and could be a great choice for Emily.
Back at the Man Palace we find out the other one-on-one date goes to Arie. Kalon is jealous, and the other guy who I keep forgetting is there was there.
Back at the group date cocktail hour (When do these people ever eat?!), Emily comforts a teary Tony who misses his kid a lot. Doog comforts Tony and says the same thing only even more comfortingly. Tony calls his kid and cries some more in the back alley.
Emily finds him, and she does a really kind of valiant thing in letting Tony go because she knows that their connection isn’t strong enough. She may be a little boring, but it cannot be said this woman lacks class.
The date rose goes to Sean - 28! Yay! I predict that they put so much of him into the first couple of episodes because he’s going to go a long way in this thing. As he should; they look like Barbie and Ken together.
It’s time for Arie’s date! After a short private jet ride, they arrive at the holiest of holy lands: DOLLYWOOD! It is seriously a dream of mine to visit Dollywood, and Arie has never even heard of it! Silly, Arie
After standard-issue theme park fun, the fear-factor challenge of this date is to write a love song on the spot. How horrifying! But what’s this? A pair of spandex pants and bejeweled boots? HOLY SHIT, Y'ALL, IT’S DOLLY PARTON. I love this woman. So does Emily who is peeing her pants. Dolly WROTE A SONG FOR HER! I’m totally okay with this private concert because OH MY GOD IT’S DOLLY PARTON, YOU GUYS. SHE WROTE “NINE TO FIVE” ON HER ACRYLIC FINGERNAILS FOR PETE’S SAKE.
Her song is a simple tune, but she's just stunning. Arie has no idea why this is a big deal at all, but he thinks Emily is super cute in how she's geeking out. I am seriously touched by the conversation Emily and Dolly have about true love.
Arie is very handsome dancing with Emily all close and lovey. Dolly thinks they look very smart as a couple, she would know, she “has an eye for those things”.
During “dinner” (wherein zero food is ingested), the conversation is about, shocker, kids and if he’s ready to have them. He is. He gets a rose after she fakes him out! Haha! This is comedy!
Arie, too, believes this is “the start of something great”, and they kiss on the carousel. This ain’t no grandma pecking kisses, neither. They are mackin’. Things look good for those two.
Emily is wearing a sparkly, slinky number for the cocktail party. She pulls Kalon aside first to chat and connect, probably. Things are at his standard level of snoot until he butts in with, “I love it when you talk, but I wish you’d let me finish,”. And later when he says he gets everything his way she says, straight faced, “Oh, I had no idea.” Old girl might have some spice in her yet. The end of the story is that Kalon is a terd.
Travis finally has Emily help him “set Shelley free” by breaking her onto the driveway. Travis is blah, but adorable Charlie pops his head out the door to squeal “Shelley, noooo! Shelley, nooo!” and then has the men toast to Shelley’s memory. Points for Charlie.
Oh look Alessandro is there and very orange and refers to a wife and family as “a compromise”. It is made clear this is not a language barrier problem, and Emily sends him home right then and there. But he’s okay because he’s living his life “like a gypsy king.”
The men could sense how upset Emily was, and I think she was rightly upset in that case. Most of the men just sit and stare, but Arie goes and comforts her. They kiss a lot, and it’s really cute. But Ryan sees and he is jeaaaaloooous.
Jef is the first to get a rose, and since I haven’t really had another opportunity, let me take this one to sing his praises. Jef is like a sexy elf-king who stores all his power in his pompadour. Jef is great, and Jef and his jean jackets, skinny ties, and skateboard can stay.
So who’s out? When it comes down to Stevie and Nate “the guy I forget is there”, it looks like Stevie will be popping and locking his way back to New Jersey. Hooray!
We get a peppering of drama to come with Ryan’s voice-over of jealousy proclaiming war on “dainty-man” Arie (because being over six feet tall and a race-car driver is “dainty”).
The preview of the week to come looks juicy. With a bachelorette as vanilla as Emily, it looks like we’ll be depending our bachelors to bring the zing this season.
May the madness descend upon them swiftly in Bermuda.