It's Raining Ben - Week 3 Recap - Cankle Awareness Week

It’s a new day in Bachelor Nation as the sun rises over the scenic hellscape that is the Bachelor Mansion.  Our Dear Leader Chris Harrison makes his grand entrance to what is frankly a pretty lackluster reception (if these skanks think they’re gonna make it onto Bachelor in Paradise, they’d better figure out where their bread is buttered) and leaves the ladies with the first date card. 

The first one-on-one goes to Lauren B., and I’ll tell you what, there is nothing more romantic than the guy you’re dating having to use your last initial because he is dating so many other Laurens at the same time.  The “sky’s the limit” on this date, and I feel like that is definitely a date card line that has been used in at least three other seasons (looking at you, Jake Pavelka).  This time around, it means they are taking a ride in a bi-plane.  Lauren B., who is a flight attendant, is terrified to get on this plane, which gives me serious doubts about her abilities as a flight attendant.  Luckily though, the seat in this tiny plane is small enough to force her and Ben together to awkwardly kiss around their helmet microphones for the entirety of the ride, which included a fly-over of the Bachelor Mansion for some next-level datebragging.  They eventually land in the middle of the desert – maybe the same one where we last saw Kardashley and Kelsey? – where a hot tub has conveniently been set up.  Oh, so it’s going to be that kind of season.  Okay.

During the Uneaten Dinner portion of the evening, it turns out that Lauren B. is single because she’s picky and is maybe a little too into her dad.   Unclear.  Ben wants Lauren B. to really know him so he tells her about his dad’s heart surgery because I know when I want to get to know someone, what I’m really asking is whether they’ve had any family health scares lately.  Lauren B. takes this as a good opportunity to really jump the gun and tell him she wants to meet his family, almost as if this is a real relationship and a family meeting doesn’t only come after surviving a series of cheesy competitions and heavy emotional manipulation.  She gets the rose and they head next door to a private concert with Lucy Angel!  Now, I stupidly assumed that Lucy Angel was the name of the singer featured onscreen, but according to Wikipedia, “Lucy Angel is an American country music family trio consisting of mother Kate Anderton and her two daughters, Lindsay and Emily.”  They charted one single on the country charts last year, so I’m pretty embarrassed that I didn’t know that.

The group date is at the LA Coliseum, future home of your St. Louis Los Angeles Rams, and the approximately 50 women on the date are inexplicably very excited to be there!  Continuing the trend of sticking to dates that have already been done before, it’s time for a soccer match.  While I was really hoping for a Juan Pablo sighting, I was shocked to see that they actually got gold medal winners Alex Morgan and Kelly O’Hare to be coaches.  My shock quickly faded when I remembered that of course they’re available, they are female athletes so despite their incredible levels of professional success they will never make enough money to turn down a paid appearance on a reality dating show. 

The ladies split into two teams, which I think were Amanda, Emily, Jennifer, Lauren H., Rachel and Shushanna on one and Amber, Haley, Jamie, Lace, Leah and Olivia on the other.  It is revealed that not one of these women has ever played soccer before, so this should be a fun date.  Only the winning team will get to continue onto the evening portion of the date, and any suspense is immediately gone because we’ve already seen like 20 scenes of Olivia taunting everyone from the balcony later that night.  So there’s a game and stuff happens and Rachel goes down with a classic non-contact soccer injury and Amber scores the winning goal but who cares because all the good stuff happens after the game.

First, Rachel’s leg injury is so debilitating that Shushanna picks her up like a little Kerri Strug and carries her inside the house!  I love this.  I’m obsessed with it.  Shushanna is the most unassumingly terrifying person who has ever set foot in the Bachelor Mansion (even counting Ashleigh) and I can only imagine how many people she murdered back in Mother Russia.

Second, we learn that Olivia is literally the most disgusting person to ever walk this earth.  Earlier in the episode, Lauren B. and Amanda were discussing how Olivia apparently spent $40,000 on clothes for the show (hey, sparkly nude-illusion dresses don’t pay for themselves!), which is one thing.  But when she steals away Ben immediately in the group setting, the claws come out in a big way.  Amber points out that Olivia has “fat toes” which I didn’t even know was a thing.  This leads to a general consensus that she also has bad breath, which is absolutely mortifying.  Friends, if I ever have bad breath, please just let me know immediately instead of announcing it on national TV.  Jami goes to tell Olivia that the girls were talking about her and Olivia is like “Oh so they were talking about my calves?  My cankles?”  Could this episode get any worse for Olivia?  Well only slightly.  Olivia is actually okay with the toe-bashing because, really, “Perfection is so lame” (in case you missed that, she is perfect in every other way except that she has gross toes).  By some miracle, Amber, a 30-year-old bartender on her third Bachelor show, gets the group date rose, but Cankles is reassured by the fact that Ben used her leg to push off the couch, which she helpfully explains is the universal sign for “I’m desperately in love with you but can’t tell anyone yet.”  She seems…stable. 

As is only appropriate on an episode airing on MLK Day, Jubilee gets to go on a one-on-one date and then is quickly beaten down by literally everyone else in the house.  It turns out that either the women in the house don’t understand sarcasm or Jubilee is so skilled at it that you can’t even tell when she’s being sarcastic.  She doesn’t start strong after a Maury Povich level freak-out when her name was read on the date card, and gets even less popular after chiding Ben for arriving late (not particularly appreciated by the other women) and jokingly (I hope) asks “Does anyone else want to go on my date?” after seeing the approaching helicopter (DEFINITELY not appreciated by the other women).  She thankfully overcomes her fear of heights so quickly that you would almost think she doesn’t have a fear of heights and maybe made it up as a cute quirk.  She spends the ride looking out the window, which is a stupid rookie mistake on this show.  Everybody knows that helicopters are for hooking up (see: Lauren B. in the bi-plane), not for checking out once-in-a-lifetime views.  So stupid.  Side note – does anyone know what Jubilee’s clavicle tattoo says?  My best guess is “The Pastry Practice” but that doesn’t seem right.

Anyways, they are spending the day at some health spa which is apparently just another mansion a few miles away with a pool and – you guessed it – a hot tub (for those counting, that’s two for this episode and three total).  In an amazing turn of events, Ben and Jubilee actually eat real food.  Unfortunately it is caviar that Jubilee spits out immediately ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.  She’d rather be eating hot dogs, which is a sentiment that Jubilee and I share generally.  The date is pretty awkward overall, and Jubilee’s “I’m not playing, white boy” doesn’t really go over nearly as well as she thinks, but Ben is “intrigued” by Jubilee, which we know because he says it over and over.  Is that a racialized term?  I wasn’t aware.  However, over dinner Jubilee hits all of the Bachelor targets with a heartbreaking but woefully incomplete story about how her entire family is dead and she is the only person left in her bloodline.  If you’re looking for some details about this story that I left out, there are none.  I welcome your speculation as to the tragic fate of Jubilee’s family.  Still, it’s a very sad story and Ben, I dare you not to give her the rose after that.  Jubes does get the rose and she and Ben kiss as the cameras pan away to an untouched crabcake.  Of course, while she was gone, everyone had plenty of time to realize that they actually hate Jubilee.

The cocktail party starts on a pretty grim note – Ben just found out that a couple of people he knows died in a plane crash, so he’s understandably a little bummed out.  Luckily, Olivia grabs him right away to let him know that she can empathize because she’s had her own struggles.  With her cankles.  Yes, that’s right.  People have written in blogs that she has cankles, and it’s been tough for her to be strong all the time.  This is just what he needed.  Also, I searched for these cankle-shaming blogs but came up empty, sorry.  Next up, Amanda and her baby voice are there to talk.  Nobody will talk to Jubilee, so she grabs Ben and gives him a sexy massage that he is very into.  The other women in the house are highly scandalized, and would like Jubilee to come over and talk to them so that they can all attack her in one convenient location.  Shockingly, she is not into it and escapes to the bathroom.  Ben, who is trying to beat Sean’s record as Most Earnest Bachelor, rushes in because he is “responsible for the emotions and feelings in this house.”  Amber joins them in the bathroom and straight up comes at Jubilee in front of Ben, making sure to point out why nobody likes her in great detail.  Wow, that was rough.  It’s a good thing Amber already has that rose, because I have a strong suspicion we won’t be seeing much more of her.

With that episode behind him, Ben is next confronted by Lace, who would like another personal period of uninterrupted eye contact.  Then Lace utters the words, “Like my tattoo says, you can’t love somebody else until you truly love yourself,” citing this as the reason it’s time for her to leave the Bachelor Mansion (i.e., leave voluntarily since she is clearly not going to get a rose).  I think I’m going to try to work “like my tattoo says” into most of my everyday conversations from now on and I suggest you do too.  At the rose ceremony, the final rose comes down to Jami, Olivia and Shushanna, with Cankles pulling out the win.  Shushanna’s time in the breadlines has prepared her to overcome this kind of adversity, so she’ll be fine.  Jami basically unravels on camera which, as always, is the appropriate response after being dumped by a guy you’ve known for five minutes.  Also, you’d think that Olivia might be a little upset about having to wait for the last rose, but it turns out that Ben gave her the reassurance she needed in their own private language, in which a very brief squeeze of the waist (known in some circles as a hug) means “I can’t give you everything all the time, and I know you’re okay with that.”  Glad they are both on the same page and this will definitely end well.