For some reason, I thought I had titled all of last season as 19 by mistake, and I was really upset. Like this is the Library of Congress. But the important thing is that this season’s bachelor is the dynamic, charming, and gainfully employed Chris Soules, a vast improvement over the superficial, whiney, and altogether disappointing Juan Pablo Galavis–who, by the way, has broken up with his chosen bachelorette, whose name I forget. As has he, I suspect.
We learned a little about Chris during his tenure on the last Bachelorette, when he unsuccessfully vied for the hand of the foolishly urban Andi. A native of Iowa, the 33-year-old farmer likes camping, country music, and sports, not that you would expect an Iowan farmer to read Proust and dabble in semiotics. He comes from a long line of heartland stock who are about as ethnic as a jar of Miracle Whip, and he couldn’t be more darling if you dyed his hair hot pink and put a rhinestone in his belly button. What’s more, he’s a millionaire, in part due to his work as something called a Farmland Investment Specialist. That sounds like he tells people the best place to plant their corn, which in Iowa is basically everywhere but in the Cheesecake Factory parking lot in downtown Des Moines.
Starting tonight, Chris will have to choose from no fewer than 30 desperate, grasping Wal-Mart shoppers aiming to get his Neil Lane ring on their French-manicured fingers. It’s going to get ugly, not to mention really confusing, what with all the Ashleys, a Britt and a Brittany, a Nicole and a Nikki, and a litany of names from the Duggar family tree. So open up your Google Sheets, and prepare for the premiere of The Bachelor: Chicks Better Scurry.
We start off live. Crowds of people are gathered on a red carpet, as if the beginning of the show were exciting for anyone but the sponsors. “Hello, Bachelor Nation,” Chris Harrison enthuses. He goes on to knowingly inform us that people are having viewing parties throughout our great land, without mentioning that they just want an excuse to get drunk. This season features a virgin! Two widows! People with dark pasts! And the usual slavish devotion to product placement.
Now to introduce Prince Farming, which no one but ABC is going to call him. Chris is a fourth-generation Old MacDonald who feels like the luckiest man alive, hopefully not because he’s just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. He loves to see his crops grow, nudge nudge. He likes riding a tractor on his land, manfully shoveling grain, and gazing pensively across the field. Iowa is beautiful, he exhorts, and you can have a good time there, if you also enjoy riding a tractor on your land, manfully shoveling grain, and gazing pensively across the field.
We see Chris’s humble American family gathered round the farm table, which is a real one and not from the Pottery Barn catalog. They’re eating a ham, some freshly picked peas from the garden, and Maw’s blackberry cobbler that always wins a prize at the state fair. The barn is appropriately weathered. The cows moo. But love is hard to find. Maybe because the commercial center of the town looks like an Edward Hopper painting.
“It would take a lifetime to meet 25 women,” Chris tells us, by way of explaining why he came on the show. Maybe he should have tried the YWCA first. Although it’ll be the first time he’s missed harvest, he must go a’courtin’ to woo himself a goodly wife. He dons leathers, mounts his motorcycle, and rides off through the cornbelt toward Hollywood. That might get him a boyfriend a little faster.
Back on the red carpet, lots of implants and veneers get out of limos and wave to the camera. They all breathlessly await the moment we will be introduced to the legion of hair-extended spray-tans arriving at the mansion for Chris. Some are only breathless because their Spanx is a size too small, though.
After some boring interviews with pod people from a show I didn’t cover, it’s time to talk to some other pod people from a show I did cover, Bachelor in Paradise. Do Marcus and Lacey think Chris can find the love that they did? Of course, if he becomes a sleazy, one-dimensional sell-out, too.
And now, here are the ladies: Britt, the aforementioned virgin and a waitress–so clearly a person with very little ambition–writes in her journal about not having sex in her last relationship. Jillian, a news producer, thinks some men are intimidated by her. There must be news of some sort in Iowa, so it could work. Amanda is a ballet instructor with eyes like Marty Feldman. She might have to accommodate and teach square dancing in Iowa. Whitney, a fertility nurse, has a voice reminiscent of one of the Powder Puff Girls. She has no idea why she is not meeting the right guys. All of America and the sound guy know.
Mackenzie has a son named after a vegetable, so she should like growing things. Alissa is a flight attendant. Are there airports in Iowa? Kelsey is a school counselor in Texas, where they likely do not teach evolution. As one of the widows, she is inspirational, but still willing to appear in a bikini.
Back to the maddened crowds at the red carpet. Here’s Andi and her bachelor, whatshisname. Jeff? Joe? They demur about their wedding plans. Chris demands answers: Everyone else is getting married, what’s with you two? He’s like my aunt. The couple proclaim Chris ready to find love. “Someone special he can take back to Iowa?” Chris asks, like it’s Pluto.
Now to find out about the situation with Juan Pablo and Nikki, his dumpee. America is more curious about this than what happened to the Malaysian airliner. In a skin-tight black gown, Nikki informs us she’s doing really great. Her bustline has certainly benefited from the experience. She and Juan Pablo both tried really hard, but she’s a nurse in one state and he’s a slacker in another. “Like, I’m not a quitter,” she insists. “We real-life tried, not TV-tried.” TV-trying is when you get edited to have a redemption arc. Chris digs in: “Did you feel like his love of the limelight took its toll?” That’s not a priority for her, she asserts, freshly installed cleavage heaving beneath her statement necklace. “What did you see in Juan Pablo that we all didn’t?” questions Chris, since he’s a journalist and this is hard news, so her feelings don’t matter.
Now we’re inside the studio with all the hair and teeth. At home, the wine has been poured, Chris reports. The cork came out as soon as your face hove into view, fella. Finally, he rhapsodizes, [the other] Chris’s journey to find love can start. We’re just pretending that it didn’t actually start on The Bachelorette and get driven off a cliff.
Chris the Bachelor tells us how fast-paced, crowded, and different L.A. is from Iowa. Later, for variety, he’ll compare his state to New Jersey, Winnipeg, and Luxembourg. Then we get a shirtless shot as he tries on clothes, and at the mansion, we get to see him showering. I like this show.
Once Chris is all suited up and has spent yet another few moments describing how great it is to have a bunch of cameras follow you while you undress a series of unemployed actresses with your eyes, the women start riding up in the limos. They reinforce the theme by raving about what a great guy Chris is, an assessment based solely on their watching him on The Bachelorette. Then again, they probably think their make-up looks natural.
The first leg emerges from the limo door. It’s Britt, breathless. She hugs him tightly, panting and nearly in tears. This is why people used to marry so young in the days when not being a virgin was frowned on. She tells him she’s been waiting so long to meet him.
Next comes the giggly Whitney with the Betty Rubble voice. She’s followed by the tragic Kelsey. Megan is next, bursting from her strapless dress, and then Ashley I., a freelance journalist. Chris tells them all incredulously that they’re beautiful, as if he were concerned some might look like the cast of Cocoon. Now it’s Trina, a blond, and Reegan (Reegan?), who brings a picnic cooler. She sells human tissue for a living, which I thought was illegal. But it’s not really a person’s heart in there–that gooey, bloody-looking blob is a joke. Fortunately, as a farmer from Iowa, Chris has seen, and probably plunged him arms up the elbow into, a lot worse.
Next, in denim shorts and cowboy boots, is Tara. “This is me,” she declares defiantly. Following her we have an Amber and a Nikki, who looks like a lot like Andi. Meanwhile, Tara puts on a little black dress, then sneaks out and returns to meet Chris again. So that really wasn’t her before, or else she’s schizophrenic.
A serious gentleman approaches next with a note for Chris that tells him to turn away from the limo and close his eyes. Amanda, in a dress better suited for a Rockette, sneaks up behind him, tells him he has a secret admirer, and runs inside without him seeing her. This seems like a poor strategy. The next girl is the broadcast journalist who works out. Mackenzie is after her, then the tentative Ashley, who has found a lucky penny and wants to put it in his shoe. Okay. Kaitlyn is next. She tells him he can plow the eff out of her field any day. Hey, leave the farming jokes to us.
Now Chris the Host appears. Chris S. tells him he feels like he’s in a dream. A wet dream. He’s ready to go inside.
The women notice that there are not many of them there–only 15. They have pooled their brain power to produce this revelation. Chris tells them how he appreciates their leaving their homes and jobs, and they should know it’s worth it because it can work. Well, only for one of them, and not for him last time he tried it, but you know. Kaitlyn then tells an off-color joke.
Where are the other women, everyone wonders. It’s as big a conundrum as how the pyramids were built. And why anyone let Kaitlyn on the show.
Britt and Chris go off together. She wants him to know he can feel safe with her. She’s there to give hugs and be a shoulder for him to cry on. She also wants to live in a small town and raise a family there. Please visit her website to learn more about her policies.
Then Chris the Host appears with the First Impression Rose. Everyone is intimidated and starts tossing back liquor. The studio audience cheers at their anxiety and self-doubt. Among the crowd are two women who went to high school with Chris, although they look like they would have been the lunch ladies. “He’s a farmer from Iowa,” Chris marvels anew. “Why is that resonating with everyone?” Is it really everyone, or just people who were previously unaware that corn must be grown before it’s packed into microwaveable bags?
At the party, Whitney, the fertility nurse, asks Chris if he inseminates hogs. Another woman gives him a heart-shaped rock she found. It’s the Algonquin Roundtable reincarnated.
But Chris still has not met the secret admirer. It’s Amanda, the bug-eyed ballet teacher. She lives super north of Winnetka, and feels it’s important to bore holes through a person with her gaze.
Chris the Host returns to borrow Chris the Bachelor, who expresses his limitless joy at his current circumstances. “There’s more, my friend,” the host gurgles. The other women squeal in horror as more limos begin to arrive, bearing 15 more competitors for the agrarian hunk’s affections. It’s a veritable herd of broodmares.
Back in the studio, Chris talks to Clare about the additional bachelorettes. What was it like for her to step out of the limo? Who the hell cares. “Chris is one of the most serious and sincere bachelors ever,” Host-Chris enthuses. Could it be because he’s a farmer from Iowa? Or is it just the usual abuse of superlatives?
Samantha now emerges from the limo. Inside the house, the other women hiss, mutter, and exclaim haughtily at this development. They resent the new arrivals, who dare to invade the territory they have ruled for an entire hour.
Michelle arrives, then Juelia. “They’re gorgeous,” cry the resentful early-arrivers as they peer out the windows, certain they will be discarded in favor of these infiltrators. Becca greets Chris, then Tandra (Tandra? Is that Sandra with a lisp?) before another limo pulls up. Inside the mansion, terror and rage reign.
The flight attendant steps out, bearing a seat belt to put on Chris. Jordan brings him liquor, smart woman. Then comes Nicole, wearing a pink pig snout to make him “feel at home.” “I don’t think Chris even has pigs on his farm. She should have done her research,” sneers another woman, observing out the window. Yeah, well, you should have read Reality Steve so you’d know there weren’t going to be only 15 women.
Brittany is wearing nothing but underwear, and it looks like it’s from Frederick’s of Hollywood. Carly brings a pink plastic karaoke set and sings her introduction. Yet another limo appears. It’s madness, I tell you, madness! How will Chris’s penis withstand the onslaught?
Tracy steps out. She’s a teacher whose kids wrote a note to Chris recommending her. Good PR there. Bo is a plus-size model; she could milk cows. Kimberly wore white to communicate bridehood. Kara tells him they would make great babies. Jade is the closest thing to somebody not white. They probably don’t have those in Iowa.
Chris returns to the party. He is overwhelmed. You know he’s already eliminated a half-dozen of them off the bat just for being smaller than a C-cup. But he believes his wife is in this room, and likely she’s three sheets to the wind by now.
When he was at home, Chris despairs, he had a lot of time and no women, and now he has a lot of women and no time. In the first case, he could make accommodations by logging onto the internet, but here. . . . He uses his precious time being taught to breakdance and learning that it’s illegal to be an ice cream truck driver in Iowa. Yes, he’ll find himself a lifetime partner without a problem.
“I wish I was a polygamist,” he says forlornly. That’s a show on another network, pal.
Ashley S. discusses how people are like onions, with layers. She interrupts Chris and another woman, demanding more time. She is clearly drunk. “I’ve never ridden a horse,” she tells him. Tara, a “sports fishing enthusiast,” is throwing them back, too, and I don’t mean little trout. Her next gig will be Naked and Afraid. Some of the other women are discussing what color life jackets are. Chris is indeed a lucky man.
He picks up the First Impression Rose and walks resolutely over to Britt, the hugger, who looks like Marie Osmond, so the virgin thing is easy to believe. They kiss tenderly.
Chris the Host returns to announce the Rose Ceremony. Nobody knows, with this many women, what number will be eliminated, so there’s even more troubled uncertainty. It’s like waiting for the grand jury results from Ferguson.
Back at the studio, everyone approves of the choice of Britt. What does Andi think? She felt the kiss was natural, if a little premature. Speaking of premature, she looks preggers in that loose sack of a dress.
Would Britt fit in in Iowa, Chris asks the two dowdy ladies from there. Well, she’s a virgin and appears uneducated, so it’s a good foundation. The ladies agree she would. The Formerly Virginal Bachelor is also impressed with the kiss. Chris S. will be relieved to know that a bunch of heathens, sluts, and manwhores put their seal of approval on him having the audacity to kiss someone within hours of meeting her.
Finally, the emotional Rose Ceremony can begin. Chris and Chris discuss how hard it will be, surely as difficult as resolving the issue of militarization of our nation’s police forces. The Forever 21 fashion show stands ready, awaiting their fate. Chris thanks all the totally amazing women for being there. The somber ceremony commences.
Kaitlyn, the dirty joker, gets the first rose. Then Jade, followed by Samantha. Ah, all brunettes. Maybe they don’t have peroxide in Iowa. Another brunette after her, then Tandra, a blond. Nikki (brunette), Kelsey (brunette), Megan (blond), and another brunette. Tara is looking ill. Amber (brunette), Juelia (blond), Becca (dirty blond), Trina (blond). Tara is listing to one side. Next is — wait, Chris suddenly walks out of the room! I bet we’re supposed to think he chose Tara, but is now Iowa-ishly disgusted by her drunken conduct.
Oh, so that is what’s happening. He returns from discussing the issue with Chris without our knowing the resolution. Tara’s blond, though. The next rose goes to Mackenzie (brunette), then Tracy (brunette), and then, alas, Tara. The next one’s another drunk blond, then Jillian (brunette), Whitney (blond), and Carly (blond). One rose is left. Naturally, the plus-size model is out. She looks too much like she’s from Iowa.
And the final rose goes to Ashley S., the onion girl. Chris is pensive when it’s over, heaving a troubled sigh.
Crazy Eyes Amanda is shocked. Kara, the high school soccer coach, is humiliated. It’s embarrassing to only get one paycheck. Kimberly is also disappointed and hurt, largely because she’s a brunette. Inside, the rose-getters cheer and celebrate their good fortune with Chris. Kimberly hears them and walks back in, asking to speak to him.
In the studio, the audience ooohs. But we won’t find out what non-event results from their exchange of mindless platitudes until next week.
The last several minutes of the show are devoted to a sneak peek of one of the most dramatic seasons in the history of The Bachelor. Really, more than the one with the virgin? He was probably from a less exotic state. In the footage, the critical moment comes when Chris says, “I’ve made a big mistake,” and then everyone appears to get angry and upset about whatever he did wrong. Apparently, every single woman cries in a different setting.
And it snows in Iowa.
