Episode 7 already! It feels like just yesterday, Kelsey Poe was faking a panic attack when it looked like Chris Soules was going to send her home. Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time rewritten every line?
Trusted sources, such as websites missing a crucial vowel in their names, report that we will see two women eliminated tonight–but only one at the Rose Ceremony, as if that happened as rarely as my grandma buying a housecoat that was not marked down. The exotic location where the six surviving wifely prospects have traveled, probably in coach, is Ben’s hometown of Warsaw, Indiana. Amanda, Becca, Caila, Emily, JoJo, and Lauren B. will be campaigning there even harder than the Democratic candidates in South Carolina, although with fewer mentions of illegal immigration.
Without Olivia, we’ll only get to be appalled at the cheap cocktail dresses and predictable histrionics of the prospective Mrs. Higginses. They’ll be discovering more about Ben’s youth, which ended when he was first able to shave in 2011. The first lucky lady to get a one-on-one date will spend time with the bachelor at a youth center where he used to volunteer, and probably also scored his pot.
But tension will darken the group date, far outperforming banality and cattiness, since the woman who gets the rose afterwards also secures a hometown date next week. It should prove as suspenseful a moment as when the nation heard the verdict in Brown v. Board of Education. It also might cause rioting in middle-aged ladies’ TV rooms.
We are welcomed to Warsaw, Indiana. It’s so representative of America that Ben will salute the flag as he jams his tongue down the girls’ throats. We see old-timey boxcars rattle along the train tracks, autumn-tinged leaves on stalwart oaks, and folks eating eggs with bacon and white toast at the diner downtown. Ben tells the handsome Aryan couple who birthed him, probably at General Hospital, how things are going.
Meanwhile, the girls troop along a tree-lined path, excited to absorb the midwestern atmosphere and get great prices on sneakers at the strip mall. Mom Higgins believes Ben will find the love of his life among the skinny-jeaned Bratz dolls arrayed before him. He arrives to welcome them in a boat because it’s easier to light than if he just rang the doorbell. Emily exclaims that she would come to live in Indiana in a heartbeat to make babies with Ben, which would be challenging since he lives in Denver now.
Lauren is concerned about last week’s encounter that had questioning her sincerity, but then she gets the first one-on-one date. They drive off in a red pick-up truck previously owned by Sheriff Taylor, visiting his church, his high school athletic field, and the former site of the movie theater where Ben had his first kiss. There’s a plaque there to commemorate the moment, which happened during an afternoon showing of The Matrix.
Then they arrive at the youth center, where the same people work as when Ben volunteered, not so much from dedication as because there’s nowhere else to work since they tore down the movie theater. The couple play games with the children, which makes Lauren feel like a big kid instead of a non-descript reality show cast member. She has never seen anyone interact with kids like Ben does. He would make a great father, she enthuses, and a semi-successful pedophile.
That evening, the girls discuss how disorienting it was for Ben to ask Lauren on the date himself, as opposed to learning about it via a card printed on an Inkjet. They felt equally unnerved when Chris Harrison wore a new tie. Then a card arrives inviting JoJo to the second one-on-one date.
Lauren feels today was amazing, but there’s still something they need to talk about–his charge that she might be acting differently toward him than the other girls. He wants her to discuss nail polish shades and hair extensions with him, too. On the other hand, he hasn’t seen evidence himself of this appalling transgression, at least until he reviews footage from the camera he hid in the bathroom.
They blather meaninglessly until Ben reveals that he indeed trusts Lauren. It’s because today, they spoke in vague platitudes for more than 40 seconds. What a relief for Lauren! It was a true breakthrough for her to realize she’s in love with Ben, a human being from Indiana–not Ben, the guy she watched in HD the previous season. Personally, I preferred the Tiger Beat David Cassidy to the real-life one.
JoJo realizes that on her date with Ben, she must finally let down her guard and open up to someone besides ABC’s attorneys. They go to Chicago, perhaps because all of Warsaw’s amenities have been exhausted. There they have Wrigley Field all to themselves. They bat the ball and run around the bases, which Ben feels is the way for a girl to impress a guy, at least one whose SAT scores didn’t break 1000.
Meanwhile, the other girls lament not getting JoJo or Lauren’s one-on-ones, and also failing to sleep with any of the producers. Ben feels he and JoJo have developed a deep relationship, filled with passion and distinguished by a shared use of sports equipment.
The group date card arrives. Caila, Amanda, and Becca are going, leaving Emily with the remaining one-on-one. She is overwhelmed with joy, but then she reacted that way when she first figured out how to work the DVR.
Back at Wrigley Field, where dinner is served on third base, Ben wants JoJo to be even more vulnerable. “You’ve been super nervous about things,” he tells her. “What’s going on?” What are these women not revealing, their Social Security numbers and bra sizes? What JoJo should be scared of are all the cameras recording her personal encounters–people can make some pretty unflattering gifs. But she admits she needs Ben to know why it’s hard for her to overcome her insecurities: in the past, she worried that she felt more than the other person, and also that she forgot to change the batteries in her carbon monoxide detector.
Meanwhile, Becca is excited at feeling what she’s never felt before, because apparently she lied about falling in love with Chris Soules. But she’s also afraid for what those feelings might mean, like the Fantasy Suite. I’m afraid for yet another girl to bemoan her inability to open up.
JoJo assures Ben she is not afraid now. Her heart is ready to give to him because he has asked her to hang in there, and also because the scriptwriters long ago exhausted any other scenarios. “I’ve thrown those fears out the window,” JoJo informs us. I hope Becca wasn’t standing outside at the time. When she’s with Ben, JoJo feels herself falling in love. The rest of us feel ourselves getting fed up with this repetitive dialogue.
The group date is at a beautiful farm, where they board rowboats. The two girls not with Ben are rowing in circles, which is deliciously metaphoric. Then they fly kites before going into a barn–you know, because it’s a farm in Indiana. There the rose awaits. It was probably well fertilized with manure. Ben knows he must give the rose to the one girl here, in addition to the other three, whom he most wants to meet his family. Becca really feels the pressure. She knows Mr. and Mrs. Higgins probably saw Chris’s season.
Ben first goes off with Amanda. She’s nervous, because none of these girls owns a thesaurus. She points out that he knows she has a past, meaning she’s a divorced mother, something that has not been a stigma since 1952. Meanwhile, publicly airing your inane romantic foibles has flown in the face of decent society since the premiere of The Newlywed Game.
For her part, Becca likes Ben so much, it just freaks her out. She desperately wants to hear that he cares just as much about her. She could effectively reduce the possibility of the object of her affection rejecting her by not continually auditioning for The Bachelor.
The rose is everything today! The girls tremble before this awe-inspiring truth. Then Caila goes off with Ben, hoping against hope that she will get to see his parents’ living room. Would her own hometown visit be as impactful an experience for him? It would if she lives in Flint, Michigan.
Time to present the rose. Ben explains that he’s excited to meet this woman’s family, and hopes they serve onion dip with the potato chips. Despite her shameful failed marriage and state of motherhood, Amanda gets the rose. Caila and Becca dab piteously at the edges of their mascara.
“What more did I need to do?” Becca the Virgin weeps. I can posit a theory. For Caila, it’s one more experience that left her without a Neil Lane diamond. At least this time it wasn’t due to the unreliability of the Craigslist personals. Banished to the house, the two woman hug each other and whine, as sympathetic music plays over the scene and viewers take the opportunity to get a snack.
So she can delve deeper into Ben’s history, he and Amanda go to McDonald’s. It’s a normal thing for him to do in town, as well as an outstanding cross-promotion for the franchise. Everyone there greets them enthusiastically. I hope Amanda’s other TV crush isn’t Bobby Flay.
“She makes me excited to take this next step with her,” Ben reports about Amanda. That’s because their next step is to get a cone at Dairy Queen. They visit a carnival where the crowd cheers wildly at their arrival. It’s the most exciting thing to happen in town since One Day at a Time was set in Indianapolis. Meanwhile, to fill a few minutes not occupied by Verizon commercials, Lauren and Amanda discuss the success of their one-on-ones, and conjecture fatefully about Emily’s.
On their date, Emily and Ben ride his boat across a lake. She needs his help to identify the swans. Ben feels she has become her own individual self now that Haley is getting on with her life, but he still needs to know if she’s ready to be someone’s wife. Will he bring her to meet his parents? The other girls believe this would deal a lethal blow to their own chances at the Fantasy Suite. But Caila feels Emily is too childish compared to her own sober maturity. In fact, people often compare her to Golda Meir when she approved full-scale mobilization of the armed forces in advance of the Yom Kippur War.
Indeed, Ben brings Emily to visit the house he grew up in, where his parents are in the make-up trailer. “Talking to people can be a hard thing for me,” Emily confesses, admitting she is inept not only at recognizing common waterbirds. Mom Higgins takes her outside to talk, then proceeds to look pained as Emily chatters mindlessly about her role as daughter-in-law, which seems to feature cheering for the Broncos. Mom is effectively done with this dimwit after three incoherent sentences.
“She’s definitely a fun individual,” Mom allows, but declares Emily too young for Ben “right now.” When he reaches middle-age, he can have sex with her in a Motel 6 while Lauren B. is driving the kids to soccer practice.
“I’m so overwhelmed with happiness,” Emily rhapsodizes afterwards, as Ben pilots the boat away from the encounter that may have caused his father another coronary. Ben knows what he doesn’t want in a wife, and it includes a person who doesn’t take a breath between sentences. He gives her the bad news. He cushions the blow by saying it’s hard for him to tell her to go home since she’s been so incredible to him. It’s refreshing how he says “incredible” instead of the worn-out “amazing” to describe events that are neither.
The other girls watch from this exchange from a window as Emily tells Ben she regrets that she sees what they have, but he doesn’t, which is like when my scale sees I need to lose 40 lbs., but I don’t.
Then Emily reports in to the other women, breaking down as she accepts that she must return to sharing a bedroom with Haley. She goes out to the limo as the other girls express fear that their last time with Ben could come at any moment in an episode. But really, they can see him again at the After the Rose special.
Pre-Rose Ceremony, Ben broods. He confides in Chris that he doesn’t know who to sleep with first. They make the women stand around outside in the cold as the two men discuss the scriptwriter’s choices. There is one person, though, whom he has decided isn’t making the grade, Ben reveals.
He approaches the group, and explains how important getting a rose is at this critical juncture. It’s as portentous a decision as whether to invade Iraq, but with the potential to create far more heated online arguments. The ceremony commences. Lauren B. gets the first rose, followed by JoJo, and then the third rose awaits its fate. Suspenseful music plays as the composer regrets his life choices. Ben lifts the rose and pronounces the name of Caila. Once again, Becca must return to her cold empty bed and Rotating Rabbit.
Ben tells Becca he was unsure up until the final moments, when he realized Benca is a terrible couple’s name. He escorts her to the limo as the other four girls consider how close they each came to being in her place, and losing another two weeks of pay. After Becca tearfully reminds us she doesn’t want to be alone and Ben walks away among the fallen leaves, previews begin which show how he’s completely forgotten about her despair by the next episode.
See you all next week!
