Episode 2: Let The Emotional Manipulation Games Begin!

“Tonight, on The Bachelorette …”

Wait. Is that a voiceover? It’s definitely not the same voice as the last host whose name rhymes with Miss Marrison, and we don’t have nearly as many voiceovers as in previous seasons, so, why is it there at all?

Anyway. It’s daytime at the Tamaya Resort outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the men are excited to see their new digs. One of them says it’s “sick” and as someone who truly loves the high desert, and everything about it – the turquoise, the blinding blue sky, the vast desolate landscapes that will mess you up if you don’t respect them – I have to agree, but that could be because when it comes to desert living, I’m very easy to please.

Katie tells Tayshia and Kaitlyn that at this point it’s easy to like a lot of the guys and I hope she’s at least able to tell them apart because at this point I am not. Except now I know who Karl is: he seems kind of intense and when the guys are hanging out he does an extremely and unnecessarily aggressive version of JFK’s “ask not what your country can do for you,” except … about Katie? I guess? It’s unclear, and uncomfortable.

First group date! The guy reading out the names says “Quartney with a Q” and are there two Courtneys here? It’s possible. I don’t know. It’s still really early in the season and I can’t be bothered to learn all their names.

Katie greets her suitors and brings them to what looks like a theatre. Spotlights give glimpses of various items that I guess could be related to sex, and we hear one guy say “is that a brassiere?” and I need to know who talks like that? Like, which one of these guys said brassiere, and has he ever seen and/or handled one before, and also what decade does he think we’re in?

The Virgin, who definitely has a name I haven’t yet learned, starts to get nervous. Because as a virgin, he can’t possibly feel comfortable around what someone called “sex stuff” and that seems like a super healthy way for a grown man to live, right?

Katie introduces Heather McDonald, who one person says is a “really well-known comedian” and I don’t know about that, but I do know that she was a guest on the most recent episode of the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast and that’s how deep I am into Bachelor Nation that I know that.

Heather gives the guys a pop quiz and it turns out that “the brain” is a woman’s “largest sex organ,” although plenty of guys thought it was her vagina, and one guy guessed her tongue. One did actually guess it was the brain, and I’m guessing he thought it was a pretty smooth move, but now he’s totally busted because he’s right.

The guys also don’t know how many erogenous zones a woman has and neither do I, although I do hope Friends wasn’t lying to me (again) and the answer is seven. Also one guy doesn’t know what erogenous means so, good luck to that guy’s future wife!

After some more questions and surprising answers (wearing socks increases a woman’s chance of having an orgasm, cool!), the producers’ plan is revealed to us and that plan is to put The Virgin on the spot. He almost skates by with putting a question mark as his answer for his favorite sexual position, and the last time he had sex, but we can tell in his interviews that he’s been crying.

Which, I mean, look: I get that having a Virgin Guy on the show is a punchline, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I’m not sure what he was expecting by coming on a show featuring a lead who literally brought her vibrator to the first night of the last Bachelor season, but if he’s a virgin he probably has his reasons, and I’m the massive crucifix around his neck is probably a clue. In any case, ok, fine, he’s waiting for marriage, and while it’s certainly not something I think is healthy for a wide variety of reasons, it’s also not fun to mock him for it (unless he gets super shamey about sex, in which case: bye!).

The men are instructed to give a speech on what makes them a good lover and give said speech to a “live audience” of the other men. Connor, who is definitely there for the right reasons (?), writes a song about it, and he rhymes “linger” and “fingers” to adorable and charming ends, and I actually kind of like it?

One guy calls her “babe” and honestly it’s just too soon for that. One guy uses puppets, and another guy puts his literal dick in a literal box? Okay, I guess? And then we have Aggressive Karl, who fondles a life-size cardboard cutout of Katie and everyone looks appropriately uncomfortable.

The Virgin, whose name is apparently Mike, brings Katie up on stage and uses a lot of words to tell her that he’s a virgin and it was actually kind of sweet, and it made Katie cry, and it was enough for him to win the “Best Lover of All Time” trophy, but it’s still not enough for me to not take the giant cross around his neck as a warning bell that Katie should heed.

At the cocktail party, Katie and Connor B. kiss after she spent their entire conversation looking at him like he’s a snack. She does not seem to hesitate when asks to re-do their first kiss. As Katie seems to have lovely conversations with Mike and the guy who did the puppet show, we get an increasingly intense voiceover from Karl talking about how determined he is to get the rose.

Notably, he says “I know a good thing when I see it” and Katie seems so tuned in to his bullshit that she says “look at youuuuuu” which is definitely a thing people say when they aren’t at all flattered by the person in front of them, and he is interrupted by a guy named Thomas right before Karl puts handcuffs on Katie and I think he might have just saved Katie’s life? They kiss and it looks pretty hot and I must have vocalized my thoughts because my husband asked me if I was ok. (I was.)

Thomas gets the group date rose and Karl, who apparently believes he was entitled to the rose, isn’t happy and great drama is foreshadowed.

One on one date! Greg, who got the first impression rose, and whose hair reminds me of every single guy I liked in the 90s, gets the first one on one date. Katie drives up in a red pickup truck and drives him to a lake where they go fishing, which Greg grew up doing. For Katie, this is meaningful because she used to go camping with her dad, who, as we remember, passed away almost 10 years ago.

Greg fumbles setting up the tent and Katie thinks it’s “hot.” They also make a “toilet” out of gray bucket and a hole in the ground, as Katie and her dad used to when they went camping, and it’s apparent that in addition to being sex-positive, Katie is also bodily-function positive, and not like in a gross way, but in an adult, human-person way.

She also says that when you lose someone you love, it doesn’t necessarily get easier, you just learn how to carry on with the grief.

They kiss (while Greg is, yes, sitting on (but not using) the bucket-toilet), and Katie gets emotional talking about her dad, and it feels pretty heavy, so they go fishing, or at least they go stand by the water with a fishing pole. Greg says words in a voiceover about how he already cares about Katie, and understands how she’s feeling, and it all sounds very earnest and sincere and I hope it is.

Later in the evening, Greg tells Katie that he lost his dad about two years ago to cancer, and they’re both crying and now my husband and I are also crying. He says it hurts that his dad won’t see the girl he’s going to marry, which echoes what Katie said earlier about missing her dad as she goes through life’s landmarks. There is something truly touching about watching them connect over this tragic, shared experience. Katie gives Greg the rose, and they kiss in the back of the pickup truck while fireworks go off overhead.

Sigh. Why can’t the show be more like this? Not that we don’t want the drama and shenanigans, but this felt like a real, vulnerable moment between two people that was handled with sensitivity, and I don’t know if it’s better or worse that this is the same show that as treated its Black participants so, so poorly, because from this we can see that they do know how to handle heavy, emotional topics.

Mansion drama: Someone named Aaron says he has “feelings” that are “starting to develop” based on the the “time” they’ve spent “together,” and I think what he’s “feeling” is really “Stockholm Syndrome” because there’s literally been a first-night cocktail party, along with a group date and a one-on-one date, neither of which he is on, so, maybe pump the brakes there, guy.

The Single Dad Whose Name I Don’t Know is struggling being away from his son. Fair.

Second group date! Tayshia and Kaitlyn, dressed in denim on denim plus fringe and cowboy boots, wake the guys up from their nearly-naked sleep with some loud cowbells and yelling and screaming and such, and make them go outside in whatever they are wearing. Turns out, a lot of these guys sleep in their underwear, and none of them sleep in socks. Let’s not forget that it’s March in New Mexico, which I know can be pretty cold, especially in the mountains.

Fortunately, production has laid out clothes for them to wear in “Katie’s Big Buckle Brawl.” Guitar-heavy “rock” music starts and this whole thing feels way more Texas than New Mexico, to be honest.

Kaitlyn, Tayshia, and Katie use binoculars to watch (or, “watch”) the guys approach. After a moment, we hear Kaitlyn say “and, now we’re creepy,” which, lol.

Mud wrestling is the order of the day. Some guys are more athletic than the others. Some bearded guy who either runs the place or is an actor brought in just for this yells at the guys that “this isn’t your senior prom.” Heh.

The last two to fight are Aaron and Cody, who had a still-unexplained fight the first night. Tonight, we get an explanation! Aaron and Cody knew each other before this, and Aaron never liked Cody and he isn’t afraid to show it. They are wrestling for real, and it’s pretty tense, although when Aaron is declared the winner of that match I realize I know very little about the rules of wrestling.

Aaron is declared the winner because of producer manipulation Tayshia says he fought with the most “heart” for Katie. Okay, sure.

At the commercial break we see a promo asking people to apply or nominate someone for the next season of The Bachelor, and seriously, who is this new voice we are hearing?

Aaron’s “reward” is to stay in his muddy clothes and drink champagne with Katie, who gets straight to the point and basically asks Aaron to explain what’s going on between him and Cody. Aaron says he has seen some “social media” posts from Cody that he says rub him the wrong way, and that he just doesn’t like the way Cody “handles” certain situations.

I’m not great at reading between the lines here, so I’m really not sure to make of this. What I do know is that Cody interviewing that he feels “confident” about how the night is going to go is a lovely bit of foreshadowing. Katie takes Cody aside right away, and asks Cody if he knows what Aaron meant when he called Cody “malicious” and “unkind.” Aaron accused Cody of being there for fame.

Cody swears that he has no idea what Aaron is talking about, but Katie seems skeptical, and doesn’t understand why Aaron would just completely make something up about Cody.

Katie interviews that Cody didn’t seem sincere in his response, and kicks him to the curb before the date is even over. Good! Trust your instinct, Katie! They’re called red flags for a reason! After Cody leaves, Katie tells the rest of the guys that she sent him home because she’s taking this seriously, and apologizes to them but says she’s going to take a minute for herself.

Excuse me, but isn’t this the stuff that the host is supposed to do? In addition to being Bachelor Nation’s first-ever sex-positive, bodily-function-positive, anti-bullying Bachelorette, we are now going to also make her do the emotional labor of doing what a host should be doing? Not cool, Bachelor/ette producers. Not cool at all.

Clouds float by an ominous moon as Katie floats through this ominous date, and the date continues. The guys wait for Katie to return. Andrew S., who I think is the guy who faked the British accent the first night, completely ignores Katie’s completely unequivocal statement that she was taking a moment for herself, and leaves the group to go find Katie. He approaches her with an unasked-for hug and tells her he wanted to be the first to comfort her, or something – whatever it is, he’s not listening to her.

When they talk, he of course makes it about himself, and how he grew up, and he tries to relate to Katie on the level of growing up poor, but he’s talking about hand-me-downs because he was the youngest child in the family while Katie is talking about praying no one would see her when she shopped for clothes at the thrift store and how her dad would make a fake fireplace at Christmas with construction paper, and I just think this guy is full of shit. He then tells Katie that her dad would be proud of her, as though he knows literally anything about her dad. Please. It was hard to tell if Katie was falling for this or not, but I think she does, because they kiss.

We then get a montage of Katie politely listening as other guys talk to her about how great she is and/or how hard their lives have been. One guy named Hunter gives her a handwritten note on what looks like the back of a paper bag, and Katie thanks him in the way a mother thanks her second-grade age child for a handmade gift, which is the appropriate response.

Andrew S. gets the Group Date rose. Boo.

Rose Ceremony? We know there’s going to be drama because Katie is wearing the same thing we have seen in the commercials where she tells the guys that if they’re not there for her, they can just fuck off. (Okay maybe not in those exact words.)

The guys file in to meet their fate, which tonight is Katie looking chic as hell with her sleek hair and 1980s-but-cool emerald green one-armed dress with a great slit and gorgeous draping. She talks to single dad Michael first and the way he moves his head reminds me of a cartoon character. He asks if he can kiss her, which I guess is nice, but she definitely has more sparks with other people.

Like Thomas! She tells him that she could imagine a life outside the show with him. Aw.

Meanwhile, Karl is definitely trying to stir shit up and speculate on which other guys may not be there “for the right reasons,” and Katie interviews that she can’t imagine anything going wrong with the night. These things are related, because the next conversation has is with Karl himself, who decides to fuck with Katie and makes vague suggestions that there are some people who “don’t have the right intentions.”

Katie presses for specifics and Karl passive-aggressively says he doesn’t want to worry her pretty little head any more tonight, she’s had such a long night already, and just to trust that he has her best interests in mind. He then orders Katie to give him a hug, and in a voiceover Katie says she doesn’t know if she trusts Karl. Listen to that, Katie! Your instincts have never steered you wrong!

Interstitial: a single airplane flies across the huge New Mexico moon, much in the same way Katie is charting her own course through not only this unprecedented, host-free season of The Bachelorette, but also Karl’s attempted fuckery.

Katie, emotional, tells the guys that a “bomb was dropped” on her tonight that multiple people might be there for the wrong reasons, and if they are, they should “get the fuck out.” She pulls Aaron aside while the rest of the guys try to puzzle out what happened. Karl absolutely looks the proverbial cat that ate the canary, but is able to swallow in time to tell the guys that Katie asked him who wasn’t there for the right reasons, which isn’t an entirely accurate representation of their conversation. He still won’t name names and the rest of the guys are mildly freaking out.

Aaron returns, and when he finds out that Karl is the one behind it, he is pissed. Aaron rightly says that you can’t just throw something like that out there and mess with Katie, and the other guys seem to agree.

And instead of a Rose Ceremony, we get yet another voiceover from a mystery man (seriously, after some 20-odd years of hearing someone else’s voice during all these promos, whose voice are we hearing now?).

Also, it looks like Karl is definitely the villain of the season, and maybe Thomas. Or maybe Aaron? Honestly I’m just glad I’m starting to learn these guys’ names.

Tag scene: Connor B. and Katie are doing “self portraits” and I think there’s a story about how Katie’s afraid of needles and physically hurt a nurse who was giving her a Covid test, but the big takeaway for me is that Connor B. has a roommate. How do we feel about a 29-year-old living in Nashville having a roommate? I don’t think I love it.