Hoodrats and Handbags: West Virginia Goes To London

Today my 5 year old niece was telling me that ‘two wrongs don’t make a right.’ Smart f#%king kid, right? When I was five I was asking strangers at the grocery store if they had kids, and if so would they take me home so I could play with them. How I didn’t ever end up on a milk carton is beyond me.

The only problem is my niece can’t pronounce Rs very well yet. As a result her attempt at sage advice sounded more like ‘two Wongs don’t make a white.’ Which, to her credit, is still true. Racist, but true.

That doesn’t really have anything to do with my Bachelorette recap, but hey…the more you know.

London!

You think the Brits are sick of us yet? One morning way back in 1773, we put on some Indian costumes and dumped a bunch of their tea in the Boston Harbor…and we haven’t stopped f#$king with them since.

A few years later we stole a whole country from them. Granted, they stole it first, but hey…two Wongs. After that we let Germany bomb the hell out of them for two years before we decided to get off our asses and save the world. Today we steal their best actors, their best music…hell, we even take the crappy stuff only tone-deaf teenage girls listen to. At this point all England has left is soccer and beer, and I can live without soccer….

And if that wasn’t enough? If somehow we hadn’t destroyed all remaining goodwill with our cousins from across the pond? Well, no worries, because this week we sent them the Bachelorette.

As always, ABC opens things up by reminding us that Emily is a mom. I find it ironic that ABC, and even Emily herself, continue to remind us that Emily is a package deal, but when Kalon points it out he’s a bastard. I mean, sure, he IS a bastard…but does that make him wrong?

Anyway, Ricki thinks dragons live in Buckingham palace. The queen lives there, so I guess she’s not too far off.  

I bet Chris Harrison gets so tired of giving the same damn speech week in and week out. This week there will be three dates…blah blah blah…I hope to see each of you at the next rose ceremony. It’s like 1) if any of these guys don’t know the rules by now they’re obviously braindead and should be sent packing, and 2) if any of us don’t know the rules by now, well…maybe there’s still hope.

What’s even worse is this episode was probably filmed after shit hit the fan in Harrison’s own relationship. So the prospect of talking about Emily’s ‘journey to find love’ probably had him sitting off camera with a revolver in hand screaming: “I’ll do THREE BULLETS. THREE BULLETS!!” (Props if you get that reference).

Sean gets the first one on one, and dude is cheesing up a storm. I like him. The date card reads “love takes no prisoners,” or “come be my prisoner of love,” or something like that, and I find myself wondering if Emily’s been reading 50 Shades of Grey.

Quick aside: The success of that book is maybe the best thing to ever happen to men. It’s the book equivalent of porn: awful plot, terrible dialogue, hot sex. The story literally wouldn’t have been any different if Christian Grey showed up with a sausage pizza and a roll of duct tape, but the benefits are undeniable: 1) Women can never bitch at men for watching porn again, and 2) Now we get to do stuff that would have cost us a pair of Louboutins and remote privileges for a month just because. Just because!! How a woman who probably hasn’t had sex since the Clinton administration (seriously, google her picture…not cute) did all that is beyond me, but I am in her debt.

Most of Sean’s date is boring. Pictures in front a guard, pictures in front of a telephone booth, an awkward kiss with a bunch of random Brits secretly hoping they chip a tooth. At one point Sean gets on something called the speaker’s corner and gives a speech on love. I can’t remember exactly what he said but I think it went something like this:

“Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a f#%king big television, choose washing machines, cars, ipods and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage payments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suit on higher purchase in a range of f#%king fabrics. Choose do it yourself and wondering who the f#%k you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing f#%king junk food in your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last years away in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, f#%ked up brats you spawned to replace yourself.

Choose your future.

Choose life.”

No, no wait…that’s Trainspotting, isn’t it? Oh well, it’s probably better than whatever ‘I don’t love her yet but I could totally see maybe potentially possibly loving her somewhere down the road’ nonsense Sean came up with.

Back at the hotel, the group date card arrives and Kalon’s name is on it. He says something to the effect of he should probably get used to it, because if he wins every day will be a group date since Emily has a child.

Now, is that an asshole thing to say? Yes. Is the point he was trying to make still absolutely true? Also yes. As I said before Emily is a package deal and Ricki will always have to be considered before she makes plans. That’s not a bad thing, but whoever chooses to spend his life with her will have to consider that and be ok with it. I don’t think it’s the point that Kalon was trying to make that was so dickish, but rather how he said it.

That night, Sean and Emily had dinner at the London tower, which I’m pretty sure was famous back in the day for holding prisoners against the crown. Finally, the good part. As the two sit down to dinner, all I can think is if I was Sean I’d be like ‘the hell with dinner, where’s this red room I keep hearing about??’ Alas, there is no red room. Just more tiresome conversation about who’s more perfect.

Emily: Do you want to have babies?

Sean: Ten. Eleven. Fifteen. I don’t care. Just take off your pants and let’s see what happens.

In the end he gets the rose, and Ken and Barbie head happily back to their Malibu Dreamhouse.

The next day it’s group date time. And since we’re in England this of course means butchering Shakespeare’s most famous work, Romeo and Juliet. A lot of people claim Shakespeare didn’t actually write his own stuff, making him the Carlos Mencia of playwrights. By that logic, it should be ok for the Bachelorette to make a mockery of it, right? Two Wongs.

Arie, who can drive over 100 miles per hour without breaking a sweat, is freaking out. Doug, who gets bent out of shape over the least little thing, is loving it. Travis turns Mercutio into Gomer Pyle, and Ryan mouth rapes a supposedly dead Juliet. All in all, I guess you could say it was a weird date.

The best part of the day was Kalon, who’s inner thesbian is out in full force, telling Emily to ‘run along’ while he rehearses.  I’m sorry…what? I swear, the only way this guy could be more of a tool is if he had a hammer strapped to his forehead.

That night at the after party, Emily tells Ryan he’s trouble. Ryan correctly states that when a girl tells you she thinks you’re trouble with a smile on her face, she wants to get into trouble. Say what you want about the guy, but he’s not stupid.  He gives her a necklace, and she gives him….a hug. Wah wahhhhhh.

Elsewhere, the guys…well, mainly Doug…take umbrage with something else Kalon said earlier in the day. Apparently he had described Ricki as ‘baggage’ and Doug, being the proud papa Hulk he is, decides it’s time to tell Emily what kind of a person Kalon really is. I’m not really sure how I feel about this. Sure, you could definitely view what Kalon said as wrong, but does telling on him make you any better? Two Won….nevermind, you get the point.

Upon hearing the news, Emily says she’s going to get ‘all West Virginia hood rat backwoods on Kalon’s ass.’ I’m not fluent in nonsensical terms so I have no idea what any of this means, but it sounds like she’s going to bend him over and tell him to squeal like a pig. So you can imagine my disappointment when she calmly asks for his side of the story and then, using only one f#%k, asks him to leave the pub.

Emily is so broken up over no one sticking up for her that she ends the party and doesn’t hand out the rose. I guess she doesn’t remember that the only reason she even knew about it was because Doug DID stand up for her. Poor Doug. Hulk saaaaaad.

Finally it’s time for Emily’s one on one with Jef. He has sort of reminded me of JP for a couple of weeks now with his quiet coolness, so it’s only fitting that he gets the date after sh!t hits fan much like JP did on Ashley’s season.

To be honest, the date’s pretty effing boring. They do some etiquette class that neither seem to enjoy, and then they go to a pub where Jef orders fish and chips, and a couple of pints. I think Jef has this thing where he orders at least one thing a day with an F in it, just for a sense of completion.

Jef goes on to tell Emily that if Ricki is baggage she’s a Chloe handbag he just wants to cherish forever. Wait, so it’s cool to call Ricki baggage as long as she's expensive? Or is it a size issue? Is it okay as long as she fits in overhead storage? Is checking her the limit? I’m confused.

Later the two go on some giant ferris wheel looking thing where Jef tells Emily how excited he’d be to have Ricki in his life. Every day when she got home she’d find Jef and Ricki having dance parties singing into combs….

…waiiiiiit a second. You know who has dance parties and sings into combs? Teenage girls. Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30. That’s who. So let me get this straight….Jef wears skinny jeans, is extremely fashionable, knows about designer handbags AND wants to have dance parties while singing into combs? He better kiss Emily soon or I might start to think he’s…

…oh, thank God. He kissed her. Crisis averted.

Quick aside: Just jokes, people…I don’t really think he’s gay. Not that there is anything wrong with that, if he was. In my eyes, everyone has the same right to be as happy or as miserable as anyone else.

Jef gets the rose. If you ever had any doubt, slap yourself. Seriously, do it. I’ll wait.

At the cocktail party Ryan busts out the Shakespeare again, and Emily digs it. When he’s not being a cocky ass, Ryan can actually be pretty charming. He also seems like he’d be a fun guy to get a beer with.

Alejandro is the only guy sent home and I feel bad for him, mostly because he’s the only guy who knew where ‘a rose by any other name’ came from.  But he’ll be fine. He came across as a nice guy, so I’m sure he’ll find a nice Vegan girl to help him eat his magic mushrooms in no time.

Next week…I don’t know! I wasn’t paying attention at the end. Was it Prague? Oh well, I’ll be back…and that’s all that matters.