The next season of The Bachelor Canada doesn’t come until next year, but the U.S. version of The Bachelor spent the second night of its vaunted Two Night Event by spending time in Banff on Lake Louise.
Canada got a favorable impression from not only bachelor Sean Lowe, but the six women he ended up with at the end. (The three others who went home? Not so much).
The obviously gerrymandered “event” (a last minute idea judging how they kept referring to Monday’s events as “last week”) made the most of the Alberta landscape, even if it also endangered lives.
The first of the two one-on-one dates went to Catherine, as Sean drove up in a giant snow bus at Jasper National Park taking them to their glacial destination. The weather wasn’t so hot there, with high winds and ice whipping them as they pretended to frolic on the glacier. Things improved when they moved to an ice castle “built for us” and got some time for one of those discussions they describe as “opening up.” Usually that means unveiling their deep down tragedy, and in Catherine’s case it was seeing a girl at camp being struck and killed by a falling tree. She was inspired in that moment, she said, not to become an arborist, but to have a husband and be happy. Sean seemed to understand the connection and gave her the date’s rose.
The group date involved some more frigid doings – a canoe ride across Lake Louise, where they’d take a polar bear jump right into it. Centuries back, men used to dunk women in frigid lakes to see if they were witches. Things may not have improved all that much, as bachelors now dunk women in bikinis to see if they enjoy life.
Turns out some enjoy life so much they decided not to risk theirs in the silly dip. Selma declined to participate and Sean said he wouldn’t hold it against her, but look who was one of the roseless when the night ended.
The others took the plunge, but Tierra knew how to work it to her advantage, feigning hypothermia and causing a lot of attention (especially among those who make The Bachelor promos and the “coming up next” packages; Tierra’s health scare didn’t take as much time in real life as it did in the combined promos).
Sean felt plumb awful about it, as he didn’t want to be the first Bachelor to lose a candidate. And while Tierra got special attention from Sean in her recovery, the other girls were positive she was faking. Advised to take the night off to rest, she got dolled up anyway and made a surprise appearance at the evening part of the group date, to the consternation of the others. When she didn’t get the date’s one rose as consolation, it may have seemed as if her plot was no longer working on Sean.
Instead, he gave the rose to Lesley, who had connived herself as sole girl in a canoe with Sean and couldn’t stop talking about how great the dip was. Given a different editor, she might have appeared to be the villain. Instead, she coins the priceless term for the one who is: Tierra-ist.
Desiree got the other one-on-one date, which infuriated Daniela and Tierra; neither had a one-on-one yet, and this was the second for Desiree. But she had complained last week, er, Monday that she had doubts whether she should be around at all. This was Sean’s bid at convincing her to stay. But nothing’s easy on a date; they had to rappel down the face of Tunnel Mountain before they got to their picnic. When they had their romantic tipi experience that followed, though, Desiree had a story that would impress Sean and the audience: She grew up so poor she had to live in a tent for months at a time. So in other words, the tipi was nice.
Tuesday was the end of the line for the one-armed-girl Sarah, who had to suffer another indignity Tuesday when she was asked to row a canoe — they weren’t thinking of her when they devised that challenge. But it was because she pulled out pictures of her family and said she couldn’t wait for Sean to meet them that caused him to do the unusual move of sending her home before the rose ceremony. Is there an unwritten two-day penalty for bringing up parents prematurely? She had such a heartfelt cry at the rejection it made you wonder if she won’t be the next Bachelorette as a result.
The fact is, bachelors pretty much know who they like and don’t like by this point, and it doesn’t thin out in the succession set out by producers. He asked Desiree for a second one-on-one date because he likes her. He didn’t ask Daniela because he didn’t. Or maybe he overheard her say at the polar bear dip: “Sean is hot, I’m hot, let’s jump in.” She was a little flaky in Montana, crying about things. She may have been a little high maintenance. At any rate, she was the third one not to get a rose, and she was shocked. Both Selma, who broke Iranian law by kissing Sean on TV earlier in the episode, and Daniela were shocked, but more so that he kept around that darn Tierra-ist in their stead.
Tierra’s rose was likely given on the advice of producers, who know a good villain when they see (or create) one. Or maybe Sean really likes her. Or they didn’t want her to press charges about the hypothermia thing.
One big lesson in the Two Day Bachelor Event is that four hours is way too long for anything this dumb. Also, it seems to me, after seeing him do the lip lock on every one of his remaining contestants, that Sean looks like he’s a really terrible kisser. I’m not sure i can even tell such things any more. But for all of his stuff about living life to the fullest, he looks a little lifeless.
But girls like his body, and he’ll get to show it off more next week when they travel to St. Croix.