In many ways, the hometown visits make for each season’s most boring episode of “The Bachelor.”
The surviving women all pretty much say the same thing: “I’m so happy to have him here in my own town, to have him on my own turf. I’m so excited for him to meet my family! I know they’ll get along well!” Increasingly, they are also saying, “I am in love with this guy, when should I tell him?” (The answer is maybe never, since he is legally prevented from saying anything back, lest he ruin the weekly elimination.)
Juan Pablo, for his part, always says the same thing too, either because he’s so inarticulate or is still learning English, saying each girl in turn is “great, just great, she makes me smile, we get along so well. She is so very special.”
He is about as natural talking to women as he is to the Yellow M&M in a commercial, and both are about as real to him.
So let us get to know the hometowns of these women!
First off is Nikki. She lives in Kansas City, so naturally there are a lot of shots of cows mooing, even though you would never see cows if you visit Kansas City, nor do her parents look like they live in anything but a very nice urban or suburban home.
Nikki (or the producers) are bent on a cowboy theme here, though, so they take him straight to Oklahoma Joe’s Bar-B-Que in Kansas City, Kan. (Sorry, no Arthur Bryant’s for them). He likes the food.
Then she takes him to an empty bistro where there is a mechanical bull. She is impressed he stays on it so long, but two things here: the length of the ride is always determined by the maliciousness of the operator and two, Juan Pablo has been riding the bull pretty much the entire season.
(Thank you and good night!)
Undoubtedly the producers talked them to both riding the bull together, because who has ever seen two people ride a bull at the same time? They don’t last long.
At her parents house, her father asks the kind of thoughtful, measured questions that Chris Harrison has never asked and in the end say they’ll welcome Juan Pablo if indeed he is Nikki’s choice (and she, obviously, would have to be his).
Nikki keeps yapping to the cameraman about how she should tell Juan Pablo she loves him. She has been methodical about this so far, first saying she thought she was falling for him and then saying she was really falling for him and now, prepared to actually usel the L word. But no moment seems right for it, she declines to tell him and regrets it as he goes off to meet the parents of three other women he will also be kissing.
Andi’s home in Atlanta is next and the first thing you notice is that Atlanta looks pretty much exactly like Kansas City. Perhaps both places are on a backlot somewhere in Burbank. But anyway, Andi is happy to see him and tries in her own way to test his manhood. Not with bulls, but with firearms. They go to a shooting range where she shows off her prowess with a couple of guns that pretty much should be illegal, telling Juan Pablo he won’t be meeting her parents until he hits a bullseye. He shoots so many rounds he hits one by accident.
Then they’re off to her house where her dad immediately is wary of the situation. I like this guy very much because he sees what a terrible process the whole thing has been. As they recount each stop they made on their world tour, he keeps asking, “How many other women were there then?”
When they are alone he levels with him: Juan Pablo is basically a guy saying he was interested in his daughter but also in three other women. He tells him to think of how he’d feel if his own daughter brought home such a player.
Juan Pablo says he’s glad he’s being honest, but honestly it doesn’t seem to be sinking in.
Andi wants to tell him she loves him, too, but the main problem is that she doesn’t.
She’s still waiting to fall in love with him. Seems a little late when Juan Pablo is sort of asking for her hand in marriage from her family. It definitely shows a crack in their pairing. She does say, “I am very close to being in love with him.” Good for you. Rings come out in two weeks, girly. You’d better be sure.
Next stop is Sarasota, Fla., where Renee is waiting for him. She’s very happy to see him and very natural around him. She’s even more happy to see her son for the first time in two months, and he’s all grown up and playing just about every position on his little league team, which she is seeing play for the very first time. Juan Pablo is excited about the prospects of being around a boy, mostly so he can play all the time. But he and the lad get along.
The home visit is the smoothest of the four; her mother gives her blessing when she sees how happy she is. So naturally, Renee is the one who goes home this week.
It’s really brutal, since Renee is obviously the best choice for a mature single father. She regrets not telling him she loved him, so she does after she’s ousted. Her reasonableness even after being eliminated makes her a prime candidate for the next Bachelorette, but producers probably don’t see her as glamorous enough for the part — also she’s just too practical and logical a choice. Why would she ever subject herself — or her boy — to another ordeal?
Juan Pablo obviously doesn’t know what the heck he wants. When he picks Nikki first at the rose ceremony and Clare second the choices are so divergent it’s clear he doesn’t know which direction to go.
Clare’s home visit in Sacramento is the the most problematic of the four, but mostly because Clare over-reacts to everything. She’s got that touch of crazy that makes her a loose cannon and she gets all bent out of shape when a sister keeps interrupting her talk with her mother. It is funny that the mother doesn’t say anything. And for all the talk of a late father who was some kind of saint, we don’t get to see the video of his advice to Clare on the eve of her engagement. Darn, this is why I thought they were keeping Clare around this long.
It seems like the visit is a big mess until Juan Pablo agrees to talk to the sister and finally, the mother. Turns out she speaks Spanish, so the two get along famously.
Clare doesn’t fret about having declared her love or not. She has at least talked him into middle of the night swims in the ocean, which must account for something. She’s still bragging about that at the dining table.
Since just about nothing happened on the hometown visits (except Juan Pablo kicking the wrong woman out), the main action of this week’s “Two Night Bachelor Event!” is left to Tuesday night’s two hours, when he takes the remaining three to St. Lucia and makes his invitations to the Fantasy Suite.
Fantasy Suite night is always potentially the season’s sleaziest episode: Three sleepovers with three different women! And apparently things go wrong with this one, the promos have us believe, with all three women in tears and saying things like “the whole night was a disaster!”
“What happens in the Fantasy Suite doesn’t stay in the Fantasy Suite!” Chris Harrison intones. “It’s ‘The Bachelor’ like you’ve never seen before.”
I can’t quite figure it out, though. Andi says she couldn’t wait to get out of the suite in the morning (was she locked in?) and later says to Juan Pablo, “there’s a difference between being honest and being an a-hole.”
I’m thinking maybe Clare does another one of her middle of the night wakeup calls and the other women rebel. A press release promises “a shocking moment that never happened before in the history of the show!”
We’ve heard their exaggerations before, though.