TeeVee: The Bachelor Brad, Episode 6
The Bachelor - Brad Womack (Mondays at 8PM on ABC)
We catch up with Brad and his 8 ladies as they head down to Costa Rica. It happens to be on my short list of places to go. Because it's tropical, rainforst-y, has a volcano AND it's pretty cheap (relatively speaking) to get there/stay there. Ah. But for now, I have to live through my television screen and just count the days down before my trip to the bahamas (2 more days!)...
The ladies meet Brad at the resort, and he gives them the first date card. It's for Chantal, and the ladies are jealous. Everyone just assumed the solo dates would go to Alli & Britt since they're the only two that haven't gotten one yet. Chantal on the other hand is all about being the first girl to get 2 solo dates with Brad.
Brad's still a little worried about Chantal's dramatic episode back in Las Vegas but is willing to see if the date changes things. He picks her up, and sweeps her away into a helicopter around the local, active volcano...
After that, the two zipline down the "longest zipline in the world" and a bunch of other ones with their legs wrapped around each other.
It seems like these two are past the Las Vegas drama and are going full steam ahead, even if it rains on them.
After the ziplines, the two sit down for a picnic dinner... But the rain pours down and the two scamper off to Brad's suite soaking wet. Brad offers up Chantal a white button down shirt, which she changes into for him. He LURVES it and the two spend the rest of the time making out on the couch before he gives her the date rose. These two have serious physical chemistry.
Meanwhile, the rest of the girls get the next date card. It's the group date - Emily, Shawntel, Jackie, Ashley, Michelle, and Britt - which means Alli finally gets to solo date she's been wishing for.
Michelle clues us in that she hates group dates. DUH. And she's the only one that doesn't think Chantal will be coming back to the Bachelorette dorm. She'd be wrong.
The group date starts, and Brad informs them they'll be rappeling down a series of waterfalls. This makes some girls scared: cue fear of heights in with both Shawntel & Jackie. (Kudos to Shawntel that bucks up and goes first... Jeers to Jackie who plays it dramatically, yet not as dramatically as Michelle did in her first rappel a couple episodes back.)
BUT it also makes 1 girl angry: Michelle.
He "promised" her during their solo date that they'd never rappel with anyone but each other. Though he gets the brunt of her wrath with this face...
AND a few punches from her before he tells her that they'll be rappelling together, which makes her happy... and the other girls jealous. Seriously, Brad CANNOT win.
Brad and his ladies make it to the "natural hot springs" for the second part of their date and gets some time with a handful of ladies.
1. Jackie uses her alone time to tell him she was jealous he rappelled with Michelle and not her.
2. Michelle uses her alone time to tell him he doesn't see him with any of the other girls and that she didn't think Chantal would come home the other night (I have to admit that I loved that their make-out session was interrupted by Alli throwing a glass of coke at Chantal for bringing a huge beetle too close to her)
3. Emily uses her alone time to tell him she tends to sabotage any good relationship she starts to form...
And then the girls wonder why Brad doesn't want to hand out a rose!
Alright, so Alli finally gets her Solo Date with Brad and she's hoping to return with the same glow as all the other girls... yet, that's not what happened. Brad picked her up and the two went horseback riding (was it me or were those like dwarf horses?!) to a remote cave...
They went spelunking, which wasn't ideal for poor Alli who's deathly afraid of bugs and bats flying at her head. The two finally make it to "the alter" where they share a toast before heading off for dinner on a platform in the middle of a pool. The two have an awkward conversation, but Alli doesn't seem to notice. As she tells him she thinks this is going really well, Brad steps back and throws the hammer. Alli, he's just not that into you. But he hopes that you'll still be friends. He sends her off without a rose and into the rejecto-limo.
The other girls had a feeling she wouldn't be coming back, and weren't as shocked to see her luggage whisked away.
So as we watch Brad beat himself up about letting such a great gal go... there's a knock on the door. It's MICHELLE.
She comes in to say she misses him, and that she thinks he made the right decision in letting Alli go home. She brings back up the fact that she doesn't understand why Chantal is still there, and gives him a pecking order of how the rest of the girls should go home (Britt, Jackie, Shawntel, Chantal, Emily, and Ashley leaving him with her.) He's not impressed with this conversation, but Michelle doesn't really seem to notice, thinking a few kisses will make him think differently.
Now there's been a lot of speculation as to why Brad has kept Michelle thus far. Some are saying the Bachelor Producers have been keeping her around for her interview clips and crazy antics. But I want to suggest that the "Hot-Crazy Scale" is in effect here.
Don't know what the "Hot-Crazy Scale" is? Well it's a How I Met Your Mother reference (which by the way was pretty good last night... Katy Perry guest starred)
It's a chart where we can see just how out of balance the ratio between a woman's hotness and craziness has become - knowledge that can prove to be invaluable over the course of a male's daily life.
The scale is a scale is with the vertical axis labeled "HOT" and the horizontal axis labeled "CRAZY."
A girl is allowed to be crazy, as long as she is equally hot.
If shes crazy she has to be hot, if shes really crazy she has to be really hot.
As long as a girl is above the “Vickie Mendoza Diagonal” she is approved for dating. Vickie Mendoza, a girl Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother dated, she played jump rope with that line.
If a female becomes too crazy without becoming hotter, she may drift extremely close to the "Shelly Galezby Zone".
Here's how I think Michelle has done on the "Hot-Crazy Scale" thus far:
I think, Brad would think she's a solid 9 in terms of hot-ness. I think he's physically attracted to her, and she only really took a dip in that department 4th episode when she had a mysterious black eye. But, her craziness has obviously increased. Sure, we might have been giving her higher craziness points, but Brad's only been seeing her crazy on an gradually increasing scale. Notice how close she's getting to the Vickie Medoza Line. She just one skip or jump over to the "too crazy" to date side and I'm hoping that comes soon.
COCKTAIL PARTY
Brad clues the girls in that he's been having problems since he's been getting grief over not giving out the group date rose. The girls narrow it down rather quickly to Michelle but don't want to straight accuse her of it. Let's get to the alone time...
Brad confronts Michelle and tells her that she's scaring him because she keeps rehashing things and it's starting to tick him off. She apologizes, citing maybe she doesn't know him as well as she'd like to and is able to muster up some tears. Brad seems to accept it.
Brad and Emily hang out on the hammock and she tells him she's sorry she pushed him away with the whole sabotaging conversation. She vows she doesn't want to do that with him.
Shawntel tries to get more information about the girl that gave him grief, but quickly rebounds with "the silent game" which is a staring contest coupled with a make-out session. I think these two are cute together, but for me it always seems like Shawntel is the one going in for the kisses, and Brad just takes them (he never seems to initiate... which could be bad for her later).
And than we have Chantal, who takes her alone time to tell him that she's falling in love with him. She feels like it's the right time, because she's the only one with a rose, and has nothing to gain from it (compared to if she told him next week, when she didn't have a rose in her hand before the rose ceremony). Brad eats it up. I think it's a little early to be spewing out "I love yous" but who am I to say?!
The girls narrow it down to Michelle and confront her about how she talked to Brad about the group date. She confesses she went to his room after Alli was sent home and talked to him for about 30 minutes. The girls weren't happy she got extra time with him.
ROSE CEREMONY
Chantal was the only one with a rose and since Alli was sent home during her solo date, only one more girl was going to be sent home. Ashley, Emily, Britt, Shawntel all get roses. So it's down to Jackie vs. Michelle and Michelle gets the rose. Jackie gets walked out by Brad who tells her she has all the qualities any guy would want in a girlfriend or a wife and then ships her off in the rejecto-limo.
Jackie kept it rather composed, though still let some tears fly as she tells us she thinks "she just didn't measure up". Poor thing. I really think that Brad crossed her off the list after their Solo date back in episode 2, but whatevs. I was 2 for 2 in eliminations, check out the ranking of the rest of the girls here.
Next week, Brad and the ladies are travelling to the carribbean island of Anguilla. And it seems like a drama-filled episode when crazy Michelle battles her enemy Chantal during a sexy bikini-filled photo shoot with Brad. Oh, and emotional Ashley will be there too. FUN. Here's a preview of what makes Chantal cry...
