Wherein the existence of racism is acknowledged

Rachel wears a sparkly golden dress with a matching jacket over it. She glitters. She glows. 

This guy with the hair is a total dick. Lee, the guy with the big hair, the stand up in the air, gelled wall of hair. Lee says, "My grandfather…" I wait for him to say “owned slaves” because he strikes me as a typical privileged white guy and he may have a Southern accent and also because he told the black guy not to get mad, dude. 

The model cute white guy  in the Hawaiian shirt (Dean) says, "These guys aren’t the people who Lee’s used to hanging around with on a regular basis on a cultural level." 

Invisible producer goes, "What do you mean by that?" 

The guy goes, "You know what I mean. I am talking about intolerance." Holy shit, this show is actually (sort of) addressing racism. 

Rachel says to Bryan, "You're so charming, it scares me." 

The guy says, "It's a fairy tale. It's 1,000% real." Which of course makes me think it's 5,000% bullshit. 

Kenny does not subvert stereotypes by yelling at Lee. Lee smiles and rattles the ice cubes in his drink rum and Coke. 

A very hot, unshaven guy tells Rachel not to worry about what's going on, because it has nothing to do with
her. Rachel says that she was very disappointed in the guys tonight for misbehaving. She talks about how she gets pressured in so many ways by being in this position (the first black Bachelorette) and she says she has to be the one to deal with it, and she will just deal with it. The producer (presumably a white woman) says, "I don't have any idea what this is like." And Rachel says, "I'm not talking to you anymore." Reminds me of a black student at Rider in a discussion group who said, "I'm tired of explaining to white people why it's not okay to use the N word. I'm tired of them looking at me like it's my job to educate them. Look it up yourself."

I missed all of the rose ceremony except for this final rose. They will make her keep Lee because of the drama. Final rose, "Lee." That's how you know this show is not 1,000% real. Going home:Bryce, another white guy, Diggy, who I liked with the glasses and the bow tie. I do not like how he refers to himself in the third person though.

One-on-one with Dean in South Carolina. They drive a Jeep. She wears a gray tank top and black jeans. He wears a black T-shirt and shorts. Nothing of note. She's looking to take her relationship with Dean to new heights which means there will be a plane or a helicopter or a...Blimp! on the date. Dean may throw up. He's not into the Blimp, sponsored by Good Year, the noted tire maker. 



Dean says he's freaking out on a level 10. He's turning red and sweating. He says, "Okay, this is happening..." She holds his hand. Do the producers exploit people's fears such as Dean being afraid of heights because his Labradoodle was killed in a blimp accident? She's making him more upset by pretending to fly it. He's darling, even though he just lost 10 pounds from sweating and possibly soiling his shorts. I might break up with her if I were him. They kiss and he does not throw up in her mouth. He has the face-touch kiss down cold. Dan keeps making inappropriate comments about grabbing joysticks that don't bear repeating. They fly by the house and one of the guys goes, "I'm getting my dart gun." (That's a Dan joke). Aside, why are they reviving The Gong Show, one of the worst game shows in the history of television and also, why is one of the hosts dressed as Robin Williams, the comedian who tragically hung himself? Bad taste times 5000%.

Group dates and Jack realizes he gets the one-on-one. Lee says that he wants to win, even if he's hurting people's feelings. 

Meanwhile, Rachel and Dean have escaped the blimp and Dean has changed into white denim jeans. Rachel is cautious because he's the youngest person in the house at age sixteen. He literally never thought in a million years that he would be going on a blimp today.  I guess I was wrong about his age, since he's literally over a million years old. Dean talks about riding dirt bikes as part of a very religious family. He mentions that his mother died of breast cancer and he learned about this in fifth grade. She lived for a few more years and then died. He keeps referring to her in the present tense and smiling the whole time, because that's what people do when they relate tragedy like how I switch into second tense when talking about your childhood (see what I mean?). I don't mean to be a cynic, but you then must give a rose to the person who told you the story of his mother's death.  


What unknown musician is this that they are forced to dance to in front of hundreds of people? Is that...No clue. Maroon 5? The Little Dickersons? The Chicken Littles? The Sons of the Oakridge Boys? But here's something that doesn't happen honestly all that often on TV still--you don't see interracial kissing except for maybe on Scandal. It's still not a given thing.  I just looked it up and the first interracial kiss was on Star Trek, between Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura in 1968. Wait, no, CNN says it was a movie called You in Your Small Corner, a teleplay from 1962. But a NYT article has one even earlier, so it's hard to say, espeically if you're only doing 30 seconds of research during commercial breaks. 

Nasty group date where they have to rap and do push ups and one white guy does a song that includes the words "fart" and the phrase "girl from the hood." Next, they have to do a spelling test to see who is the smartest. The first word is "squirt." I thought it was "skort." Second word is "passion." Jonathan gets "caress." Someone else gets "schmuck." Eric correctly spells "euphoric." Kenny misspells "champagne" and then drops the f-bomb in front of a few fourth graders. Boudoir is spelled wrong. Eric spells "facade" with a "ph." Peter gets the "coitus." He spells it with a "q." Josiah gets "stunning" and he uses it in a sentence. Anthony gets "boutonniere," which I don't even know how to spell (it auto-corrected). "Physiological" is spelled wrong. Josiah is the last one. He's a lawyer. His word is "polyamorous," which my spell check doesn't even recognize, but he gets it 1,000% right.  


Is Rachel a lawyer or a doctor? She says she's licensed to practice in New York. The guys are getting drunk. She says she likes to relax by cleaning and watching Ratchet TV, which I had to look up. The men are tattle-taling on each other, and Josiah says that Iggy shoots steroids "in his nuts." Lee hopes to make it big in Nashville by being on the show, and he's really only there for dramatic purpose. 

Kenny again debunks stereotypes by rapping to Rachel, rhyming "beach" with "feet." He's a wrestler. She tells him that she wondered why he was fighting with Lee, and acknowledges that he was dumb for being baited. That's mature. Lee tells the white guys that he doesn't have a problem with any of them. I hope Kenny doesn't get baited by him, but it looks like he might go and confront him, which he does. Cliffhanger established. 

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