After announcing Nick is “jazzed” about traveling to New Orleans, the women all pack their bags on this weeks episode of “The Bachelor.” (Mo Amini/Flickr Creative Commons)
Left with another cliffhanger last week, this episode picked up in the middle of a catfight between everyone’s favorites, Corinne and Taylor, before the rose ceremony. There was some very heavy, rather unoriginal name-calling and a lot of discussion of “emotional intelligence.” While this drama is a little old after being drawn out for nearly three episodes, it does leave something to look forward to at the always-anticipated “Women Tell All” episode before the finale. Corinne essentially goes directly to Nick after her spat with Taylor and tells him she’s here for the wrong reasons, to which Nick responds that he hopes Corinne “continues to show her maturity.” Sweet, naive Nick thinks all these women are mature. Corinne drunkenly declares herself the queen before the rose ceremony, during which Nick says he knows all the women so well, which is funny considering I couldn’t even recognize the women who were not given roses. One of them didn’t even get time in the confessional, showing how trivial she was to the show. Both Taylor and Corinne come away with roses, causing us all to shake our heads at the absolute ridiculousness of this show.
After announcing he is “jazzed” about traveling to New Orleans (an original or scripted pun?), the women all pack their bags. Jaime is from New Orleans (is that kind of home-field advantage even allowed?). From Nick’s description of the city alone, it wasn’t hard to predict the absolutely cliché dates. Rachel finally gets her well-deserved one-on-one date. They spend the day exploring the city and its culture, going shopping and trying local cuisine (including oysters and beignets). They even get to join in on a second line, a band that walks the streets in celebration or memoriam. Nick claims that what he has with Rachel is the “most explosive chemistry.” Rachel describes the date as “electrifying.” After dinner at Mardi Gras World, a warehouse filled with old parade floats, Rachel gets the date rose. While this particular date did have us questioning how many musical performances “The Bachelor” producers could fit into one day, it also solidified the fact that Nick is planning on seeing Rachel at the Hometown Dates. We are proud of Rachel, not only for her genuine relationship with Nick, but for not making a date-related pun and also for the number of leotards she appears to have in her wardrobe.
The next date-card served two purposes this week, both revealing who was on the group date and the two unfortunate girls left over who would be going on the two-on-one, none other than Corinne and Taylor. At this point, it’s unclear what is going to be scarier: the ghosts on the haunted group date or Taylor and Corinne duking it out over Nick. The group-date was a bit nonsensical. A tour guide told them about an alleged ghost haunting the plantation house they were staying in. There was a fair deal of moving furniture and falling books, the usual poltergeist activity. The girls and Nick play with a Ouija board, after which the lights go out. This particular date did give the other girls plenty of distraction while Nick went off to have some alone time with a few of them. He speaks with both Danielle’s (L. and M.) the most. Jasmine and Raven are particularly spooked by the paranormal activity. Jasmine may not end this show with a husband but she will apparently be leaving with a curse. It is also getting to that point in the season where all the girls believe they are Nick’s number one. Raven announces to Nick a little prematurely that she’s in love with him, but Danielle M. ultimately takes away the group date rose.
It’s officially time for the dreaded two-on-one and, if you couldn’t tell by now, Corinne doesn’t like Taylor. They are going to the bayou. We can only hope this date lives up to the legacies left by the beloved Chad and Alex, or Kelsey and Ashley I. Taylor hopes this will be just like a “one-on-one with Nick with a small side of Corinne.” Things obviously do not go as she expected, as the date starts off with a dispute. Possibly my favorite catty line to come out of this entire series was Taylor telling Corinne, “I don’t have a nanny, I have a Master’s degree.” They attend a voodoo ceremony in the bayou and get their tarot cards read. Just when I thought the date would end without Corinne getting ahold of a voodoo doll, someone very willingly makes her one (hopefully Raquel doesn’t throw away that treasured keepsake while cleaning Corinne’s room). Corinne calls Taylor a “big mean swamp monster,” but she’s definitely mature though, don’t worry.
As suggested in “The Bachelor Drinking Game,” everyone should have taken a shot when Taylor questioned Corinne’s ability to run a multi-million dollar company. Honestly, I have no idea where Nick is for the majority of this date, but after a short chat with both the ladies, he gives Corinne the date rose, and they leave Taylor with the voodoo tribe in the bayou as he and Corinne are carried away on a swamp boat towards the evening portion of their date. Has Taylor become one of the bayou people? No, no, she’s just being blessed by the voodoo tribe to go crash the rest of Nick and Corinne’s date. This is what we are here for people! We see her storming into their dinner before being left with, you guessed it, another cliff-hanger. We are getting tired of this, “Bachelor,” this leaving us waiting cannot become a regular, every episode thing. Please tune in next week to hopefully (finally) see this overplayed drama pan out, to catch more of Corinne’s amazing pop-culture references and to see Nick cry again!
Julia Mancini is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at Julia.mancini@uconn.edu.