The Bachelor: Race for Second Place

The Bachelor S16E08: "Week 8"

Hometown dates are intense. There are so many layers of nuance about socioeconomic status, family dynamics, awkwardness levels. And Ben's family visits revealed probably the widest range of different families that I've seen on The Bachelor in quite some time. We had the rich horse farmers in the middle of nowhere ("We replaced the boys with horses. Lindzi is very sheltered). The claustrophobic grip of Kacie B's family on her virginity ("I've seen this show before, I would have a serious problem with you two moving in together"). The world's sweetest dad and world's kickiest mom in Texas. And of course, Courtney's morph at the end of the episode into a trembling, lovestruck doe.

So let's dive right in with the curiously raised Lindzi, who learned to ride before she could walk and has not yet caught on to the fact that humans have a higher concentration of pigment in their lips.

Her parents' compound/stables looked seriously idyllic. Carriage racing! Fireside chats! Lindzi didn't date much while growing up because they raised her in the 1800s. I guess that backfired, since sometime in the last five years Lindzi moved across the country and cultivated a voice that sounds like the ghost of a thousand Jagermeister shots. I like Lindzi and her party-girl voice, and I feel like she'd be better off with a super handsome guy with a wicked sense of humor, insanely impressive job, and a taste for something harder than white wine.

Kacie's hometown date was so deeply revealing and so raw I wanted to cry. From the first way-too-practiced twirl in her baton routine across that bedraggled field named after her grandpa, I think it hit Ben with full force that she is poor and comes from a very conservative family, and that her great legs and being 24 is not going to bridge that gap. It didn't help things when she described her ideal of love as her grandmother dying of a broken heart on Thanksgiving Day after her grandfather passed away. SO ROMANTIC! Is your idea of love a mystical suicide pact, Ben? Ben, how do you feel about a father-in-law who is a federal probation officer and sees through your veneer of manliness right into your quivering boy-jelly heart?

I really liked Kacie B.'s dad. As a man who makes his living eyeballing killers and worse, it took him about one nanosecond to figure out that Ben is a rich kid who's basically made of bullsh-t. I loved when said to Ben, "I don't want to see YOU get hurt," because I think that was pretty much a threat. Kacie B. gave a big song and dance to her family about how she had tried to live up to their expectations, but now she's ready to be herself and a bunch of other movie taglines. Basically she was saying she was ready to get down and dirty with Ben on overnights. She is so 24, I love you Kacie but you have not left Tennessee, in fact I'm betting that you still live at home, and a huge part of Ben's appeal is that he represents independence from your family and a new identity and a town with a high school football field NOT named after your grandpa. But you could have roughly the same life-changing experience renting out a condo two towns over. Maybe try doing that first, before signing on for a lifetime of Ben's soft voice and caveman hairline.

Then Nicki and Ben went shopping. Good times. Her mom has kicky hair. Her dad is a genuinely good person. Do I really have to sit here and pretend for even five seconds that Ben is going to end up with Nicki? They go together like a plate of nachos and a tall glass of buttermilk. Barfsies. Girl got a shopping spree out of it, probably courtesy ABC or the Ft. Worth Stockyards, so keep it up, Nicki! Milk that network swag udder and don't stop sucklin' until they beat you off the teat with a tennis racket.

Suddenly, with no other girls to worry about and a clean win in sight, Courtney had some spinning to do. She couldn't just make snarky remarks about Emily to the cameraman anymore, she had to convince America to pick up a few copies of US Weekly with her and Ben on the cover, and the way to do that was to transform herself into someone in love with Ben. That's how our Pretty-Girl Crazy, offbeat Courtney became a blushing faux-bride, staging a pretend wedding with Ben and feeling the buzz with her family from glasses of his signature white wine. Her mom, Sherry, was fantastic, with her soundbyte of, "I would be very surprised if Courtney IS in love with him." EXACTLY. Thanks, Sherry, couldn't have put it better myself.

Watching Courtney glow prettily next to Ben, and then seeing her turn up at the rose ceremony in a drop-dead nude sequin gown—it was almost pitiful to watch. That dress and shoes combo was KILLING IT. Cracked me up when she tried to kind of lean up against the group hug so Ben wouldn't notice everybody hates her.

Still, there's just no competition. Courtney versus the other three is like pitting three field mice against a lawnmower. She's crazier, she's smarter, she's shinier, and she's going after Ben like a killer shark after a particularly chubby baby seal with a little caveman bowl cut. Go get him!

I don't know if it's the obviousness of Courtney's win that made the show promo Emily as the main attraction of the next episode of The Bachelor. Maybe Neil Lane wants to line up his Heart of the Ocean pendant with the Titanic re-release. Maybe Ben can't hold the viewers because his soft cadence has been sending small children into seizures. I don't know, but I do know I love Emily Maynard with the kind of devotion that makes small Latin American communities march idols of the Virgin Mary down the street while swinging rose petals and incense into the sky, and I like Kacie B. a LOT more when she's in the back of a limo.

Like, how amazing was Kacie's breakdown? In that one ride down Mulholland, she managed to deconstruct into essentially a performance piece about being 24 years old and dumped. Her statements included:

– Why does it have to hurt?

– I thought I knew what he was looking for.

– I had no clue this was coming.

– What does he want?

– I thought it was me. I was stupid.

– It's not me.

– Why am I not good enough? Like, I don't get it.

– This is why I don't love.

– I loved him and I don't know what to do.

– How did this happen?

– What the F-CK happened?

– What THE F-CK HAPPENED?

Like a perfect arc that climaxed in pure rage, her anger was as refreshing as a flood of water breaching a dam. This is the first moment of the rest of your life, Kacie! Go find an apartment and throw your baton away! You can go to California and date cool guys without ABC flying you there. This show can save your life if you will accept that there is more to life than high school memories and that the high school memories are not enough to get you there!

Seriously, go get it, Courtney, and more earnestly: Go get it, Kacie. You dodged a bullet. Now go get the rest of your life.

QUESTIONS

– Who is Emily going to be dating? Leonardo DiCaprio?

– Is Ashley going to visit Ben?

– Is Ben the worst Bachelor of all time?

– Do you get the sense that guys have betrayed Courtney in the past only by not being able to read her mind/anticipate her every whim/not being okay with the fact that she's Pretty-Girl Crazy?