You know it’s Monday night when The Bachelorette is trending along with Gaza on Twitter. Keep being you, world.

Chris Harrison introduces the final episode of an overall tepid tenth season in front of a live studio audience. Wait, did he just say it’s a three-hour show? Good lord. I get some dark chocolate peanut butter cups and settle in for a long night.

“This is the first week [where] I don’t know what could happen,” chirps Andi. Oh, well, it’s not a major week or anything, so that’s good. I’m glad uncertainty has only reared its head during the most important episode of the season, and possibly the most important moment of her life.

It’s time to meet the Fockers—dad Hy, mom Patti, and sister Rachel and her husband—only Andi’s family isn’t so Focker-ish. Their Jewish heritage has barely gotten a peep all season (more on this later). Nick’s up first, and he exchanges the most awkward hug of the season with Patti. Everyone remarks on Nick’s obvious nerves. “He seems a little reserved,” says Patti to the camera, moonlighting as Captain Obvious for the episode. He stumbles over recounting his feelings of true love, but goshdarnit, he does seem genuine and Patti agrees. “For someone to say that about my daughter is very special,” she says, tearing up. Get your tissues, Patti, because someone else is about to say the same exact thing to you tomorrow.

But first, it’s time for a sisterly heart-to-heart. “He makes me feel like a woman,” Andi tells Rachel, and I half-expect Aretha Franklin to break out in song here, but no dice. Nick and Hy speak next. “My whole job is Rachel, Andi, and Patty,” says Hy firmly. “I got one daughter taken care of. My job now is Andi.” If this is supposed to sound sweetly paternal, it doesn’t. It makes Andi sound like a helpless floundering female waiting for her father to secure her a husband—not a self-sufficient woman with a kick-ass career. “It would mean a lot to me to have your approval,” Nick tells Hy nervously. Hy falls silent for a moment. “I feel exactly about Andi the way you do,” he begins (I hope not exactly the same way, considering last week’s fantasy suite shenanigans), and then reluctantly gives Nick his seal of approval should Andi choose him.

I must interject here to make mention of the worst installment of the weekly Suave shampoo commercials featuring the Bachelorettes of Christmases past. This week’s ad features Andi talking stiltedly with Catherine and Desiree, who literally squeal when they wave around their ring fingers, appropriately adorned with baubles, so that Andi can see what her future might hold. Betty Friedan, I’m glad you’re not around for this.

Next up is Josh, and Andi’s family just loves him. Josh, who has thus far shown himself to be loud, dim and hot, is appropriately charming as only former athletes can be, and he lays it on thick for his one-on-one with Hy. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” enthuses Josh. (Really? She’s cute, but in the way that my cashier at Pathmark is cute.) Hy tells him that marriage is sometimes hard work, and wonders if Josh is prepared for that. “It already hasn’t been all roses,” Josh assures him quickly. From a sharper man, this would be a quippy one-liner referring to the show’s recurring motif, but I’m afraid any wit is wholly incidental here.

On their final date, Andi and Josh muse aloud about their confidence in each other. “I have no questions,” Josh coos. “What, you have no thoughts?” exclaims Andi. Yes, that’s it, Andi: no thoughts whatsoever! Absolutely inane conversation ensues for five minutes and is concluded when Josh reads her a letter and hands her a baseball card with her ‘stats’ on the back. “Drafted: first pick,” Andi reads, giggling. It sounds cheesy but it’s actually kind of cute.

The final date with Nick involves fewer giggles, and finally, at long last, there’s a mention of religion: “We’ll figure out whatever it is, where to live, religion…” he says obliquely. It’s the first time in the season, to my working knowledge, that Andi’s Jewishness is even referenced.

It seems bizarre that The Bachelorette never shows potential couples discussing the sorts of things marriage-minded people speak about, like religion or politics. Obviously, there’s a good chance such discussions would alienate large swaths of viewers, so the choice not to air these moments—if they happen at all—is undoubtedly calculated by ratings-minded producers. But for a show that purports to be all about helping the lovelorn find their true match, these are glaring omissions of substance, and it’s disingenuous to exclude mention of major issues that actually impact the longevity and ultimate success of any resulting relationships. However secular and non-practicing a Jew Andi might be, one would think it would behoove a woman on the cusp of marriage to someone who is not Jewish (Nick) or someone who is Jewish but was raised Catholic (Josh), to at least initiate conversation on where she stands in terms of her Judaism. No?

Nick gives Andi a necklace with a vial of sand from the beach where they had their first date, which is simultaneously creepy and thoughtful. And like sand through the hourglass, so is this day of my life: When is this freaking show going to end? Good god, there’s 45 minutes of self-doubt to go before we even get to After The Final Rose. I get more chocolate.

Back from commercial break. “It’s coming down to the final moments,” says Chris. Promise? Andi awakes on the day of reckoning. Josh meets with Jeweler-to-the-Stars-and-Trashy-Reality-Show-Contestants Neil Lane to pick out a ring. When Nick gets a knock on the door and we assume it’s his turn to meet with Neil, it’s not Neil at all but… Andi!? This can’t be good. And it isn’t: Andi proceeds to tell Nick that something didn’t feel right when she woke up that morning—and it wasn’t last night’s sushi. Nick looks stunned, and they bid each other farewell. It begins to rain as Nick looks pensively out on the patio, unless that’s actually a producer pouring down buckets of water from the roof. Either way, we get the point: Nick is a sad panda right now.

Back at the live studio audience, Chris elaborates on Nick’s shame by telling the world that he’s tried repeatedly to sit down with Andi “to chat” since filming ended, but she’s always refused—until now, because she is contractually mandated to. “But first, let’s see how the show ends,” he says, but duh, we already know how this ends. Josh approaches Andi and offers a fast-paced hodgepodge of tidbits pulled from romantic movies into one mawkish speech. Andi tells him she loves him, he proposes, and she happily accepts. And they’ll for sure live happily ever after, or at least until after she finishes filming a season of Dancing With the Stars. The end.

Note: There was an After the Final Rose special, but nothing of note happens except for the continued exploitation of a wounded man (Nick), who also tells Andi that it was wrong of her to make love with him if she wasn’t in love with him. Despite the fact that we all know they’re not crocheting in the fantasy suite, such a direct admission of its inner workings is actually (and literally!) “hitting below the belt,” as Andi tells Nick, looking positively green. The audience lets out a collective gasp and Twitter explodes. Okay, now it’s the end.

Catch up on all the previous Bachelorette re-caps here.

Image: ABC/The Bachelorette

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Ahhh, the fantasy suite episode: where The Bachelorette finally stops pretending it’s a classy enterprise and pimps out its star for numerous sexual encounters that are all but broadcast on television.

Against the gorgeous backdrop of a resort in the Dominican Republic, Andi reminisces about her romances with the three remaining guys, for all of us at home: Josh, the too-good-to-be-true athlete/family man; Chris, the sweet, strapping farmer/entrepreneur; and Nick, the skeptic with whom Andi has a deep mental connection. And now, it’s time for one-on-one dates with each guy, because nothing helps you figure out just who you want to marry than a careful process of elimination.

Nick is up first. He and Andi take a helicopter ride to a private island, and while they sure look pretty, the conversation is stultifying, with a lot of nervous “uhhs” from Nick. Dinner isn’t much better. But then Nick shows Andi the fairy tale book he made for her of their love story. “It was childish, in a cute way,” Andi tells the camera later, and she loves it so much she grants Nick the key to the kingdom, so to speak. “I can’t wait to talk with you all night,” Nick tells her. Yeah, sure. He then tells Andi he loves her and they start groping each other frantically. Save it for the suite, guys.

Next up is Josh, wearing a shirt that’s basically a picnic tablecloth, but still managing to look ridiculously hot. Josh auditions for “Best Future Father Who Speaks Passable Spanish Award” by playing ball with some local children. He also tells Andi that he loves her, which he admits to having said before, without actually meaning it. So wait: he’s said it and not meant it to other women, then? What a turd. But what does Andi care for other women’s broken hearts? Josh gets a key to the Fantasy Suite as well.

Andi’s third and final date of the show—horseback-riding—is with Chris. “Is it your first time riding a horse?” asks Chris. “Yeah, I’m really nervous. You gonna teach me?” says Andi, giggling. Weird pause. Err, they are actually talking about horses here, are they not? Then they discuss last week’s hometown date in Iowa. “I loved when you hopped on my lap in the tractor and went to town,” says Chris. Okay, that’s it: can you really blame me for reading the erotic subtext here?

But alas, erotic subtext and all, it’s just not meant to be: Andi starts crying as they hang out after dinner, which is never a good sign on these dates (or any date, really). Sure enough, she breaks up with him. “I have too much respect for you to blame it on Iowa,” she tells Chris. Instead, she tells him it’s Iowa and his boring personality. No, just kidding, but she does say that she just can’t see a foundation for something serious forming between them.

Chris, who is so absurdly polite that he would probably apologize to the thief taking his wallet for not carrying more cash, takes it in his stride. “It’s not what I expected,” he tells the camera softly, and then he slips out into the night to return to his tractor. Tonight, Chris is plowing a different kind of field than he expected.

Andi insists on having the rose ceremony so that her final two could actively decide to stay and continue pursuing her, as though there’s a chance they might actually chuck it all in when they’re so close to fifteen minutes of—um, eternal marital bliss. They both accept and the three of them clink glasses with starry eyes. Next week: The Men Tell All. It’s not everyone’s favorite special episode until somebody cries.

Catch up on all the Bachelorette re-caps here.

Image: ABC

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The Hometown Date episode: it’s everyone’s favorite—except for the premiere episode, the one with the fantasy suite, and the finale, that is.

First up: Nick and his ever-present, artfully-draped scarf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They go to a brewery, because Wisconsin, and sip an assortment of beers including one called “Nick & Andi.” No wonder alcohol is associated with an increased risk of vomiting. Next, it’s time to meet Nick’s family. Ten siblings and he still couldn’t figure out how to get along with others! But his little sister Bella sure is cute, especially when she’s sent to interrogate Andi with carefully recited lines, while Andi fumbles for kid-friendly answers. Finally, Nick has a heart-to-heart with his mom, and they both cry as they discuss Nick’s love for Andi.

Next: Arlington, Iowa, where Chris the farmer is waiting to greet Andi with open arms and one giant tractor. “Hottest farmer ever,” says Andi, like she really knows a wide array of farmers and can safely make such a conclusive assessment. The whole idea of urban, high-powered, professional Andi seriously considering making a home in Iowa is a joke, but a narrative that the show really wants us to believe in. “What would I do here for work?” Andi asks Chris. “There’s an opportunity here to be a homemaker,” jokes Chris—but is he really joking? They take a tractor ride and look gleeful (well, she is sitting on his lap) and then an airplane flies overhead with a banner that proudly declares: “Chris loves Andi.”

Chris introduces Andi to his family, and Chris’s mom—I now fully comprehend the meaning of the word homespun—steals the show with her straightforward country sass. “You need gumption to live on a farm, and you have it!” she tells Andi. “And you’d have such beautiful babies. I’ll baby-sit!” But this one is just silly: “There’s no limits for a woman on a farm nowadays.” There are limits for everyone on a farm, because it’s a farm. Still, Chris makes quite a lucrative living, and his sisters tell Andi how amazingly successful he is. The whole family gives off a really good vibe as they joke around with each other, and Andi loves it. “This is a great family,” she marvels to the camera.

On to Tampa, Florida, where Josh greets Andi with a friendly game of baseball. But really, Josh’s hometown date is defined by family and football, and his younger brother Aaron’s upcoming NFL draft fills about ten minutes of screen time. Josh quit baseball, apparently, to devote himself to helping Aaron succeed (an actual career is never mentioned). In fact, the whole family is determined for Aaron to succeed, and if I wasn’t a huge devotee of the best TV show ever, Friday Night Lights (sorry,Bachelorette!), I might find this family’s obsession with football a little weird. To the camera, Andi pretends to be annoyed at the prospect of watching Aaron play football every Sunday, but her face lights up when Josh’s dad asks her if she’d be willing to attend weekend games. “I’d love to!” she says earnestly. They all play a football game together outside, and it’s a little much already but gosh darn they do seem very affectionate with one another. I guess the family that punts together, stays together.

The final hometown date is Marcus’, in Dallas, Texas. Marcus takes Andi for a quick jaunt around town before stopping at an empty nightclub to reenact their first “date,” when the guys stripped for charity. For someone who claimed to be so shy before his first striptease, Marcus sure has grown surprisingly fond of the pastime. And Andi definitely loves it, though she does express some hesitancy about whether her feelings match the fervent emotions that Marcus declares. The seediness of this date is offset by the family portion of the evening, when Marcus introduces Andi to his mother and siblings. To match his striptease, Marcus lays his emotions bare too, tearfully thanking his brother for stepping up as a father figure.

Later, Chris Harrison gathers everyone at his own house to reveal some news. When the gang is assembled, he tells them about Eric Hill’s fatal accident. Andi breaks down; the guys sit there looking dumbfounded. After a moment of loud silence, Marcus has to go outside to collect himself, and Andi follows to comfort him. The whole thing is terribly sad, with shades of creepy voyeurism: I can’t shake the niggling feeling that the producers chose to air this segment because they knew it would pull viewers.

The following night is the rose ceremony, and after Andi takes a moment to collect herself at the beginning of the ritual, she chooses Josh, Chris, and Nick. Marcus looks stunned, and I don’t blame him: he seemed like a sure thing, at least from the way the show was edited. Andi leads him outside and cries, lamenting that she couldn’t keep him there knowing her feelings didn’t match his. Darn. I liked him, and looking at him.

Next week: the fantasy suite. Stay tuned for tasteful shots of rose petals on bedspreads, champagne on ice, and lights being turned off.

Catch up on all the Bachelorette re-caps here.

Image: Matthew Putney/ABC

The post The Bachelorette with Andi Dorfman, Episode 9: Andi Meets the Families, Tragedy Strikes appeared first on Jewcy.

This episode determines the hometown dates—you know, the ones where Andi gets shepherded around her suitor’s neighborhood and meets the friends and family who have been coached about what to say to her. But before we can get to all the manufactured drama of that fan-favorite episode, we must endure the tension of this week, in Brussels.

Marcus gets the first one-on-one date, and his prior admission that he was contemplating leaving the show because he was too scared of the process is discussed ad nauseam. “I’ve been writing in my journal about it,” he tells Andi. The consensus? He’s ready to stay and fight for her affections because he’s madly in love with her. Marcus also tells Andi about his rather dysfunctional family dynamics—his dad split a while ago and his mom freely admits that she was not the best mother. Personally, I think being honest about familial flaws before said family is trotted out to meet the blushing Bachelorette is the way to go, and Andi seems to agree. “I’m excited to meet his family,” she tells the camera.

Back at the hotel, Josh gets the next one-on-one date card. As he gloats unbecomingly, Nick looks on moodily. He decides that he’ll have none of this, thank you very much, and he slinks to the hotel’s lobby to ask the clerk to remind him of the room number where his wife is staying. “Her name is Andi Dorfman,” he says, holding back a laugh. This is the worst acting I’ve seen since Tara Reid in… anything, actually, but because this drama is staged just like everything else on the show, the clerk tells him where Andi is staying. Nick surprises her in her room—no fluffy hotel robe and matching turban here, as she’s still dolled up from her evening with Marcus—and proceeds to whisk her away for a romantic nighttime stroll and make-out session.

The next day brings a one-on-one date with Josh, in Ghent. For all his protestations that he’s no typical athlete, Josh has a lot of trouble expressing his feelings. Andi badgers her witness until he admits, “I’m falling in love with you,” but who’s to say whether it was a genuine expression of true love or simply a coerced confession? I’ll let you be the judge of that one.

Then, on to the group date—the only one in this episode with a rose at stake. The guys are understandably competitive, though both Nick and his upturned nose are above such pettiness. Andi takes the guys to the Maredsous Monastery, where, weirdly enough there is a pottery room. She and Chris do their best Ghost reenactment (just the pot-throwing part, not the murder or psychic parts), but alas, it’s not enough to get him the rose. As he snootily predicted earlier in the show, Nick is the one to get the rose and secure a hometown date, as well as some one-on-one time with Andi while the other guys are sent home. When he waltzes back to the hotel, even I could feel the frost radiating from the rest of the guys, who greet him with stony silence. Farmer Chris, appropriately, is the first one to lay down the metaphorical pitchfork and confront Nick about his subliminally sleazy ways. Nick remains undeterred.

The guys jostle for Andi’s attention at the cocktail party, which culminates in a desperate Hail Mary pass by Chris when he pulls Andi out of the room for a long kiss right before the rose ceremony. “You go, Farmer Chris,” marvels Andi, looking a little dazed. Chris gets a rose, but not before Marcus and Josh do. And we know Nick already has one.

Next week: the gang finds out about Eric Hill’s fatal accident amid the hometown dates. I’ve got no snark for you there.

Catch up on all the Bachelorette re-caps here.

Image: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/ABC

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And then there were eight. This episode begins with the gang in Venice, where Andi arrives to inform the men which one of them will be her solo date, and though we are led to believe it might be Cody, it ends up being moody Nick. Let’s hope he found a better attitude somewhere in his luggage, because Andi has questions for this guy, and she wants answers.

Andi and Nick walk through Venice, encountering a gondola, gelato, pizza, and a whole lot of pigeons. But it’s at dinner, for which Andi is decked out in a ballgown, that the official interrogation begins. “Where did my sweet Nick go?” wonders our heroine. Nick mans up (just kidding) and blames his surliness on Cody, who had dared to call him arrogant in a previous episode, gravely wounding his feelings. Nick doesn’t seem very kind or good humored, but maybe he and Andi share some raw, animal energy that just isn’t translating on screen, because she gives him a rose and lets him stay.

The next morning, Andi wakes up alongside a secret admirer (it would be more interesting if i stopped here, wouldn’t it?) card, and so she chooses to focus on honesty during that day’s group date and arranges lie detector tests for everyone. Because nothing says romance quite like lie detector test, right, lovers?

Chris, by all accounts till now a gentle and placid farmer, confesses to the camera and the world that he’s pretty nervous because he’s actually been hiding something from Andi. This serves to make him just a little more interesting. As the guys take their tests, we learn some lame, revealing and squicky things, including the fact that Dylan doesn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom—but nothing is more lame than the revelation that Chris’s big secret is merely that he was Andi’s secret admirer. (And with that, the promo voiceover guy officially decides to stop pretending that this is the most dramatic season of The Bachelorette ever.) But Andi learns none of these confessions because she decides to rip up the results, and good lord do I hope a production assistant handles all the food should she and Dylan ever go on a dinner date again.

At the cocktail party, Brian steals Andi away for a fairly cute diversion, in which he administers his own lie detector test to Andi and asks the inevitable question, “Do you want to make out?” Well-played, Brian. Josh uses his alone time with Andi to protest the lie detector tests because relationships are built on trust (and on television, of course), and at this point, Josh’s constant need to defend his image definitely looks suspect. When Chris gets his own tête-à-tête, he nervously confesses his secretive admiring ways, as though there’s a chance Andi’s not going to totally love it. Of course, Chris gets the date rose. This irks JJ, who shares his ire with the gang, and Chris gets his farmer’s overalls in a twist when he harshly rebukes JJ—with foul language, to boot. My my, Chris, do you speak to the cows and sheep that way?

Finally, at long last, Cody gets a one-on-one date in the fair city of Verona, and it’s a rather cruel twist of fate—or the production team—that Cody, not the sharpest tool in the utility shed of contestants, gets a date that involves letter-writing and Shakespeare. Cody keeps professing his love for Andi, who clearly doesn’t reciprocate. Dinner’s gonna be awk-ward. And it is, as Cody babbles that he wants to introduce Andi to his parents and “roll around” with her. I guess Shakespeare didn’t make that much of an impression. Andi starts tearing up, which Cody wrongly interprets as an encouraging sign. Finally, well past the point of mercy, she tells him straight out that she’s just not that into him.

At the cocktail party, Andi continues to be inordinately in love with Nick, Josh continues to brim with righteous indignation, and in the end, Andi sends JJ home so he can dedicate himself to making custom pants for the masses.

Well, we’ll always have Venice, readers. Next week: Brussels, as in the sprouts.

Catch up on all the Bachelorette re-caps here.

Image: ABC / The Bachelorette

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After a week away, The Bachelorette is back, but unfortunately, it’s not better than ever. This week, the gang travels to France and encounters racism, miming, and frog legs, in that exact order.

Chris Harrison has a heart-to-heart with Andi at a French café where he asks her if she’s falling in love. Andi coyly demurs, but it’s pretty obvious the way things are going from the first one-on-one date of the night with Josh, the former pro-athlete. (Marcus who? I officially change my end-game prediction here.) Andi is clearly besotted, but Josh spends nearly the entire date convincing her that he’s not the stereotypical athlete who goes through women like “flavors of the week” at the ice-cream store. He seems really concerned about this, but they make out a lot anyway.

Back at the hotel, JJ tells Marquel that Andrew had referred to him as a “blackie” at a previous rose ceremony, as in, “Wow, Andi gave roses to a couple of blackies.” Though JJ says later in a confessional that it might have just been “black guys,” the fact that Andrew thought it was worth remarking upon is still good old-fashioned racism.

Marquel tears up a little when he speaks, quite genuinely, to the camera about his feelings regarding this situation: “Sometimes, no matter how you treat a person they just have this idea of you, and the first thing people recognize about me is that I’m a black guy.”

First mortality, now racism. But lest The Bachelor franchise inspire any prolonged authentic emotions, the camera quickly pans back to Josh and Andi making out. Thank God: I was feeling too contemplative there for a minute. Marquel just experienced actual racism, but Josh gets more screen-time recounting his troubles over being pegged as the hackneyed lady-killer athlete to Andi. Mon Dieu. Josh gets a rose.

On to the group date! The date card said nothing, so what could the afternoon’s activity possibly be? In an array of different colored shorts, the men are led by Andi through Marseilles, the pronunciation of which she mangles completely, saying “Mar-SAY” in a horrid Valley girl accent. Surprise: the guys will be learning how to mime and then sent outside to perform for the natives. From what little I know about French people—the women don’t get fat, for instance—it seems like they don’t easily suffer fools. I’d volunteer for a street performance in Manhattan any day over this.

Nevertheless, the guys are game and make like Marcel Marceau, or their best approximation of him, as the crowd stonily looks on. Marquel’s miming is actually pretty awesome, and JJ’s routine includes a reenactment of his and Andi’s first date. I hate to give a “pantsapreneur” points for anything, but that’s actually pretty cute. Nick sulks because he doesn’t want to pretend how not stupid this date is.

Day turns into night and everyone assembles at a lounge. JJ whisks Andi outside for a ride on some kind of spinning contraption that’s supposed to be a ferris wheel but which looks and functions more like the nausea-inducing teacup ride I take my kids on at various amusement parks. JJ and Andi manage not to vomit, which is good because they make out a lot on the ride. Can you just imagine?

Back at the lounge, Nick and beefy blond Cody get into a fight over Nick being too smug and Cody being too grateful, or something. Cody mad. Cody want to smash. Nick realizes he is about to get squashed like a skinny grumpy bug and wisely starts placating Mr. Muscle.

Despite Nick’s apologies, every guy who has alone time with Andi badmouths Nick and when it’s his turn, Nick owns up to it. Andi keeps calling him salty, like he’s a potato chip or a margarita, but she loves the lame poem he offers up and they make out.

More party drama: Marquel finally confronts Andrew, who went to the OJ Simpson School of Responding to Accusations and denied, denied, denied his “blackie” comment. “I respect everybody,” he blusters. “I never said that!” Methinks the asshole doth protest too much. Marquel gives a dignified response—“I’ll never stand for that kind of talk”—and just walks away, and I love him so much, but JJ is the one who gets the date rose.

Bryan gets the next one-on-one date. He and Andi eat their way through a market and giggle impertinently over “gross” frog legs, and even I, as rude an American as the worst of them, wince at this display of immaturity. They watch a movie, The Hundred-Foot Journey, that was just featured in a commercial and now gets more advertising as Andi tries to talk it up as naturally as possible. Forget frog legs, the lines she’s being fed here are the worst comestibles of the whole night. Bryan gets a rose.

Andi skips the cocktail party this week, because she already knows she’s sending home Marquel, Andrew, and Patrick. If Marquel isn’t the first black Bachelor next season, someone’s going to get an angry letter about it, mark my words.

Next week: Subterfuge! Tears! Gondolas! Until Venice, readers.

Catch up on all the Bachelorette re-caps here. (Editor’s note: Ep. 5 was was a ‘highlights’ episode which we did not re-cap, because a re-cap of a re-cap is too meta, even for us.)

Image: Patrick Aventurier, ABC / The Bachelorette

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The first episode of this week’s Bachelorette double-header opens in Santa Barbara, with Nick getting the one-on-one date card. He and Andi go bike riding and take a hike, and Nick tells her that he feels like a 12-year old boy around her. Oh god, I hope not: do you know 12-year old boys?

Andi digs deep into Nick’s romantic past, which includes a seven-year romance and a quickie engagement (to someone else), among other things. He tells her he’s pretty skeptical about soul mates, and though I’d think this would be the kiss of death for a starry-eyed hopeful romantic, Andi delights at the challenge: “I think that if I develop real feelings for him, I can turn him into a believer,” she says. This sounds like a solid plan of action.

The group date takes place at the Music Academy of the West, where Andi’s suitors greeted by none other than Boyz II Men. Best line of the entire season thus far goes to Eric: “I’m pretty sure I touched my first butt to ‘I’ll Make Love to You’ in seventh grade.” Andi is very pareve toward Eric, and I have no idea why: dude is not only the best-looking one there but hysterical, and seems like one of the sharper tools in this shed of contestants.

‘I’ll Make Love to You’ is the very song the guys are tasked to sing with Andi in front of a live audience. They are predictably horrible. Andi kibitzes with Cody, the beefy personal trainer who looks like a fitter Moose from the Archie comics, and Josh, who gets the rose.

Andi’s next one-on-one date is with JJ, whose official occupation is being a “pantsapreneur,” a businessman who sells exclusive, custom pants. Don’t look for that word in the dictionary, though. They wear makeup to look like senior citizens—because JJ said he wanted to grow old with someone in a previous confessional—and walk around Santa Barbara together. He gets a rose.

Back at the mansion, a guy named Ron makes a hasty exit after getting a phone call that a friend of his died. Then Dylan tells Chris about how his siblings died, both from drug overdoses. In the midst of these serious real-life moments, a breath of frivolous manufactured drama blows in when, at the cocktail party, JJ and Josh confront Andrew about getting a waitress’s number when they went out together the other night (wait: are the guys allowed to leave the mansion by themselves?). But he gets a rose anyway at the rose ceremony, as do Marcus, Brian, Marquel, Tasos, Cody, Patrick, Chris, Eric, and Dylan.

The second episode begins in New England because, Andi tells us, it’s quaint, and because, the producers don’t tell us, it’s cheap.

Dylan and Andi enjoy a scenic trip on a lovely train reserved just for them, and then Dylan reveals that his brother and sister both died but looks too angst-filled to discuss it further, and who can blame him. In fact, he can barely discuss anything after that, and remains quiet until dinnertime when Andi tells him to buck up and open up—or else. And he does, the music is cued and tears are shed, and he gets a rose.

Onto the group date, which turns out to be a basketball game with the men up against Andi, who gets a little help from some new friends: WNBA players. The women win, because WNBA, and then the guys break up into two groups to compete for a slightly smaller group date with Andi, where the winner will be one of five men instead of ten, which is fifty perfect more normal.

Eric pulls Andi aside. We know from a previous clip in the episode that Andi has expressed doubt about their relationship, despite a seemingly lovely first date; she feels they’re not thriving in this kind of contrived atmosphere, but it’s the only atmosphere they have at the moment. She tells him this, and he looks shocked.

Brian comes to grab Andi and they proceed back to the court, where he makes a crazy half-court shot and Andi appropriately fawns. It’s the perfect opportunity to lean in for a kiss, but as Brian tells us just a bit later, he’s bad at reading signs. He gets the rose anyway.

The final one-on-one date of the episode goes to Marcus, who is so obviously Andi’s favorite that I don’t even need to check Reality Steve for spoilers because I can spoil it myself just from the way she makes eyes at him. They have the obligatory “death defying” date where they rappel off the side of the building in which the guys are staying, but not before Marcus allays the fears of an anxious Andi. “I need to be the man in this relationship and hide my fear,” he explains. Ahh, sweet, sweet machismo. When they reach the bottom, she holds him tightly and says: “I couldn’t have done it without you,” embracing the cliche once and for all.

Andi seems to be a pretty unaffiliated Jew—so far she hasn’t mentioned her Jewishness explicitly, at least compared to the Bible-thumping of former Bachelor Sean—but I do find it a little ironic that her apparent intended is of German and Polish descent. Just musing aloud here.

Marcus gets a rose by dinner, and is the first to whisper-yell “I’m seriously falling for you and it’s terrifying,” into Andi’s ear against a backdrop of loud country music.

At the cocktail party with all the guys, Eric takes Andi aside and tells her he came to the show to fall in love with a real person, and not a TV actress. “You have a poker face with me,” he says. Andi freaks out, likely the culmination of fatigue and the stress of being a Bachelorette and also, maybe, because she knows he’s right. Eric—who was probably just hoping that Andi would finally ditch her shiny façade for a real moment with him—tries desperately to salvage the situation. But alas, she is too offended to listen to reason. She sends him off in quivering rage, with a chaste kiss on the cheek.

“Love is the reason to live,” Eric says in his confessional, which is the beginning of a painful and sobering final segment dedicated to his memory, instead of the expected rose ceremony. Chris Harrison and Andi reminisce about Eric, who died in a paragliding incident as Andi was wrapping up filming for the show, and send their condolences to his family. It’s surprisingly not tacky.

The show will return in two weeks, perhaps to give us time to process this reminder of mortality in what is usually the glibbest show on television.

Catch up on all the Bachelorette re-caps here.

Image: ABC / The Bachelorette

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I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for my misstep in last week’s recap—as a couple of eagle-eyed fans pointed out, former Bachelor Jason Mesnick is Jewish, and thus, Andi is actually the second Jew in a titular role—but still the first Jewish Bachelorette, so my error wasn’t that egregious. I welcome future corrections from dedicated fangirls (and boys), should I err again. Now, on to episode two.

The scene opens on the remaining 19 contestants, who await their operating instructions from host Chris Harrison. He delivers the first one-on-one date card to Eric Hill. “Maybe this is the key to my fairy tale,” Hill responds. It’s a sad, discomfiting statement—more so than the standard, banal Bachelorette-isms—as we all know what happens to Eric later.

He and Andi get into a little convertible and drive to a place with sand, water, and a boardwalk. “What’s this place called?” asks Eric, the seasoned world traveler. Andi answers helpfully, “the beach.” It can only get more stimulating from here on out, right? They frolic around and make sand angels, and then thankfully the awkwardness of their interaction is cut short when a surprise helicopter shows up to whisk them away to a snow-covered mountain for a snowboarding lesson. Their teacher, Louie, drops the first really horrible grammatical colloquialism of the evening—“Thanks for letting me tag along on your guys’s date,” he chirps—and then we watch Andi fall and fall again and continue to frolic with Eric, but this time on a snowy surface.

Finally they attend to dinner, where Andi, engulfed in a warm and cozy sweater, settles comfortably on the couch and says, “Tell me about when you went to Syria.” Eric obliges, and if you were just going by Andi’s facial expressions, you would think Eric was discussing how he lost a big football game in high school rather than the time he barely escaped from rebel fighters in a very dangerous Middle Eastern country. She does perk up a little when Eric talks about wanting a family more than anything; the poignancy of this moment is genuine and acute. They end the date by roasting marshmallows—no, that’s not a euphemism for anything—and Eric tells Andi about the time in Guatemala when he roasted marshmallows over a volcano vent. Andi purrs and says “stooppp” for the fifteenth time and suddenly, the DNA test I ordered for her last week is redundant because she sounds exactly like a million other Jewish women I know.

Over to the rest of the guys prepping for their group date. “Let’s bare our souls,” reads the date card, and the men start hooting excitedly as if engaging some weird ritualistic pre-mating call (and aren’t they?). Surprise, surprise, the group date is literally as described! The guys must perform a striptease for a bunch of women including Andi, but it’s all for charity so it’s not completely without class.

Marcus, the half-Pole, half-German guy looks terrified, despite possessing a more than adequate six-pack. “I’m a little more… reserved,” he says, and I find myself warming towards him as the spectacle of flesh begins. Chris Harrison shrugs his shoulders and slaps a tush. “The things I do so you can find love,” he calls to Andi, but really, he doesn’t look put out in the least. Though I had hoped never to use the word anal again in this recap series, I must use it here to refer to the area Nick exposed when he bent over a little too far and shocked both Andi and ABC’s censors. Marcus, who had been so nervous, manages to pull it together and shake and shimmy with the best of them, and I begin to wonder if it was all an act. Is nothing sacred on reality television anymore?

Anything remotely interesting about this episode has now ended, as the “scandal” they had saved for the latter part involved a contestant who got drunk and unwittingly made himself look like a fool, unlike the other guys, who were sober fools. Andi has a second one-on-one date at the pony races with a guy named Chris, who seems entirely unremarkable but gets a rose anyway.

The drunk contestant, Craig, doesn’t get a rose, and this appears to have a literally sobering effect on him. Overexposed stripper Nick does not get a rose either. Roll credits. I realize that my experience watching the Mad Men season finale the night before this episode was like a short snapshot of the highs and lows of television and also, America. God bless.

Image: ABC / The Bachelorette

Previously: The Bachelorette with Andi Dorfman, Episode 1: In which many hot men emerge from limos, and a doctor is eliminated

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It’s gotta be better than JDate.

That’s probably what Andi Dorfman was thinking when she agreed to appear in the latest season of The Bachelorette—that, and the pursuit of fame and fortune.

Andi is the first Jewish bachelorette in the considerable history of the television franchise; amazingly, we’ve endured 18 seasons of The Bachelor and nine seasons of The Bachelorette (and a whopping four marriages!) with nary a starring female member of the tribe—until now. Thankfully, Andi did the Chosen people proud in the last night’s opening episode: she embarrassed herself no more than any other previous Bachelorette, and the crop of guys in her orbit are better-looking than the men in previous seasons and certainly better-looking than most of the guys populating JDate. Let’s recap, shall we?

The show opens with a tribute to Eric Hill, a contestant who died in a paragliding accident after he finished filming for the show (he did not win). The cynical side of me suspects that more than one producer had a wild moment imagining an alternate reality in which Hill was the victor, only to die after proposing but before his grand romance with Andi could publicly commence. But because I like to believe that good triumphs over evil (even among calculating entertainment executives), I did my best to dismiss these thoughts. Anyway, host Chris Harrison says they are dedicating the whole season to Hill, and I’m sure his bereaved family members will take some small measure of comfort from this gesture.

Next, we meet Andi “I put the bad guys away” Dorfman, who is shown traipsing through the desiccated backyards of Fulton County, Georgia. Do assistant district attorneys normally go poking around such rough turf as part of the investigation process? Andi tells us her job is fantastic, but she is not complete without love. Of course you’re not, honey: that’s why this entire franchise exists in the first place. But you’re 26, so I understand your urgency.

The montage that follows is as predictable as the arc of a celebrity marriage: Andi, trying on crazy hats and cool clothes. Andi, driving in a convertible. Andi, posing with a rose and a tight, tailored suit, because what else do attorneys wear? Andi, posing with a rose and an elaborate, flowy gown, because what else do Bachelorettes wear?

Chris, who is paid a lot of money to pop in and out of the frame and narrate exactly what is about to take place—”The limos are almost here!”—does just that.

An assortment of men emerge from the limos, beginning with Marcus, whose chiseled jaw elicits an audible gasp from Andi. Then there’s guy from Iowa. Guy with bowtie. Token black guy wearing a picnic tablecloth for a shirt. Guy with earring, who turns out to be named Tasos and who has the first adorable opening move of the night, which entails putting a lock on the gate and then throwing the key into the fountain with Andi, in homage to Lover’s Bridge in Paris. Cody, a personal trainer whose muscles cannot be contained by the blazer he is wearing and pretends to push the next arriving limo. Rudie, a fellow attorney, who asks, “May I approach the bachelorette?” Carl, a firefighter who is reserved and quiet. I suppose not being easily excitable is only a plus when you fight fires for a living, but it doesn’t make for very compelling television. Jason, a long-haired blond surfer dude who is actually a doctor. “I diagnose you with a fever because you are HOT!” he chuckles. Let’s hope he’s a better healer than comedian, for his patients’ sakes.

Then there’s Emil, the proper enunciation of which, he tells Andi, is “Anal with an M.” Where do they even find these Prince Charmings? Brett, who brings a lamp—that’s it, just a lamp—because his mother told him to never greet a lady empty-handed. Considering the fact that this series has no end in sight, mothers should really be teaching their sons never to greet a lady in a scripted reality show with a stupid gag. It’s only sound parenting advice in this day and age. Eric, who has been traveling around the world for his job, has a cute opening: he gives Andi some small wooden dolls from Peru that a local girl instructed him to pass onto his girlfriend. It’s pretty sad watching Eric interact with Andi and excitedly discuss his travels. If I learned anything during this whole extended scene, it is that Andi is a hugger, because she says it no fewer than seven times.

Host Chris returns to give Andi the first impression rose, earning approximately $65,000 in ten seconds. Nice work if you can get it. A guy named Nick gets the rose.

The manufactured drama of the episode peaks when the camera pans to Chris Bukowski from Emily’s season, standing right by craft services! What’s he doing here? Is he hungry? No, he wants to meet Andi, who doesn’t want to meet him because it’s weird but more importantly, her rejection is part of the script. “I’ve been out here for seven days!” cries Bukowski. He is summarily dismissed. I sincerely hope he is adequately compensated for this show of humiliation.

Andi then mingles with the actual contestants, which was boring enough to watch without having to write about it too. I did catch that Marcus, the Aryan-looking blond from Texas, is half Polish and half German, and really, what better combination of ethnicities to attract a nice Jewish girl?

Finally, the rose ceremony. I don’t know what barometer Andi is using, because Brett with the lamp got a rose but Attorney Rudie didn’t, and he seemed nice enough. Anal guy didn’t make the cut, nor did the surfer-dude doctor. So she’s Jewish, but got rid of a lawyer and a doctor right away? Someone get this girl a DNA test, Jewish mothers of a certain age are asking questions.

“I’m not going back to a whole lot,” says surfer-dude doctor in his confessional. I hope his patients saw that and switched practitioners, stat. Good lord. A rejected suitor named Josh B. who wasn’t interesting enough to mention before shows a flash of personality in his confessional. “This is stupid,” he mumbles angrily. Yes, Josh B. Yes, it is.

“Cheers to all of ya’ll,” says Andi to the remaining men, who are trying hard not to look too pleased with themselves as they clink glasses of champagne.

Which reminds me, it’s going to be a long season: bring wine.

Image: The Bachelorette

Editor’s note (5/24): Jason Mesnick, Bachelor #13, is Jewish. Thanks to readers Sarah and Shira for the correction!

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Perhaps more than the series finale of Dawson’s Creek or the fall of the Backstreet Boys, news of Loehmann’s closure—its official liquidation process began on January 9th—signals the end of my childhood, as I suspect it does for many of my contemporaries. At 27, I suppose it’s about time, but the news is sobering all the same.

It was at Loehmann’s where I first learned the blood sport of bargain shopping, in which proficiency was crucial for any woman with a love of clothes but limited funds to spend on them. It was a sport made more ferocious by hordes of pushy Brooklynites who regularly crowded the Sheepshead Bay store by the water I frequented. Often, my mother and I would perform tashlich (a Rosh Hashanah ritual of atonement) by the marina, and after contemplating our sins of the past year, immediately cross the street to worship at the altar of 50 percent off.

Salespeople were scarce, and customers had to fend for themselves using whatever scrappiness and resources they had. Loehmann’s was a good training ground for any young person trying to make his eventual way in the world, and I developed many early talents there. Specifically, I mastered: hovering, as in stealthily over someone’s shoulder to seize the last Calvin Klein skirt left; eagle-eyed vision, to spot that designer diamond in the rough; and patience, for the wares were notoriously eclectic, and those diamonds could only be found if you did some careful digging.

It was in those infamously communal dressing rooms—which can still elicit pained shrieks of recollection to this day—where many of us first saw such a blatant parade of flesh. Having not grown up in one of those freewheeling naked homes, I was like a horny teenage boy with hormones on sensory overload, always making a conscious effort to avert my eyes from bodies in various shades of undress. But, being so used to the sanitized images of supermodels from the magazines I hoarded in my bedroom, seeing realistic portrayals of what most women really looked like—sagging flesh, cellulite, the telltale signs of motherhood written across so many bodies in stretch marks and C-section scars—came as a relief, as I had half-feared my own body was freakish in its un-model like proportions.

Yet though there were many women proudly strutting in all their fleshy glory, there were many more who were obviously mortified by their perceived imperfections. I vividly remember observing scores of women stare despairingly at their reflections in the mirror as they slapped their thighs and upper arms with violent vigor. Their blatant shame at having to reach for the next size made a deep impression on my already-fragile body image. Maybe there are others, like me, who can pinpoint some of their confused relationships with their bodies from the lessons inadvertently derived from these dressing rooms; in that respect, Loehmann’s proves to be a double-edged sword in my own arsenal of childhood memories.

There were the usual suspects on every shopping expedition, soothing in their unfailing reliability: the resigned-looked husband holding his wife’s purse outside the dressing room, the well-dressed woman who looked pained to be mingling with the commoners, and the infuriated tween girl with her equally exasperated mother engaged in fashion-related tiffs. My mother and I often played the roles of the last couple of characters, with my mother always honing in on the least fashionable items in the entire store, bearing them triumphantly while I stood there with growing horror. Reacting to my disdain, she would gallingly wave the plaid skirt or frilly sweater and cry, “But this is a fashionable store! Isn’t everything fashionable? I just don’t understand.” We had many a memorable fight in those hallowed aisles, but they were usually drowned out by similar mother-daughter battles at the next rack over.

Its doors may well be closing, but Loehmann’s will live on in our collective memories. A classier precursor to TJ Maxx and Marshall’s, it was also a place where you could kvetch in the dressing room, and query complete strangers for their thoughts on your outfit and expect to receive brutally honest assessments in return. We will always remember the tears and triumphs that occurred there in equal measure, and we will fondly recall a time where people eschewed the convenience of clicking a button in their pajamas and actually took the time and effort to shop in a store. Perhaps most of all, we will think back to the undiluted joy of the rare occasions when the stars aligned, and both mother and daughter saw the appeal in a single dress—that just happened to be on sale for 60 percent off.

Tova Ross is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Huffington Post. She is a contributing blogger at Kveller.com. Follow her on Twitter at @tovamos.

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