Last night’s episode of The Bachelorette: Emily Has a Daughter opened up with a crackerjack “news story” from Charlotte local stations and “rumors” that the new season of The Bachelorette was filming in Charlotte so Emily could be close to her daughter. This, of course, came as a shock to everyone watching, since WE HAD ALREADY KNOWN THIS FOR MONTHS. Great reporting, Channel 9!

So we see Emily in the park with her daughter and some Mom Friends, which is nice because we really never get a slice of what “everyday life” looks like for the Bachelor/Bachelorettes. Then Chris cattle-calls all the men out to the courtyard, and DROPS A BOMB: On this season, if you get a one-on-one date, you need to pack your bags ahead of time because if you don’t get the rose, you’re going home immediately (aka to a local hotel to be in seclusion until filming is over). Then Chris announces that he has the first date card to give them, he leaves, some douche drops “it just got real” and the entire world sighs with disapproval and disappointment.

Chris, a Corporate Sales Director (who’s the kind of guy who’s so freaky looking that he starts to look attractive after you stare at him for long enough, kind of like those visual eye puzzles with the shapes that jump out of you, only with HIS FACE) really wants that First Date Card. But sad news, Chris, because much like going into a ball game, Pro Sports Ryan is never expectin’ to lose, and he didn’t lose now – Ryan got the First Date card. “Be my king in Queen city.” What does it mean?! The guys all wonder, as they tear their shirts off their chests and pound the cement ground in frustration. Ryan has no idea, but he what he does know is that his Pastor always said that “if you treat a woman like a queen, she’ll treat you like a king.”

And cut to the only moment in the entire show where we’ll like Kalon The Kracken, who tries very hard to stifle a “shut the fuck up” smile.

Emily’s First Date With Real Housewife Ryan

And then it’s pool time, pool time, look at all those muscular chests pool time! Kracken thinks that it’s like being in a frat house from hell – on steroids, no less! – but no one could really hear him drop that Truth Bomb over the collective orgasm that just erupted from every woman in America. Emily walks in to pick up Ryan, they leave, the guys all talk about how stupid Ryan’s hair looks, and then we see Emily and Ryan jump into her white Tahoe and take off.

Ryan has no idea where they’re going – all he knows is that this could be the first date with his future wife! Although, secretly, he’s hoping for a helicopter ride or a wine soaked jacuzzi session or a private concert in the park. You know, the standard first date stuff. Oh no, though…Emily pulls up in front of her house and tells him to help her bring in the groceries. Which is hilarious, because now Ryan knows what every girl he’s ever dated felt like after sleeping with him – major disappointment, veiled by a grin-and-bear-it attitude.

So it turns out that they’re gonna make cookies for Rikki’s soccer team because Emily is Snack Mom and while The Bachelor/Bachelorette usually does dates that are exciting and glamorous, that’s not her real life (although, to be fair, she’s a 26 yr old single mom who drives a white Tahoe and lives in a brick mansion in Charlotte, so her everyday life is pretty okay in my book). Ryan decides to turn off the douche nozzle and warms up to the idea that baking cookies could be romantic. You know, kind of like the Real Housewives do when they’re forced to show for the camera how they can be real people, too, despite their good looks, unrealistic lifestyles, and vapid personalities.

Flash to The Guys Left Behind, as they talk about whether or not Ryan will meet Rikki on the first date or not. Parent Expert Doug chimes in his two cents about the way things are done When You’re a Parent (did you guys know that he’s a dad? He has a son. Just in case you didn’t know that yet).

So Emily and Ryan go and drop the cookies off to Rikki and her teammates. Ryan has to stay in the car, HA HA HA! and once again brings up the fact that he would love to taken away on a big jet and on these big adventures BUT this is okay, too. Seriously, the more he keeps bringing that up, the uglier he gets. But, luckily for Ryan, Emily gets back into the car and tells Ryan that the date isn’t over. I was kind of hoping that the rest of the date was going to include the two of them helping one of her friends move, just to really put the screws on Ryan’s Fantasy Date, but no – they’re going out to dinner at one of Emily’s favorite places. Cut to a bare-chested Ryan ironing his shirt, him saying some more stuff, and then Emily picking him up in a sports car. The rest of the date is pretty boring – dinner at a restaurant and then a concert by some country band no one has ever heard of – but here are the high points: 1) Pretty much everyone in Charlotte decided to join them by lining the streets outside the eatery, which was actually kind of creepy. 2) Emily is kind of a tough customer. She doesn’t let guys off the hook when it comes to being honest about real life. This is good with guys like Ryan, who are used to charming a girl with a smile, but I also have a feeling we’re in for some uncomfortable moments down the line. 3) Ryan bugs me. I still think he’ll be in the #Top5, but the more I see him, the more I think of that really good looking guy who’s now 50 and has divorced his first wife to run around in a convertible with his 19 yr old girlfriend.

The Group Date Card shows up, and it’s a big one. It says, “Let’s set the stage for love” and Stevie The Dancing Elf (did you guys know he’s a party MC?! HA HA HA HA!) immediately wows everyone with his brainiac skills by deducing that they’re going to be on some type of stage. Kraken confides that while the thought of theater might make some of the guys nervous, he, for one, embraces the stage. And then we all threw up in our mouths a little bit and then some guy asked him if he was flying a helicopter to the date and then we all laughed and things were okay again.

Meet My Muppets!

Okay. Here is the thing that I kinda sort of love about Emily: While she seems very soft-spoken and sweet, the fact that she wouldn’t do the show unless it filmed in Charlotte so she could be close to her family speaks volumes. Knowing that, and knowing that she actually had a hand in planning the first date with Real Housewife Ryan, we can all pretty much assume that she also had a hand in the group date. As some of you might remember, Emily’s real job is an event planner for a children’s hospital. What is the group date? It’s about putting on an event that’s actually a fundraiser…for The Rikki Hendricks Center for Intensive Care. I kind of love the idea of Emily insisting that one of the dates be an event that raises money for her charity and actually be useful for something, instead of just a way to make people uncomfortable by forcing them to be “adventurous” and jump out of a bunch of helicopters.

So the guys show up, Stevie The Dancing Elf looks like a total douche in a newsie-type hat and his sweatshirt draped around his shoulders, and Emily announces that they’ll all be performing today…with The Muppets!!

Cue my boyfriend having a meltdown about “those lucky fucks! They have no idea how lucky they are!” Which is true.

The Muppets – Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Fozzie Bear - are truly hilarious. Tony triyng to do his Kermit impression is not. Head Trauma Charlie has a hot flash about speaking in public, but all The Guys Left Behind are cheering for him to do well, and like a stand-up guy, he turns it into an honest confessional moment with Emily, who is of course super sweet about it. The show is a hit – both Emily and Chris Harrison show some surprisingly impressive acting chops – and it’s a fantastic event that raises a lot of money.

Then it’s the date part of the event. Tony can’t wait to tell Emily all about himself. Chris wants that rose SO BAAAD! Pretty much like the way he wants everything else. Emily calls him attractive and his head explodes, along with everyone else’s. And then it’s Jef With One F… Oh, Jef. Lady Killa Jef. Jef is starting to kill me, y’alls. Jef is the kid at Y camp that every other girl is in love with so you don’t want to be in love with him too because come on but then he talks to you once while standing in line at the canteen and he actually seems really nice and sweet and he smiles at you later and then all of a sudden you’re madly in love with him and crying on the way home from camp because you don’t know if you’ll ever see him, the true love of your life, ever again. And Jef knows this. It is obvious that Jef knows the effect he has on girls, but unlike Ryan, it doesn’t seem to be a power that he uses for evil. Instead, he simply plays it cool…and by holding back, he’s putting Emily on the wooing side and has got her worrying about whether or not Jef is into her. As the rest of us Bachelor Scholars will attest to, this is a classic yet supremely successful ploy.

Stevie gets gross by slow dancing with Emily, and the guys all sneak up to watch and laugh. Kraken makes Stevie hate him even more by breaking it up. Emily kind of shows that she’s also got some game by using the same line on a couple of guys “Today I was kind of like, ‘Where’s ___?’ What’s going on with him?” Which is annoying but works like a charm. Kraken admits that he’s never really had to compete for the attention of a woman, which is just so…god, this guy is an asshole, right? Like, he’s a complete asshole. And then Biology Aaron tries to break in and Kraken is all, “just give me 2 minutes, good sir” and Aaron’s like, “Go fuck yourself” so then Kraken tries to make himself look like the chivalrous one by slinking away. But then he whines to the guys about it and Stevie’s like, “I hate you so much” and while everyone else agrees with him, we still get to witness this really awkward trading-of-the-barbs which somehow ends up making both Stevie and Kraken look even more like idiots.

So the rose comes up and Tony wants Emily to know more about him but she doesn’t give him a chance and instead makes a speech about who she’s going to give the rose to and gives the rose to Jef With One F, who looks at her and is like, “Yeah?” like he TOTALLY WASN’T EVEN LISTENING TO A WORD SHE WAS SAYING! Touche, Jef With One F. Touche x 1000.

There’s No Room At The Greenbrier (At Least Not For Joe)

For the second date, Emily picked High Energy Joe. They fly off in a private jet to the Greenbrier in West Virginia, one of her favorite places in the entire world. The star of the date is the Greenbrier – a resort that Emily has been going to since she was a little girl (btw? This place is freaking ridiculous). They jump into a 100-year-old pool in coordinating swimsuits.

Which is a great sequeway for The Guys Left Behind, where Kraken says a bunch of stupid stuff about his feelings when it comes to being with a woman who has a child and Parent Expert Doug gets all huffy and defensive about Kraken saying that Doug “gave up being a dad for three months” to come on the show, even though he did, but Kraken needs to step back and think about what he said (even though he didn’t really say anything except that Doug wasn’t going to be home with his son for three months, and it’s the same tired argument we’ve had every single season where someone gets pissy about their kid and someone else is like, dude, you made a choice to be here for 3 months instead of at home, and everyone else just rolls their eyes and goes to the bar for another drink).

Back to the date! Emily comes down the staircase in a dress, they go to dinner, she asks Joe some tough questions that he doesn’t quite answer, they put some notes into the love clock, and then Emily starts crying (and OF COURSE she’s a pretty crier, right? Like, of course she’s not the kind of girl who screws up her face all weird or gets super ugly when she cries. Emily cries and all of our hearts break with her, because she’s beautiful and perfect and our only hope for a fair world is that she turns out to be a Nexus 6 Replicant who has learned emotion from being fed fake memories). She doesn’t feel sparks with Joe, even though everyone else watching (me) thinks Joe is kind of great and that she’s just not giving him a chance. The main reason, though, is that even though he’s a great guy, she just doesn’t see him fitting into her Everyday Life, so she cries and Joe gets it and drives off in a limo and then fireworks go off and it proves that Emily is taking this seriously, you guys! She’s NOT playing around! She’s got a daughter to think of.

“Cock”tail Party Time! 

The cocktail party is kind of boring EXCEPT that, in Tony’s quest for Emily to get to know who he really is, he tries to interrupt time between Emily and Ryan and gets caught standing there and having to listen while Emily read aloud a SEVEN PAGE LETTER FROM RYAN. Seriously, this guy is SUCH a douche! Please, everybody, stop writing letters and notes to the Bachelor/Bachelorette. We did that in Middle School. We shalt not do that anymore! So it was awkward and uncomfortable but then Tony FINALLY got to tell Emily about who he is. Which is basically that he’s also a father, which to him means that there should be an instant connection and Emily should fall in love with him, because single mothers and fathers always fall in love with each other!

And then Kraken gets more time with Emily, which means that we have to stare at his fish face some more, which sucks. Also, just so everyone knows, he’s like an old man so that’s why he doesn’t really relate to girls his age because their interests are just “different.” Stevie The Dancing Elf talks some more about how much he hates Kraken. The surprising part is that Sean The Insurance Agent is starting to get some more camera time, which is not a bad thing. Sean also talks about Kraken and how he likes to use his vocabulary to “show dominance in the household” which is an intelligent and courteous way of saying that Kraken is a pretentious douche, which he himself confirms in the next scene by declaring that he now feels “mentally refreshed” after his time with Emily. GOD I HATE THIS GUY.

The Rose Ceremony begins, and Biology Aaron and Kyle get the boot. They talk a bunch about how hard it is to get their heart broken by someone they’ve known a week, and then it’s The End.

BUT! I also tuned into Jimmy Kimmel after the show last night, and TOTAL DRAMA BOMB – Emily let it drop that there is definitely a guy on the show who was angling to get dumped in a sympathetic manner so he could be the next Bachelor. My pick for the culprit is Real Housewife Ryan. Because duh.

Also, let’s compare Jimmy Kimmel’s Top 4 picks with my Top 5 picks –

Jimmy’s – 1) Jef 2) Sean 3) Arie 4) Ryan

Mine – 1) Jef 2) Ryan 3) Arie 4) Michael 5) Alejandro

Typically I always have one pick who shows up really well in the First Episode/draft but ends up playing poorly the rest of the season. Michael and Alejandro are at the bottom of my roster right now. I kind of wish I could switch out one of them for Sean…Kimmel’s spot on with that prediction, I think.

That’s it for this week! We’ll see you back here next week for another not-at-all-objective recap of The Bachelorette: Emily Has a Daughter!

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It’s basically like Nicholas Sparks-type lost romance mixed with ‘80s movie makeover montages sprinkled with elements of My Best Friend’s Wedding capped off with 90210 Kelly Taylor “I choose me” vibes ✨