The Bachelor Canada – Episode 2 Review

Reviews

From the gorgeous salmon Kaylynn and Tim ate on their date (like actually took bites of and ate!), to the koom-ba-ya moment where Natalie and Christine actually seemed joyous when April got the post fashion-shoot one on one date, to the ‘come get high with me’ innuendo, on the first date card, this season sure is shaping up to be a Canadian one, eh?
After last week’s finale, episode #2 is all business. We’ve already established that the girls aren’t quite capable of lowering my self-esteem in a 22 second segment like the American contestants often do, so it’s up to us to find things we like about – wait for it – their personalities. I know,right?

It’s a tall order. After all, we only have an hour to cram in dates, connections, drama, girl-fights, first kisses, premature evacuation of the resident lingerie model, showcasing of the clear distinction between Canada’s profanity in television laws over America’s by letting the word ‘shit’ roll off at least three of the girls’ tongues and of course the distribution of roses. But somehow, the team has managed to git-er-done, without a moment to spare.

The first one-on-one date, of course, goes to Kaylynn, more because I don’t think her little heart could take waiting an extra day to see Timmy than because he might actually be interested in her.

And yet. It wasn’t enough for Kaylynn to be given the first one on one, or go in a helicopter, or get an awesome free coat for her trip to Grouse Mountain (totally worth going on the Bachelor just for the sponsored outerwear, no?). And it wasn’t enough to establish the ‘most unbelievable connection of your life’ (um really? You spent at least fifteen years parentless and locked up with anorexic tweens – let’s not blow our load too early, now okay?) Nope, not enough for Kaylynn. Kaylynn wants to have it all. At the end of the night, she’s rewarded for her honesty with Tim’s heartfelt confession “this has been really…really…nice” and his memorable speech as he gave her the rose — “So this is here. And it’s not weird”… and finally, the evening is capped off with a kiss, which didn’t make me want to swallow my own vomit. So there’s that.

The next morning, the ladies team up for a dragon boating challenge in an effort to win coveted extra time with Tim, while pretending that rowing in the cold rain after spending at least an hour painstakingly styling each tendril of hair is your idea of fun.

Team One – Alison, Dominique, Lisa, Renee and Sachelle went against Team Two – April Burlesque, Jenny, Martha (whose ethnicity changes every time she opens her bronzer), RiLeigh and Trisha.

Tim floats up to the girls waiting dockside while desperately trying to maintain his balance on the boat and with a quick-witted “Ships Ahoy” from April that made me want to shower, the girls get their paddle on.

Lisa’s team quickly begins fearing for their lives as they fail to get anywhere near winning and they trudge back home thinking – this isn’t the wet and sloppy I had in mind when I signed up for The Bachelor. Shame.

In the meantime, the winning girls don their best ‘slutty geisha’ costumes like besties on Halloween and it’s off to the Sun Yat Sen Garden. It’s here that I begin to catch on to Tim’s poor math skills, when he talks about having five girls with him for some one on one time. My suspicions are confirmed near the episode’s end when he asks for half the girl sandwich made up of three people and only goes off with one girl. I’m not judging, Dude. I suck at math too. I’m just not as obvious about it.

I must say, the way Tim man-handled the bottle of champagne when he was opening it was totally hot, but I’m still not feeling close enough to him to develop a strong opinion one way of the other. What is it?

I don’t even know what to make of April Burlesque – (AKA Suicide Stacey???). Her hair, her voice, the things she says… “it matches my dress which makes me kind of calm, but that doesn’t mean anything”? What does that mean?

The rest of the one-on-one times were just as…unique. You’ve got Trisha, waiting for Tim to jump in at any moment and be all like ‘Come on, you’re so beautiful’ when she tells him she didn’t think she could ever compete in pageants (he doesn’t) and then there’s RiLeigh who tries to force Tim to be ‘real’, by insulting him and calling him a phony without ever having had the chance to get to know him while he sits there looking confused.

Clearly Trisha must have done something right. Tim strings together an incomplete sentence “There’s something I need to do…and…Trisha?” and with that she’s one rose richer.

The next morning, Tim surprises the ladies with an early morning entrance and before they even have time to brush their teeth, they’re whisked away (upstairs) to get their ‘Flare’ on with a Rimmel London sponsored photo shoot .

I was more interested in some of the new nail colours than I was in the actual chemistry developing (or not) between Tim and the ladies. I literally have nothing to say about Christine’s shoot (and neither did Tim, except that it was terrible), Natalie’s kiss was weird, April’s seemed the most fun and natural and Sonia – well, for someone who’s so comfortable doing photo shoots, you sure did seem to need quite a bit of direction. Gotta love the photographer who twisted the knife by (for sure reciting lines given to him) saying “I’m not getting what I need. It’s all about chemistry.” Clearly Tim didn’t need to spend one more minute with Sonia to know that she wasn’t the one, but the good news is, she was cut early enough to go grab the early bird Seniors special somewhere straight from the mansion. I wonder if she got to keep the dress.

Tim has the opportunity to choose one girl to spend the rest of the night with and obviously goes for April. I’ll admit I too was enthralled with the song that Andrew Allen sang to them and basically wanted to curl up under a blanket and play it on repeat. At this point, I’m thinking April is pretty normal, and I guess because of this, Tim is starting to relax a bit too. The problem is, I’m not sure if I care. I don’t know if it’s his slow talking, or if it just seems like he’s trying too hard to be enthralled by these girls, but I’m feeling a bit of a disconnect. Tim caps off the night by pulling the blanket normally reserved for hand jobs over their faces to give her a kiss – and you can hear her say “Really” before he muffles her with his lips. At first I thought she wasn’t into it, but judging by the way she gushed on about the kiss after, I’d say he had her at blanket.

So just when Tim thinks he can start relaxing and work on forming relationships with these girls, we head into yet another night of Kaylynn damage control. I’m just gonna go out on a limb here first and say to Martha (if you’re reading this) – you go on with your bad self, girl. What you did last night was practically a public service announcement. I totally agree you were trying (desperately) to empower Kaylynn and though you clearly failed, it’s no fault of your own.

Kaylynn should never have set herself up to fail with the goal of acting normal and like she didn’t care. That’s like me being left alone in a room full of tiny Halloween Chocolate Bars on October 24th and being all like ‘Sure, I won’t open the box till Halloween’. Completely ridiculous. I know my limitations.

Kaylynn’s attempt at not caring consisted of her drinking heavily and straining her neck to catch as much action as she possibly could through her peripheral vision while appearing nonchalant. That is, until she lost her shit, starting with digging her gravy by asking Tim point blank if he wants her to leave when he specifically says to Other April “can I steal you away?” which in Bachelor language means “Can I talk to you alone?”

It’s not long before she’s a finger-wagging, booger-smearing, hyperventilating disaster and despite many attempts by the girls to calm her the F down, she is beyond help.

She steps out of the spotlight for a brief enough moment to let an awkward rose ceremony go down where the ladies given roses are April Burlesque, Christine, Sechelle, Martha, Dominique (in some serious sparkle-on-sparkle), Jenny, Other April, Rileigh, Natalie and Lisa (who seems to grunt at Tim every time he talks to her – really not sure what she’s going for there).

Renee-Anne and Alison barely have time to finish their pity interviews before Kaylynn totally ruins what I can only assume would have be a really well-worded toast by Tim to the remaining ladies but accusing Martha of being a bully and doing everything but saying “I’m gonna cut you.”

Tim tries to help but the sincere look on his face sort of looks like he’s trying really hard to have a bowel movement while consoling Kaylynn and it’s pretty much all I can think about (well, that and the 14 shades of lipstick on his collar), even as he actually shares some reasonably well said, comforting words.

In the end, he does the only thing he can do to change the mood – announces that they’re going to Cabo as Kaylynn hyperventilates in a corner.

Next week looks like things heat up both weather wise and among the ladies and I for one, am ready for it.

In the meantime, let’s just all go out for a rip, eh?

I'm a busy, working mom who loves nothing more than settling onto the couch with a glass of wine to harshly critique the unfortunate romantic relationships of happily-ever-after wanna-be's. Check out Reality Bytes