The Bachelor Week 7 Recap: Ben Drags the Girls to His Boring Hometown

ABC.com
ABC.com

Read our live recap of The Bachelor Season 21 premiere that will update throughout the night!

Welcome back to the Bachelor Show. Today, Ben and the six remaining girls are heading to Warsaw, seat of government of Poland and the 32nd most livable city in the world!! It's where Ben grew up. Which I don't think anyone saw coming -- he doesn't have a trace of an accent, and might not even own one of those gigantic rabbit fur hat with the amazing ear flaps. 

We get there, and man, Poland sure is Americanized these days. They all love our dualie trucks and our greasy spoons and our dive bars and our signs that read "Welcome to Warsaw, Indiana." Oh wait that's where Ben's from. This all makes sense now. Except for the part about why Ben is the Bachelor in the first place, amirite?!?!!

I am rite. Ben's rapid evolution from harmless bore to narcissistic, controlling bore hasn't even been interesting, or perilous, or conflict-sprouting. It's just happened, and nobody has seemed to care or notice. Which means that as always (ok, almost always: don't forget about Juan Pablo), this show 1000% needs the women and their various wonderful forms of insanity to keep its crazy heart beating. But they jettisoned that pacemaker last week when Olivia got run out, and now are left with three girls who could easily be exactly the same person, one who could only be told apart from that group because she's not-white, a virgin, and a (presumed) not-virgin with two kids. This is a dangerous way to run this show.

After some brief time running down the girls to his parents at the local diner that proves this is real America, Ben shows up on a much worse boat than these girls have become accustomed to, briefly makes mention of how his parents are almost definitely boning each other at home right now, and tells Lauren B she's got exactly 30 minutes to get ready for a date with him, so she'd better not get all engrossed in the crossword from the in-flight magazine again. 

The First One-On-One: Lauren B

So if you're living in Warsaw and you're not looking for a Stormwater Coordinator job, what do you do? Well for one, look for a Stormwater Inspector job. But after that, you hit the Things To Do In Warsaw Facebook page, navigate to the Recommended Sightseeing tab, and realize that SHIT YES you should be going to Oakwood Cemetery, the Warsaw Walmart, and Barnett Bail Bonds, just as it recommends. 

But Ben? No he's just too good for any of that classic Warsaw stuff. Ben wants to take Lauren B to his the rec center he used to work at -- according to some indications, very, very recently -- and show off what a great guy he is because he gives back to the community, in exchange for money.

The rec center accomplishes exactly that -- all the kids fawn over him, and he moves in to cheer up some crying kid named Eric, although we never see the end result, so he is in all likelihood still crying, ignored by peers, rec center staff, and indeed, the entire world other than a Bachelor producer who just needed a sap. 

But there is a big highlight here, and his name is Ronnie. Ronnie the "Half Court King" is a seemingly mentally challenged young man with dope hair who is outright incredible at making half-court shots. He gets challenged to make a half-court shot -- and if he does, Ben will have to kiss Lauren in front of a bunch of kids who know for a fact that kissing transmits dangerous cooties. And he does! And then he hits another, just for fun. 

While the rest of his life might be pretty tough, Ronnie is absolutely sick at half-court shots, which seems to make him happy, and that makes me happy. And furiously jealous, of course: at one point in my life I was also practicing them a lot, in the hopes of getting a college scholarship as a specialist who would only be on the floor for the final five seconds of every half, and would be paraded around campus as a hero after I won every tight game, but I couldn't get very good at them because they're incredibly difficult. But also I'm happy for Ronnie, remember! The big question here, though, is why Ronnie didn't get the kiss when he hit the shot. He did all the damn work. 

After that they head back to where Ben's staying, and have the necessary conversation that either will clear up all the uncertainty from last week about Lauren B-eing a horrible person around the girls, or LEAD HER TO HER DOOM!!! Unfortunately, the first one happens and blah blah they're happy too. The final stop is a place where she can see the real Ben: a local dive bar where she can watch him rip shots, high-five people who don't really like him but do want to get on TV, and play Nudie Photo Hunt. There are no roses on these, so she doesn't get one, but clearly will eventually. Also, free Nudie Photo Hunt tip: your first move should always be looking to see if their nipple has been photoshopped out of one side. 

The Second One-On-One Date: JoJo

When the date card reads "Let's find love in the Windy City," the other girls try very hard to convince themselves that Warsaw is plenty windy, and that she will be staying right here, instead of going to Chicago, which is officially named The Windy City. 

They are wrong! Warsaw can obviously only support one date. So they head to Wrigley Field and have it all to themselves, which, admittedly, is pretty dope. At Wrigley they take a little BP (JoJo actually gets ahold of one on a dead pull and cranks it out to left), run the bases, and shoot steroids into their butts at Sammy Sosa's locker. After that, they lie in the outfield and talk about how she's nervous, and shouldn't bold back, and all that leads JoJo to determine that something huge has changed in their relationship.

At this point, JoJo is another lock for a rose. Which is weird because WE STILL KNOW NOTHING ABOUT JOJO AT ALL. Nothing. Most of these girls get boiled down to a lone defining characteristic -- twin, mom, virgin, Asian, over-drinker, alien lizardperson -- and so far, JoJo doesn't even have that. We know she lives in Dallas, although I can't remember her saying a thing about Texas or even seeming like she's from there. We also know she's in commercial real estate, but Ben has never once asked her about net absorption, REITs, or even sale-leasebacks. We know she's pretty but not whether she waltzed right into that plastic surgeon's office and said "give me the kinda-Michelle Rodriguez", or if that's all natural. And we might never. I feel like the bulk of the character development on this season was spent on girls who aren't even around anymore, leaving us with nothing more than an incredibly boring blob of woman-ness remaining. Which is all Ben could ever ask for. 

The Three-On-One Date

Becca, Caila, and Amanda are on the card for this one, which means that Emily will get her own solo date too. Go Emily! Those three take a limo to a farm that Ben did not grow up on, because farms represent middle America to the Bachelor producers, where they fly a kite and do sit on planted hay bales.

Despite the rose-absence on the others, there will be one on this date, and the winner of said rose will get to spend the rest of the night with Ben. This is totally backwards as far as I'm concerned. The girl who gets the rose is free and clear to Hometowns next week, while the others are still up in the air. But we're well past the point of rewarding rose-winners with a dinner they will not be allowed to eat: shouldn't they get to go home all happy, while Ben puts in more time with the girls he still has to make a decision on? No, apparently that highly sensible approach is not how this works. 

After Becca tells Ben to cut her early if he's not feeling it, and Caila explains how she's always viewed herself as a small flowerless plant that typically grows in dense green clumps or mats, better known as moss, Ben gives the rose to Amanda because he feels the need to keep proving to the world that he doesn't hate children.  

Amanda's reward is the much lusted-after Native Advertising Date. Or maybe, just maybe, Ben actually loves McDonald's and their new all-day breakfast so much that he independently reasoned that he and Amanda should order and eat Egg McMuffins and fries (Fries with your breakfast?? What a world!!!) at 10pm, then work the drive-through at McDonald's for a night while asking everyone if they wanted breakfast or dinner while the rose sits next to an "All-Day Breakfast" sign. All that said, this really does make me want a Bacon Egg & Cheese Biscuit, so, good work Bachelor Strategic Partnerships Team.  

After that it's off to the Warsaw town carnival, where Amanda is forced to play silly games in full view of thousands of people who just want to touch Ben's hair. She deals with this all pretty gamely, but watching this date it's pretty obvious that she's either 1) extremely uncomfortable being thrown into this dirty mob scene, 2) has completely lost interest in this whole thing and Ben in general, or ideally, both. 

The Final One-On-One Date: Emily

In a twist that no logic will ever explain, Ben is taking Emily -- a full week shy of Hometowns -- to meet his mom and dad. Could Emily have fared better on this date? Good lord, absolutely. Let's get some choice quotes from her that surely will win over Ben's parents:

 

  • "Don't laugh: are those swans? Oh good, I love ducks!!"
  • "I've dreamed of being an NFL cheerleader as long as I can remember."
  • "I've always wanted to have kids really young."
  • "If I could sit around watching movies all day I'd be sooo happy."
  • "I hate vegetables." 
  • "I am so average at everything in life."

 


As they all talk, Mom puts on some good Midwestern Nice to provide some diplomacy, then tears her to shreds pretty cleanly when she's talking to Ben alone. It's completely sad that Ben needed to use his parents to make a decision on this girl and tell him what's obvious: that she's way too young and not ready for any of this. 

He absolutely should've used the 'rents to cut her too, because they definitely would've said something better than the speech he actually planned, which is "I just don't think I can see...you being my wife." What ever happened to sugar-coating with talk of how relationships with the other girls have just progressed faster and how he doesn't want to hurt her any more than he has to? Chris Harrison has the script for that speech in his Palm Pilot, son! Emily gets dropped off at the girls' house, and has a very weird few tearful minutes with the gang after telling them she's been cut, which never happens for obvious reasons. But maybe the only running car in town is at their house or something. 

This is yet another blow to the overall makeup of this girl group, since Emily clearly wore more than everyone else put together and will be taking it all with her. But also, she was basically the only interesting one left. Sure, she was all the things that got her cut -- too young, too ditzy, too unable to differentiate between waterfowl -- but she was also the only one who actually said anything close to sincere or authentic over the last few weeks, and the only one who seemed like a real person, even if on first glance she definitely registers as the fakest. I'll miss you, Emily: time to go back to being infinitely more lifeless around your sister because it makes Haley feel better about being completely boring. 

The Roses!

Ok, so going in, only Amanda is safe. Four girls remain for three Hometown Roses! Lauren B gets hers first, which was both obvious and also very obvious. JoJo grabs the second one, which was obviouser. So the decision remains: Becca or Caila? Virgin or person who keeps implying during this episode that she doesn't have any friends? 

Caila, it's you. Come and get your rose. Caila seems happy, enough. At first, Becca is furious with Ben for not cutting her ahead of time -- her Bachelor-veteran status and knowledge of how that stuff works clearly had her thinking she could ask to be spared a gut-wrenching rose ceremony -- but then eventually gives up and is just normal-sad. The possibility of The Virgin as a spinoff show is seeming realer and realer. 

Next Week

Hometowns!! Thank god. Just when this show stripped away everything interesting, unpredictable, ire-inspiring, and generally insane, it's time to put the pressure for all those things onto families who hate the idea of their daughters getting married on reality television. Which always works.

Sign up here for our daily Thrillist email, and get your fix of the best in food/drink/fun.

Ben Robinson is Thrillist's Editorial Director, and really does spend his Monday nights doing this. Follow him to hang out with Ames in Gstaad @BatchSlap.