The BatchSlap Bachelor Recap: Make Eye Contact With Lace or DIE!!

ABC/Rick Rowell
ABC/Rick Rowell

Hello, new friends. Welcome to your one and only home for the next 10 weeks. This is BatchSlap, a formidable Bachelor recap internet product Chris Harrison once called “huh?” For years, BatchSlap was here. Now, BatchSlap is here. Come back every week of this Bachelor season, and ye shall be rewarded with ever more BatchSlap.

For the first episode of every season, I avoid chronicling the plot of the show, because there isn't one. Instead, I provide a brutally critical assessment of people based on 1 to 4 minutes of screen time. As always, ONLY the girls who got a rose get run down here, which means I don't have anything to say about the girl who brought the horse, except that I simply canter believe she didn't make it. Let's go!

THE GUYS

Chris Harrison

The only reality TV host to ever bang Justin Bieber’s mom has a new look this season: dark-on-dark pinstriped suit, and a shimmering (still skinny, thank god) tie. He looks like a pit boss at the second best casino/resort in Reno.

Ben

Just when you thought Ben couldn't get any more boring, they force him to carry two hours of network television programming on the weekly, and reveal he's a software salesman. This guy could sell Windows 95 to a millennial eskimo wearing ketchup-covered gloves, itellya! We get some footage of him shooting baskets at the Indiana farmhouse he grew up in, and he's honestly got a very nice form to the jumper. I like this until he later goes to his parents' actual house, which is a very non-farm condo with a pontoon boat docked behind it, and we’re left to wonder whose dusty backyard Ben snuck into, to prove he’s from a place with wholesome farms.

In preparation to be sexy, they gave him a haircut that does a very fine job of making it look like he has a toupee, which is one I’ve never seen before. I guess the idea is trick the ladies into thinking you’re wearing a rug, and when they go to grab it right when the onion rings come out at dinner, as all women love to do, he’s all, “Nope! It’s real yo!!” and the girl becomes even more impressed with him.

Some other things we learn about Ben:

  • He had his first kiss at a local movie theater, and then the chick smartly broke up with him that very night.
  • He can palm two basketballs at once and hold them out sideways like he was the naked guy on the Voyager space probe, except NASA wanted to let the aliens know about basketball. Which would’ve made sense, because, Space Jam.
  • He’s looking for someone who believes in small town values. Well let me tell you, one time I got a pair of insulated work gloves at a Blain’s Farm & Fleet in Grand Island, Nebraska, for $2.99. $2.99!! Despite this value, I will not marry Ben.
  • He continues to fear he is unlovable, which seems to have quite a bit of grounding.
  • He leans against trees mad good.

THE GIRLS

Amanda

She might be the best looking of the bunch, certainly top 4, but she also has 1) a voice that sounds like a tiny little trumpet mute got shoved into her larynx, and 2) two kids. She hasn’t dated anyone since she got divorced, but now she’s going to: for the kids! She’s going to go out and get hammered at Ruby Tuesday and give dudes OTPHJs in her Kia Optima. For the kids.

Caila

Like Ben, she also sells software! Back-office processing software, the sexiest of all software. She also met her former bf on a plane, then saw him on the street in Boston and decided it was fate, and started dating him. Then she saw Ben on The Bachelorette, thought he was hot enough to overcome being incredibly boring, decided THAT was fate even though 7.3 billion people also had the opportunity to see him on The Bachelorette, and broke up with her first fate-bf to come on this show. If this works out, you’d better make sure she doesn’t watch any Christopher Mintz-Plasse movies, Bennyboy!!

Haleynemily

The Twins. They appear to be made of a slightly more lifelike porcelain, and do EVERYTHING together: they talk at the same time, they can do the hand-clap thing that six-year-olds at camp who don’t even have the same DNA can do too, and they go to the same boob surgeon. This show is turning into a light beer commercial. Wazzzzzzzuppppppp, ladies!!!

ABC/Rick Rowell

Lace

The bad one who will drive 2/3 of the total plot for the season always reveals herself in the first episode, and Lace keeps true to that. She’s got just the total villain package here. She’s hot, knows she’s hot, tells everyone she’s hot, and asks the other girls if her boobs look hot. She’s the heaviest drinker of the bunch, which generally means you’re gone on the first night, and keeps trying to kiss Ben. Even after he says “don’t kiss me please, I’m boring,” she keeps bouncing back for smooch-attempts like one of those oval-ish blowup dolls you punch, and then rock back to you due to sand in its base or some shit. She gets the final rose, then yells at Ben because he didn’t make eye contact with her. Also, she’s got a simply enormous mouth. If the Joker was born with his Joker mouth, and then got surgery from that same guy who gave him his Joker mouth after he fell in the acid, you’d have Lace’s mouth.

Jami

She’s Canadian! Which means she knows Kaitlyn. Seriously, she knows Kaitlyn! She also knows Bryan Adams. Probably.

Jackie

Jackie is a gerontologist, which, it turns out, is the study of the social, psychological, cognitive, and biological aspects of aging. Which means she had the perfect opportunity to get out of that limo and say “I want to grow old together…so I can observe your gradual deterioration and use the findings in a groundbreaking research paper.” But, she didn’t. What even IS seduction these days, people???

Jennifer

This one claims to be a small business owner, which is clearly a lie, as she’s 5' 7'', and the average height for American women is 5' 3.75". Now, in the Netherlands, where the women are abnormally tall, she’d be an average height business owner. Denmark and Belgium, too. Here, she’s definitely a tall business owner. Despite the lies, she does say some witty stuff, so we might have something here.

Olivia

Olivia is everything: First Impression Rose Winner, potential Bachelor Winner, and potential Most Evil Bitch of Them All, Because She’s Way Less Transparent About It Than Lace, which actually works really well, since you can see right through lace. She’s a news anchor in Austin, and is therefore almost too perfectly trained for this very moment: she adorably claims to be nervous but clearly isn’t, talks about how the best part of her job was “having access to the community” and giving back, and loves picking a spot on the map and just GOING, man. She’s definitely hot, and knows Ben knows that. The weird thing is that nobody is talking about how her eyes make it seem like she’s actually a dangerous alien lizard that just has the skin of a human on the outside of her, which somehow manages to conceal her alien lizard tail.

ABC/Rick Rowell

Jojo

Every so often, a person decides that showing up to meet a crush in a gigantic unicorn mask will be a wise decision. Rarely are they are correct. Jojo just ruined the odds for basically everyone else. She’s also a real estate developer from Dallas. Of all the lies these girls tell, this I believe. I used to write for a real estate magazine, and I can personally attest that literally every single person in Dallas is a real estate developer.

X-Men, Fox

Jubilee

Jubilee is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, most commonly in association with the X-Men. She is a mutant with the superhuman power to generate pyrotechnic energy plasmoids from her hands. A teenage "mall rat," she was the X-Men's youngest member in the early 1990s, often playing a sidekick role.. Also, she’s a war vet, and she’s on a mission to win Ben’s heart — and there will be casualties along the way, she claims! When she kills someone with her pyrotechnic energy plasmoids, is that admissible evidence?

LB

My lone note on LB: my gf saying “ooooh, she’s got a derriere on her!” She is not wrong.

Lauren B

Is somehow not LB. She’s a flight attendant, and adores her job because she loves meeting new people. New people who ring the call button, and she has to remind that for the fifth time, she doesn’t have Clamato, and please don’t ring the call button while the seat belt sign is illuminated, Mr. Brian Dennehey.

Lauren H

Kindergarten teacher Lauren H caught a bouquet at a wedding the week before she came on the show, so of course she brought it throws and it at Ben, who catches it -- not because he wants to marry her, but because he can palm two basketballs at once, dammit.

Becca The Virgin

You remember Becca. Poor, poor Becca: she came onto Farmer Chris’s season never having dated anyone, and also never having become not a virgin, and was the very picture of innocence -- the kind who has a story like “someone else signed me up for the show…I don’t even own a TV! Or hell, condoms!! Whoops, sorry for saying ‘hell’.” Now, she’s very firmly stuck in the Bachelor Industrial Complex Feedback Loop, and will be on one of these shows literally forever, chasing she knows not what.

Amber

Another re-tread! Amber was on Bachelor in Paradise. She did things there. Who cares. Clearly not me.

Leah

She brought a football! She hikes him the ball through her dress! She says “I knew you were a catch!” Everyone is throwing stuff at this dude!

<p>ABC/Rick Rowell</p>

Mandi

Oh Mandi! You came with a rose on your head, and Ben didn’t send you away. Oh Mandi! You gave Ben a full periodontal exam, and he didn’t send you away. Oh Mandi! You look like a cross between Heather Graham and Billy Crystal’s wife from Princess Bride, and Ben didn’t send you away. Oh Mandi!

ABC

Sam

She’s a lawyer. She asks an important question: “boxers or legal briefs?” Ben is so boring that he dislikes boxers to the extent that he chooses legal briefs. She’s a lawyer.

ABC/Rick Rowell

Rachel

To be creative AND of the moment, she rolls in on one of those hoverboard segway things, and is also unemployed! How??? I would hire anyone with a hoverboard.

ABC

Shushanna

Форсаж ее любимый фильм . Она думает, что они созданы друг для друга . Она хочет Бен , чтобы обнять ее . Она является математиком. Она не говорит по-английски. Она только говорит на русском . Я действительно надеюсь, что она никогда не говорит по-английски . Бен сократить полдюжины девушек, которые говорят по-английски сделать . Это происходит - козел ел до волка. *translation: Google Translate
 

Coming This Season

Cliffs! Boats! Jumping off cliffs! Jumping off boats! Ben making out with girls in bras! Biplanes! Hot air balloons! No helicopters somehow! Everyone telling Ben they’re in love with him! Double dates with Haleynemily! Lace punching people! The newscaster turning into a lying bitch who manages to convince Ben she’s the victim! Chris Harrison dramatically intoning “that would absolutely change everything”! Ben crying! Not me, that’s ridiculous.

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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.