The Bachelor: This is now a slog

"The Special Two Day Bachelor Event continues," Chris Harrison cheerfully tells us.  TSTDBE is my Personal Circle of Dante's Inferno.  Instead of the usurers crouching on the burning sand, the Bachelor Recappers are forced to watch over and over again night after night and there's never a Rose Ceremony and Tierra keeps inventing new ways to fake injury and there's no alcohol.  Anyway, we're now in Canada.  Banff Canada.  BAMF.  Banff. Banff Canada.

Solo date with Ambiguously Ethnic Catherine.  She is taken to a glacial wasteland and left for dead.  No, she actually is abandoned there until Big Dumb Sean arrives in the tunneling machine from the original Total Recall.  This leads to some frolicking in the sub-zero blizzard and whatever.  I'm sure AEC is praying for some indoor activity, but night brings us to a fucking OUTDOOR CARRIAGE RIDE and then drinks in an Ice Castle that's made of ice and hypothermia.  AEC wants to get meaningful and tell us "why I am the way I am" and proceeds to tell us the story.  When she was 12, she was at summer camp.  This already sounds like a Friday the 13th installment.  She was walking down a narrow path in the woods.  Her best friend was walking ahead of her.  THEN.....JASON APPEARED AND SAWED HER FRIEND IN HALF WITH A CHAINSAW.  No, that's actually more plausible.  What really happened is a TREE FELL ON HER FRIEND AND KILLED HER.  The fuck.  This has shaped her entire life since and that's why she's looking for....I'm not sure exactly.  Somebody to walk ahead of her, I guess.  She gets the Traumatic Tree Falling rose.  TIMBERRRRRR.

Group Date at the Lake.  Lake Louise.  Why is Lake Louise that color.  Chemicals, I bet.  More canoeing!  One Arm Sarah must be psyched.  They get to the other shore and it's time to bikini up and Polar Bear Plunge into the freezing waters of Lake Louise.  Not everyone is psyched about this.  Drunk Lindsay's down, though!  Her permanent .08 BAC will ensure that she doesn't freeze up.  Selma's out.  AdopTee says it will make her emotionally vulnerable.  So would having coffee or boarding a bus, though, so no surprise there.  Anyway, everybody into Lake Chemical Peel and it's fine except for Tierra of course who immediately develops some hypothermia and is wrapped in foil and taken away by a team of medics hopefully to the middle rack of a preheated 450 degree oven.  Anyway, back at the hotel, treatment apparently involves a nose tube and a sandwich.

Sean comes to reward this shameless attention whore and tells her to miss the party tonight and GEE I WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN.

Night drinks.  Finally something indoors.  All the chicks who managed to survive the chilly waters of Lake Magnesium get some solo time.  Sarah decides to show him a bunch of childhood pix.  Dude, boring.  Wait on that shit, k?  BTW, her handicap isn't having one arm, it's that fucking stoner voice.  Project, damn you!  Diaphragm!  Of course T-Pain gets suited up and makes an appearance because she was faking, duh.  S makes a beeline for that shit but my girl Linds is already a couple of chardonnays in and breaks that shit up.  YOU GO LINDS.  Shockingly, Lesley and not T-Pain gets the rose.

Afterwards, Sean makes a special trip up to Chick Suite to dump Sarah personally.  I told you those baby pix were not a good idea, girlfriend!  Aww, she's very sad.  It's all gonna work for you, Sarah! 

Solo w/ Des.  We begin with some rappelling, like duh, there has yet to be any season of this show that didn't involve rappelling.  Blah blah blah, they make it to the bottom, picnic, giggling, they climb a tree, that fucking ad with the rock climbing and that banshee howling "SOMEBODY LEFT THE GATE OWWWWWWPENNNNNNNNNN" comes on.  It's time to fucking bury that ad.  Nighttime.  Teepee with indoor fire.  It's like having a date inside a chimney!  Des, as it turns out, has her own hardscrabble tale of growing up as a Poor and living in a tent and a trailer and it's very sad but it's not like a tree fell on her BFF or anything.  S and Des are perfect for each other because they are both just about as vapid and boring as each other.  She gets the Poverty Rose, which she sells for a block of cheese and a few crusts of bread.

Finally it's time for the Drinks Party.  Selma breaks her religious code of honor or whatever and kisses him.  Way to bring shame to your family!  Oh, yay, it's Drunk Lindsay's turn.  She's giggly-drunk tonight and when S asks her to tell him something about herself she says "My face is a mask of joy, but my soul is tortured by ten thousand lifetimes of pain. I am born and reborn into a dark universe."  Kidding!  She says, "I sleep naked!"  That's what she says.  Oh, Linds.  You are Human Mardi Gras Beads and I love you.  AdopTee appears and decides she hasn't gotten quite fucking weird enough yet, so she gives him a handkerchief and tells him to blindfold her for some bizarre Trust Ritual and starts crying about being abandoned and she needs WAY MORE THERAPY than this show will provide.  Her whole steez is "I'm a complete basket case and emotional head-on train collision and I will repeatedly demonstrate that to you but hey PICK ME LET'S GET MARRIED."  Somewhere there is a team of psychiatrists who can't wait to get their hands on her.

Rose Cer, finally.  GUARANTEE you T-Pain's not going anywhere.  OK, so 3 of them already have the hardware.  Drunk Linds gets the first one, yay!  AdopTee, because how can you kick her off after her crying jag?  Then Tierra, of course.  See ya, Daniella and Selma.  They cry appropriately and leave.

NEXT WEEK:  The tropical paradise of St. Croix for the usual diving-off-the-back-of-a-yacht and Tierra crying.  Fuck that bitch.