The Bachelorette: Finger of Blame

This week, we're going to kick off with a Group Date featuring a selection of idiots getting matched up against the National Dodgeball League All-Stars, I guess, who have the steely-eyed glare of Navy SEALS although they're wearing ballerina tights and playing a game most people quit pre-puberty.  These roided-out Dodgeballers try to excise the pain and humiliation they felt as children by whipping balls at the hapless contestants until Chris Harrison mercifully steps in and stops the madness and divides the monkey-brained males into two dodgeball teams for some good old-fashioned dodgeball in a cage off the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.  The winners will, presumably, get something like more time with Des or something.  This is as boring as it sounds until the third and final game when BOOM Brooks goes down with a broken finger.  He is led away and put down, hopefully.  Oh no, wait.  We have hospital footage.  Brooks is in the Finger ICU apparently.  There is a team of doctors surrounding him. Brooks may not make it.

Go to the light, Brooks.  Let go of the pain.  You were too good for this world.

Cut to the Intercontinental Century City for the Dodgeball Victors Party.  Sadly, Brooks' finger death has cast a pall over the proceedings.  But Brad has the resolve to soldier on.  He has, it seems, a secret from his past that "has really haunted him."  IF IT'S JUST YOUR DAD LEAVING YOU, BRAD, WE'VE HEARD IT.  YAWN CITY.  No, wait, he has a three-year-old named "Maddox."  Why would that haunt you?  Is Maddox a ghost?  Not an actual three-year-old?  Is it a plastic baby dressed up to look like the Pitt-Jolie Maddox?  That would be haunting.  Wait, there's more.  Maddox's Mommy likes the booze and Brad didn't like that.  Why you gotta be stepping on her good time, Brad?  It's always Unhappy Hour around Brad.

Wait, is that James Mercer from the Shins? What's he doing on this show?

He whisks D. away to the rooftop helipad.  He was "glad to see her in her own skin today."  Not like the women he keeps in the basement at home!

HERE COMES BROOKS.  He has made it.  He will live, as it turns out.  He gets some makeout time for this, but the Shins' James Mercer gets the rose.  Then they get treated to a private concert by a dead-eyed chanteuse named Kate Earl or something, who slurs her way through a few horrible proto-songs while they dance listlessly, lulled into a near-hypnotic state by her monotone mumbling.

INT. BACHELORETTE HOUSE. THE NEXT DAY. Des is writing in a journal or something when the phone rings and WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT it's Chris Harrison.  He has some "bizarre news" and you better get over to the Monkey House pronto.  We learn that there's apparently a guy on this show named Brian or something who has a girlfriend named Stephanie and WHOOPS HERE SHE COMES and Brian forgot to break up with her apparently.  Stephanie seems a little shrill and has the overall mien of a Marina Girl who's been told they lost her reservation at Tipsy Pig.  Anyway, Brian or whoever the fuck he is is swiftly escorted out by the crew and the whole thing is so distressing it makes BRANDON cry.  Brandon is a fucking basket case who really should not have been cleared by the psych staff to be on this show.

Anyway, the whole thing just ruins the Solo Date with Kasey that day.  There's some kind of hanging on ropes on the side of a building and then rooftop windy pool situation, who cares.  Hey, what is up with the name "Kasey" with a "K"?  At some point in the late 80's was there some famous person named Kasey with a K that I missed?

Group Date slash Lone Ranger movie embedded advertising.  One of these stupid let's-do-movie-stunts things they do almost every season, sprinkled with advertising for the Armie Hammer-Johnny Depp BLOCKBUSTER that's coming this summer.  I'm sure it'll make a bazillion dollars or whatever, but really, Gore Verbinski, doing a tie-in with the Bachelorette reeks of desperation.  This is the territory of third-string J Anniston romantic comedies, not epic thrill-bores.  Anyway, Joan Pablo wins whatever kind of contest they're running here which is no surprise because he is JUAN PABLO and has a Spanish accent and is a former professional soccer player.  I bet JUAN PABLO is on this show because he has now had sex with every single woman in America and needs something else to do with his time.  They watch a screening of the movie with "the popcorns" and FUCKING TALK THROUGH THE WHOLE THING.

That night, by the campfire, Drilling Fluid Engineer must have tripled up on the Adderall because he is tweaked out of his skull and is licking his lips like a monitor lizard.  He begins hopping from rock to rock making guttural, screeching noises.  His brain is a fever storm of electrical activity.  Meanwhile, James' dad has a "cancer spot" and he wants to make sure Des is here for the right reasons!  WHOA MAN!  THAT'S NOT HOW WE DO!

Cut to the following day where we're having some kind of pool party for some reason and Ben goes off alone with her for a minute because he's a contestant on a dating show and is trying to advance his position on the show but this unaccountably makes the grown man named MIKEY enraged again.  MIKEY then riles up Michael G., who solemnly informs Ben that they will not be friends!  Mikey gathers up his GI Joes and his Star Wars action figures and makes sure Ben knows he will not be playing with them again.  Brandon starts crying.

Rose Ceremony!  Brooks looks moist and narcotized.  Cut this week are Brandon the Decompensater and Some Guy Named Dan.  Bradon awesomely says he got his "heart smashed by a hammer" and "once again, someone left me."  LINE FORMS RIGHT HERE, LADIES.