The Bachelor, Episode 4 Recap: THEY MADE THE TWINS BATTLE EACH OTHER (giddily claps)

Anton Chekhov once said that if you start your reality dating television show by having two beautiful twins step out of a limousine simultaneously wearing identical outifits and yell “WE’RE TWINS!!!!!!!!!!,” by the end of the season they must fight each other for one man’s love. Monday night, The Bachelor gave us the inevitable, as Ben took twins Haley and Emily on a 2-on-1 date from which only one would return.

There are two types of twins in the world: Those that manage to interact with the world like separate human beings with different brains and bodies and stuff, and those who wear matching outfits, request to be roommates at college (and don’t even debunk the beds!) and can do coordinated dance routines. The twins on The Bachelor are, well, uh:

Yes, Haley and Emily are Weird Twins. While every other competitor on the show is listed alongside their occupation, Haley and Emily have “TWIN” listed under their name, as if they go down to the Twin Office, sit in Twin Cubicles and come home at the end of the day exhausted from Twin Work.

They work out on the same treadmill. No, not treadmills next to each other, the same treadmill, so they can both walk at the same speed:

I don’t blame twins who are like this. There is something about being not an older sibling, not a younger sibling, but an EXACTLY THE SAME AGE sibling that molds these relationships in a way the rest of us can understand.

No, I don’t blame Weird Twins, but I will still find them Weird. And I cackled with glee when The Bachelor intentionally drove a stake between two Weird Twins in the fight for one man’s heart for our amusement.

Monday’s episode brought Ben and the 12 or so girls remaining to Las Vegas, which is also Haley and Emily’s hometown. Ben surprises them at the end of the episode by saying he wants to spend the day with them. Will they go on an extravagant tour around their hometown? No, the producers already used up all the glitzy Vegas stuff, so this “date” is actually just a trip to their mom’s house.

We learn the Weird Twins have four dachshunds.

I’ve always thought people with multiple dogs should try different breeds with different personalities and demeanors. I guess this family believes having multiple versions of the same exact thing is fulfilling in its own unique way. Hmm.

Ben talks to the twins’ mom to learn about each sibling, discusses the difficulty, awkwardness, and confusion involved with dating two sisters simultaneously, and explains that to ensure he can have a strong relationship with one of the twins, he has to let the other go. He tells Haley she’s through, both twins cry, and we move on.

The show portrays this as the humane, genteel way to solve this situation. I’d like to point out that this dude just dumped a girl in front of her mom, then made out with her sister in the limo on the way back to their suite. Don’t worry, Haley! You can go pick up your bags at the hotel where you stay here in Las Vegas and go back to work at the Twin Office. I’ll be hooking up with your sister in Mexico.

The only thing that prevented this from being a perfect stretch of The Bachelor is that I actually had no idea which twin was which the entire time. The show never bothered to set up their personality differences, or even had them dress differently. (One of them had a splint on her thumb, the only identifying trait either way.) So it was hard to feel any way about which one went home. I guess the problem was the Twins were too good at being Twins.

Elsewhere on the show, Becca went on a 1-on-1 date with Ben to a wedding chapel, where Ben revealed he had gotten ordained as a minister and that they would be officiating a series of real people’s marriages.

Ahh, yes, what better testament to the sanctity of the relationships on The Bachelor than a place famously known for poorly thought out marriages. Becca and Ben are at the Little White Chapel, which is known for having a drive-thru window, and whose incredibly poorly proof-read website prominently advertises that it has married Brittney Spears (sic), Freddy Prince Jr. (sic), Sinead O’Connor (sic), Sylvester Stalone (COME ON), two of Mickey Rooney’s seven marriages, “Drummer for Cher” (???), and perhaps most beautifully, “Stone Cold & Steve Austin.” Guys! These aren’t grammar errors! How can I trust you to correctly write a name on a wedding license if you’re out here botching “Stallone!”

True story, though: We probably saw more lifelong weddings take place in this five-minute segment than in the entire 20-season run of The Bachelor thus far.

My favorite part of The Bachelor is the forced reaction to celebrity cameos. I will never forget the moment when on last season of The Bachelorette, Jared breathlessly told the cameras that The Cranberries were Kaitlyn’s favorite band. The Cranberries’ most popular song charted at No. 8 in the US when Kaitlyn was 7years old. Sure, Jared, they are her favorite band, and not just the best band available to play a song for cheap in a cathedral in Dublin at the moment The Bachelorette was filming there. THE CRANBERRY QUOTIENT will measure responses to The Bachelor’s many forced celebrity cameos.

Monday night, we got ventriloquist Terry Fator, who is organizing a talent show for the girls at his theater in Las Vegas!

Caila laughs and tells us of her lifelong love for Terry Fator.

Let’s take an excerpt from the Wikipedia page of Terry Fator, who rose to prominence in 2007 for winning Season 2 of America’s Got Talent when 24-year-old Caila was most likely 16.

So we’re left with one of three options:

1. Caila has a very generous description of when she “grew up.”

2. Caila is blatantly lying.

3. Caila is confusing Terry Fator with some more famous ventriloquist who was on TV when she was a kid.

Either way, ABC rolled with this as the best way to portray how thrilled everybody was to see Terry Fator. As producers of a reality show which also temporarily lofts people to fame for a brief window of time, perhaps they saw some irony in the faux-excitement of meeting a guy who won a show nine years ago. Perhaps they saw hope in the fact that Fator has turned that brief window of popularity into a real gig entertaining people at a real hotel in Vegas night in, night out. Most likely they were just thrilled somebody expressed excitement to see this dude, and ran with it, even if there’s no way it was true.

People saying someone is here “for the right/wrong reasons”: 0.

People saying they aren’t here to make friends: 0. Oh, we got sooooooo close, though.

With drunk superhero Lace gone, Olivia is far and away the star of The Bachelor.

Yeah, there were twins and stuff, but here is the main plot of Monday night’s episode:

- Olivia does sexy talent show.

- Olivia worries sexy talent show has harmed her chances with Ben.

- Olivia has a “panic attack” about harming her chances with Ben. (In real life, a panic attack is a terrifying thing that happens to people with chronic anxiety, often symptomized by dizziness, loss of breath, and heart palpitations. It can last hours. On The Bachelor, a panic attack is a girl saying “I’m having a panic attack!” and crying for a few minutes.)

- Olivia cuts off another girl to have a conversation with Ben to discuss her sexy talent show and make sure it hasn’t harmed her chances with Ben.

- Other girls get upset at Olivia for cutting off another girl’s conversation.

- Olivia worries her conversation with Ben has harmed her chances with Ben.

- Olivia cuts off another girl to have a conversation with Ben to have another conversation with Ben and make sure it hasn’t harmed her chances with Ben.

- Other girls get upset at Olivia for cutting off another girl’s conversation.

- Olivia cuts off another girl to have a final conversation with Ben.

- She’s not worried anymore!

Olivia’s name was the last one read on her date card and the last one read at the rose ceremony. You’re good at doing suspense, Bachelor, even if the outcome is obvious from the outset.

The best talent Lauren could come up with was “putting on a chicken costume and reading poorly reworded lyrics to “Old McDonald Had a Farm” off a cue card.

Lauren really seems to like being on camera, but is also untalented enough that she can’t even sing her rewritten lyrics to “Old McDonald” without reading them off a cue card. I’ll bet $50 she’s on another version Bachelor TV show.

Look, many of these girls don’t have talent. Only Rachel owned it. Her talent was walking off stage and coming back with balloon animals somebody else made:

You can go two ways in life: You can be unemployed and write “aspiring actress” or “former retail technician,” or you can ride in on a hoverboard with a big banner saying UNEMPLOYED under your name.

This girl got about 14 seconds of airtime this season, but I think she made the most of them. Ride off into the sunset on your hoverboard. You’re a jobless inspiration to us all.

Jubilee, a veteran who was born in Haiti and lost her entire birth family, has already lived two or three times more in her 24 years than Ben will in his entire life. And now she reveals SHE PLAYS THE CELLO. At one point, Ben tells Jubilee, “You’re complex.” She was fully entitled to yell back “AND YOU’RE SIMPLE AS HELL” and walk off the show and go home.

One of them is still on the show. Which? I know -- do you?

After taking Lauren B. in a biplane and taking Jubilee in a helicopter last week, Ben takes JoJo up in another helicopter and flies around Vegas with her. We get it, buddy. You have aviation options at your disposal. Tune in next week, when a hydrogen-filled dirigible with Ben and Caila inside explodes upon making contact with its docking mast!

Amber is done, making this the third time she’s been eliminated on a Bachelor-related show. You might think this is the end of the line for her, but I THINK SHE CAN FIND HER WAY ONTO ONE MORE OF THESE SHOWS. LET THE FREE BOOZE AND VACATION JOURNEY CONTINUE!

Ben describes Caila as a “sex panther” after they make out.

It all makes sense now. Ben is a guy who quotes Anchorman in 2016. Great. This season is going to end with Chris Harrison mentoring Ben as he struggles to pick who gets the final rose -- “Ben, do you really love lamp?”

Still the only contestant willing to drink beer, and I still respect it:

Update: I still have nothing to say about Lauren B.

Update: still has kids.

WHAT IS YOUR SMALL BUSINESS! JUST TELL US ALREADY!