‘The Bachelor’ episode 2 recap: Corinne bares all, Danielle M. reveals a secret, Liz’s day of reckoning comes

I have a secret to tell you guys. You know how the website you’re currently reading is called SB Nation? Everyone knows that the “S” stands for Sports. But they think that the “B” stands for Blog, and they’re wrong. It doesn’t. It actually stands for Bachelor.

Before we dive into tonight’s episode, though, there are a two things I have to tell you. The first is that it’s the biggest night of the year for college football: Alabama and Clemson are playing each other for the national championship. I therefore feel a little foolish tweeting about Nick’s wife quest while these teams are questing for historic sports glory, but sometimes for art — and love — you have to make yourself vulnerable. I am here to recap this for The Right Reasons™.

The second thing I have to tell you is that I’m in New York — a place sometimes referred to as “the city that never sleeps,” or “Taylor Swift’s marketing strategy,” or “the city where that rat dragged a piece of pizza down the subway stairs that one time” — and I’ll be doing a Facebook Live show tomorrow at 11 a.m. ET with Liz Plank of Vox and Rebecca Jennings of Racked to recap what I’m sure will be an exciting episode. Please watch, please clap, etc.

As a result, I’m watching the show tonight in a hotel room in SoHo. The hotel smells like Abercrombie & Fitch and I am very hungry, but the show is about to start, so I can’t order room service until the first commercial.

LET’S DO THIS!

We open with a shot of Chris Harrison wearing a chambray shirt, sleeves rolled up to a cool and casual three-quarter length. He congratulates the women for being there. This dude has the easiest job in the world: Show up for three minutes per episode, wear a shirt, and don’t mess up the two sentences you’re supposed to say.

What time is it there? It looks like it’s morning, but all the women seem very drunk already. I mean, I would be too, if my end-game were to marry Nick “Handsome Software Salesman” Viall, but that’s what these ladies supposedly desire.

The first group date is something out of a horror movie: They pile into these ugly blue convertibles and drive to another mansion in Los Angeles, where they have to take fake wedding pictures with Nick. It’s the most heteronormative shit imaginable. The producers must’ve been like, “You know what? Let’s just lean in and give America what it wants.” I’m breaking out in hives watching them pull dresses off the rack.

The only good thing about this date is the photographer, who looks like James Franco doing his best impression of John Lennon impersonating Siegfried and Roy on vacation in the Hamptons.

The women have to wear different versions of bridal gowns (the note I write myself is: “they look like zombie idiot brides”). Poor Alexis — you might remember her as the woman who showed up in a shark suit last week and insisted that she was a dolphin — is forced to wear a gown with a fake pregnancy tummy for a “shotgun wedding”-themed shoot. It’s hard being The Funny One.

Corinne — the 24-year-old who still has a nanny and also millions of dollars — is being a D-I-V-A. She’s already established herself as this season’s villain, and she’s living up to it as she brags about kissing Nick first in front of the other girls while she parades around in a veil and a bridal bikini (words that, had you asked me in college, I didn’t think I’d ever get paid to type).

Brittany one-ups her, however, as some maniacal producer has decided that she will wear nothing but a bikini bottom made of leaves. They strap hair extensions on her to cover her boobs. Corinne is pissed because she wants to be The Naked One. These women are mainlining champagne.

We cut to commercial, so I quickly order some room service. I’m so nervous about missing a moment of the show that I don’t look at the prices and just go with a salad and some tuna appetizer thing. All these naked women have made me think twice about getting the burger.

We’re back! Nick comes out in a leaf Speedo to match Brittany’s, and he has a massive shorts tan. All the women have moved on from champagne to Moscow Mules. Corinne is death-staring Nick and Brittany. I bet she’s going to take her top off soon.

YAHTZEE! She does. Nick holds her boobs while James Franco doing his best impression of John Lennon impersonating Siegfried and Roy on vacation in the Hamptons takes their picture. Corinne gets to take more photos with Nick as a reward for going for it.

Major takeaway: Lotta boobs tonight.

I don’t know what happened for the first two minutes of the evening group date, because my room service came and I had a heart attack when I realized how much I accidentally spent for such a small and disappointing amount of food. Look at this shitty dinner:

It cost me $67 dollars. I hear one of the women on TV say something like, “Oh, my God, I’d kill myself,” and I’m like, “I JUST MIGHT!”

But anyway, they’re at some rooftop bar, and they’re all still drinking. I don’t know how. Maybe I’m just old now, but I can either day drink or evening drink. I’m shocked these women are still standing.

Except that Corinne isn’t. She’s definitely blacked out. She says she might be in love with Nick. She keeps stealing women away from him, getting mad when they “reinterupt” her, and then yelling at them to “be there for Nick and nobody else!” It’s really quality television.

Nick and Taylor, who is 23 years old and has her masters from Johns Hopkins in psychiatry already and yet somehow still thought going on this show was a good idea, manage to have the most banal conversation I’ve ever heard.

“You know what I’ve noticed about you?” she says. “You get a thought and go with it. It’s super attractive, it’s super cute.”

“It’s just who I am, I suppose,” Nick says, smiling sideways at her.

I’m about to throw my computer out of this hotel window. That’s not attractive or cute, Taylor, that’s called HAVING A FUCKING CONVERSATION! I’m worried about Johns Hopkins’ psychiatry program.

I think Nick really wants to have sex with Corinne, because he gives her the immunity rose, which is like the Bachelor equivalent of a heart-worm pill for dogs: It helps you stick around longer.

Danielle M., the nurse who saves babies lives, gets to go on a one-on-one date with Nick.

“I’m glad my name was on that date card,” says Danielle M.

“I’m glad you’re glad,” says Nick V.

“I think I can physically feel my IQ lowering,” says Charlotte W.

This date is boring, but TL;DR: They can’t believe it when the helicopter pilot successfully lands the helicopter on top of a yacht, even though landing the helicopter on the yacht is the helicopter pilot’s one job. Then they make out in the yacht’s hot tub. I’ll tell you this much: If Danielle doesn’t win this whole thing, it’s because she was on a boat before the season finale, much like Odell Beckham Jr. and the New York Giants.

The tuna thing I ordered tastes like anti-freeze, so I can’t eat it. I’ll eat anything, and I will not eat this. The salad was so small. I’m starving. I can’t help myself — I open a bag of nuts, some peanut M&Ms, and a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips from the mini bar.

Here is a picture of 3,000 dollars:

This date is so boring that we cut back to Liz at the house, who is telling Christen that she had sex with Nick at Jade and Tanner’s wedding months before the show started. Liz says “Jade and Tanner’s wedding” so often that I’ve decided that is going to be the name of my new band. We’ll open for the Handsome Software Salesmen and then get in a huge brawl in the parking lot after the show when I drunkenly yell at some audience members that “WE’RE NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS!”

Christen is like I WON’T TELL and we’re all like suuure you won’t.

Back to Danielle M.: She tells Nick that her fiancé passed away five years ago from a drug overdose. She didn’t even know he was addicted, but she’s the one who found him dead. This is very sad. I don’t have any jokes about this. Danielle M. is very soft-spoken, this is tragic and I feel bad for her.

Danielle M. and Nick make out on a ferris wheel.

PLOT TWIST: One of my best friends just sent me this music video. Danielle M. is the star.

WHAT IF SHE’S ONLY THERE TO GET MORE STARRING ROLES IN MUSIC VIDEOS?

Nick takes the women to the Museum of Broken Relationships, which is apparently a real thing, and a place I never want to go. It’s like getting your wisdom teeth out: Once you’ve lived it, you don’t really want to go back to look at your extracted teeth under glass at the dentist’s office.

All the women have to pretend to break up with Nick as a part of some whacked-out performance art piece. Josephine gets really into it and slaps him. No one is really that funny, which is too bad, because this is a great opportunity for people to riff.

And then Liz takes the stage (which is, in the this case, a door stoop at the Museum of Broken Relationships, aka Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell) and doesn’t even try to be funny. She decides it’s time to bare her soul. Christen is losing her freaking mind because she thinks Liz is about to spill the beans, but Liz’s speech to Nick — whom she has decided is avoiding her, because he is — is veiled enough that the other women don’t realize these two have already seen each other naked.

Liz wears a shawl while she holds this stupid little notebook that she’s written her speech in and I experience the worst case of second-hand embarrassment I’ve had since JoJo and Alex made out on top of a lying-down horse on the last season of The Bachelorette.

I feel really sick from all the expensive minibar peanut M&Ms I ate. Why did I eat so many expensive peanut M&Ms?

The women are now walking up to the door of an establishment wearing heels. The Russian one, Kristina, is like, “Is this an empty club just for us?!”

It is, and OH SHIT, Liz and Nick go into a separate room! It’s going down, folks! Christen somehow hasn’t told anyone else about their history yet, which is astonishing, because if Liz had told me that, my first impulse would’ve been to tell Corinne and watch her light the entire mansion on fire, ending the season and reuniting me with my phone.

Nick is not into Liz. To the camera, he’s like: I hope she didn’t say anything to the other women. And it’s like: This isn’t your narrative to own, man! But I mean, I do get that probably sucks to have someone who rejected you surprise you on your reality show when you’re just trying to increase your social media following find true love.

“This is real,” Nick says to her, and I don’t know what he’s referring to, but whatever. “As far as us having a past, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, right? We’re two adults who had a fun night — things got a little crazy.”

Record scratch: Nick keeps telling America how “crazy” his night with Liz was. But she didn’t give him her number. And two women have chosen other men over him after having sex with him. So I’m going to go ahead and say he’s a guy who’s mostly into missionary and whispers “hey” after the whole thing is over, which doesn’t actually take that long.

OK, back to the show: Nick is like, why didn’t you pursue a relationship with me? And Liz is like why didn’t YOU pursue a relationship with ME? And I’m like — you guys clearly don’t like each other.

I am, however, reminded of that time Nick asked Andi, on After the Final Rose once she’d rejected him: “Why did you make love to me if you weren’t in love with me?”

Does Nick have some complex where he can’t seem to understand that sometimes women have sex with people they don’t love? Sorry, dude, but, newsflash: It happens. Move on dot org.

Nick sends Liz home because she’s clearly not there for The Right Reasons™.