The Bachelorette Episode 5 recap: What was absolute garbage last night, and where were the bright spots?

Hey gang, welcome back to Hell, aka the recent episodes of The Bachelorette. This week, we’re going to do things a little bit differently, because I’m fed up that the producers are still making one guy’s flaming racism a main storyline.

In case you missed it, we left off primed for a two-on-one date between Lee and Kenny, from which only one man can return. Oh, and as though that weren’t bad enough in and of itself, they’re dragging this out for two nights. There’s an episode tomorrow, too, which is, for a Bachelorette beat writer, like having two back-to-back exams in college and but without Cheetos from the library’s vending machines to get you through.

Last week I wrote about how this show stopped being fun. I debated not writing about it at all anymore, to be honest, because a) last week made me want to stop watching, b) I have only so much to say about how slimy it is, and c) I said it all here. I have a feeling that until Lee and his Richard Spencer haircut get sent home, I’ll just keep writing some version of that over and over, with varying degrees of disgust.

However, I’m hoping that once this Lee B.S. is done, the show will get back to being what it’s supposed to be: a dumb (as opposed to sinister), Monday night diversion. In the meantime, I’m going to write about this program by scoring it like a sports game. I’ll be awarding an arbitrary number of points to Team Garbage and Team Bright Spots, so that at the end of this we can see whether there was anything worth watching at all.

Ugh, Kenny and Lee are talking on the porch. Kenny’s trying to stay calm. Lee says, “I respect how [bleeping] calm you are, because you couldn’t do that the other night.” Lee is egging Kenny on, asking if he wants to get violent, twisting his words, gas-lighting him. I hate this. Lee calls Kenny a stack of bleeding muscle.

+1,800 for Team Garbage.

But then Kenny says this about Lee when Lee eventually backs down: “See what a b**** does when a b**** is confronted?”

+1,800 for Team Bright Spot.

Bryan and Rachel are making out in a sailboat tied to a dock. It’s reminds me of kids making out in parked cars behind the high school gym, but instead of a car it’s a boat, and instead of high school it’s a reality show, and instead of kids it’s two humans over 30.

Bryan’s smarmy, smooth voice sounds like that of a late night DJ on a soft rock station. He says to Rachel, “So if you think I’m too good to be true for you, and I think you’re too good to be true for me, then there’s a very simple solution: I just think we’re a perfect match.”

Someone call Shakespeare and tell him there’s a new all-time great wordsmith coming for his throne!

This is not a point for Team Bright Spot, but it’s not a point for Team Garbage either. It’s more a point for Team Goober, so let’s go ahead and add that to the mix.

+900 for Team Goober.

The last one-on-one date in South Carolina goes to Jack Stone, the lawyer who, for some reason, is the first person in the history of The Bachelorette to get a last name rather than just an initial.

I thought Bryan was a tool. But Jack Stone is giving him a run for his money from the get-go, when he says, from the perch of the horse-drawn carriage, “I like to joke, and if someone can’t take a joke, and joke back, it’s boring.”

Jack Stone, buddy, pal, my friend: if you have to say it, it probably isn’t true. This schmuck has definitely texted one of his friends before and been like, “Why do nice guys always finish last?”

Rachel and Jack Stone go to this bar called Shuckin’ and Shaggin’, where they eat oysters and do a dance called shagging. Which is not, as Austin Powers would lead you to believe, another word for having sex. Rachel doesn’t seem to be having much fun. Jack Stone gets pretty creepy on the boardwalk afterwards.

“So it was really hard to focus in there,” Jack Stone says. “Did you not notice? I kept staring at you? You looked amazing. You looked so pretty in there.”

Then he tries to kiss Rachel and Rachel is like “Eh, I’m sick, you don’t want to kiss me,” and he’s like, no I do, and she’s like, no you don’t, and then he kind of pecks her on the lips and I AM DYING. I couldn’t be experiencing more second-hand embarrassment if I were actually the second hand on Jack Stone’s body.

Note: If you’ve ever been on an incredibly uncomfortable date and don’t want to relive it, skip this, because I guarantee it will bring those memories flooding back. After watching and writing this I can’t stop thinking about this one date I went on where the conversation was the romantic equivalent of pulling teeth, so I lied and said that my roommate called to tell me my dishwasher broke. And I said I had to leave to “fix my dishwasher.” I might be a jerk.

Jack Stone tells the camera he’s falling in love with Rachel, which is strange because I think they’ve had maybe one (1) conversation before today. She looks as though she’d like to fall into the void she’s wishing would open up underneath the table.

Rachel says all the right things though, about how he’s great on paper, and how she’s hoping there’s some chemistry there. I find it hard to believe she thinks there could be after she looked physically repulsed when he tried to kiss her that afternoon, but I guess she’s all in on Bachelorette-speak.

It becomes very clear very quickly that there is no chemistry to be found when Jack Stone starts getting super weird. This, I have to say, is quality TV. I’m laughing pretty hard as Jack Stone says, “I love parents,” and, “Is your dad funny? I feel like I get him.” Rachel’s like “You don’t know my dad?” And Jack Stone’s like:

Which is what serial killers say before they murder you. I’m pretty sure Jack Stone is blacked out; I think that’s what’s going on. I don’t know how many drinks he had at Shuckin’ and Shaggin’, but he can barely string sentences together, and has trouble processing it when Rachel sends him home from the date for being the Mayor of Sketchyville.

I don’t know how to score this. I think we might be back to Team Goober. And I think it’s, like, +90,000.

Lee is trying to get Will to be on his side about the whole Kenny thing. And Will is like, “When you call someone aggressive, there is a long-standing tradition in this country of regarding black men in America as aggressive to justify a lot of other things.”

Lee goes on a rant about how he doesn’t respect it when people play the race card, and I want to put my foot through the TV.

+320,984 points for Team Garbage.

We know Lee won’t go home because they’ve been teasing the two-on-one date with him and Kenny forever. My question is: Are the producers making Rachel keep him around? Is she OK with this? She can’t LIKE him. Ugh.

+10,000 points for Team Garbage.

+900 points for Team Bright Spot, because Iggy finally got sent home.

I don’t know why, but for the past two seasons we keep going to the arctic. Nick took his ladies to Finland, and now Rachel’s taking her gents to Norway. Nothing against either of these countries: They both seem great. But whatever happened to romantic beach escapes? One of the producer’s dads must owe Santa Claus a ton of money and this is how they’re working through the debt.

Rachel and Bryan go on the first one-on-one date in Norway, which is funny, because she hated Jack Stone and loves Bryan and they look exactly the same. Actually, they both look just like Joel Osteen, as Clinton Yates of The Undefeated pointed out. And then Jeff Weiner of the Orlando Sentinal made this:

Anyway, Rachel and Bryan-Jack-Joel go to this huge-ass ski jump left over from the Olympics (I think, I don’t know, kind of made that up) and repel down it. Rachel is scared.

“I think I’m more afraid to let go physically rather than emotionally, but today I’m afraid to let go physically,” says Rachel, and it’s the most impressive Bachelorette platitude I’ve ever heard.

They make out in mid-air; Bryan makes these soft humming sounds while they kiss and I feel physically ill.

Rachel and Bryan have a ton of chemistry, I’ll admit, so I think she just wants to seriously smooch (wink, wink) him. She wonders why Bryan is 37 and still single if he’s so great, and I’m like, hey, listen, let’s not assume people aren’t dateable just because they’re not already spoken for. I say this out loud to the pint of Ben & Jerry’s in my lap and the house plant near the TV that I have named Steven.

Rachel is being honest about not being able to believe it when good things happen to her when it comes to relationships. She says she doesn’t believe men when they say nice things, and that she has trouble taking compliments, because she’s guarded and skeptical. I relate to this, and would imagine many other women probably can too, so this is a big win for Team Bright Spot.

But then Bryan’s like yeah I used to be skinny and had acne and no one liked me but then I got super hot when I was a senior in high school. LOL. Who among us, Bryan with a Y?

Anyway I guess they had a nice date, Bryan’s fine, whatever, who cares. I don’t know why he creeps me out so much. He just does. He tells Rachel he loves her.

Let’s give Team Bright Spot +20,000 for this date because the bar is so low.

So the guys go play handball. Alex the Russian dude calls the Norwegians vikings, and the Norwegian handball coach says, “Handball is life.”

Peter is so clearly going to win this whole thing — he and Rachel make out (she straddles him!) in a hot tub at the night portion of the date. They walk back into the main room three and a half hours later the way two college kids who had sex all night walk into the dining hall in the morning and have to face all their friends.

But Rachel gives Will the Immunity Rose because if she gave Peter the Immunity Rose everyone would be like, “Yeah, I’ll pack my bags and leave because there’s no way I can catch up to how much Rachel likes Peter.”

There is, however, this really funny moment when Josiah tells Rachel, “You are the woman for me. The woman of my dreams. I just want to grow old with you and I really, really mean that, Rachel.”

Rachel is like “Hey, the thing is, you don’t ask me questions about myself.”

Josiah says, “Right. You’re so perceptive.”

He leaves the conversation being like, “Nailed it!” and she literally tells the camera: “Do I question it? Of course. He sounds disingenuous. He likes the idea of me than rather than really getting to know who Rachel is.”

I love how this probably happens all the time with dudes. Where a woman leaves a date being like, “Eh, he seems up his own ass and self-involved, and he’s on his group text with his friends being like ‘She loves me, bro, I killed it, we’re totally going to bone.’”

Team Bright Spot gets points because Rachel dunked on Josiah behind his back. +1,825

This is where stuff gets bad again. I’m still so appalled by how long this storyline has gone on.

I have a hard time believing Rachel doesn’t see exactly what’s happening. It’s not about her relationships with them at this point, these guys have become a side show. Yes, that’s what the two-on-one date always becomes — no one who goes on it ever makes it very far after. But this is the grossest yet.

The whole back-and-forth on the date is fairly extensive, but, in short: Kenny tells Rachel he isn’t aggressive the way Lee says he is, and then Lee lies and says that Kenny tried to pull him out of a van one time. Rachel says she believes Kenny.

This reminds me a lot of WWE. Kenny’s a wrestler. He’s the face. Lee is so one-dimensionally evil that I don’t know whether this is scripted; he’s the quintessential heel. The producers have set it up so the two of them just sit there talking trash to each other for a while, and Rachel isn’t there. I don’t know where else she could be if not told specifically to hang back, considering they just flew into the middle of nowhere on a helicopter.

Whether this is truly real or exaggerated, it doesn’t matter. We’re all being manipulated with Lee’s racism for ratings, and it’s and ugly and I wish they hadn’t gone this shameful route. No amount of knowing or not knowing absolves this plot-line of it’s terribleness.

Tomorrow won’t be any better — Kenny bleeds from the eye and weeps, and Rachel cries a lot. I am dreading this with every fiber of my being.

Team Garbage points: +2,890,267

Team Garbage: 3,223,051

Team Bright Spots: 24,525

Team Goober: 181,800

Welp, Team Garbage won tonight by a landslide and I can’t imagine tomorrow will be any better! Classic 2017 for ya.