From Here To Virginity
Welcome to the Bahamas, everyone. It’s Week Seven and Becca begins the episode by assuring Grandma Chris that she still gets butterflies when she thinks about the guys. Good to know the spark is still there after all this time!
The first one-on-one date goes to Colton. With Colton out of the house, the men can finally, finally, after such a long wait, take a deep, deep dive into the subject everyone’s been waiting to probe into- the subject of Colton’s virginity. The men seem to think it’s pretty weird, and if the situation were reversed, they would consider it a deal breaker. Wills calls it a “huge responsibility to have”. Colton himself calls it a “roadblock”. I call it puzzling, but that’s just me.
Anyway, the producers are having a field day with this, sending Becca and Colton on a date to find “conch and more conch”. They’re “deep diving for conch”, they’re eating the “pistol” of the conch which is known to locals as "natural viagra". Essentially, they have a fever, and the only prescription is more conch (bell).
With the afternoon of double entendres seemingly behind them, they discuss the conch again at dinner with Colton saying, “ I kept pulling at it and it just kept coming out”.
Finally Colton tells Becca that he is a 26 year old virgin. Becca leaves the table for 2 hours.
Or.... it could have been editing. I'd love to know what Becca was really thinking when he told her. To find out, we’d have to dive at least 15ft down, past the Great Barrier of Reef of Minnesota Niceness, past the myriad conchs on the ocean floor, to discover the truth. In other words, we have no way of knowing. Girl's got a good poker face. But I would imagine she felt confused and maybe a bit disappointed. Or am I projecting? I don’t know- the whole thing makes no sense to me. Ultimately, of course, Colton can do whatever he wants. If he asked my advice I would simply say, “You know what Colton? Forget everybody else. You do you”.” And then he would smile back at me and say, “Yeah… that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Eventually Becca returns to the table and we get the full explanation. He says he was obsessed with football (ok?), and that it wasn’t a “marriage" thing but a “heart” thing. But Colton's also discussed how he was really in love with his last girlfriend and was broken hearted when she broke up with him, so I just don't know what to think. Anyone have Aly Raisman’s contact info? I’m sure she’d love to discuss this with me.
Colton also mentions how he wasn’t comfortable telling his teammates in the locker room about maintaining his V-card, and mentioned how difficult “locker room talk” could be. The second he said “locker room talk” I just started seeing red and my ears closed up. Can we collectively banish that idiom from the lexicon? It’s absurd. Anyway, Becca gives Colton the rose.
Back at the house, our sweet Blakey-boo is spinning out. Hopeful that he’ll get the second one-on-one date, he is crushed when Garrett receives it instead.
Becca greets Garrett on the beach with the classic two-legged jump-up. Becca’s a tall girl so I assume this is a great undertaking for everyone involved. I can’t like Garrett, but I’ve always struggled because he’s come off well on the show. Thankfully, this date seems to reveal the real Garrett. Perhaps underneath the bigoted Instagram likes, he’s really just…..not that bright. Can you believe it? Not excusing him for one second, just saying, it all makes a bit more sense. I’ve wracked my brain all season wondering, “what could he be thinking???” Perhaps the answer is, “not that much...”
Becca seems to be searching for the same thing I am, calling it “depth”. She asks Garrett how he’s feeling and he says he never gets “down and discouraged”. He says maybe the amount of times he has ever felt “down and discouraged” is “less than a handful, maybe two fingers”. Thanks for the visual breakdown of that, buddy. Also “down and discouraged” sounds like a Rodgers and Hammerstein lyric, not how you talk about your varied emotional states.
Anyway, they talk more at dinner and Garrett refers to his ex-wife as “hot-blooded”. Maybe Garrett is picking up where Jordan left off with the “is this a very impressive robot, or a very unimpressive human” style of vocabulary. In any case, Becca, (someone who felt good about potentially marrying Arie), finds “the depth” she was looking for in Garrett and and he gets the rose.
[Our show is rudely (for the second time now!) interrupted by a different kind of reality show. One quick thought- if we imagine that picking a Supreme Court justice is like giving out a rose, then perhaps we should give the rose to it’s rightful recipient- the guy with a FLOWER RELATED last name! Yes, I’m talking about Merrick GARLAND, and yes I’m done with my political coverage.]
Back to our program. Blake, who had been spinning out all episode, is finally able to catch his breath when he finds that he will have the next and final one-on-one-date of the week. He meets Becca for a “local” party on the beach and dances and makes out with Becca all day long. Becca says that she feels “most strongly” for Blake and the rest of the night is just this face over and over:
Blake shares his Sad (Scandalous) Story about his parent’s divorce and how the aftermath affected both his own family and the small town he grew up in. Blake tells Becca he loves her and Becca says that he’s “gonna make my heart burst” and asks him to say "I love you" again. She says she can “100% see a future with Blake” and that “my heart recognizes his heart”. Can we call this now? Why do we still have so many episodes to go? I love them together and I don’t want anything else to get in the way.
But… we still have several more weeks, and another date just for this episode- this time a three-on-one with Leo, Jason, and Wills. Obviously Leo goes home, but happy to say his curls looked great in the Bahamas. Dude knows how to condition. Best of luck to you, Leo. You’re sweet and you’ve got incredible hair.
The night portion brings the last convos with Jason and Wills. Wills tells Becca that she makes him believe in love again and so of course Becca sends him home. Jason is still in the running, despite the fact that he hasn’t told Becca that he loves her. WHICH IS TOTALLY FINE, BTW. I feel like the timeline of the L-word this season has been especially rushed. Typically hometowns is when the L-bombs start dropping, am I right? It feels NUTS that Jason, who’s been on ONE individual date with her would be ready to say “I love you”. But then again, why am I even bothering to make sense of this. This situation is not normal and these people are no longer capable of rational thought. That’s what they mean when they say that “the process is working".
Wills is “absolutely wrecked” by his dismissal, and I have a feeling there’s only one prescription for his sickness: more conch. I mean— a season on Bachelor In Paradise. Lucky for us, he's gonna get his medicine.