The Golden Bachelor, ep 3

I have real earnestness problem with this season. It’s easy to make fun of Adderall-addled 24-year-olds who want to get wasted on Cuervo margs and dry hump a barely functional Axe body spray model, but these ladies are so old and so sweet that it’s hard to pull it off without looking like an asshole. Will this stop me? No. I have never been afraid of looking like an asshole and I won’t start now. It is my Brand.

The ladies are scheming in their Bachelor mansion slash Active Senior Lifestyle Center and some of them are forming an “alliance” like this is Survivor and what good is an alliance on this show? Jesse shows up and announces a group date and it’s for EVERYONE and it’s the worst possible outcome, a TALENT SHOW. Horrifyingly, this is not just for Gerry’s enjoyment but for a LARGE AUDIENCE at some place called “Canyon Club” which I assume is not the brewery in Moraga or the Laguna Beach “facility for Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon meetings” and definitely not the “all men’s destination resort in Palm Springs.”

Anyway, everyone frets that they “have no talent” and then Sandra comes out and admittedly tells a five thousand year old joke but works the stage like she’s used to the big room at the Sands opening for Sammy Davis Jr. Ellen does a sex ed bit that involves getting the Canyon Club to say “vagina,” which, good for Ellen. Then Leslie makes that seem absolutely Puritan by doing a lap dance that is probably already making the rounds on GILF sites. But the producers focus on Joan, who writes and recites a truly awful poem with an AA BB CC rhyme scheme but TUGS AT OUR HEARTSTRINGS because we don’t care about art or poetry or self-respect. She wins the dinner with Gerry.

They have dinner in what appears to be an antique mall crossed with a Pier One. It’s mostly boring BUT Joan reveals that her daughter just had a kid and I hesitate to call this foreshadowing because immediately we cut to Joan on the phone with her daughter who CAN’T LET HER MOM EVEN HAVE ONE THING because now Joan has to rush home because THE BABY or something and I spent the first 3 months after we had a kid trying to keep my mom AWAY so I don’t know what the fuck Joan’s daughter’s deal is. This, inexorably, leads to Gerry crying, like we GET it, he’s so sensitive, fuck.

Pull yourself together, G-dog, you got like 12 other bitches who want to make out. Also, no way you want to deal with Joan’s codependent-ass daughter the rest of your life.

The ladies are visited by Michael Costello who is apparently a Dress Guy and it seems Ellen is going on a solo date so he ushers her to “dress paradise” which appears to be the clearance section at Nordstrom Rack.

Ellen picks one of the incredibly basic dresses and she and G go sit on a hill somewhere.

Then it’s off to hot air balloon or whatever, we barely see it, fuck ABC, you spend all that money for like 25 seconds of hot air balloon footage?

Back at the Group Home for some pre-rose scheming. G is back on the OJ, that one glass of champagne must have really fucked him up. Faith spins some elaborate and boring fantasy about going to a road trip to… a natural wonder? A secluded beach? A luxury resort? No. A cafe. Faith’s dream is to go to a cafe. Gerry’s like even I can do that, let’s smash faces.

Kathy gets some time with G and bizarrely chooses to spend it looking at photos and crying. I don’t know, maybe I’m just different but I’ve never found “looking at pictures of my dead dad and crying” to be a turn-on but c’est la vie, I guess.

Every other recap is obsessed with some kind of drama between Kathy and Theresa that involves Kathy talking shit about Theresa and her clothes behind her back or something but it was kinda boring and this kind of low-stakes shit is what passes for DRAMA on a show when everyone goes to bed at 9 pm. Speaking of, I have a great idea for a Golden Bachelor/Bachelor in Paradise crossover show where the olds get day drunk and spread vicious lies about each other and the kids watch Fox News and do, I don’t know, macrame or some shit.

Rose Ceremony. Faith gets the first one because the producers probably told Gerry she was gonna stroke out if he didn’t. Sandra accepts hers “like a hole in one,” what.

THERESA IS WAITING. DO NOT DENY THERESA, SHE WILL UNHINGE AND SWALLOW YOU WHOLE.

She gets the last one. RIP my girl Edith, who never got a chance. Also goodbye to some other chick I didn’t know was on the show.