‘The Bachelorette’ review: James Case – Desiree Hartsock drama; a Juan Pablo Galavis tragedy

Well, that happened. What a crazy-intense episode of “The Bachelorette” this was. With a few windows for a break here and there, the rest of the episode was in a nutshell the “let’s bash James Case hour!”. Maybe all of it was merited, but since we were not in the van when these things were said, we don’t know. It’s certainly feasible that James and Mikey Tenerelli (eliminated last week) were just horsing around and not being serious, and because the other guys were in a bad mood, they blew things completely out of proportion.

Here is our honest take about all of this. The guys don’t like James, and when you are in this environment where you have nothing to do but live with the guy, your emotions skyrocket out of control. He may not be evil incarnate, and we don’t believe that he is. He’s probably just an immature guy who came on this show looking for a good time, and isn’t quite ready to settle down. He probably does care about Desiree, but he probably also said what Drew Kenney and Kasey Stewart claim that he did about trying to become “The Bachelor” at the end of all this.

James came on the wrong show. We still don’t think this makes him one of the worst guys ever to come on the series, mostly because we’re pretty sure that a good three-quarters of the guys who sign up for “The Bachelorette” have something on their mind in addition to finding love. He’s just one of the few who said something idiotic and got caught for it. (Should have picked a party show instead, James!)

Desiree should have sent him home, basically because you know that there will be questions there forever, even after he smoothed things over with some reassurances that may have been true, but were also somewhat skewed. She also would have looked like an idiot had she kept him. Luckily for her, she sent him packing.

Sadly, his exit was not the only one, since we also lost Kasey Stewart (who we ultimately just found preachy and all about the drama) and the dire strategy that was the exit of Juan Pablo Galavis, our personal favorite for much of the entire season when it comes to pure mystery / entertainment. The guy was suave, and he was different than everyone else. However, the producers decided to never give him a backstory at all until this week, and instead they marginalized him as the good-looking Latin soccer player. Ugh. What could’ve been, Juan Pablo. What could’ve been.

Clearly the frontrunner here is still Brooks Forester, even though both Drew Kenney and Zak Waddell each had their moments with her this week. We’ll just have to see now where the story develops from here on out to see if this hierarchy still stands.

What did you think about some of Desiree’s choices this week? If you want to hear what Catherine Giudici had to say about her favorites this season, all you have to do is click here.

Photo: ABC