‘The Bachelor’ review: Liz Sandoz, Nick Viall’s ‘breakup’ takes center stage; Corinne’s top exits stage right in episode 2
“I’m just full of #1s. It’s better than being #2, or going #2.”
Ladies and gentlemen, Corinne Olympios! She is by far the villain of the season through two episodes, and she wasted almost no time at all getting to Nick Viall really well during “The Bachelor” Monday night. She is one of the most aggressive contestants in Bachelor history. She’s also one of the most delusional, given that she talked about her “sparkle” far before Tierra LiCausi did on Sean Lowe’s season.
So why give her the first group date rose? Why are we rewarded this sort of behavior? Well, the only reasonable answer to this question is that producers thought it’d be funny, though we’re not exactly sure we’re sending the right message in 2016 that if you take half of your clothes off during a photo shoot that is supposed to be all about weddings, you should be heavily rewarded for it. This entire date was cheesy in itself, though, and there were plenty of people just came across as rather boring and lacked any (ahem) sparkle at all. Vanessa did go for it in her 1980’s theme, and we do like that someone gave Alexis an actual shotgun for her shotgun wedding, given that she didn’t actually know precisely what it meant.
So how did everyone else take Corinne monopolizing all of the attention? Not great! In particular, we had mental health counselor Taylor talking how she is not going to let anything Corinne says get to her, only to blatantly do that very thing in stealing Nick back right after Corinne stole her. This entire date just boiled down to tension between the two of them, and it really wasn’t all that much fun to watch the majority of it unfold.
Danielle Maltby visits Newport Beach – Selfishly, the thing that we were the most concerned about while watching this date was whether or not producers were going to show too many of our favorite hangs and they would be crowded the next time they were in town. Luckily, the show wasted a lot of time aboard the yacht and the hot tub. We’d start getting into talking about how ridiculous this was, but there was such a part of this date that was sad and heartbreaking. Danielle had a tragic story due to her past fiance dying of an overdose more than five years ago, and the way she approaching it was real and authentic. She didn’t approach this from a perspective of trying to exploit it for attention; it came from a place of vulnerability, and it was a touching and pretty real conversation.
Unfortunately, we’d say that Emily Maynard is probably the last contestant on this show with an emotional past to actually end up winning in the end. It’s probably not working out for Danielle.
Group Date #2 a.k.a. Where Do Broken Hearts Go – True story: We’ve seen this museum in Hollywood before and we would’ve rather taken a picture with every fat guy in a Spider-Man costume outside of the Dolby Theater over having to go in there and deal with this sadness. Breakups are depressing, and we don’t think think’s anything all that appealing about the sadness of other people. What made this particular date all the sadder was that Liz was on it — did you know that she hooked up with Nick and Jade and Tanner’s wedding? Maybe that wasn’t mentioned on the show. She couldn’t find the right place to bring it up on the date, though she did mention it to Christen earlier and that proved to be the WORST DECISION EVER. She later went and told Nick about it.
Kudos to Nick for at least playing along with the fake-breakups, especially given the fact that he’s already been dumped twice before. He had a surprisingly good rapport, and played along with even being a drunk for a minute or two! Then, Liz went up there and pretty much just told the truth. SUPER awkward. Basically, it was her eliminating herself from the competition almost, since it made it clear to Nick that she obviously wasn’t going to keep this to herself.
You knew where this was going: Liz is gone, and thankfully, we don’t have to deal with this stupid story anymore. There was some humor tonight, but this was as DRAWN OUT as can be. There is still a slight cliffhanger, given that Nick had to tell the other women what was going on. We’ll see how the women take it next week. Grade: C+.
What did you think about tonight’s episode of the show? Was there a part of it that you thought was the craziest? Share in the comments! Also, head over here to see who we want to see get a group date coming up on “The Bachelor” next. (Photo: ABC.)