‘The Bachelor’ review: Tierra LiCausi freezes … but why did Sarah Herron cry?

One day after saying that he was really starting to doubt whether or not “The Bachelor” would lead to him having a wife in the end, Sean Lowe took a complete 180 on Monday night’s new episode. Why? Nearly all of the dates were at least largely positive, and save for someone needed medical attention yet again, there were no moments that needed that heavy dramatic musical and serving camera shots.

This was a much stronger episode overall, as well, largely because there were some inspired conversations between the women and Sean that were not all in the traditional cookie-cutter mold.

Received a rose before the rose ceremony

Catherine Giudici (one-on-one) – Is Catherine the frontrunner now? We have to think that the answer here is an undisputed “yes.” This date was just about the perfect sort of “Bachelor” date: there was a sense of adventure, and plenty of romance. The thing about Catherine is that there does not seem to be any of that awkward banter between the two that you traditionally see on these dates … including the canned “I love love” and “fairy tale” phrases. (The producers still made Catherine read a few in the confessional room and she looked like she hated herself for it.)

Lesley Murphy (group date) – The premise for this date was just completely irresponsible: pressuring the women to jump into a frigid lake in a bikini to impress Sean. We know that the women gave Tierra a ton of grief for getting hypothermia, but this is an occasion where we don’t think she was faking it. (As for the other times, well…) There’s nothing really attractive about convulsing on the ground, even though she did realize later that this was a situation that she could take advantage of.

However, the rose still went instead to Lesley, who somehow “turned a corner” despite us seeing very little of it.

Desiree Hartsock (one-on-one) – This was much more of the traditional “awkward date” to us, as Desiree still didn’t really address what was going on in Montana. She did tell a touching story about having to live in a tent at times as a child, and this was enough to move Sean and improve her relationship with him.

Saved at rose ceremony

Tierra LiCausi – Yep, she’s still around! Tierra continued to be a thorn in everyone’s side during this episode, but there was no real bad-mouthing to Sean about her and he seems to be completely oblivious to everything again.

AshLee Frazier – She’s still a favorite, even if she did not receive a heap of airtime during the episode until she blindfolded herself at the end (which is something that the “50 Shades of Grey” girl from the first episode probably would have loved).

Lindsay Yenter – Lindsay receiving a rose was pretty inevitable. She’s just that sort of bubbly personality that Sean is proving alone, and the moment he found out about her sleeping habits he was just about ready to give her every rose in the building and drop down on one knee immediately.

Eliminated

Sarah Herron – This is something that we are a little bit confused about, mostly because we don’t really see that Sean suddenly realized that he needed to send Sarah home simply because he saw some photos of her family. There has to be some sort of leaderboard in his mind of the people he knows that he is sending home at some point, and he liked Sarah enough that he wanted to keep her around for a while.

What we think really happened was that Sean saw these photos and realized that she had some deeper feelings for him than he realized, and he felt so bad about it that she left.

Daniella McBride – Poor Daniella. She reminded us a lot of Jenny McCarthy when it comes to her personality, but she never had a one-on-one. Thus, this elimination was inevitable.

Selma Alameri – This was the worst episode possible for Selma. First, she was the only person to not do the whole “Polar Bear Plunge” into Lake Louise. Then, she also made the decision to “shame her family” and kiss him on TV to make up for it. In conclusion, she was sent home.

What did you think about this episode, and how shocked are you that Tierra is still in the running? Be sure to share your thoughts below, and you can check out where we ranked the ladies going into this episode over at the link here.

Photo: ABC