Pop CultureBy Yaron Weitzman on

The revolving Bachelor in Paradise door is churning. Just when it seems like a couple is going strong, more hormones are dropped in. That’s the beauty of Paradise.

Also, we’ve reached the point of the series where the goal becomes receiving a rose, as opposed to finding love. All Bachelor shows are dressed-up game shows, but what’s great about Paradise is that no one masks it. There’s nothing to do on the island except drink, flirt and rub sunscreen on other dudes.

Who would have guessed that those three things make such great TV?

GOING HOME

Chad: And here you thought we were done with The Chad. Nah, there’s always another ounce of juice to squeeze out of the orange, another card to play. In this case, it meant ensuring that there was protein in the van tasked with taking Chad home following his meltdown.

Oh, don’t forget the booze, too.

Goodbye, Chad, we’ll miss you. Though something tells me we haven’t heard the last of The Real Chad Johnson, aka the Deep Throat of the Bachelor universe.

https://twitter.com/realchadjohnson/status/762838473703174144

Leah: So apparently Leah’s heel turn during the Ben Higgins season of The Bachelor worked. For those who need a refresher: Leah spent the first few weeks of the season silent and in the background. Then, seemingly realizing that her time had come, she decided to cook up some drama and rip future winner Lauren B. to Ben. Upon being confronted by Lauren B, Leah lied and said it wasn’t her. The whole thing was actually pretty impressive — though it wasn’t until her Tell-All episode performance that I truly realized just how serious Leah was about becoming a permanent fixture in the Bachelor universe.

And so, Leah returned to our lives this week — only to be sent home within a couple of days. But, man, did she leave her mark and make it clear that she’s got bigger plans.

As loyal Paradise viewers know, anyone knew who’s brought to the island is given a date card. Leah claimed she was hoping to use hers on Chad. Yes, the same Chad who we’ve seen threaten others and punch walls and eat raw sweet potatoes. As a Bachelor viewer, I love Chad, but no one in their right mind would peg him as the man they want to date… that is, unless they’re trying to throw themselves into the spotlight.

Anyway, Leah was told that Chad was sent home and so she was forced to find someone else. That someone else turned out to be Nick. Nick said yes to the date, even though he was feeling Amanda. Leah kissed Nick during the date because, well, I’m not really sure, maybe she figured it was her best chance at finding a rose. Nick kissed her back, then returned to the hotel to find that he, also, had been given a date card. (It’s here where we see the true genius of the date card; it’s essentially a giant puppet string that the producers dangle.) Leah figured she and Nick were about to go for Round 2. Nick, though, asked Amanda out, and here’s where Leah doubled down on her heel turn — she actually tried psyching Amanda out pre-date. It was an impressive move.

It didn’t work, though. Leah put all her eggs in the Nick basket, only to see him choose Amanda instead. Just like that, she was gone. All there’s left for her to do now is find Chad. If the two of them do get together, though — well, THAT’S a reality show that I would watch.

Jubilee: Honestly, I’m surprised Jubilee, the lone black girl at Paradise, even made it this far. That might actually be a Bachelor record.

To be fair, though, she did dig her own grave.

“If you give me a rose, I’ll appreciate it,” she said to Jared. Rookie mistake. The key to winning a rose at Paradise is to pretend the rose doesn’t exist. You don’t tell the member of the opposite sex that you’re looking for their rose. Instead, you talk about how excited you are to “explore your connection with them.” Sheesh, Jubilee, it’s like you’ve never even watched the show.

STILL IN PARADISE

1. Sarah

Sarah is the rare Bachelor contestant who seems like a genuinely good person. Which, of course, begs the following question: why the hell does she want to be a part of this cesspool?

She’s also highly in demand. Vinny was into her at one point. Daniel is into her and gave her his rose. Christian then joined the cast and took Sarah out on a date. The ladies have the roses next, meaning Daniel and Christian’s respective fates are in her hands. Here’s hoping she goes with Daniel’s zaniness over Christian’s good looks.

2. Vinny

This is how you take advantage of your time on Paradise:

First, you tell Sarah you’re into her and plant a juicy one on her lips.

https://twitter.com/GMAPopNews/status/762815288437972992

Then, less than five minutes later, you have a similar conversation with Izzy and once again go in for the kill.

https://twitter.com/GMAPopNews/status/762815610585657344

Vinny gave his rose to Izzy, and appears to currently be paired up with her. Still, given his skillset, I wouldn’t rule a future move out of the question.

3. Daniel

“I find a lot of people don’t respect me because they don’t get to know me,” Daniel said at one point to Sarah. I’m no expert, but that could be because you repeatedly refer to yourself as an “eagle.”

That said, Daniel showed a softer side this week. It was the first time in his Bachelor career that he displayed any, you know, feelings. He’s clearly into Sarah, but isn’t being a jerk about it. Now if he can just stop asking Nick how it feels to see Josh Murray shoving his tongue down Amanda’s throat, that would be great.

4. Lace

What do you do when the basket you put all your eggs into — in this case, Chad — is sent home because he’s a ‘roid ragin’ maniac? Exactly what Lace did here, find yourself another man and make sure he doesn’t think twice about giving you that rose.

Earlier that same day, Lace was giving Grant crap for not being as into her as he was the previous day. You know, before she abandoned him so that she could spend the rest of her evening humping Chad in the jacuzzi. Grant, understandably, was a bit confused by that whole episode. Clearly, though, he and Lace talked things over like mature adults and are ready to enter into a serious relationship.

5. Grant

Hey, there are certainly worse ways to spend one of your first nights in Paradise.

6. Josh Murray’s Tongue

Murray dropped in and immediately stole Amanda away from Nick. The two haven’t stopped playing tonsil hockey since.

So, here are some things we learned about Murray this week:

  1. He loves tongue action.
  2. He’s occasionally a biter.
  3. He moans. A lot. It’s gross.

Seriously, enough with the moaning.

7. Izzy

She seems to be in high demand, which is good. But if she wants to climb these rankings, she’s going to have to cook up some drama.

8. Jared

Like Izzy, yawn. Also, gets point demoted for missing the first 19 signals Emily threw at him and making her kiss him.

9. Nick

“I don’t actually give a shit,” Nick said at one point to the cameras when talking about Josh stealing Amanda away from him.

Yeah, I’d say the footage says otherwise.

Someone remind Nick that he’s 35 — 101 in Bachelor years — and that it’s time to go about finding love another way.

10. Christian

If you ever wanted to know what it would sound like if Shaun T, the fitness guru who created the Insanity workout, showed up on Paradise, well, wonder no more:

He’s going to need that level of confidence and perseverance if he plans on overcoming the fact that he’s black and staying in Paradise. 

11. Carly

Suckered Evan into giving her a rose. The only problem: Evan’s not the kind of guy you easily lead on. He’s the sensitive type, which means one kiss leads to all sorts of feelings for him, or, as he says, “butterflies and explosions.”

And so the producers, knowing Carly wasn’t feeling Evan’s game following their kiss on the night of the Rose Ceremony, gave Evan a date card so that he and Carly could create some more good TV. For their date, Evan and Carly were tasked with setting some sort of Guinness World Record by eating a hot pepper and then locking lips for more than 90 seconds. They did so…

… only Carly threw up afterwards.

“It wasn’t from the hot peppers,” she told the cameras. The next day, she informed Evan that their half-day relationship had come to an end. That means her rose is now up for grabs.

12. Emily/Haley

I still don’t know which one is which, and since the show has instituted that dopey rule that if you give one of them a rose both move on, I’m going to continue lumping them together.

The twins got started early this week by going after Leah. They poked fun at her appearance and had some other choice words.

Then it was time for them to start worrying about their own “love” lives. We’ll get to that in a bit. More importantly: we learned that Emily doesn’t drink alcohol, or so she claims, which led to her acting drunk after downing one beer during this week’s show. There is almost literally nothing else to do on Bachelor shows other than drink, so my question is: how the hell does Emily pass the time?

13. Brandon

You know how when dudes combine an always-serious disposition with deep stares and a plethora of love cliches they come off, well, shall we say, uber creepy? Yeah, that’s Brandon.

Also, he got played by the twins. I get not knowing that the two had pulled a Parent Trap-like switcharoo on you. But to say that you think you had good chemistry with Haley when, in fact, you spent the majority of your evening talking to Emily, well, that’s just a bad look.

14. Evan

I don’t even know where to start. First, there was his inability to make a move on Carly.

Then there was him thinking the kiss was “incredible,” while Carly was puking in her mouth.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s what Evan had to say about Carly the next day:

“I haven’t felt how I do about Carly in a longtime.” This dude must not have watched his own Bachelorette season. If he did, he would have seen myriad clips of him talking about how into JoJo he was. Also, HOW THE HELL CAN YOU SAY THAT ABOUT A GIRL YOU’VE KNOWN FOR HALF-A-DAY?

But wait, there’s more.

Evan then decided that Amanda, the same women who had her tongue in Josh Murray’s mouth for 24 hours straight, was his best chance at love. He even wrote himself (I repeat, wrote himself) a date card to psych himself up.

Our last image of the week was Evan waking Amanda and Josh Murray from their make-out stupor.

Yeah, I’m sure this will go great.

15. Amanda

“Mommy, where are you?”

That’s what one of her two daughters asked Amanda during their on-air Face Time session.

“Mommy’s dry humping multiple dudes on national TV and so she’s not going to be home for a while, baby,” she said. OK, I made that response up, but the point remains the same. Amanda, you have two little kids at home, maybe you should think twice about playing tongue twister with the moaning monster.

Lines of the Night

“I can’t even be the Bachelor now.” — Chad.

“If I were to bang someone, it’d be one of the twins.” — Daniel

“I’ve got really great boobs and a nice butt.” — Emily

“He’s only concentrating on the male boner, he’s not concentrating on the lady boner.” — Carly on Evan.

“You guys went on a date and you threw up. I don’t think it’s going to work out.” — Jared to Carly.

See y’all next week.

About Yaron Weitzman

Yaron Weitzman is a freelance writer based in New York whose work frequently appears on The Comeback, SB Nation and in SLAM Magazine. He's also been published on SB Nation Longform, The Cauldron, Tablet Magazine and in the Journal News. Yaron can be followed on Twitter @YaronWeitzman

View all posts by Yaron Weitzman