The third episode opens with Bachelorette Cara, the 27-year-old recreational billiards enthusiast, getting an energy healing in her master suite next to this season’s host, Clits Harrison. Svetlana, the healer, remarks that Cara’s energy is feeling “a little purple.” In Svetlana’s confessional, she tells us that Cara’s chest, namely near the heart, feels blocked. Is Cara holding back from the contestants? Is she not ready to love?
With the disappointment of last episode’s Mimosa Brunch and the contestants being too drunk when the Bachelorette arrived, Cara tells Clits that she’s determined to make these group dates count and actually get to know these women. It’s a heartfelt moment, one that quickly disintegrates when Frank, the new sound guy, makes a fart noise. Ugh.
Group Date #1 is a Sex Toy Party held in a local shop Strap On, Strap Off. Cara invites 5 women that she hasn’t felt connected to yet thus far: the remaining Emily’s, Janessa and Bri. The party is led by a quirky instructor with blonde dreads named Pimona who immediately makes the women go around the circle and talk about their favorite sex position.
Again, major props to the editor that mastered the use of crickets when stand-up comic, Emily E., shouted “Hot Carl!” to be funny but then quickly realized this wasn’t one of those moments for a “bit.” The inexperienced Emily F. didn’t have an answer so she just said “French kissing?” Meanwhile, the emotionally distraught Emily Z. sobbed into her vibrator, recounting what sex used to be like with her former fiancee.
The mood gets a little… weird… when Cara realizes halfway into the class that she’s unknowingly sitting smack dab in the middle of two exes with a bad history, Janessa (retired dancer) and Bri (unemployed). While the instructor is demonstrating how to give the perfect clitoral massage, Bri remarks that Janessa treated her’s like “a kid overusing their pencil eraser.” Rough! It gets worse during the instructional dental dam sequence when Janessa comments to Cara that if she ever goes down on Bri, she’ll need an X-Large because of Bri’s “oversized labia.” While most Bachelorettes would be turned off by this combative behavior between Bri and Janessa, it actually seems to intrigue Cara, whose delighted with the women’s antagonist repartee. Side note: Emily E. seemed pissed any time laughter came from anyone else’s jokes but her’s. Which we also got from her confessional when she stated, verbatim: “I get pissed any time laughter comes from anyone else’s jokes but my own.”
Back at the house, Liz, the bisexual magician, lays by the pool talking to fellow contestant Michelle Rodriguez about how she doesn’t understand why she wasn’t asked on a group date because she thought she and Cara had a real connection. Michelle Rodriguez only offers one piece of advice: “When I tell you to go, you gotta go. You gotta paddle your little heart out. You can’t hesitate, you can’t pull back, you can’t hold back. No fear. Alright?” Liz sincerely takes the advice in until she is told by a producer that the quote was just a line of dialogue from the film Blue Crush.
Group Date #2 is held at the endlessly romantic Dave & Busters, primarily because Sam got Stefanie and Alana a deal where if they pose with the new Flavor-Blasted Dynamite Shrimp appetizer, the producers will get the location for free.
Joining Cara on this date is YouTube couple Stefanie & Alana, the professional networker & Tweeter Sam, the mysterious closeted girl Jamie and 50-something Lorraine.
Remember the flirtation between Sam and Alana last episode? Well this episode, while Cara is distracted playing Dance Dance Revolution against Lorraine, she doesn’t even notice Sam and Alana running away into the “Jurassic Park 3D” ride. We can’t assume they *weren’t* just innocently driving around a dinosaur-infested theme park, but the subtitles inside the ride suggest otherwise. We hear giggling and then see the subtitles read “Slurping sounds.” Before the camera crew could pop their creepy little heads in, Alana and Sam are already running towards Mario Kart. But where was Stefanie, Alana’s girlfriend, this whole time? Getting diarrhea from the Flavor-Blasted Dynamite Shrimp appetizer that she had to house during the photo shoot.
The date ends abruptly when Cara beats Lorraine in Air Hockey and Lorraine throws the puck at the Elvis pinball machine, shattering it into an oblivion. One of the new sound guys had to be rushed to the ER. (I heard Frank’s stable now.) Perhaps the saddest part of the group date was that Jamie, afraid for her family to see her on national television as a queer woman, hid in the bathroom the entirety of the group date. The worst part is that she was unfortunately in the stall right next Stefanie’s atomic explosion.
Meanwhile back at the house, Puck, left out of a group date yet again, decides to cook dinner for the other contestants. The pantry in the Lisa Frank House was only stocked with quinoa, lentils and candy necklaces from the Sex Toy group date, so comical music overlays with Puck playing out the “I don’t know how to cook” storyline.
When the second group gets back from D&B, they’re dramatically met with a house filled with smoke. In what seems like three seconds, Cara quickly puts on her travel firesuit and bravely enters the house. After a dramatic 20 minutes or so, the fire is finally out. Clits emerges from the house with a half-burnt wig, telling the women that it’s time for the rose ceremony.
At the rose ceremony, Cara, in her Nike firesuit, cradles a pot filled with charcoal remains. She gives a whole speech about fire safety and then, naturally, lets Puck go because she “put all the women’s lives in danger.”
She gives out roses one-by-one, but left standing vying for the last rose is Stelana, the YouTube couple. Cara gives her final rose to Alana, which means she’s letting go of Stefanie. We can speculate that it had to do with the diarrhea incident in the van on the way back from Dave & Busters, but hey, who knows.
Stefanie and Alana have a heartfelt goodbye. But it gets even more dramatic when they Stefanie’s final confessional into their Break-Up video. Rough!
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