Episode 'The Bachelorette' - Season 7, Episode 2 (Parts 1 & 2) Recap

It all went Vegas on “The Bachelorette” this week. Chances were taken. Some gambles paid off, others not so much. And as a bonus, I’m now offering two-to-one odds that there’s a certain fellow who, if eliminated, women across America will happily console with a complimentary hands-on castration.

So the ultimate 18 contestants are settled into their cushy Los Angeles digs, and host Chris Harrison explains that roses are on the line with every group and individual date. Those on individual dates come back with either a rose, or a one-way ticket out of Ashleyland.

Ben F. says he’d love the advantage of the first one-on-one date, and a chance to make the first first-impression.

No dice, Ben. William’s rabbit’s foot clearly isn’t past its prime yet, as the winner of the show’s first immunity rose gets his first one-on-one date. Exuding unflappable confidence, he intimates that he’s “Excited, but nervous and hopes he doesn’t blow it.”

No pressure. National TV. Beautiful woman. Hakuna matata, man.

As for Ashley, she’s feeling lucky. She’s absolutely sure her men are the tops of any season so far, but she’s a little concerned one person might feel something where the other may not.

But this is a sporting lot, and there’s sportsmanship in the air. Office supply salesman Matt “Wants to kill William at this point.” Sports marketer Chris isn’t so sure why he’s not on the first date.

These guys realize this is a two-month competition, right? As in, not everybody gets a date in the first two weeks?

William and Ashley hop a private jet from L.A. to Las Vegas to live it up for a night. Meanwhile, Jeff is once more playing up the mask. “I’ve taken the stealth approach, while everyone else is riding around in cabs.”

If anyone wants to chime in with what the Hell that’s supposed to mean, my info is at the bottom of this recap. Thank you.

An Early Wedding

Back in Vegas, Ashley and William are mobbed the moment they step from the limo. Buckle up, William. That’s the least jarring thing you’re about to experience. The little chestnut-haired dynamo is starting with the big guns, taking William wedding shopping starting with some cake taste-testing. William is already tittering nervously, but when she pulls him into a jewelry store, every dog and bee in Las Vegas starts smelling fear. Credit where it’s due, he rolls with the punches and still charms Ashley by playing right along with it.

He’s grinning. He’s giggling. He’s wetting himself.

Ashley and William even walk into a hotel wedding chapel, and walk down the aisle together with a priest. As William stands with the priest and Ashley walks the aisle now wearing a little white dress, William describes her as “Definitely the kind of girl any guy would want to marry.” Well . . . yes, I suppose this would be a good time to reach that conclusion, now that you’re being walked through wedding planning on a first date on ABC in prime time.

At the altar, William catches Ashley a little off-guard by actually barely hesitating to say “I do.” Expert bluff-calling, Will. Ashley, meanwhile, is duly impressed because she “didn’t think he would actually go through with it,” and suddenly hopes the whole shebang isn’t legally binding.

When it’s her turn for the big vows, she smiles and says “I will eventually, just not at this moment.”

So both declare it the best first-date EVAR(!) and William’s heart and steely nerve is rewarded with the contest’s first long, sweet smooch. Ashley tells us she knows he’s in it to win it, and that she’s falling for him after half a date, to her surprise.

Later that evening, Ashley and William are treated to a Bellagio Hotel first: William rows he and Ashley across the World-Famous and momentarily inactive Bellagio fountains to a moonlit dinner on a floating platform.

William opens up and tells Ashley that he’s been working in sales since right after high school but has always wanted to be a stand-up comedian. But on a more serious note, the two bond over the pain of family alcoholism. William tells Ashley how hard it was to learn he’d lost his alcoholic father to an assault six years ago. He also shares the story of how his watch stopped at precisely the moment his father died, and how he’s worn it stopped at that time ever since.

Meanwhile, at the mansion, Constantine, Ryan M., Chris, Ben F., Nick, Bentley, West, Lucas, Stephen, Blake, Matt and Ames find out they’re the lucky 12 who will go on the first group date in Vegas.

A Rose is a Rose

Elsewhere, it’s academic by now but Ashley officially tells William over dinner that the immunity rose is once more his. They celebrate with more tender kisses, as the fountains explode behind them.

Later, the dashing dozen talk themselves up a big game en route to Vegas, while Ashley is walking on air. They arrive, rendevous with Ashley and adjourn to a theater where “America’s Best Dance Crew” winners JabbaWockeeZ are doing their thing on-stage. As the boys are ga-ga over the crew’s purdy lights and slick moves, Ashley ducks around the back and into a service tunnel.

It’s a few minutes before Nick realizes the dashing dozen is less its pretty thirteenth . . . right before she arises dancing that fine little tush off from beneath the stage.

Ben F. pretty much guarantees it won’t be his sharp sense of direction that wins him her hand: “All of a sudden, rising up from the ground, through the Heavens, comes Ashley!” Um, Ben, pumpkin, the Heavens are that way, the other way is . . . you know what, never mind, got any of that white left?

Blake gets a little rattled at the challenge put before the 12 handsome devils: they’ll split into two teams of six and rehearse with JabbaWockeeZ to develop their own two separate routines. The best routine, stays and rocks the stage with Ashley and JabbaWockeeZ that night before a live audience. The other crew, does the baggage-claim bossanova back in L.A.

So it comes down to the Best Men versus the No-Rhythm Nation. The Best Men act out a mock wedding, complete with our girl as the running-a-tad-late, groom-terrifying bride, but the No-Rhythm Nation trumps them with a mock rose ceremony with a little more active participation from the dancing queen with her own sultry moves.

The show is a blast and massive success for the whole bunch, and they adjourn outside for drinks later, with Ashley still stumped for a rose-winner as time draws short. Blake is the first to pull her aside, and tell her that their two Type-A personalities just add up to “double the perfection.” Later, West shares the pain of losing his wife and how it can close him off sometimes from opening his heart. He considers the competition a big step in resetting his life.

Back at the mansion, William shares his date and jokes, “It’s OK that my fiancée is out with 12 other guys, I trust her at this point!”

Tickle Me Bentley

Elsewhere, it’s Bentley’s time and I swear, this is an exact quote from him, to us, assessing the situation.

“She’s got a great body, amazing butt, rockin’ legs and having her tickle my *BLEEP*, that would be amazing.”

He then explains that Ashley’s essentially an after-thought, to him. He just cares about winning the competition. Period.

So once alone, he thanks Ashley – a little backhandedly – for giving him the last rose last week, and lets on that competing with 17 other men bothers him a little. Ashley call him on this immediately and tells him he’s being insecure. In the most blunt way possible, she tells him (though still with that tremendous smile), “You’re being me last time, you know that?”

When she presses him, he tells her that if anything will take him out of the competition, it’s his feelings for his daughter. She pleads with him to stick around if he feels anything, because she senses something between the two. Throughout the entire competition, he continually interrupts her, she continually suggests with slowly decreasing patience that he shut his noise-hole and listen to her.

Astonishingly . . . Bentley gets the rose. He’s clearly humbled and awestruck.

“Can we just bag this and go play blackjack?” Again, exact quote.

Back at the mansion again, Mickey and J.P. find out they’ll flip a coin to decide who gets the next one-on-one date in Vegas. J.P.’s crushed, Mickey says he’s sure that everybody else wishes they could be him right now.

Upon his arrival, Ashley goes googly-eyed and exclaims to us, “Mickey’s better looking than I am!”
The two are off to a uniquely cool wine-tasting. Apparently, the wines are arranged vertically and to get the highest bottles requires the patron riding a harness on a remote-controlled wire rig. Ashley decides she’s letting it ride and tells Mickey she wants to make every decision for the date via a coin flip.

Red, or white? Paper, or plastic? Slap him, or knee him? Let’s let fate choose!

So they decide on a white, and that Ashley will ride up to retrieve it. They even flip for whether Mickey will sweep Ashley off her feet in his arms to their table, or if she’ll ride piggyback.

So Mickey sweeps her off her feet, and they’re off to dinner. They’re playing a weird sort of open-ended “Truth-or-Truth” game with the coin-flips now. Mickey wins a flip and gets to ask a question, so he asks when the last time was that Ashley cried. Not surprisingly, she tells Mickey that it was as she relived the end of her season on “The Bachelor.”

Back home again, Jeff is getting increasingly irritated with the jibes about the mask. Matt, meanwhile, is becoming the most irrationally irritated with Jeff wearing the mask at all.

In Vegas, Ashley continues getting all wobbly-kneed over the handsome Mickey on their way to a Mandalay Bay Hotel suite overlooking Vegas. There, Mickey opens up about losing his mother six years ago and describes himself as a “mama’s boy” who appreciates learning all he knows about how to treat people from her. Ashley’s fascinated with how he turns such a tragic loss into something so ultimately positive. That’s marryin’ material there, she says.

And yet, Ashley says, she’s still not so sure he’s a rose man. She suggests they flip for it, and Mickey is promptly thankful he’s wearing dark pants. Luckily, he gets the flip, the rose, and she even lets him keep the coin. They then adjourn to a “beach”-side walk beneath the stars, and it’s something all young lovers find on their sandy strolls: a private concert with Colby Cailat and her house band! Happens all the time in Vegas, I’m sure.

Meanwhile, Back at the Hall of Justice . . .

The tension is building heading into the next rose ceremony. Upon her return, J.P. is the first to pull her aside and deftly asks her to flip him for a kiss. Ashley says she made her move and leaned in simply because, “for whatever reason,” she had just wanted to kiss J.P. that evening. She seems to foreshadow that he’ll be around a little longer, saying she sees good times ahead and just asks him to be patient. That has our man bouncing right back and feeling fine.

Outside, though, it’s a much less warm, fuzzy scene. William is talking smack after his second rose win and guarantees in Namath-like fashion that he’ll win the next one, too. The only thing he might have just guaranteed is an eventual ass-kicking.

Nick starts his one-on-one time with an impromptu line-dance step with Ashley, but it’s not long before William horns in to make another impression. Listen close, and you can hear wagons circling as William is dubbed “Ding-Dong.”

As William and Ashley relive their first date in contented bliss, Jeff looks on from the balcony and decides it’s time . . .

The trash talk about The Mask continues as Jeff awaits on the staircase. He says he isn’t fazed by it at all. Jeff and Ashley sit on the stairs, chat a bit and Jeff reveals that at 29, he found himself divorced from a woman he’d been with 10 years not long after he’d survived a near-fatal brain hemorrhage. He then tells Ashley that he’s ready to reveal his face. He reaches for the mask, pulls it forward, up just a touch . . .

. . . And here comes Matt. Jeff keeps his cool, but walks away, knowing that whatever happens now, happens.

Ben C. has her laughing from the get-go, as he compares her to, “A table at an unbelievable restaurant that he had to reserve weeks in advance.” He also confesses that he was truly jealous of the group daters, because he truly loves to dance.

It’s then Bentley-Time again. He starts it off telling us that he would “rather be swimming in pee than try to plan a wedding with her.”

Who screens these guys?

So the two go one-on-one. Bentley immediately suggests they skip the conversation, and unfortunately, Ashley sounds intrigued. He sweeps her up, carries her to the fireplace, and lays a long kiss on her. Unfortunately, she digs that, too.

But what did Bentley think?

“It started out good and sucked toward the end.” He admits he won’t last the full two months. Ashley is still worried, but trusts his “sincerity.”

Once more, it’s rose time. West starts off with the first rose.

Then Constantine.

Then Ryan P.

Then Ben C.

Then Jeff. Then J.P.

Finally, when the dust clears, we’re down to 15 bachelors remaining. Matt, Stephen and Ryan M. are out of the hunt.

Reactions vary. Matt almost seems more upset that Jeff is still there than that he’s going home. In a nice nod to the season premier, he phones his mom, gets her voicemail and tells her that he’ll need a ride home from the airport . . . and French toast.

Stephen is disappointed, but really pretty accepting.

Ryan M. is arguably the most rational, concluding “Life is definitely not fair,” but that he feels it’s Ashley’s loss.

Ashley tells the remaining 15 that she really feels her husband stands among them, and that the best is yet to come. A toast, and we’re out.