Episode 'The Bachelorette' Season 7, Episode 6 - Ashley Does a Dumb, Dumb Thing Recap

Week by week, date by date, Ashley Hebert makes a better and better argument favoring celibacy.

This week, “The Bachelorette” took this American idiot and her eight long-suffering suitors – who, by now, must be developing nervous twitches with every date card that arrives - to Hong Kong - one of Asia's most beautiful cities and the home of (bar-none) the world's greatest martial-arts films.

Unfortunately, at no point does Zhang Ziyi pop out from around the corner and roundhouse this airhead in the chops before she kills someone.

We lead off with a pointless – and kind of badly done – shot of Ashley standing on a street corner as car after car whips past her in fast-forward. She’s staring vacantly as we  get a voice-over covering what’s on her mind this week.

Guess. Go on. Guess. Think, names of luxury automobiles. Starts with “B.” Rhymes with “Rentley.”

Take your time. It’s a brain-teaser.

Closure Time

Oh, but this week, she apparently wants “closure,” another word that will cue you to take a drink every single time she says it this week. Here comes the best lie of the week.

This is much, much better than her watching two guys who both apparently dig her duking it out in a Muay Thai fight she pushed them into and saying “I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

“I truly owe it to them to find out for myself (about Bentley) so I can be the best fiancée, the best wife I can be,” she lies.

Host Chris Harrison pulls the neurotic bimbette aside, and though he looks like he truly does not feel good about what he’s about to do, he drops the big bomb: Glory Be, Bentley’s in Hong Kong! He’s in their hotel!

A little digging on YouTube, and I found some unaired footage of Ashley’s reaction:

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Don’t worry. Ames had a good head-injury guy on speed-dial. Chris is fine.

To his credit, Chris only half-heartedly encourages her confronting him. He reminds her that this whole thing could end very badly if things keep going this way, but never exactly enthusiastically endorses this. Instead, he jots down his room number, encourages her to give it some thought, and leaves her to it.

So . . . did she do it?

Just what exactly do you think she did?

Of course, she shuffles off to Bentley’s Conrad Hotel suite and at first, the two seem happy to see each other. She asks him directly, almost right off the bat, why he flew halfway across the world when Hong Kong has perfectly good telephones.

“I thought about calling, but it would be too easy,” he explained.

You may absolutely take that to mean, “Are you mildly retarded? ABC offered me a stay in a luxury Hong Kong hotel, and more screen-time. Would you say no?”

Once more, Ashley relives her every agonizing, bleeding-heart moment since he left. Bentley comes back with the surprising take that he considers her heartbreak some affirmation that there was at least a connection between them. He even throws in that he didn’t anticipate that he would miss the whole experience by the time he got home to Salt Lake City.

Ashley genuinely believes that Bentley entered her life, however briefly, for a reason but just couldn’t let him go that easily. Bentley isn’t so optimistic; he tells her, in a shocking moment of reason, that she owes the other eight men her undivided attention now and that it’s time she changed the punctuation on their end sentence from his infamously open-ended “dot, dot, dot” to a “period.”

Well, that lit a fuse.

Mission F$%^ing Accomplished

Ashley goes off on him and tells him that he owed it to her to man up and just say “it’s over.”

“If you came here for the same reasons Michelle Money told me, that you’d run with that and have fun and leave me with a ‘dot, dot, dot’ and leave me wanting you, then mission accomplished. If this was what you wanted, mission a-f***ing-complished!”

Whoa! You kiss J.P. with that mouth, Sailor?

Bentley agrees it’s not fair, but the man is damn-near sociopathic about this. Watching him, his pulse never climbs. His voice never wavers. “I feel like maybe where you’re at with this whole process, maybe we should call it a period.”

Before she leaves, Ashley takes him to task one more time for actually flying out to tell her this when he could’ve called. Bentley, to his credit, stares at her and just thinks, “Paid vacation. Free airfare. Bootleg DVDs. Those enough reasons to deal with this again?”

“F*** you, Bentley. I’m done with you,” she snaps off before the break.

He got off light. We’re nowhere near done hearing about it. She does, after all, promise that she’s going to tell the guys individually when she’s ready.

Well . . . . she’ll tell one.

Meanwhile, back at the Hall Of “We’re Hopping A Slow-Boat Before This Woman Gets Us Killed,” it’s date time. This week, it’s two one-on-one dates and a group date. And Lucas gets the first solo flight.

“Let’s find our good fortune on the streets of Hong Kong,” reads his date card.

Despite still not getting his mano-a-Ashley time, Ryan feels good.

“’Big Tex’ in downtown Hong Kong? He won’t be coming back.”

Sure enough, she’s mercifully taking it easy this week, with some more tourist-like shopping. She and Lucas do hit it off among the racks of exotic and enchanting . . . um . . . bootleg DVDs and knock-off handbags. However, they do eventually settle in to nosh on some fried pig intestines and reminisce on the first organ either would offer up for a Double Quarter-Pounder.

Setting Sail

So after a hearty meal, the two go out for a sail around the harbor beneath the moonlight, with Ashley saying she’s certainly, absolutely, 100-percent for-really-real not thinking about Bentley but she does want some romance.

In Lucas, though, she does find a little bit of a kindred spirit. He tells her that his own first marriage went decidedly south until there were no romantic feelings left by the end, but that he does regret it. Everything does indeed happen for a reason, he tells her.

Meanwhile, back at The Ranch . . .

Blake has an interesting take on his present company. Like Ryan, he also has not had a one-on-one outing with Ashley. That gives him a troubling read on where he stands.

“I’m not thrilled at being lumped into the same category with Ryan,” Blake said. “If she sees us as the same type of person, that doesn’t set well with me.”

Then get out the Pepto, Blake, because J.P. gets this week’s other one-on-one for a second round of alone time between the two.

On the boat again, the two have had a few drinks as the evening winds down when Ashley puts out a more somber tone. She tells Lucas that she’s been giving all of this a lot of thought, and with disappointment . . . . .

She smiles and offers him a rose.

It was cute exactly once. But after what she’s putting these men through, and what is right around the bend, this is like painting “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” on an atomic bomb you’re about to drop. In the meantime, she tells us that Lucas’ natural masculinity “makes her feel like a woman,” and gives her a sense of being protected.

It’s group-date time, and Ashley is telling her next set of suitors, “Let’s get our hearts racing.” These men have nerves of steel. I would be sweating bullets by this point.

“Now that Bentley is in the past, I can move forward with the guys that are truly here for me,” Ashley reminds us. It won’t be the last time.

Enter the Dragon Boats

Her six dates meet her on a beach with two boats, where she splits them into three teams of two and tells them they’ll be dragon-boat racing – as soon as each group of two spends an hour on the streets of Hong Kong talking strangers into rowing with them.

So the teams of Blake and Ryan, Ames and Mickey, and Ben F. and Constantine go forth to find rowers. All three come back with full teams of at least eight, but Ben F. and Constantine also go for style points by coming back decked out in red kimonos.

The boats plow through the water – well, actually, Ben and Constantine’s team kind of struggles with they paddle to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” – with Ashley beating the drum on the boat of Blake and Ryan’s team.

Seriously, at what point must a man just say, “There is no way in Hell you’re worth this?”

Back on the beach as everyone chills, a couple nearby gets engaged before Ashley and Suitors’ very eyes. In a moment that probably sent chills down spines, she cooed, “Who’s neeeeext?”

Back from the break, and ABC has some technical issues. I think the dialogue has started looping . . . . wait, it hasn’t. She’s actually still talking about how she’s in no way, shape or form thinking about Bentley.

At the post-date cocktail party, Ames pulls himself a smooth move talking Ashley into an elevator ride up to the 48^th floor of the hotel. No sooner does the door close than Ames wraps up Ashley in his arms and gives her one deep, soulful kiss that surprises but entices her. They’re interrupted briefly at one floor, but they’re back at it again the instant the door closes, porn-y music and all.

Later, Ben F. is with her on the balcony and with a touched note in his voice, tells us that he can’t believe he came here the biggest skeptic of all but has now fallen harder in love than ever.

Later, Ryan takes Ashley out on the balcony for a little privacy while Blake, et al bitch like catty school-girls about their happy-go-lucky bro. Blake’s main complaint seems just to be that Ryan standing out from the rest with his natural exuberance just makes him nervous. He even intimates that he’d probably just go home if Ryan got the rose.

Oh, don’t sweat that decision. We’ll take care of that one for you.

Ryan, though, does such an effective job sweet-talking Ashley in the other room, that she excuses herself briefly to snatch the rose from right in front of the other five and privately award it to Ryan.

Later, Ashley tells us that she hasn’t been more excited so far for a date than for her second one with J.P. She’s suggested to him, “Let’s take a peek into our future.”

On a Knee

The two enjoy an intimate dinner in Kowloon’s Chinese Zodiac garden, where Ashley asks him an interesting question when J.P. tells her that he didn’t expect a month ago that this is where he’d be.

“What do you think we’re gonna be doing a month from now?”

“Something having to do with getting down on a knee, maybe?”

J.P. tells Ashley that the last thing that really made him cry was when he and his last ex split up, but that he’s determined to never feel that way again. Ashley, in turn, takes some deep breaths and unloads about the incident with Bentley. J.P. is shocked, but probably solidifies his relationship with Ashley by just telling her that he appreciates her honesty. Yep. Rose to J.P., followed by a tram ride overlooking the city, complete with another “magic” kiss.

It’s cocktail time, and Ashley is on Cloud Nine, completely assuring us that she is in no way thinking of Bentley.

If you’re playing the drinking game, then how in the world are you still standing? Oh . . . and you might want to put the drink down now.

The very first thing Ashley does is sit everybody down and tell them all about the incident with Bentley, and how she sees nothing but great things ahead now that she has her closure. Because, of course, the name of this show is...

“Ashley Gets Closure.”

Her joy is met with dead silence.

Constantine is the first to call her out on her hypocrisy about honesty. Lucas just wanted to know why she didn’t do it earlier. J.P. and Ryan are the first two to come to her defense, maintaining that she’s just trying to be up-front with everybody now.

Still, Constantine is monumentally brassed-off. He runs down everything they’re all putting themselves through, including Ames suffering a concussion, for someone who’s still mooning over the one that got away. Lucas is a little more blunt: “She’s wasting my f***ing time.”

Guys! You’re giving Uncle Walt a fit in the afterlife! Language!

Ames, however, gets what she’s going through and tells her so. Blake lets her have it at first with both barrels for stringing everybody along, but her tears stay his hand and he ends up embracing her.

Mickey?

He tells her he feels the competition has become all for naught, and asks her to send him home. She tells him that if that’s the way he feels, it’s his initiative to take. He’s off on a boat, back to the states.

The Roses

After a little cooling-off, it’s rose time. Ben F., Constantine, Lucas and Ames are all staying. Blake is gone.

Blake doesn’t have much of a reaction . . . simply that he believes Ashley will make someone happy, but it just isn’t him.

A toast to what’s to come, an announcement that next week’s dates will take us to Taiwan, and we’re out.