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The Logical Rose-ning Section: Your Recap of The Bachelorette, Episode 4

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Rachel Lindsay is a practicing attorney who once took the LSAT. And you, dear reader, are an aspiring attorney who will soon take the LSAT, Rachel Lindsay is also an aspiring married person, serving as the Bachelorette on this season of The Bachelorette, the love story these depraved times deserve. And you, dear reader, may also be an aspiring married person? Either way, you definitely have at least a few things in common with Rachel. So every Tuesday, we’re going to be tracking Rachel’s romantic journey on The Bachelorette, and see what we can learn about love, loss, and the LSAT. Welcome back to the Logical Rose-ning Section.

Last time: Well, we’ve been deprived of quality Bachelorette time these last two weeks as lesser competitions like the NBA Finals dominated the airwaves. In the meantime, we learned about how Rachel actually dated NBA Finals MVP Kevin Durant in college … and that the producers may have committed gross negligence during the filming of spin-off Bachelor in Paradise, which allegedly led to a situation that is in no way humorous or romantic or anything these shows attempt to be. This resulted in legal action and the cancelation of BIP. With this distance and the intervening news stories, it’s tough to remember, say … the men grinding on the unwitting audience of The Ellen Degeneres Show or professional wrestler Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny losing a wrestling match or Lee leaning into that Richard Spencer haircut of his.

Lee the Racist Leatherfaced Snake Person

We immediately pick up from last week, with Lee attempting to cut down Eric, Kenny, and Josiah. What do these three guys have in common that might not jibe with noted racist Lee? No idea. Anyway, as Lee attempts to manipulate these guys, he becomes increasingly desperate and volatile.

When Kenny attempts to have some one-on-one time with Rachel, Lee purposefully misunderstands Kenny’s request for “60 more seconds” with Rachel as a request for “16 more seconds” with Rachel, a duration of time no one has ever asked for, ever. Lee, upon pulling this “trick,” looks child who just tricked his parents into letting him go to bed at 9:30.

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Dean and Brady pick up on Lee’s treachery. If Rachel doesn’t already pick up on Lee’s increasingly sweaty appearance and deranged actions, or the contestant’s growing antipathy for him, or his racist beliefs, then hopefully she realized she’s dealing with a horrible person once he gifted her a Manson-sque carving of “ENCHANTING” on a wood block.

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That looks like it was a made by deranged serial killer who drank two pots of coffee and then used his left hand to engrave. It looks like it was made by a person trying to accurately replicate how he wrote as a kindergartner. It looks the last thing you see in a slasher film before Lee the Racist Leatherfaced Snake crashes through a window to slay himself a wife.

Lee absolutely dominates this episode as the editors set him up as this season’s villain. It’s really too bad that Rachel, who is among the smartest, most successful, and self-assured Bachelorettes this show has ever had, doesn’t get the typical villain who, like, gets a little too confident and drunk and flirty. She has to deal with this bigoted sweat gland of a human as her season’s villain, who views the manipulation of the non-white contestants as his right.

Rachel, of course is very perceptive, and seems to sense that Lee might not have the most enlightened beliefs or people skills. At this thought, she gets emotional—for the first time, she is a loss of words—about the pressures she faces as the first black Bachelorette. She mentions the harsh judgment she’ll receive for the decisions she has to make on the show. She also says she alone will face this judgment. Later, at the rose ceremony, Lee gets a rose. It’s hard not to see this sequence and think that she broke down at the producers’ insistence that she keep the Lee on to continue to fill the show’s drama quotient. Again, after the producers showed really bad judgment during Bachelor in Paradise, it’s hard to not assume they’re acting with the worst of intentions here.

Chris Harrison, scratching and crawling his way back onto the camera after being an afterthought this entire season, promises to “facilitate anything” that Rachel wants. He then does the only thing that seems to be within his powers as the nominal host of this show, which is to cut the cocktail party short and go straight to the rose ceremony.

Rose Ceremony

Smash cut to the rose ceremony, where Will, Dean, Jonathan the Tickle Predator, Piggo Mortensen, Adam (still don’t know who this is ¯_(ツ)_/¯), Bryan, Matt (don’t know this dude either), Josiah, Jack Stone, Iggy, Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny, and Lee get the red rose of continued camera time. They join Eric and Peter, who already received date roses. This means that the elfin Bryce, the similar but slightly less elfin Brady, and Diggy must say goodbye. These contestants bid adieu to Rachel, and then walk solemnly to the cannon where Chris Harrison fires them in the general direction of their hometowns.

One-on-one date with Dean

This week’s episode was brought to us by the tourism board of Hilton Head, an island off the coast of South Carolina. The contestants travel to the island, which steadfastly kept its name despite the disreputable associations it conjured during the Paris Hilton sex tape scandal of the early aughts. Once on Hilton Head Island, do we learn about the island’s strategic importance during the Civil War? The rich culture and history of its Gullah inhabitants? The island’s lowcountry cuisine? Nope! We learn about blimps.

Dean, who looks like a laboratory-engineered contestant for this show, gets the one-on-one date with Rachel. They drink champagne on the hood a jeep when the Goodyear blimp, in all of its old-timey, slow-moving glory, approaches them with a message that their “ride is here.” 36 hours later, the blimp lands and they hop aboard.

Rachel, adorably, had a childhood fascination with blimps, which she referred to as “b’imps.” Dean, afraid of heights, struggles to repress images of the Hindenburg.

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Rachel, doing the last thing someone who has a fear of blimps would want her to do, takes the wheel (Joystick? Old-fashioned lever and pulley operation?) of the blimp and manages to not immediately imperil the passengers. The pilot then lets Dean pretend that he’s controlling the blimp like a big boy. Dean and Rachel then step three feet away from the pilot in the back of the cockpit to enjoy a quasi-intimate moment.

The blimp then flies by the hotel the other contestants are staying at with the message “Ice Cube’s a pimp” “Dean and Rachel 4 ever.” The last thing these insecure knuckleheads need is an airborne advertisement of Rachel’s intimacy with another guy. They try to reassure themselves that Dean is younger and handsomer than they are … which in their warped minds is a bad thing.

Dean gets the date rose. Rachel and Dean then go to concert by something called Russell Dickerson. These live performances by D-level musicians are a staple of one-on-one dates, but who are they for? The musician looks like he is just trying to get through a contractually-obligated performance that will maybe net him $14.73 of new spins on Spotify. The Bachelorette and contestant look uncomfortable as props in a live show. And the crowd of 37 Craigslist extras look just as confused about what a Russell Dickerson is as the rest of us. Anyway, successful date!

Group Date

Afterwards, we move onto the group date, featuring Alex, Anthony, Piggo Mortensen, Bryan, Jonathan, Adam, Matt, Kenny, Lee, Iggy, Eric, Will, Josiah. This leaves Jack Stone with the one-on-one date, which is shelved for another episode.

This massive gaggle of guys are invited to a boat to see Hilton Head Island. The dudes bring out their best boat attire, but none better than Josiah, who wears flood pants high enough that his cuffs would stay bone dry even if their boat sunk to the bottom of the Port Royal Sound.

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On the boat, the dudes have a dance off, a rap off, and eventually a shirt off competition. During the rap battle, Piggo calls Rachel a “girl from the hood” keeping with the theme of racist nonsense in this episode. Dude, her dad has been a federal judge for like 20 years.

The guys then are compelled to do a spelling bee. Josiah brags about his vocabulary, but can’t immediately think of a word to describe the vastness of his lexicon. My favorite words are wordy words that describe wordy words, so let me help you out Josiah: brag about your vocabulary full of recondite, grandiloquent, abstruse, recherché, and arcane words next time.

Some guys get easy words like “passion” and “façade.” Other guys get words that are literally impossible to spell, like “boutonniere.” Josiah, as promised, wins the spelling bee. The only thing higher than his IQ is the hem of his drawers.

What these dudes would have scored on the LSAT

This episode really focused on these dudes’ smarts, which allows us to surmise what they would have scored on their LSAT. Here are a few educated guesses:

Dean is perceptive, picks up on Lee’s lack of respect right away, and is able to calmly articulate that into the producer without saying anything regrettable himself. He seems like he is able to absorb information and make the proper deductions. 168.

Jack Stone stumbled into a conversation and thought Dean was referring to the other contestants’ “corks,” not “quirks.” 143.

Bryan, in response to Rachel’s query that Bryan’s charm seems too good to be true: “It’s a fairy tale.” Bryan, in response to Rachel’s retort that it is not a fairy tale: “It’s real, it’s 1000% real. I promise you.” 138.

Iggy, during the spelling bee, mixes up “boudoir” with “Bordeaux” (which he also spells incorrectly), which leads me to believe he is prone to equivocation fallacies and sloppy mistakes. 141.

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Eric misses four out of the six words in “façade.” Missing four out of six questions on the December 2016 LSAT would net Eric a 136.

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Back to the Group Date

During the cocktail portion of the group date, Piggo establishes pole position in this group, as he and Rachel start to discuss living arrangements. Rachel is apparently licensed to practice in Wisconsin, allowing her to move to Piggo’s hometown of Madison. This surprises Piggo Mortensen, but Wisconsin lets experienced attorneys from every other jurisdiction practice there, so basically every attorney is licensed to practice cheese curd law or whatever the main legal industry in Wisconsin is.

Meanwhile, the other dudes use their time with Rachel to question the motives of other guys in the house. Iggy brings up doubts about Josiah. Josiah brings up how Iggy admitted to shooting steroids into his testicles.

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Lee brings up Kenny. Kenny brings up Lee. Things get heated between an increasingly frustrated Kenny (who, embracing the hottest term of January 2017, calls Lee “an alternative facts piece of garbage”) and an increasingly inebriated Lee. It looks like everything is about to come to a head until … duh duh duh … they hit us with the third consecutive “TO BE CONTINUED …”

What we learned about love

The journey to find love is a perilous journey best traveled via outdated and dangerous airships from the 1920s.

What we learned about loss

There’s no shame in losing a spelling bee, provided you get most of the letters of your word correct.

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What we learned about the LSAT

These dudes would not do well on the LSAT, but Rachel? Probably very well, although the exact score is still undetermined.