Bachelorette Recap, Clare, Ep. 3: Clare Forgets She’s Mic’d

The fact that I’m going to attempt to formulate words to describe the worst car wreck we can’t look away from–aka Clare’s season of The Bachelorette–is a level of commitment I wasn’t prepared for when I signed up to recap this season.

But I am a woman of my word, so I will write about what I’m witnessing. Even if it kills me. Which it might, because this is the worst thing I’ve ever watched in my life except maybe the 2020 presidential debates.

I find myself having to rack my brain to figure out what’s going on in the first five minutes of this episode, kind of like waking up somewhere and not knowing where you are. Oh! A rose ceremony! Oh right this guy Yosef who smiles like the Grinch is about to cause trouble. I have trouble retaining any information about this season other than Clare’s swimfan imprint on Dale.

Yosef, or as the guys call him “Yo”, decides he needs to tell Clare that the naked dodgeball date was classless and that she overreacted when the guys didn’t all jump to talk to her during the first group date. Anytime you’re going to reference “class”, “maturity”, or “overreacting” to a woman scorned, might I recommend wearing something with a little more protection than a thrice unbuttoned dress shirt and a Men’s Warehouse suit. I wouldn’t go near those words without a full suit of armor.

At first, Yosef’s delivery seemed…okay. And then all at once, it was not. Clare handled it shockingly well because honestly I expected her to behead him or something. She seems like the murderous type, or at least a slapper.

Lucky for Yosef, who deserved a slap at the minimum, Clare simply walked away when he was done berating her for being old and unworthy of parenting children. Yeah. Super ugly. I’m sure his daughter would’ve rather seen his bare rump on a group date than watched her dad verbally abuse someone on national television. The moral compass seems a wee bit off, here.

As Clare shakes and cries to the camera, Dale strolls up in a white tank top beneath his chocolate brown suit and I have a hard time concentrating on their embrace when all I can wonder is if white tanks under suits is no longer just a look for factory workers smoking pipes in a brick alleyways back in 1932. 

Immediately Clare forgets about being a strong woman who doesn’t put up with Yosefs of the world, and morphs into a helpless damsel in distress because that’ll keep her closer to Dale’s chiseled abs in this moment.

She cancels the rose ceremony because she’s “too emotional” i.e. she already got her time with Dale. Roses go to:

Dale

Zach C

Demar

Brendon

Jordan

Joe 

Jay

Bennett

Eazy

Ben

Ed

Ivan

Kenny

Zach J

I don’t even know why I bother writing their names because the only people I even halfway remember on this season are Dale, Eazy, and Bennett.

The poor blokes without a rose leave and don’t even get a two-second exit interview. They just evaporate into mist as though they never even existed. 

First date of the week:

Jason

Jay

Eazy

Chasen

Blake

Ed

Riley

Dale

“Today we separate the men from the boys. Love, Clare”

Cut to Clare sitting in her “Presidente” suite doodling in a flimsy notebook from the dollar section at Target. Budgets are tight. It’s 2020. 

Knock knock!

Deanna, the Bachelorette from 12 years ago, is at the door! Did she really quarantine for two weeks? Something tells me this wasn’t about Clare. Mama needed a break from her two small children. We love our kids, sure, but two weeks alone in a La Quinta hotel room doesn’t sound bad.

Anyway, apparently they brought in an “old” Bachelorette because Hannah Brown would seem like a teeny bopper next to Clare. Can you imagine Clare taking advice from Hannah Brown? I die. Now that would’ve been some good TV.

Clare tells Deanna that she already knows that Dale is the One and jokes that this might be the shortest season ever. Meanwhile, Tayshia sits quarantining in the room next door, so Clare has no clue just how right she is. Producers got one whiff of Clare’s Dale fixation on night one and were like, WE NEED BACKUP.

For the record, this visual of Tayshia bunking up one room over is just in my head. But it’s also true.

Clare would rather talk about Dale with Deanna, so she completely forgets she has a group date. The sun sets, and the guys are still sitting around in their date clothes waiting for her to show up. Yikes. Finally she does, and says the day portion is cancelled, so switch out your khaki shorts for some highwater pants and meet me in the courtyard for a cocktail party.

The guys try to pretend like they’re not pissed that they quit their jobs to be on a show with a woman who won’t even go on dates with them, and shimmy into their highwaters and slim-cut polos. Eazy opts to switch out his jungle button down for his daisy button down.

Dale takes Clare aside first, telling the guys he just needs to talk to her for five minutes. They then spend 45 minutes heavy petting on the bed in her room before the other guys are annoyed enough that Eazy goes looking for them. Clare, who was spread eagle with Dale on top of her just moments before, answers the door with her jacket barely back in place.

Dale tries to slip out quietly so she and Eazy can talk, but Clare stops him and insists she get one last hug. At this point, she’s disrespecting the other guys far more than he is.

Obviously the guys vent to Dale when he returns to the group. He just cranks up his 500 watt smile and stares dumbly until the tension has passed and the other guys are out of things to say. Not a bad tactic, honestly.

After a few minutes, Clare thanks Eazy for their conversation, then quietly asks a producer if they can “rush the rest of the guys along”…Clare, honey, you’re still mic’d! And rush them along, they did, even when one guy tried to fight for more time when producers sent in the next guy to interrupt. Clare was like, “Nah, we’ve talked enough, let’s move it along.” Being privy to her request to shuffle them through made the whole thing simply painful to watch. 

By this point in the season, I want to blame the producers for giving Clare a bad edit, but I can’t. She’s treating these guys like garbage and only putting up with their presence so she can keep being on TV and call herself the Bachelorette. I’m actually glad producers decided to give her the boot (rumor has it she didn’t exactly quit). 

Dale gets the group date rose. I barely react. I’m so bored and annoyed with this whole scenario. ABC needs a casting overhaul. Please, Lord, let Tayshia save this franchise.

Eazy tells the camera that all the guys’ spirits are broken down because Clare refuses to give them a shot since she’s so clearly already chosen Dale. MY SPIRIT IS BROKEN TOO, EAZY.

When Clare shows up the next morning to pick up Zach J for the one-on-one date, her only comment to the camera was that Dale looked so hot in his backwards baseball hat. I decide to break my rule of no drinking this week because I just can’t keep going. You can thank our sauv blanc collection for the existence of this recap.

Clare tells Zach J they’re having a spa day, but apparently La Quinta Resorts don’t have a spa, so producers purchased two of those $30 feet spas from Walmart and plopped them in front of two conference chairs in the business center.

Zach is ticklish and squirms constantly as the unmasked La Quinta employees who have been torn from their families for this one moment attempt to scrub his feet. Clare finds a man with ticklish feet the least attractive quality she can think of. And trust me–she’s trying to think of as many as she can so that she has an excuse to send him home. Even though he’s hot and nice enough, he’s not Dale so he’s gotsta go!

They hop in the pool for a few minutes before her dog rounds the corner, and she spots the perfect out! “I need to go take my dog back to my room, so let’s meet back up at dinner!” As she climbs the stairs out of the pool, she turns around to give him a courtesy kiss, but changes her mind at the last second. She makes up some ludacris story that he pulled back and didn’t want to kiss her, which only makes him panic and yell “I want to kiss you! Why did you stop?? Why did you STOP??” as he hastily tries to grab her face to make up for it.

Except he can’t make up for it, because she’s straight up gaslighting him.

Now, Zachary probably should’ve let it go instead of desperately attempting to kiss her again because it came off a wee bit aggressive, but I think he wanted to prove to her her that he genuinely wanted to kiss her because he thought she was offended. 

It was horrible. She literally ducked and weaved away from him until he finally retreated, bewildered and embarrassed. Just as I am.

Back in her room, she cuddles her two dogs and whimpers to the camera that Zach J trying to kiss her reminded her of abuse in her past. I am fully on team Take No Abuse, but honestly, I think she was clinging incredibly hard to the potential of using his attempt to kiss her as an excuse to kick him out. So she leaned HARD into blaming him for being aggressive. At this point none of the guys are going to escape with reputations in tact because she’ll find as many hard core excuses to chop them as she can. First, Brandon didn’t stalk her enough before the show. Now, Zach didn’t want to kiss her enough but then wanted to kiss her too much. 

I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE CLARE. PUT US OUT OF OUR MISERY.

That night, in an attempt to set the record for the Bachelorette who goes on the least amount of dates, Clare sends Chris Harrison in her place. He walks up to Zach, who is sitting at the table for two waiting for Clare, and tells him that Clare’s not coming. When Zach tries to tell Chris what happened by the pool, Chris just gives him a look of pity and tells him he’s going home.

Can I go home? 

The second group date begins, but first I pause Hulu to see how much time is left in this episode. TWENTY MORE MINUTES????

Lord be with me. That is 20 minutes too long.

The group date guys are thrilled that Dale is not on this date, because maybe she focus on something or someone else for a little bit. LOL not gonna happen, boys!

I’d like to know how much they had to pay Margaret Cho to quarantine for 14 days. She leads the men through the art of roasting, and tells them they’ll be roasting each other in front of a live audience: the non-date guys! Clare is smiling ear to ear because that means Dale will be arriving soon.

At the roast, the guys all take little digs at Dale, except for Bennett who wrote 3 full pages about Dale’s incessant talking (we don’t even know anything about Dale’s personality so this is news to viewers–all we know about him is that he smiles a lot and seems to enjoy dry humping). Dale is 0% offended, and when the date ends, he chats with Eazy by the pool about the whole ordeal without a single trace of being butt hurt. He doesn’t come across cocky. Just easy-going. It’s actually a very attractive quality of his.

Clare though? Oh, Clare was NOT having the Dale jokes. HOW DARE THEY MAKE FUN OF MY MAN AT A ROAST WHERE THE POINT IS TO MAKE FUN OF PEOPLE.

That night, she refuses to talk to any of the guys about anything other than their Dale jokes, which most of them point out was 1 joke out of 45 in their set. One by one, they each ask her during their private time to not talk about Dale, but she insists. Every single conversation went like this:

Clare: “Wow you were bringing the heat tonight! Why’d you say that about Dale?”

Guy: “Oh it was just in good fun. But let’s not talk about him. I’d rather spend tonight getting to know you!”

Clare: “But Dale!”

Guy: “Can we talk about us instead?”

Clare: “Time for you to go back to the group.”

Then she refused to give out the group date rose. As she walked away with a producer, she quietly said, “Sorry, I just couldn’t give a rose to any of those guys after they ripped on my fiance!”

WICKA WICKA WHATTTT???

YOUR WHAT?

Your FIANCE??

Oh my. Clare. You just said that outloud! Out.Loud. Mic’d. P’sst, Clare! That’s not just the voice in your head!

Keep in mind Clare supposedly met Dale one week ago. One. Week. Ago. He has not proposed or said I love you or met with Neil Lane. 

I’m not a fan of calling women crazy. In fact, I hate it. HOWEVER, Clare is reallyyyy making me bend my rules of feminism here. 

TEASERS FOR NEXT WEEK: Jason’s demons begin to show as the guys’ patience for The Clare and Dale Show slowly unravels. (Remember from last episode when we didn’t know if they were murder demons or food obsession demons? We’re about to find out.)

Then WHOOSH!

In slow motion with a milky filter on the shot to give 1970s vibes for no apparent reason, Tayshia bursts out of the La Quinta pool in slow motion, wearing a coral bikini and a sexy grin that says, “Trust me, these guys will be thrilled to learn they don’t have to put up with Clare anymore.”

I’M READY FOR IT. Let’s gooooo bring me some Tayshia!! Here’s to hoping she makes her entrance next week and salvages what’s left of this season.