'It is not in the stars that hold our destiny, but in ourselves "- Shakespeare

Chris Introduces Rachel as next Bachelorette

In a surprise , the producers announced after the show that Rachel will be the next Bachelorette

On to the recap:

   

Sea Lions

    

Watching nature shows can be informative about human behavior as well as in the animal kingdom. I recall watching one about sea lions with the story about  males competing with each other for the right to monopolize the females during the breeding season.

Not all the males can be the alpha so one strategy to gain access to the females was to establish positions on the periphery of the females. When the alpha was busy (breeding , fighting , eating, etc.) the periphery  males would seize the moment to take a run at the females. These periphery males would rarely take on the alpha male and just hover around waiting to sneak in for a quick breeding action.

I see our boy Nick the Weasel as periphery male . He does not have enough charisma to be an alpha. But the role of the Bachelor demands an alpha.

Alpha Males swim with lions

We head into the evening with Nick in crisis. He sent three ladies home last week shaking his head that he has not found the deep relationship he had hoped would evolve. For a few minutes we are forced to sit thru the fake dilemma as to whether Nick will continue on and fight the good fight in his journey for love. Chris Harrison is forced to come by and give our boy a pep talk because taking beautiful girls on yachts is so depressing and stressful he needs a boost in morale. An alpha does not need encouragement  to carry on . Eventually, Nick shakes his gloom and affirms his desire to carry on because love is worth it. Thanks for carrying the baton Nick, now let’s get back to the ladies.

We have six ladies left and the producers bring us to another Caribbean island -Bimini. You likely recall Ernest Hemingway lived on Bimini from 1935 to 1937. Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea while living there and the story is can be interpreted to be a metaphor for Nicks struggles. Let me take a moment to  refresh your recall of the story :

The Old Man and the Sea tells the story of a battle between an aging, experienced fisherman, Santiago, and a large marlin. The story opens with Santiago having gone 84 days without catching a fish, (THAT is a slump !) and now being seen as "salao", the worst form of unluckiness. He is so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with him and has been told instead to fish with successful fishermen.  Santiago tells the apprentice  of his plan to go way out into the Gulf Stream  to end the unlucky streak.

Our boy Nick has twice been on the show as a candidate for the final rose of the Bachelorette. Both times he  made it to the final two and both times  been left at the altar which may give some a sense he is unlucky. But now he gets to be  The Bachelor and end his unlucky streak – with me on  the parallels so far??

On the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago takes his skiff into the Gulf Stream, sets his lines and, by noon, has his bait taken by a big fish that he is sure is a marlin. Unable to haul in the great marlin, Santiago is instead pulled by the marlin, and two days and nights pass with Santiago holding onto the line. Though wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a brother. He also determines that, because of the fish's great dignity, no one shall deserve to eat the marlin.

Nick whittles down the number of candidates  from 30 to ten but reducing the roster from 10 to 6 leaves him in tears. He fears he will not find love but his “brother” Chris Harrison steadies his course  and helps Nick overcome his fears and determine he will charge ahead in his honorable pursuit of love.. But he still has Rachel at this point...

On the third day, the fish begins to circle the skiff. Santiago, worn out and almost delirious, uses all his remaining strength to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon. Santiago straps the marlin to the side of his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed.

Nick has a  constructive day on the yacht with Vanessa with scuba diving and kissing as main recreation. Vanessa puts a cherry on top by professing she is falling in love with our boy. Nick is feeling encouraged...

On his way in to shore, sharks are attracted to the marlin's blood. Santiago kills a great mako shark with his harpoon, but he loses the weapon. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But the sharks keep coming, and by nightfall the sharks have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Santiago knows that he is entirely unlucky now, and defeated now, but not when he caught the marlin, tells the sharks of how they have killed his dreams. Upon reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, Santiago struggles to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder, leaving the fish head and the bones on the shore. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep.

Nick fights his demons about not fulfilling his destiny for love but selects  four candidates for hometown dates where he can meet the family. Any family members meeting this guy will have serious doubts about his sincerity and even Nick knows it..

A group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet (5.5 m) from nose to tail. A fisherman  is given the head of the fish, and the other fishermen tell Manolin to tell the old man how sorry they are. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. The boy, worried about the old man, cries upon finding him safe asleep and at his injured hands. Manolin brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of his youth — of lions on an African beach.

We will need to wait until  the final rose ceremony to see is Nick recovers to face a new  with a beloved  but I have a feeling Santiago and Nick will have a lot in common in the future .

Ok the literary metaphor portion of our show has concluded ..... but when you work in systems you need to go to literature on occasion..

In this week’s episode we have   three one-on -one dates ( Vanessa, Rachel and Danielle M)  as well as a group date with Raven, Corinne and Kristina.

We have escorted Vanessa straight to the final four since they sang the national anthem to start opening game of  the season and she has held serve. She is this year’s shampoo commercial candidate and flips her hair every possible occasion in case we missed the first 45 times.

Vanessa with the flowing hair

At dinner, she falls prey to the Bachelor curse of expressing how much she is in love with our boy. But, Nick holds off reciprocating to the chagrin of Vanessa as Nick says he has to respect the process and save the L- word for the final.  Ok- Nick we will hold our breathe as we don’t see the love either. Vanessa peaked in the early innings. She might hang on but her stock gapped up  in the beginning but is not rising every day, just holding at current levels.  

Danielle M

The more interesting  event of the night was the date with Danielle M.  The producers seem to like girls with back stories that generate sympathy but are generally shrugged off quickly.

Sample:

Lady candidate over dinner : "I am glad I was able to come on the show as last month my entire town of 30,000 was massacred by a horde of Mongols."

Bachelor: "whew sounds rough.... glad you could get over that and make to the show" (Bachelor leans over for a kiss) 

 Danielle M is a beautiful girl with a sad face carrying the burden of a tragic back story. She related to bachelor nation and Nick that her previous boyfriend died from a drug overdose. She does not seem to be over this as she has an element of forlornness to her. Nick and Danielle M ride a bike around Bimini but the blue sky and sunshine does not seem to generate any joy from Danielle M. Danielle seems to crave something to pull her out of the hole she finds herself in but our peripheral  male does not have enough to charisma to lift her spirit.  Danielle  M. needs an alpha to help give her a sense of who she wants to be- someone she can look to and feel she wants to go in the same direction. But the juice is simply not there and Nick has no choice but to tell her it is midnight and the carriage awaits to take her home.

Kristina

Nick then decides he doesn’t like the bachelor rules and structure so he bags the cocktail party and rose ceremony and heads over to talk with Kristina . Kristina has a back story coming from an orphanage in Russia that affords her a certain amount credit and a figure to guarantee a spot on Bachelor in Paradise . Nick opens with how much he cares for her and wants to spare her the pain of a rose ceremony. 

 All in all, I think this is better than sending her a text message but she does not take it well and we have our final four. Although The Bachelor is a story about the mate selection process it is also about the mate de–selection process .

Corinne

Corinne makes the final four  and brags about her “sexabilities” giving everyone in Bachelor Nation  a new vocabulary word  that is not likely to appear on the SAT’s.  Rachel establishes once again that she is far and away the  Tom Brady of this competition. Raven from Arkansas  gets  the fourth seat and offers a spunkiness that make her a dark horse candidate .

But as noted above, after the show, the producers  announce Rachel will be the next Bachelorette recognizing  this chick is special and deserves her own show an should not be doomed to an engagement with Nick the weasel .

So that announcement leaves us with three candidates left. Nobody on the planet would imagine Corinne to actually end up with the final rose and marry Nick. Although Corinne’s nanny might be rooting for it . I do have to hand Corinne some credit though for being herself and creating some life on the show.  The producers recognize they have a wild one and give Bachelor Nation every chance to get all they can handle of this "Raw" chick to use Nick's word. Arrangements for her flight to Bachelor in Paradise are being handled as we speak.

Raven  the dark horse

So it has come down to Raven or Vanessa.  After hometowns we can have a better idea. I would argue though that Nick’s fate is not any more likely to be richly rewarded than Santiago’ s fate from  the Hemingway story. After the final rose ceremony, I eventually see Nick falling asleep and dreaming about being the Bachelor again.