Power-Ranking The Bachelor Girls, Week 7

"The last time I was in love with someone, they died."

This week on The Bachelor, Nick and a group that is 66% brunettes head to Bimini, a place I had literally never heard of. They are all really, unbelievably stoked about Bimini. It is in the Bahamas, apparently. The girls are still reeling from the double loss of Danielle L. and that other brunette girl (Wendy??), but it's okay because they get to stay at a breezy Air BnBimini and rub sunscreen on Nick's spindly bod. Corinne eats a bunch of cheese to convince Nick that she's in touch with his Wisconsin roots. Raven playfully shoots Nick with a bolt-action rifle to show what her daddy's gonna do to him on their hometown date. Kristina distantly wonders why one of the sharks on their snorkeling date looks so much like Alexis.

Why does Corinne wear heels she can't walk in? Did Nick start using Sun-In? Are we ever going to meet Raquel? Why hasn't there been a degrading relay-race group date? Had anyone else heard of Bimini?

Put on your snorkel and let's dive in.

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8. Danielle (Last Week: 4)

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Oh, Danielle. You sweet sunbutter muffin. You were the last Danielle standing, but alas, you stand no more. Danielle and Nick go on a one-on-one where they ride bikes around town and lose a basketball game to a bunch of literal children. It looks like fun! However, Nick is not feeling the chemistry with Danielle “for whatever reason” (It’s because she’s tall and blonde, Nick!) and decides to send her home. Woof. I thought Danielle was top 3 material for sure. I don’t have much else to say about her departure, except I think it should be noted that at one point, Danielle literally says the sentence “The last time I was in love with someone, they died.” My birthday is May 9th; please, someone put that on a throw pillow for me or something. Thanks in advance.

7. Kristina (Last Week: 1)

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Kristina, my little matryoshka. My little Romanov child. My little kulich. Kristina gets all sensually slathered in sunscreen by Nick on the yachting group date (also: I hated, hated, hated the gross panning shots they got of the girls taking off their swimsuit covers) but it’s not enough to earn her a hometown date. Which is sad, because I think getting a peek into her family’s dynamic would have been extraordinarily interesting. (Are they maybe not legally allowed to show Kristina’s siblings on national television because they are, in fact, the escaped Romanov children? I will not let this rest.) Nick sends Kristina packing and she is not impressed with him for it. I, for one, will miss Kristina a lot. On the plus side, at least there’s still one white male in a position of power who isn’t getting cozy with the Russians.

6. Corinne (Last Week: 6)

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Well, it finally happened. Corinne, presumed college graduate, finally uttered the words “My heart is gold, but my vagine is platinum” on national television. Here’s the thing: if last night were the first time I had heard those fateful words, I would have lost my mind. I would have fallen off my couch and rolled across my slanted floors that make all my furniture tip over, out the door, down the stoop steps, past the trash piles, past my curmudgeonly super who is constantly trying to clean the sidewalk and off into the chilly New York night. You would never have seen me again, but perhaps on a clear night you would have been able to hear my cackles bouncing off the boulders in Central Park. Alas, the impact of this now-iconic line was severely dulled by the fact that we’ve already heard it a million fucking times. Stop spoiling your own show, ABC! Anyway, Corinne is super not okay in this episode. She is drunk and pouty and can’t stop eating cheese. We’ve all been there, but I am somewhat worried about Corinne. Is she eating anything besides cheese? Why isn’t anyone giving her bagels and Gatorade? She is pushing tipsy one hundred percent of the time. You know how your brain is kind of floating in liquid inside your skull? I think Corinne’s cerebrospinal fluid has been completely replaced with Prosecco at this point. She is a walking, talking vodka-soaked gummy bear. More specifically, she’s a gummy bear who is stressed about not getting a hometown date. As she should be - after all, what kind of cheese-pasta-fueled, nanny-loving, Courtney Stodden-looking, barely-functioning alcoholic who needs to get her roots dyed could ever stand a chance against Rachel? Against Vanessa? Danielle, Kristina? I’d assume that Corinne’s stiffest competition would be Raven, but then Raven shocks us all by being the first of the bunch to score a hometown date, placing Corinne squarely on the chopping block. Corinne’s solution to this problem, natch, is to try to entice Nick with her platinum genitalia. Listen. Have you ever heard an adult person say the sentence “My sex abilities are definitely top-notch?” No! You have not! Why does everything Corinne says make her sound like a robot who learned to speak English by watching The O.C.? Anyway, Nick, who has long since learned his lesson about pre-Fantasy Suite banging, gives Corinne a glass of water and sends her back to bed. Corinne is not happy. The good news (for us, not for her future employability) is that it looks like she’ll be getting a hometown date after all. I cannot wait to meet the people, hired help or otherwise, who have spawned Corinne. I hope Raquel gets plenty of airtime - she’s a star, I just know it!

5. Vanessa (Last Week: 5)

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Vanessa looks incredible in her cornflower blue romper and snags the first one-on-one in Bimini with Nick. On their date, she tells Nick that she’s falling in love with him, and he gives a very carefully crafted response. Vanessa is crestfallen that he doesn’t say he’s falling in love with her too, which, okay. Relax, Vanessa, they can’t all be as expressive as human ficus Ben Higgins. What Nick really says is basically “Look, I’d love to tell you that I’m falling in love with you too, but lord knows it doesn’t go so well for me when I tell someone I love them on this show. I’m not going to say it out loud until it’s the finale and a woman has explicitly stated that she will accept my proposal. I am not about to let someone pull a Kaitlyn Bristowe.” It sounds truly rehearsed, which makes me suspect that at some point while doing his daily sun salutations and selfie session, Nick was like “Oh, I need to come up with a good response for when someone I like tells me they love me.” Nick is clearly so into Vanessa. She has nothing to worry about, I think, but she literally isn’t seen for the rest of the episode, so maybe she did the thing that I always do when I feel like I’m not getting enough attention and is hiding in her room to see if anyone misses her. I wonder if she is also a middle child.

4. Nick (Last Week: 2)

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Look at this dude. Look at him in his little neon shorts and his lil’ towel with his sunkissed hair. He looks like a seven year old. Look at this little guy who never imagined he’d be sailing on a yacht in Bimini with three bikini-ed women who are all arguably out of his league. It’s moments like these when you can really see how much Nick LOVES being the Bachelor. Anyway. Nick does pretty well this week, gently sending two top-notch women home without making them endure a humiliating rose ceremony (I mean, as a viewer and somewhat of a sadist, I love the humiliating rose ceremonies, but I appreciate his tact). He does not sleep with Corinne, despite her most valiant efforts. He doesn’t tell a billion women that he’s in love with them (@benhiggins). He is terrified to meet Rachel’s father. I actually liked Nick more this week than I have in a while. Keep it up, lil Nicky!

3. Raven (Last Week: 7)

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Oh, Jesus. Pack your cutoff shorts and your thinly-veiled racist tendencies because we’re going to Hoxie, Arkansas. Raven gets the only rose this episode, possibly because she’s a hypnotist (those eyes!) and is thus guaranteed a hometown date. Raven asks Nick if he’s scared to meet all the dads and brothers. Uh, okay, Raven. Let’s think outside the patriarchy, shall we? Maybe he’s nervous to meet some moms! Maybe he’s nervous to meet some sisters! Maybe he values the opinions of each of his prospective wives’ family members regardless of their gender! I bet Raven’s dad is one of those guys who makes his daughter’s boyfriends fill out “applications” and thinks it is just friggin’ hilarious. Raven also reveals that she calls her dad “Daddy,” which made something deep inside me quiver with discomfort. And I actually know a lot of people that do this, and I usually don’t think it’s that weird. I don’t know. Maybe it’s her accent. I’m scared for Raven’s hometown date. I’m just going to go ahead and say what everyone is thinking: Arkansas is terrifying. I know that’s a generalization. I know I’m stereotyping. I know I’m a coastal elite! But still! The only good thing to ever come out of Arkansas was Hillary Clinton, and she wasn’t even born there. On the plus side, maybe this means we’ll get a Bachelor and 19 Kids and Counting crossover episode, which would be my ultimate reality TV dream (that, or an episode of America’s Next Top Model meets Chopped).

2. Whoever Framed This Shot (Last Week: Not Ranked)

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I mean. This is the stuff that film school wet dreams are made of.

1. Rachel (Last Week: 3)

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Rachel has an island date with Nick (“This place is well-known for having no tourists,” he says, hilariously) and it’s fine. Whatever. Most importantly: Rachel is your new Bachelorette! I have no idea why they chose to announce this so early. She clearly isn’t going home this week, and it’s a pretty major spoiler since she seemed like she had a real chance to win. A leading theory is that ABC wanted to get out ahead of spoilers. Maybe. Maybe they were just really fucking pleased with themselves for finally casting a person of color as the lead (“Juan Pablo was Latino!” cries a producer in the distance. I don’t care!) and couldn’t wait to share the news. I’m choosing to go with the theory that they wanted lots of time to handpick great guys for Rachel to date, and to encourage guys who might not normally apply. Fun fact: The Bachelorette begins filming only a couple of days after The Bachelor finishes airing and the Bachelorette is typically announced, meaning that the guys who apply to be on the show have no real way of knowing who their Bachelorette will be ahead of time, which can make for weird situations (see: last season’s Caila/Jojo switcheroo, or the Britt/Kaitlyn debacle.) This is also why, until Jojo’s season, no runner-up had ever been the Bachelorette - it’s too quick of a turnaround and there’s no time to film intro packages or get people to root for her. Anyway, this is all a long-winded way of saying that A. I know too much about this damn franchise and B. It wouldn’t surprise me if Rachel draws a higher-calibre group of men than, oh, I don’t know, the absolute trolls that Jojo had on her season. Rachel is 31, meaning she’s less likely to draw a bunch of 25-year-old Instagram models, and she’s intelligent, educated, and gainfully employed. She passed the bar on the first try! What I hope this means is that guys who might not apply to date, say, a 24-year-old “dog enthusiast” who sells hair gummies on Instagram might actually apply to date someone like Rachel. Regardless of their reasons for announcing this casting long before it seems necessary, having the first black Bachelorette is a huge deal. I’ve seen a lot of internet comments to the tune of “Oh, great! Now black women have an equal opportunity to be on a shitty dating show!” Whatever, buzzkills. Visibility is important. It is absolutely insane that it’s taken them this long to have a POC as the lead. I don’t even really feel it’s my place to talk about why it’s important, so here are some think pieces for you to peruse. I don’t even remember what Rachel does in the actual episode. It doesn’t matter anyway, I guess.

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See you next Monday!