Wonderful! - Ep. 75: A Very, Very Bad Week

Episode Date: June 21, 2017

Fair warning: This is a pretty tough episode to listen to, and it was a pretty tough episode to record. We're covering everything that went down during the suspension of Bachelor in Paradise, and also recapping a super problematic episode of The Bachelorette. There's a lot of rotten stuff happening right now that we're trying to sort out; we ask for some patience as we figure out what comes next. CW: Racism, Sexual Assault Additional Reading: http://www.refinery29.com/2017/06/160041/bachelorette-lee-garrett-provoking-kenny-angry-black-man http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/abc-racism-on-the-bachelorette-is-not-entertaining-its-gross_us_594896bce4b07499199e13b0 https://theringer.com/bachelorette-week-4-recap-a7bd701d239 MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Maybe you should go and do some contemplating. Right reasons, right reasons, being a good girl for all the right reasons. Right reasons, right reasons, being a good girl for all the right reasons. I'm the best rat and I'm rapping to your poolside. Here to find true love. Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Rose Buddies.

Well, I just got back from E3, played with all my friends, Crash Bandicoot, Sonic the Hedgehog, Tales and Knuckles, The Echidna, and Zelda from Zelda. And did I miss anything? Have you, uh... Hey, Griffin, have you checked the internet at all? Oh, no, I've just been too busy hanging out with my friend Call of Duty, who's the lead shooter in Call of Duty. Let me just get online. And Call of Duty, who's the lead shooter in Call of Duty. Let me just get online.

Oh, fuck. And that's a little skit that we've prepared for you. The only point of flight. And scene. And scene in this episode of Rose Buddies. I played Julie, the wife of Randy. The concerned wife of Randy. Mm-hmm. The wife of Randy.

The concerned wife of Randy. I don't, I don't, where do you even start? Where do you even start with one like this? If I sound like, I feel like I sound like kind of a scamp right now. I've got the headphones in, listening to the monitor. I sound kind of like, oh boy, here we go. Oh boy, here we go. The feeling I'm feeling is mostly dread and anxiety and really just sadness, overwhelming sorrow. Yeah.

I want to explain. Griffin and I were both really anxious and kind of dreading recording. And not because we don't love each other, because we do very much. Well, if that's your first assumption, that's a pretty whack place to jump to. We want to do this episode well, and there's no way to do it well. There isn't. There's a lot of different

things at work here. Obviously, we are sort of dancing around discussing. We did not have an episode last week, so this episode we're going to be covering the Bachelor in Paradise suspension, and and now as of this afternoon they're just fucking storming right ahead with that thing oh and we should do some trigger warnings oh absolutely jesus again where to begin um there there will be discussions of sexual assault allegations um just a sort of blanket racism i think for the back half

of the episode alcohol abuse yeah sure um it it i don't i don't know what we got to be fully transparent i feel like like you and i had a conversation um and i saw this echoed throughout the the the rose buddies facebook group that we were sitting in on the live reaction feed, too, of just like, I'm feeling an enormous amount of dread about this fun entertainment television show. like shock at how badly they are fucking up. Maybe shock's not the right word, but just like immense disappointment, but also like most of my anxiety stems from the fact that I cannot help but feel in some way complicit in what this show, like the space in our cultural landscape this show occupies.

And I'm not saying like we put this show on the map or anything, but I know there are people who watch this franchise because of what we did. And fuck me, it's been a bad couple of weeks for this franchise. And not just that, but the warning signs have been there in a big way. And so all the things that came out recently, it's not as if Griffin and I and i thought no that's not possible

no i mean it's if anything when the news started breaking i was like yeah like they've been flirting they've been flirting with that for a while to be fully and completely transparent like we fuck we talked about this last week like there's going to be a breaking point for us watching this show and i we've had discussions rachel and i about like what what the future of rose buddies is going to look like whether we want to continue like even even supporting this show even no matter how critical we are it doesn't change the fact that we lead a thousands of comments long discussion group um who watches it live like i cannot help but feel responsible for like some people who watch this show when the things this show are doing are they're fucking completely rotten and problematic and dangerous and irresponsible and like I, if we weren't doing this podcast, I don't know if I'd keep watching.

And the fact that we are doing this podcast, like it's, I haven't been looking forward to this. I wasn't looking forward to the episode last night. Like, I don't know that it's a lot of fun anymore. Yeah. Um,

so that's, that's something that we're sort of struggling with to sort of set the stage with like, it's going to be, it's going to be a tricky episode and we're going to do our best and please be patient with us and with each other. Like when this news broke, there was a lot of sort of hostility, I feel like between people like some folks who were just upset that the show got canceled. And some folks were like, well, yeah, the show got canceled, because what sounds like happened was pretty horrible. Just like,

be patient in general, I think, and let's get into it. Okay, so I'm going to talk about kind of the timeline of events. And this is from a Vulture article that kind of outlines the days as they unfolded. So June 6th uh, Bachelor in Paradise released a cast list, uh, and then June 11th, uh, production was halted by Warner Brothers. Yeah, that's an important thing to keep in mind that ABC does not produce this show. Warner Brothers is the production company behind the show. ABC is the channel that, um, airs it. Uh, also worth noting, because it's weirdly, I'm looking at this timeline too, June 4th

is when this, um, what, what happened took place two days before they announced the cast list yeah um so yeah uh yeah we're june 11th yeah so june 11th warner brothers halted production and released a statement that says we have become aware of allegations of misconduct on the set of bachelor in paradise in mexico and the e reported that some contestants had started to travel home yeah somebody got a picture with like all of the contestants leaving that leaving that airport um the the the allegations of misconduct were reported by way of a third party complaint by one of the producers on the show and not by either of the parties actually involved in the in the incident um which is another thing to keep in mind um there was god there was so much fucking like character assassination going around

including like a lot of it landing on this producer's shoulders which like again i don't really want to get into because a lot of that is painted by like the fact that this show is a lot of people's careers who of course are going to say some shit um to to keep it alive if they can yeah um but yeah so the next day june 12th is when um reports start leaking that the misconduct involves Corinne and Demario. And just one quick, I'm sorry to keep interrupting you. I know this is going to go a while, but somebody posted a great video. I forget who the outlet was that posted it.

I want to say like now, now this shit, I don't know. I'm sorry about like why they hadn't covered this story up to this point. And it was because like Twitter, right right it was tweets or something i think yeah well it wasn't just that the sourcing was suspect it was that this was a potential sexual assault um situation that had happened and uh it is unethical to like air the name of a victim of sexual assault which like pretty much everybody was just kind of sprinting full force forward with that, like knowing,

um, the details. Um, but since both of these people have sort of, um, put out, put out statements, um,

uh, about this stuff, like I, I, I feel like, and also it's been like two weeks since it's happened. Um, I,

I feel like we can sort of talk about it a little bit more comfortably. And we'll get to the statement. Yeah. Uh, so and producers, saying that Corinne was very obviously intoxicated. obviously intoxicated and this is when the issue of consent was introduced of uh her and demario were engaged in this sexual activity and corinne appeared unable to give any kind of consent and demario was also intoxicated um i feel like also at this point we got to step up and say like uh there is even in the statements there's very little placement of blame on it on on anybody um and that there is a tape of this happening whatever happened that is probably never going to see

the light of day although there are lawyers still i think actively pursuing these tapes and so pretty much this is not to like fucking this is i'm sorry if this is what it sounds like this is not to like cast doubt on anybody's particular story it's just like a general blanket statement of like pretty much a lot most of like what is coming out of this is coming from second second party sourcing um so uh and and a lot of that is because at least corinne says that she doesn't remember yeah a lot of what happened so that is her statement um well let's first next day june 13th chris harrison released a statement so nobody from abc has said anything at this point, but Chris Harrison comes forward and says, there are a lot of competing details in the various press accounts of this

incident. And there's a lot of misinformation out there too. We urge everyone to be patient until the investigation is complete. So, so Chris Harrison does this a lot. He comes forward as kind of a spokesman for the franchise, um, but doesn't really ever say anything. Yeah. confirming that she is, or she says, I am a victim and that she is in therapy currently for, quote, physical and emotional trauma. Yeah, can I actually have her statement here? Can I read it? Oh, yeah, go ahead.

I am a victim and have spent the last week trying to make sense of what happened on June 4th. Although I have little memory of that night, something bad obviously took place, which I understand is why production on this show has now been suspended and a producer on this show has filed a complaint against the production. As a woman, this is my worst nightmare, and it has now become my reality. As I pursue the details and facts surrounding that night and the immediate days after, I've retained a group of professionals to ensure that what happened on June 4th comes to light, and I can continue my life, including hiring an attorney to obtain justice and seeking therapy to begin dealing with the physical and emotional trauma stemming from that evening. Okay, so this is where, at least from my perspective, I start thinking, we got to tap out. Yeah.

Like, Corinne's statement, for me, took this beyond rumors and gossip into something real that was very disturbing and clearly harmful to her. And whatever you feel about Corinne, you know, is unrelated to this. That should fucking go without saying. Yeah, like, God knows that we were hard on her last last season but like yeah this is come on y'all like this is this is the shit i'm talking about like people getting upset because this tv show this this trashy tv show they like got canceled there's a real person like that you have to fucking put that first regardless of what you

think of the character they play on television if If this was, I mean, this is cliche to even say, but if this were a friend of yours, if this were your sister, you know, if this were your kid, you know, you would probably think a little differently about it than this reality show villain,

you know, which is so easy to disassociate yourself from what happened to her. And so many people have come out and you know slut shamed her sure and um i just and this and so we'll get to kind of what has happened today yeah as the day we're recording that's the prestige to this shitty shitty story um but when she issued her statement not only did i believe her uh but i thought yeah like i could see this happening you know straight up the shit that happened with rod and um lace lace in the last like we talked about that when we covered the second season of bachelor and paradise like or was it third i don't know maybe super fucking uncomfortable like these two were really

intoxicated um rod who like is a shithead like to the point where he like shit his pants and like a costed hotel staff like and then the fucking audacity of warner brothers to come out and be like no we got our shit on lock don't worry worry about it. Safety's top concern. Fucking really? I've watched the show before and it wicked isn't. If that's your top concern, your other concerns must be not very much of a priority at all.

Huh, Warner Brothers? We should also mention that later that day, DeMario put out his own statement where he said, I thought that was the next day. No, I think it's the same day. It's unfortunate that my character

and family name has been assassinated this past week with false claims and malicious allegations. I'll be taking swift and appropriate legal action until my name is cleared, and per the advice of legal counsel, will be seeking all available remedies entitled to me under the laws. So do you want to get to today? I mean, yeah, we are straight up. We're leapfrogging over a lot of shit because a lot of contestants i i feel like in those first couple days we were hearing a lot of details about what happened and about um uh corinne's like lucidity in this in this moment and um the events of what happened and how producers wanted to step in but they were not allowed and so and

this is really important to keep in mind it was not corinne who filed this complaint that got the show suspended it was it was these producers so there was a lot of contestants going after the character of corinne there was a lot of contestants um or not contestants just like anonymous sources saying that the producers who filed the complaints weren't even there when it happened sort of like trying to cut the legs out from any anywhere where the story could go more in the direction of oh well nothing bad really no don't don't worry about it which like again we we don't know what happened but i cannot help but think about all of the people whose livelihood not just the cast, but the,

the, the contestants who's now, who their career is bachelor series alum, who are going to be negatively affected if this, if this show gets shut down and how like, yeah, of course they're going to fucking fight tooth and nail to do whatever it is.

They don't give a shit about like who is right and wrong. They give a shit about this television show that they had a spot on continuing to be on the air and plus bachelor in paradise and the bachelor bachelorette franchise have created this gray area where a lot of people were making the argument of oh contestants get drunk and hook up all the time how is this any different and and created this doubt within the viewers and and the fans of the show of, yeah, hey, that's that.

Yeah, no, that's, that's a good point. And I'm sorry if that's how you feel about this. You're writing this show a blank check that it is horrifying for them to be in possession of. No fucking way. People give people fuck all the time on this show.

You can't fucking say that about this show because it gives them infinite capacity for evil. And like, I don't know. So today, You can't fucking say that about this show because it gives them infinite capacity for evil. And like, I don't know. So today, meanwhile, during since Warner Brothers issued this initial statement back at the very beginning on, gosh, what was it? June 11th. we cut to June 20th, where we finally hear from Warner Brothers again, saying they have concluded their investigation and found no evidence of misconduct, and none of the cast members' safety was in jeopardy,

and that production on season of Bachelor in Paradise will resume, and that they will, quote, implement certain changes to the show's policies and procedures to enhance and further ensure the safety and security of all participants i want to read like the for me the like this is i'm sorry this is such this is such dog shit like our internal investigation conducted with the assistance of an outside law

firm has now been completed out of respect for the privacy interests of those involved we do not intend to release the video tape of the incident we can say however that the tape does not support any charge of misconduct by a cast member nor does the tape show contrary to many press reports that the safety of any fuck off go eat shit like that part that part contrary to what everybody said everybody's saying shit because you didn't say shit for two fucking weeks. Yeah. And that's, you know, so I reached out. I have some friends that are in the law profession, obviously not practicing any kind of law related

to The Bachelor or Bachelorette. But I was trying to think, is it unreasonable for me to want them to say something? Like, just say anything. Like, ABC Warner Brothers, say anything. abc warner brothers say anything i recognize that you are under scrutiny right now and that you are doing this quote-unquote investigation right but just say anything about your concern that you know contestants are reporting they had this experience and they weren't saying anything at all and i just thought is this unreasonable yeah and my lawyer friends made the point that if they are to acknowledge any kind of accountability for this, either other contestants could come forward and also sue and say that they felt unsafe.

Yeah. Or DeMario could use that as proof that his character is being further assassinated by the network like i understand that there are complicated aspects of this that are preventing people from saying more um but the fact that they're gonna continue the show to that point though like i got online when this news was breaking and started to i got on reality steve who was like, we've talked about him some. He's like a sort of known reporter and scooper of this franchise. And his general sentiment was like, this show's fucking done. Like, how do you come back from this? Yeah, he went on that Here to Make Friends podcast that we like so much.

Yeah, Here to Make Friends on HuffPo. And I said, there's no way. There's no way. And looking at like what's going on now it's like why are they why are they obviously there's some sort of like calculation right this like this arithmetic of like how much money do we lose if we just like scrap the whole thing versus like how much money do we lose in potential legal fees against like x y and z um and so i was like reading his stuff when this news broke and i was reading

other people's stuff and the sentiment from like hashtag bachelor nation was like man i hope corinne puts out an informal apology and boy i hope this producer gets fired never like it's it's there there's no there's nothing about this it doesn't fucking suck like there's nothing about this it doesn't stink on ice you know what i was telling griffin so we don't know anything about this that doesn't fucking suck. Like, there's nothing about this that doesn't stink on ice. You know what I was telling Griffin? So we don't know anything about this quote-unquote investigation. So the fact that a lot of people are willing to buy into that... The fact that Rachel keeps calling it a quote-unquote

investigation, I think maybe parts the curtain on what she thinks about it. I just, like, so many people, and I understand it. I mean, Griffin and I used to love this show, uh, specifically bachelor in paradise. It used to be like a highlight for us.

So I understand a lot of people were like, that's all I need. I'm back on board. The investigation showed nothing. So great. I believe in investigations, but done by the parties who are financially like invested in the, yeah.

Like, I don't understand how you look at this situation and just go like if you were a fucking if you're a big company right you're apple and something bad happens to apple and so apple does an internal investigation and like two weeks later after being silent about it when all these rumors are swirling apple comes out and says you know we looked into it and we liked what happened it was was good what happened. Like, oh, good. Good, Apple. I'm glad to.

And I saw reports from the press with headlines like, scandal over. Bachelor in Paradise. Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. To that point, Corinne's lawyers are still pursuing this tape, still trying to get their hands on this fucking tape. Yeah. I can't, like, why did they shut the fucking showdown like why did they shut this

showdown if why did it take them two weeks after shutting this showdown obviously they have to take all their complaints seriously right um but why shut the fucking showdown if like absolutely nothing there's no way we can talk about this further without getting into like full-blown conspiracy theory and obviously there are lots and lots of wrinkles to this situation that like i don't even know how to begin on unpacking right like we didn't talk about this but like being drunk is not a an invitation for sexual assault it is not a it is not a like there was a lot of talk like oh they're giving them too much alcohol just because they're drunk like there was a lot of talk like oh they're giving them too much alcohol just because they're drunk doesn't that doesn't like give anybody permission that doesn't make that is not a way

to explain away why sexual assault happened there's incalculable wrinkles about like um demario came out and said like i've lost my my job because of this and um they're just looking at sort of the the comments in response to when this news first started breaking which by the way was the first day i landed at the ground on e3 and i was like oh shit the world's falling apart um there there are a lot of like super super racist comments coming out about demario which is like there's we're not we talked about it and we're not going to cover bachelor in paradise right yeah even if it comes back we're not going to do like there is there is no way i could watch whatever weird frankenstein show they now throw together rose buddies the podcast will continue

yeah yeah yeah but bachelor in paradise coverage will not we cannot we i i can't envision watching it and enjoying every single person not just, every single person that watches that show is going to be watching it like they are watching an episode of 2020 or Law and Order. Of trying to find the moments and picking apart every piece of it. And it's not going to be fun and it's not going to be funny. It's going to be disturbing no matter what they do because this changes everything. Yeah, I can't. There were a lot of think pieces written like this show's done no matter what happens like this show's fucking done and for abc to just say like we saw the tapes that we shot and it was no problem so we're just

gonna do it again so one big wrinkle is that apparently and this is just like starting to develop like literally a couple hours before we started recording uh there are reports now that past bachelor and bachelorette contestants are now being reached out to to be on bachelor in paradise whereas the cast they had arranged for the original season four or season three um are like apparently maybe not being invited so are they calling like michael stagliano and being like, hey, what about one more time, bro? Yeah, and he's, like, fucking in a shack somewhere in Alaska, like, smoking a cigar with a big beard. AJ Pavelka. Like, you'll never pull me back in.

It's like, it's, that's gonna be weird, right? You can't just bring those same people back and be like, all right, let's do the first day again. Remember, you two kissed. Like, there's no way they can bring them back and shoot more without addressing what happened and so like raven and um alexis alexis and like all all those folks are you know out out of season which i'm not like saying like oh what a what a travesty i'm saying like those were top tier bachelor in paradise contestants for what this show was going to be and to say like all y'all are done now let's bring in the fucking Snickle Fritz

yeah they're going to move from all these people who were really fresh off of the show to whoever is still willing to go on which I think is going to be a questionable a lot of people it's it's I want to wrap this up because we haven't even started unpacking the

episode of bachelorette that we watched last night that was in its own way also pretty fucking horrifying but like corinne corinne says i'm a victim and i don't remember what happened that night and that i'm going to get to the bottom of it i've hired a legal team to get to the bottom of it and the wind has so completely turned against her and it's fucking super hard it's really fucking hard to watch and then to me that's like that that when i boil it all down like getting past the like oh we don't know exactly what happened we don't know whatever i can't the one thing i do know is that this this this woman says i don't remember what happened and so like something bad happened and i mean i

like i'm i'm a victim of this and like everybody now is saying like where's your fucking formal apology because our show's launch date is probably going to be two weeks behind now like well and you know what and this is the other thing i told griff I mean, before they even announced today that the investigation was concluded, I wasn't surprised that this happened. And to me, that said a lot about where I was at with the franchise, you know, like the fact that I instantly was willing to think, oh yeah, no, I could see somebody, you know, becoming a victim on this show made me think wait why am i covering this show yeah uh so yeah so no bachelor in paradise coverage from rose buddies and like is it's weird i think to just say like all right bachelor in paradise you sit in the

corner but bachelor next season start in january you're gonna like we're talking we're we're doing some fucking soul searching and please like i feel like we have to be completely transparent about this at all times like we are now like um we're part of the max fun network we have ads we get donations for this show and i don't know like no matter what we've never rachel and i never talked about like well let's just not do a podcast because like we love doing this podcast and we love the community that is built up around it i i genuinely do um but i i i i don't want to it's not it's it's getting less and less fun to watch this show and it's getting less and less fun to talk about this show and like my enjoyment of this process has i guess very little bearing on sort of the bigger picture and i get that but like it's when we started doing it we knew that this show could be problematic and we thought like well let's still cover it because it's a silly ass show and as long as we are critical

of when it is problematic then we're doing our due diligence but now i i don't i there was some fun here this will be a good stage setter for the conversation that we're about to have like there was cool stuff that happened on this episode of The Bachelorette there was some good stuff there were some good dates and there were some fun scenes and there were some funny jokes we are going to be talking about those after spending a half hour talking about

sexual assault allegations sandwiched in like Lee's racist bullshit that tonal dissonance, that dog don't hunt anymore. Yeah, well, and I always feel the need. So I was talking to Griffin about this. The show has always been problematic. There have always been characters or individuals on this show

that have been kind of gross. on this show that have been kind of gross. So in some ways, it's difficult for us to say now it's too far. You know, I mean, I recognize this is a different story, but it's not like the show before was, you know, like the TV show Full House. Perfect, yeah. Which I'm sure had its own slate of issues.

I get that. This is the worst week this show's ever had. Yeah. Between the very real and very irresponsible way that it is turning Lee's actual racist behaviors into an entertainment reality tv blood sport and this the the whole bachelor in paradise stuff i i'm i know this show's been problematic in the past this is a new this is these are these are uncharted horrible fucking waters and

i just keep coming back to the dread i had at 659 last night where I thought, like, am I even going to fucking enjoy this? I know I'm not going to enjoy necessarily unpacking it. Like, is this even fun anymore? And if it's not, then, like, let's fucking let's do something else. Let's lose. Like, Griffin and I want to do a comedy podcast. We don't necessarily want to do a recap podcast. I mean, that's part of what this is, obviously.

But I don't have undying loyalty to this franchise where I think I have to cover it. Like I would rather make jokes with my husband. I don't even care about like the not being able to do our really sweet comedy shit. I care more about like i i just can't get over the fact that i there are people who watch this show lots of people who watch this show because of our podcast and i i can't fucking i can't fucking stomach that anymore i know y'all are adults or whatever and it's it's it's your choice but like it's it weighs on me like a heavy a heavy burden yeah um should we just do the ads

now who's our advertisers this time if you liked this oh man you know what you really love is stamps.com babe it's been heavy and it's gonna be heavy again real soon do you have a really really good hey can i steal you away yeah no and again i really do want to stress this upon you you really need to stick the landing because this is a fucking burden someone i see her she's like shifting in her seat she's stretching she's stretching she's really gonna pull this one out this one's gonna be like a little a little bubble of joy that's gonna pop right in the middle of this fucking fart balloon i love you so much i'm trusting a lot on the microphone there no i got every fucking in there okay um our sponsors this week let's find out who they are. This is a fun part of the podcast where I didn't prepare.

Hey, guess what I have on my butt right now? A chair. I do have a chair, but the chair is under my butt. My MeUndies is what I am talking about. We both have MeUndies now. I'm wearing MeUndies right now, too. Are you kidding, babe? We have matching MeUndies.

I don't think wendies right now, too. Are you kidding, babe? We have matching MeUndies. Not that I don't think we're matching right now. Well, no. I'm wearing the Army Men's ones that I thought were dinosaurs for a bit. So every pair of MeUndies is made of sustainably sourced micromodal, which is a fabric that's three times softer than cotton. I've talked about MeUndies 300 times. You would think I would know what the name of the fabric was at this point. And they come in all kinds of fun colors and patterns. Like, I don't know what to say, man.

Like, all my underwear is MeUndies because they keep sending it to me. And I'm maybe the luckiest boy on earth. Rachel's checking to see what she got on. It says have. I'm wearing the ones that say have a nice day. That's fun. Because you see it and it's like, hey, let me say something. If I'm seeing you in your underwear, babe, I am having a nice day.

Do you like that character? No. He's was his name though manj manj manj i will mourn him um so you can get you can try me on these today go get the celebrate pattern before they're all gone gone jesus at me on these.com slash rosebuddies and you'll save 20% off your first pair. And if you don't love them, they're free. Just go get 20% off your first pair plus free shipping at meundies.com slash rosebuddies right now. That's meundies.com slash

rosebuddies. One more again. Meundies.com slash rosebuddies. Our other sponsor is stamps.com. That is true. Why go to the post office when you can handle all of your postage needs from your desk? Because my toilet's broken and the one at the post office always works. Nice try, though, Slylock Fox, with all your riddles. Have you really used the bathroom at the post?

Oh, you have, haven't you? Used the bathroom at the post office? There are very few buildings in this city that I have not used the bathroom in. Nice try trying to catch me in one of your riddles again, Slylock. Anything you can do at the post office you can do right now from your desk at stamps.com except go to the bathroom unless you have the coolest

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biggest fear uh gotta use that digital scale gotta use the digital scale it is so important uh so don't wait go to stamps.com before you do anything else and click on the radio microphone at the top of the home page and type in rose and stamps.com enter rose stamps.com never go to the fucking post office again i said the f word in there they probably don't like that. This message is for Chloe and Xander. Those are some fucking names. It's from- I love it.

It's from Sarah and Nathan. It's pretty good names. Is this what we do now? I'm just saying, Chloe and Xander. Maybe it's because we're watching Buffy again. It really sticks out, you know? Uh--huh how do you feel about the name rachel it's good you know i like the name rachel good biblical bible name love that stuff okay what about griffin then not bible so disappointed when i was old enough to find out i guess i was like four and i was like what is a griffin

like sort of tarzan like and they're like you are and i was like, what is a Griffin like sort of Tarzan like? And they're like, you are. And I was like, that's not Bible. So sad. So disappointed. The message is Chloe and Xander from the day of your pumpkin patch group date. We knew you were here for the right reasons. The destination date to Waffle House sealed the deal. You make us happy to believe in love, like when Rachel is exasperated at Griffin but then giggles.

You're that cute. Congratulations on your literal marriage. Love, Sarah and Nathan. Aw, guys. Guys, thanks. I do get exasperated with Griffin. Babe, one time I was at a Waffle House. You just looked...

You did look exasperated right then. Well, because I'm holding your laptop. Please take it back before you tell your anecdote. I was at Waffle House once. I was with Evan and Justin and Emily and Laura and all them. We were going to Kings Island, the fun amusement park. We were at Waffle House. I'll never forget Honky Tonk Badonkadonk was on the jukebox,

and I was so pumped up. I don't know this song it's bad you want to sing like a verse honky tonk badonkadonk like it's bad but i was sprinting out of the waffle house and there was like a little um slope down to the gas station that our car was parked at we just eaten some waffles and i was running and the slope was slippery and my feet went out from under me and i landed on a metal grate right on my tailbone and I had to go to the hospital I didn't get to go to Kings Island oh my god were you okay I was fine I just like it popped my back real bad and scared me I had to go I had to go to the hospital didn't go to Kings Island we were like 10 minutes

from Huntington sliding doors sliding hills what if you had gone to king's island and also injured your tailbone then you would know it was supposed to happen like final final destination you know who i blame toby keith i think he was on hold on how do you spell badonkadonk trace adkins fuck you trace and go fuck yourself trace adkins that's what i think no i'll say it he kept me from going on the fucking... That's unnecessary. On all my favorite rides. I think you kept yourself from going on your favorite rides.

Wow, babe. What a betrayal. Here's another message. This one is for Nurbert, and it's from Wilbert. The names are just popping the fuck off. It says, hey, Beeb, this is the perfect place to have a sappy message read. This year has, honest to God, been the absolute worst. I don't know what year this message was written in, but I agree.

But together, we've survived some truly unbearable shit. I do love you. Oh, that's good. That's really good stuff. That's good. That hasn't happened yet on this season. I do love you. I'm sure.

Well, I guess we're only on episode four. It's going to happen very, very much. Hey, guys, this is Adam Conover. You may know me from my true TV show, Adam Ruins Everything. Well, guess what? Now we're doing a podcast version right here on Maximum Fun. What we do is we take all the interesting, fascinating experts that we talked to for just a couple of minutes on the show, and we sit with them for an entire podcast, really going deep and getting into the fascinating details of their work. Should we talk about the show? Yeah, man. Psyched for it. Psyched for it.

Episode four. Okay. So we haven't had a rose ceremony yet uh we've picked up with the drama i had to open it you could have you could have opened it in the other room that's probably true uh we pick up with the drama between lee and eric and Iggy, Eric is upset that the men are talking about him. And this is where we start to get some of the men also weighing in on Lee, saying that he is an instigator. And Eric just kind of closes his speech to the group and says, you know, I'm going to be who I am. Just focus on you.

We're still before the rose ceremony. There will never be another rose ceremony. We're suspended between them in the infinite space. The men are still taking turns talking to Rachel. And Kenny is having a conversation with Rachel. And Lee decides to interrupt. And this is after Lee has already had time with Rachel that night. Jesus, this was the same night as the Eric stuff. I did not even put that together.

Yeah. Jesus Christ. Uh, so Lee interrupts and Kenny says, you know, can you give us a few minutes? And so he walks slightly out of frame and then comes back a few minutes later. As you say, give me 60 seconds to like wrap this thing up. And Lee, who I think is pretty tanked at this point, says like, all right, 16 seconds. And then walks and like counts on his. We talked about this last week, but like Lee has made this decision to, like, oh, I'm the villain now, so let's just be a fucking literal villain from an 80s competitive ski teen movie.

So he just walks to the side of the frame and counts off 16 on his fucking fingers, making that fucking shit face. Yeah. fucking shit face. Yeah. Um, uh, so we, so we get the sense that it's not just Eric that has the problem with Lee at this point.

Other guys are noticing his bad behavior. Uh, so Lee, when he does get time with Rachel, he brings out this wooden block, uh, and he talks about his grandfather and how he has his grandfather's knife. And then he shows that he has carved the word enchanting into this wooden block.

He says something profound here, or maybe she says it. One of them says like, oh, that's your word. If you have just, if you have a go-to adjective that you use to describe somebody that you're trying to date, you've gone wrong somewhere, I feel like. Well, I mean, all the men on this show use the word stunning for example yes but like enchanting oh that's the only adjective you use to describe me that feels authentic to me in a way um i i wanted to talk about i have dean's whole quote here about lee um because the issue of race kind of for the first time makes an uh makes a an appearance i guess in this episode does this happen at this point i'm pretty sure yeah this is when when dean

is talking about lee um when like a bunch of the dudes are talking about how lee stinks um dean says the only people that i've seen lee pick fights fights with have not been the people that he's used to seeing on a daily basis from a cultural perspective, which is maybe the most roundabout way of saying he's a racist I've ever heard of. This is in one of the behind the scenes interviews. And a producer asks him, what do you mean? The most like clueless producer. Maybe the producers were trying to get somebody to say Lee's racist this whole time. Yeah, no, I think they were trying to get him to say something. His response, though, is,

you know exactly what I mean when I say that. The longer Lee sticks around, the more everyone will become aware of his intolerance. So Dean says this, like, behind closed doors in the moment interview, but doesn't really confront Lee at all in any particular way. Yet. Maybe he does.

I just wanted to point that out because that's the closest anybody's gotten to say Lee's a fucking racist. Again, they don't know about all of the very bad tweets, which we should, I guess, mention again. Dude said that the KKK and NAACP are the same. He's a fucking racist dude. Yeah, we talked about this in our lives.

They don't know about that, obviously, but this is at least the first time somebody's a fucking racist dude yeah we talked about this in our last episode so like they don't know about that obviously but this is at least the first time somebody's like hey wait a minute so after Kenny gets interrupted he goes back to talk to the guys about it and the guys kind of agree with him that this is unfair and

Kenny decides that he is going to confront Lee about it so Kenny pulls Lee aside, and Lee is being very impatient with Kenny and actually says, get to it, as Kenny tries to pick what he's going to say. He's trying to do to Kenny what he literally did to Eric earlier in the evening, which is like, I get off on smiling when a dude is upset and seeing him get angrier. Yeah.

And Kenny to me starts from a very reasonable place and says, you know, we were friends. We, you took advantage of that friendship to interrupt me and Rachel. Uh, and Lee's just being very impatient with kenny and is not listening to what he has to say and kenny gets more and more angry and louder and louder right he's doing that

purposefully to try to get kenny to to yell and have rachel here hear the confrontation and then pin that shit on kenny which is exactly what happens yeah um i will say uh before this happens or at least it's shown before it's happened uh rachel has some time with brian brian is the one that she had the real gross make out with on night one she done she did it again in this one uh and so gross because it just there's a lot of mouth opening so close in on them and they get right in there. I told Rachel like I feel like I'm kissing them right now. Brian talks about how he wants Rachel to be vulnerable.

Rachel says that she's kind of scared to be vulnerable. And one of the things she's scared of is how charming Brian is. And she says, you know what? What makes you weak? And he says, well, you do do you make me weak in the knees i knew you were gonna say that yeah i get it like this this this happened like there's this dude i feel like on every season who just like i don't really buy i don't really buy it there's no there it has to feel substantial for me to get like real on board with it. And just saying line after line,

after line, after line, like feels really disingenuine. Why? Because it feels like it has nothing to do with Rachel. No. You know, it's,

it's just about him being prepared to answer correctly. Right. With the, with the most like suave line that he could possibly generate in any given moment. Yeah. It's not about their gap teeth. You know, it's not about like something real and unique to their relationship. God, I love that fucking gap teeth conversation.

Peter. Okay. So when Rachel overhears Kenny and Lee fighting. This is when she's talking to Bryce, I think. I don't know. I don't know. A lot of these dudes look the same to me. Yeah.

Still. Rachel starts to get frustrated and she tells us, the viewer, that she's disappointed with the guys. And she seems kind of emotional and this is when she starts talking about the pressure she's under as a black woman uh on the bachelorette or specifically as the bachelorette she talks about how she already knows what people are going to say uh and that she's going to have to deal with it. And that's a lot. She said the pressures that I feel about being a black woman and what that is and how I don't even want to talk about it. I get pressured from so many different ways being in this position and I did

not want to get into all of this tonight. I already know what people are going to say about me and judge me for the decisions that I'm making. I'm going to be the one that I'm going to be the one that has to deal with all of that and nobody else. And that's a lot here. This was edited really weirdly, because like, it was a very emotional response. And one of the most one of the most sort of what I'm struggling to find the right word, I think a couple times this episode, it's when the subject of race has been most sort of discussed on this season of this show, like where it has been discussed, frankly, way, way less than I assumed that it might be.

And it was edited really weirdly because this emotional response, like, was she crying because Kenny and Lee got in a fight? That's how it was edited to make it seem like. But that doesn't track, really. We were talking about that. It seems as if this was part of a much larger conversation.

And we didn't get to see that conversation. We got to see the moment where she broke and said these things. And it didn't make sense given what we had just like yeah from a narrative perspective the theory that i saw floated in the live reactions to this that like made me pause was like what if the producer said like by the way you're fucking keeping lee that dude's gonna be ratings gold we love all this fucking

drama um yeah if she was told that and then fucking said, well, that sucks. Like people are going to think certain things about me because of that decision. There's this rumor that we talk about a lot that there's always a producer pick, that there are people that are kept on the show, not because The Bachelor or Bachelorette wants them there, but because producers recognize their good television. they're good television and the theory is that rachel is perhaps upset because she has been told that she has to eliminate some of the men who are seemingly better guys uh than lee and she's upset is it i we have obviously no substantial evidence of this but like this season of this show to a fault to an enormous fucking fault is following the pattern of other seasons which is like this is about the time in the season where they introduce like the big drama and then they keep that drama going for a few episodes

until it terminates in a big dramatic two-on-one date um that is the pattern that they are trying to follow and so they're gonna fucking try and juice this juice this thing for as long as they can. And so, like, I don't know. I think I could buy it, man. I mean, at this point, I don't fucking trust this show as far as I can throw it. So Chris comes to talk to Rachel and says, just tell me what you want to do. I can facilitate anything. Which, you know, Chris.

Okay. Classic Chris. Maybe not anything, but all right. Uh, yeah. What has she been like? I don't want Lee to be on this show. He stinks. I want you to lead a monologue competition between the men where they all read monologues

from Shakespeare and then you help me judge which are the best. You would say, yeah, next episode. Let's get to it. I can facilitate that. Um. So, uh, they shut down the cocktail party, go straight to the rose ceremony. She ends up sending home Bryce, Diggy, and Brady. Either Bryce or Brady is the one who said the transphobic comment.

Who's Bryce? Didn't do anything really this whole season, which like whatever. Diggy, I was sad to was i was brady had some fun hair brady had he was the one okay um and diggy man i wanted you to know dig i know we liked diggy a lot he had some great accessories uh and i just he seemed like a good guy i was bummed yeah okay ready to go south carolina i guess so heltonilton Head. This is one of the few times that this show goes to someplace that I used to go as a kid and I thought was, if you live in Hilton Head,

my apologies. Just kind of alright. It looks really pretty. Yeah. It's like if you want to go to Myrtle Beach, but you don't want to deal with all of the... Ugh. See, I heard Myrtle Beach is gross. Hilton Head always seemed classy to me. If you want to go to Myrtle Beach, but you're afraid of saltwater taffy, you go to Hilton Head seemed classy to me. If you want to go to Myrtle Beach, but you're afraid of like saltwater taffy, you go to

Hilton Head. If you're afraid, if you want to go to Myrtle Beach, but you don't want to walk down the street and every second shop you walk by sells like katanas and ninja stars and laser pointers, you fucking head to Hilton Head. It's a big classier of an experience. I'm talking a lot of shit to the Carolinas right now, and I want to apologize. I don't know why I'm saying this. I loved every trip I took to the beaches in Carolinas.

Nagshead? Fuck yeah. Some of us grew up- Hitting up the dunes. Some of us grew up significantly far away from any kind of beach. That's true. I'm sorry. I tried to sound cool.

You know where I went when I wanted to go near a body of water? Where? Lake of the Ozarks in Branson, Missouri. That sounds good, too, though. What's this, Silver Dollar City? You told me about that. Yeah, I mean, that was fun. Yeah. A lot of saltwater taffy there, Missouri. That sounds good too, though. What's this, Silver Dollar City? You told me about that. Yeah, I mean, that was fun. Yeah.

A lot of saltwater taffy there too. God, can we not? I'm drinking this ghost, and it's very salty, and I'm just trying to push it out of my mind. So we get to see the guys at this resort in South Carolina. They all stand on the balcony. They yell Rachel's name. Love that.

Never not good. So, you know, I get my bearings. Yeah. I know that I am on a travel date. My compass is centered. Yeah. The men have yelled my name off the balcony. Date card comes.

It's for Dean. Yeah. Man, this was a good fucking date. It was. uh yeah this man this was a good fucking date um it was and god knows we've been hard on dean because of the dumb shit that he said but like this was this was a really there's been a lot god just makes you so fucking angry is that there's been a lot of really good dates and good contestants and great moments on this season in this show and it has been completely drowned under the ocean of shit that this fucking franchise has dumped out here to be fair i think a lot of what we like about dean uh in this episode is coming through rachel yeah sure like the way rachel is around him that is true and the conversations they have it's coming from her. I mean, he's just a good.

The conversation that he had with her at dinner, like really fucked me up. You know what he is? What is he? He's good at kind of absorbing what is good about her. Yeah. He seems like a good boy. Okay. I don't know if I go that far.

I think he's better than we thought. Yeah. We got to talk about, we got to get into this date because the opening moment of it, it filled me with delight. Okay. So they get in a jeep. They go to Bluffton, which appears to be a big field place.

The town is just one big field. No buildings in Bluffton. Got a field, though. Our mayor is a cow. Needs all the grass in the field population two cows in bluffton who is who is saying this exactly that's the fucking mystery of it all unpack it it's the twin peaks mystery who's saying it? Who's the narrator? I'll never tell. Moo.

Oh, wait. Oh, shit. Fuck. Now you know. I'm a man that says moo. Oh. I got bit by a cow. It's the only word I can say. Except the words I just said.

Except the other words I've been saying. Moo. They have a picnic in Bluffton. Why can't I die? They have a picnic in Bluffton. They have a picnic in Bluffton. They open up a bottle of champagne. And they look in the distance and they see a blimp,

specifically the Goodyear blimp. I don't know if there are other blimps. There's the bad month blimp. Get out of here, bad month blimp. They start talking about like, is that our date? No, no, no. But anyway, here's a funny story. If you're on this show and you see a blimp or any sort of fun means of transportation,

if you're like sitting by the river and you see a couple of swan boats pad fun means of transportation, you're going to, if you're like sitting by the river and you see a couple of swan boats paddling up, why is your first instinct? Like, surely we're not going to get on those swan boats. Rachel tells this great anecdote about how, when she was a little kid,

she was obsessed with blimps. And that there's this story in her family about every time she would see one, she would point and go, bimp, bimpimp it's so good cute story um so the good year blimp gets a little bit closer and starts flashing some words on an led display on the side of it that says did you write down what it says no it says like rachel and dean this is your blimp get up on time for a sky journey and

rachel starts jumping going down and saying bimp bimp bimp and while she's doing it she shakes the bottle of champagne that like sprays all over her out of her excitement it was so pure it was such a pure moment i wish i could save it in a bottle i mean you could probably get like a gif of it yeah probably uh so this is when we find out dean is scared of heights uh and so they kind of go through a few scenarios in which he might have to hold his hand uh or deal with his potential motion sickness uh and then they get in and dean's super solid about it i mean well not at first nervous. Well, not at first, but yeah. Rachel gets in the pilot seat, and the blimp pilot lets her kind of steer a little bit. And then she encourages Dean to get in, and Dean immediately starts looking for the seatbelt.

It's adorable. And he's looking for it, and she's like, are you looking for the seatbelt? And he's like, oh, no, I'm not worried about it. I'm not going to need it. That was funny. He does some piloting. And then they go to this little bay window section of the blimp. And they talk about being adventurous.

And they have more champagne. And they toast to taking their relationship to new heights. And then they circle by the resort where the men are staying. And the little screen on the blimp says, Rachel and Dean are in here. It's the most obvious, like, fuck all y'all that I've ever seen. Like, sometimes this stuff happens, like the plane or the helicopter will fly overhead. This was a blimp literally saying, like, all you boys are not up here.

You are in there and they are in here right now. Yeah, he's probably getting smooched. What's up now? So the guys are back at the resort and they're kind of speculating. So Dean is the youngest contestant. He is 25 and Rachel is 32. And so the guys are all kind of speculating as to whether or not Dean is mature enough for her. Which is a super cool conversation to have.

Like Brian was the one leading this. I think Brian's 37 rachel's 32 it's it's a it it's kind of a double standard because these conversations don't usually happen on the bachelor although i feel like last season was one of the rare examples where it kind of did where they were talking about corinne in this in this context because she was younger than nick he was the bachelor last season, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. I just always think that's a dumb, that's always like kind of a gross argument to have. It's an easy argument to make. It's just the easiest one when you don't know anything about a person. Yeah, sure. So, after they do their blimp portion of the date, they go to a night portion, which I thought was really pretty. It was like they were out under this tree,

probably still in Bluffton. Yeah, and all of these lights were hanging down from the tree, like on these fronds hanging down, and Dean said, did you do this? And she said, yep, climbed up a rope, got all the lights up. Ah, so good. God, I love Rachel, man.

She's wonderful. And so this is when they kind of have a more in-depth conversation. Rachel talks about her parents that are still together and her strict religious upbringing, but that her parents were always kind of supportive of her doing what she wanted to do, even if it was strict. And then Dean tells a story about his family, uh and then dean tells a story about his family uh how they were always really close until when he was um he was young he was like 14 when he was yeah when he was uh 15 his mom passed away from breast cancer uh and that when he was even younger than that she had had it but recovered but then she was re-diagnosed when he was 14 and

put into hospice care uh and then he remembers the day that she passed away and how his dad was really upset and how he you know didn't express any emotion uh in that moment but that his family kind of fell apart and his brothers and sisters moved away and his dad wasn't around as much uh and he says that he's never really talked about that with anyone before yeah i am like for obvious reasons like very sensitive about people using stuff like this as chips that they can play in the the grand poker game of the bachelor or Bachelorette, right? But, like, man, he was so, he seemed really shaken up about it. Yeah. And, I don't know, it was a really, and Rachel was, too.

Like, Rachel got really emotional about it. And it was a very, I don't know, it feels gross to comment on the relative realness of, like, how people talk about this stuff, because stuff because there's no like right way to do it. But it was it felt very it felt really authentic. It really resonated with me. The one thing that she says that I really I found poignant was he talks about even after all of this, even though his family kind of fell apart, that he still really wants a family. even after all of this, even though his family kind of fell apart, that he still really wants a family. And she says that that kind of shows a lot of his character because it could

have gone the other way. Yeah. You know, he could have turned really cold and kind of closed off. And she talks about how she didn't want to cry in that moment, even though she was upset because she didn't want to make him more upset. And it just, it just felt really human.

You know, it didn't feel like strategy, you know, which sometimes these moments do. And also, like, I wonder how many dudes at the house know about this stuff. Probably nobody. But, like, it's hard to leverage arguments about, like, oh, so this shit makes you grow up real real fast and the fact that he was only what 15 15 when it happened like man i can't fucking imagine being 15 um but yeah it was it was it was a very it was a really good date like we're not done with

the date yet though oh jesus god can we please be done with the date don't forget about the dickerson i oh shame on me uh dickerson me once shame on you um there's somebody in the group who knows this dude and says he's actually really talented it's okay i'm sure i'm sure yeah you don't get to be on the show if you're not talented he he gets the rose and then they walk off to another portion it looks like they just walk there but that's probably not true. But they go to a concert, get on a platform, and who is performing but Russell Dickerson. And they dance. He appears to be some kind of country and Western artist.

And so they do the thing where they dance on the platform in front of everybody and everybody takes videos on their phone. And it feels like they're the only two people there. You know, your standard Russell Dickerson moment. Yeah, sure. Group date. Okay. And this is the last thing. I know we're moving slow and we have a lot of we've gone for an hour and 10 minutes.

But this group date is the last thing that happens on this episode there are a lot a lot a lot a lot of people can we just say everybody but jack stone who is going to get the solo date i want to say their names it always adds to it okay did you really i got worried because the names were coming so fast and furious i didn't think you got oh wow alex anthony peter brian jonathan adam matt kenny lee iggy eric will josiah i don't even know who matt is i don't know who matt is who's matt uh guys are on a dock uh they meet rachel on the dock and they find out they are getting on a boat. This part of the date was bad because all of these people were crowded on the bow or perhaps the stern.

I don't know. Not entirely sure. One of these days I'll really sit down. I know that port is left and starboard's right. Oh, I didn't even know that. Booyah. They were all gathered on this very, very, very, very crowded part of the boat and it didn't seem like they were allowed to go anywhere else.

And again, there were like 14 dudes all out there and Rachel. And it was just like, it seemed like they were all on top of each other. And it would have stressed me out. You know me. I'm in a nautical environment. I need my space. I need to know. I got to have my exits.

Have we ever been in a nautical environment? Oh, we have when we went to Hong Kong. So they start doing these weird little like icebreaker activities where they toss a football and whoever catches it has to do a dance move. And so they're all doing their different dance

moves. And then Rachel encourages those that want to to take their shirts off. A lot of that this season. They do some limboing. This is where we start to get some more of Josiah's bravado. He says that he is, quote, the sexiest guy on this boat.

Yeah, this has popped up. I mean, it goes on for quite some time. But he starts doing push-ups with Rachel on his back. Well, there's a push-up contest. There's a push-up contest. She actually. Well, there's a push-up contest. She actually introduced specifically that it's a push-up contest. Loving it. And then there's a rap portion in which Kenny

and Peter both do their own freestyle raps. Peter's left something to be desired, huh? Yeah. Yeah, Peter. It wasn't the desired, huh? Yeah. Yeah, Peter. It wasn't the worst, but it wasn't great. His day was very good.

His rap was quite bad. No, his rap was very bad. His rap seemed like excessively bad. Although later on, they had some time alone, and she said she very much liked his rap. So beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So they get off the boat and they are going to uh an event in a big crowd where chris appears to be uh running the show he's at a podium and he announces that this is the bachelor nation spelling bee and then we cut to the crowd where

adam jr is in the audience i'm getting a little bored with it guys gotta mix it up a little bit more can't just have adam jr adam jr in the crowd of these scenarios that you'd like to see adam jr in they fucking fly off in a helicopter and adam jr's hands are taped to the bottom bars and he's just hanging on cliffhanger style who's that in the pilot seat it's adam jr we just generated two really really good ones i'm worried he was kind of an afterthought. I'm worried there was some like bottom rung producer. Oh, you think they reshot the crowd and put Adam Jr. in there?

Maybe. I would like to see, you didn't ask, but I'll tell you. I would like to see Adam Jr. Let's say next day there's like a chili cook-off competition. Oh, I love it. I would like to see Adam Jr. as either the chef or as a judge. Maybe a judge.

Or an ingredient. You want to do another one? Yeah. Okay. I would like to see, let's say there's a date where they go fishing. Something's on the hook. What is it? They pull it up. Adam Jr. It's Adam Jr.

You want to do another one i think we're all right this episode's already gonna be the longest episode of any podcast ever recorded all right well you guys hit me in the facebook group i could go all day uh so they're spelling uh adam is the first to spell and his word is squirt did we sorry did we talk about it's gonna be a spelling bee we did okay um the words at least at first are sexual words there were children in the audience and three children as judges there's no way they can play it off as if squirt was anything other than what you if you are a nasty at home might assume it to because the next word was like sensual or something like that like you words include boudoir um coitus uh we get stunning you can't just open with... Squirt. Your first word is cummies.

What? Yeah, Adam asked Rachel to use it in a sentence, and she says, like, lime, squirt, and tequila. But that's not... Come on. Wait, what are you thinking, Griffin? What are you thinking, Rachel? What are you thinking? What are you thinking, Griffin? What are you thinking, Rachel? What are you thinking?

So Iggy gets out on boudoir. Kenny gets out on champagne. Boudoir stuff. The difficulty curve here was pretty outrageous. It was a pretty buckwild sine wave here. Eric gets out on facade, which is a little out of theme.

And then the girls that are judging put on ear muffs when Peter gets the word coitus. Loving it. And they should have kept it on when he tried to spell the word because wowsers bowsers. Holy shit. He starts going and I'm not sure what's happening here,

but he starts saying q u i q u i now he says q u i c u i like he tries to start over which of course is not allowed but the boy he does spell out kwee kwee which is now the only way i'm going to ever refer to love making like you play your cards might you're to get some kwee kwee tonight. Oh, man. That is not going to work with me, Griffin. Just saying, it's been so long since I've had any kwee kwee. It's bad.

All of it. Yeah. Josiah, this is a fun moment. He gets the word stunning. Which was a weird downgrade. Yeah. And after he gets that word, he says, hey, can I use it in a sentence? And then proceeds to talk about.

This is so good. I'm sorry. It's good. Yeah, it's pretty good. And then proceeds to give a sentence about Rachel being stunning. Anthony gets out on boutonniere. This is the word that comes after it. Yeah, which is a super hard word to spell.

Do you think you can spell it right now? Gun to your head? No. Do you want to try? Well well i have it written in front of me did you write it down correctly the first time i think so b-o-u-t-i nope that's the sound they make what is it it's b-o-u-t-o-n-n-i-e-r-e you know everybody in the facebook group was saying that I should make you spell things. Oh, okay. Hit me. Well, I don't have any fact checking in front of me.

Well, here's a list of Merriam-Webster words. Should I find something sexual? I mean, if you could find one on the Merriam-Webster website, you know, they're pretty woke nowadays. Oh, frequently misspelled words. This is good. Gosh, your computer's so heavy compared to mine. Oh, it's full of processing power for all my MacBook gaming. Let's say exhilarate.

Oh, geez. E-X-H-I-L. Oh, man, I don't know. Now I'm lost. And I know I got it right so far. Exhale. I. Nope.

A. Yes. R-A-T-E. Yes. Shit. See? That's how they get you. That was our segment, guys.

Do you want to? No, you're going to do one now. No. Yeah. I'm a terrible speller. This can't be good podcast. Conscientious. Oh, I saw that one.

Well, you cheated. Well, I don't remember how it's spelled. C-O-N-S-C-I-E-N-T-I-O-U-S. That's right. You know what I always spell wrong? Huh? Separate. I always get mixed up on whether it's separate or separate.

Separate? Yeah, it is. I think it's a-rit, right? Yeah, with an A. Okay. Anyway, this isn't good. No, it's bad. I don't know why people ask us to do this.

They must have known. Okay. So who ends up winning? So it comes down to Will and Josiah. And Josiah wins on polyamorous. And he gets a large trophy. Which he kisses a lot. Which ends up being a really fun prop throughout the night.

Because when they go to the evening portion and everybody's drinking their cocktails, he pours his directly into his trophy and drinks out of it. Can we talk about, it's going to be inappropriate if we, considering how this episode ends, if we talk about the like after episode stinger at the actual end of this episode of Real Spice, can we talk about it now? Oh, yeah. Because it makes me angry that this is the weekend we got the best shit in the show, and they relegate it to the credit roll, where Josiah has his goblet full of his drink, and he turns to Will, and he says,

Refuel my goblet, and does a thick British accent. And Will's like, what are you saying? He's like, refill my goblet. And then all the dudes in the room getting this conversation about game of thrones and moe's like i don't know what you're talking and they're like dude you wore the north remembers t-shirt we know you know what game of thrones is and he's like no he starts talking about how bad the accent is it's not about bad the accent he's like what are you king joffrey he's like yes refill my goblet it was really fun it was fucking funny and it reminded me that there are dudes in this house

that are funny and and get along and produce things that should be one of the cruxes of this show but because this show refuses to be anything about like anything other than the dumb shit that it's always about like it it ends up under the title role. Bones me out. It was so good. I know. I would love an episode that's just those fun moments. Yep.

I mean, it's the fucking blooper reel, isn't it? I guess so. Can you... Sorry. Can you fucking imagine what the mental all is going to be like? I'm not saying that in like a... I'm really looking forward to the to the battle we always hate those episodes those are our least favorite episodes every season this one is going to be i mean i guess abc gets the final added out on it right but like there's a lot yeah i don't

know what i don't know what's going to happen there's a lot of folks on there who uh are gonna have a lot of defending to do can you imagine if they open it up like waboom and what's his fuck like what are they gonna say and then anyway we had a real live racist on this show let's see what like it's gonna be a fucking disaster like it's because so far like everybody at abc and involved in the production of the show has been so tight-lipped about all this stuff like i don't understand how they continue that and do like a special where everybody typically comes out and airs out all their dirty laundry yeah i'm not looking forward to nor i uh okay so uh this is a group date just a reminder um rachel is spending time with the guys she spent some more time with Peter.

And they have one of those conversations that feels like we're already planning what our relationship is going to be like after the show. Because they talk again about moving. And Peter, as you might remember, is from Wisconsin. And Rachel brings up that she just happens to be licensed to practice law in Wisconsin. This is the shit more than anything else. Like, when you start talking about where you're going to live or actual practical life stuff after the show is over, like, to me, that is always the clearest, like, you're going to win the fucking show. She's not talking about this stuff with anybody else. There's a couple other moments with the guys, but I kind of want to just get over them.

Let's just get into it. Yeah. I mean, we should talk about the Iggy stuff. Yeah. That's what I was going to get to next. So Iggy has been kind of hanging out with the group and kind of listening to Josiah's kind of bravado. And he decides he's going to take it upon himself, much like he did with Eric, to tell Rachel that he is not right for her and that she should be careful because he's protective of her. And he questions Josiah.

I really want to drive home. This is solely, this is because Josiah is playing. This was the same moment that ended up in the after the credits of Josiah celebrating with his King Joffrey impression and drinking out of the goblet and celebrating because he won the completely inconsequential spelling bee on the group date. Like, that's what Iggy sees and is like, this guy's not here for the fucking right reasons. this i'm so i'm done with iggy on so many different levels one of which being like when he um meets up with rachel and goes off to talk he's like why does he say like hey sweetheart or hey sweetie and talks about like how he is her protector or whatever and that shit always

puts a pretty gnarly taste in my mouth but to like go after josiah just because he's like celebrating because he won the spelling bee yeah that's the most childish bullshit ever and it's just this dude trying to get in the fucking mix exactly because somebody some producer said like if you want to stay on this show you need to get in the fucking mix yeah uh and so meanwhile while iggy is having this conversation with rachel josiah is kind of complaining because he does feel like he's kind of become a target. And as he's saying that, Iggy walks in and is like, oh, you know what? I was just talking about Rachel about that. And I actually said just those same things to her that I feel feel like you know that i i can't trust you

and josiah's reaction is not i think what iggy was expecting because he's like well why the fuck would you do that yeah he's like okay first eric i'm eric now i guess um because iggy did this exact yeah he's like oh your personality is different when the lights come on and just as like give me an example. Give me one example. Iggy says, I can think of five or six off the top. And Josiah's like, name one. And he can't fucking do it.

Yeah. And so then there's this moment where Eric, who seems to be really perceptive to me, because there's something about the way that he picks up on this stuff and then analyzes it really quickly. He tells Iggy, you know, Iggy, you're shifting the energy in the room. When you come in and you instigate this kind of issue, it makes everybody uncomfortable and it changes the whole energy. And that's what Rachel sees. He points at these three dudes who are just like sitting on the couch, just sort of like looking at the middle distance at the floor while like holding their foreheads, like looking like they're trying not to be in this room.

And Eric makes this excellent point about like all these dudes are going to go hang out with Rachel and they're going to she's going to get this fucking energy. Yeah. You are always, what does he say? You're always in the sauce. Yeah. And you are making things way worse than you are making things better. And it was a really perceptive thing. It was a sort of recognition of the fact that they are all real people

in this television shooting environment, and fuck, it's got to be uncomfortable a lot of the time, to be in that environment and say, all right, go be romantic. It's tough. Josiah goes to talk to some of the other guys kind of outside of the room, Josiah goes to talk to some of the other guys kind of outside of the room. And he talks about how Iggy kind of always reveals that he has done this as if it gives him some kind of pass. Yeah.

Like, what am I going to say? Like, oh, thank you for tattling. Yeah. Okay. So this is when we get to the Lee stuff. the lee stuff um rachel sits down with lee and talks about how she overheard kenny the other night talking to lee and lee starts talking about how kenny was screaming at him and lee says you know i love the guy uh but you know he was just being very aggressive towards me which is some like dog whistle bullshit we're gonna talk a lot about this but let's like get through what happened and then so then rachel after talking to lee goes to kenny because she she says you know this doesn't sound

like the kenny that i know uh so she goes and talks to kenny um and, she tells him about how she overheard him yelling and that she talked to Lee and he says, you know, I felt really dismissed by Lee. You know, I was trying to bring up my concerns and Kenny does say he felt bad. He felt like he didn't handle it the right way and that he ended up shaking hands with Lee and he thought he kind of cleared the air. But Rachel's like, well, why am i still talking about this then and kenny says well maybe lee doesn't always tell the truth i want to hop in here and point out that like this entire time there are cut in segments of lee either in the moment interviews saying like nothing makes me

happier than like getting these dudes all riled up and um i want to see his what is it i want to see his pitiful world come crumbling down or something like that talking about kenny um and and kenny uses this expression to describe lee's behavior that i'd never heard before but i really appreciated where he says lee's handshake doesn't match his smile which i feel like is a really apt way to describe lee um and then after that conversation is over between lee and rachel um or between kenny and rachel kenny feels like her body language suggested that she was in lee's corner he seemed really really really defeated in a way that was genuinely difficult to watch because it was,

it came completely out of Lee's full blown fucking gaslighting shit. He calls Lee a quote, alternative facts, piece of garbage. and Kenny says, you know, I wasn't aggressive. You can look at the tapes.

I was like 10 feet away from him. There was no action. And so the scene ends with Kenny going back inside confronting Lee and trying to pull him, or not pull him, but take him into another room. Yeah, if they can go outside

for a check. And then we get the like, cliche to be continued, like other dudes gathering around to like see what is going on yeah there's a suggestion there's going to be some kind of physical fight the crescendo of this episode was to sort of boil it down lee going to rachel and saying kenny is aggressive and i felt threatened and um i don't know what got into i love the guy i love the guy but uh you know i felt, I felt like he was really aggressive while in the moment saying like, I love getting in this dude's head and making him seem like a asshole.

And Kenny saying like, well, shit, Rachel doesn't like me anymore because of what Lee's said. And then we get a teaser for next week's episode. Um, and this is going, this is going to be next week's episode. It, the, the teaser for this next episode was infuriating because it was just,

it was just this, it was just this like, um, real, real life issues of, um, black men being portrayed as dangerous and aggressive and the sort of exploitation of that for television drama stretched out over what is best case scenario one more episode not two or three more episodes although there is a

suggestion so we know that jack stone has the next one-on-one. And then there will be a rose ceremony. And there's a suggestion that there's a two-on-one. That these two dudes are on. With Lee and Kenny. And in that way, they're treating it like any other, like I said earlier in this episode, like they are treating it like any other drama

that they have ever manufactured on this show. And that is so irresponsible and so, so, so, so dangerous if you look at it with one additional, even thin layer of context on top of what it is that they're doing here. Yeah, and so this is, so Griffin found an article. A lot of articles about this stuff. Before we get into that, like, it's fucking horrifying.

We talked about this, I feel like before the season started of like, how are they going to handle having the first black lead on this show and having the most diverse cast? In my mind, I thought it might be a case where just they kind of just like ignore it and do it as business as usual and maybe that's what the fuck they think this is and maybe it's just the fact that we know that lee is actually a huge huge racist that is making it so untenable but this is this is i feel like a lot worse than i thought this was going to be this entire episode dedicated to this racist dude goading on a black man into seeming dangerous enough that he would be sent home is fucking horrifying and the way that they are stretching it out without any sort of critical look at it is like beyond the pale i feel like that's yeah and this is what's so tricky about trusting trusting the show and trusting your reactions to it uh obviously there's editing involved lee seems just kind of like a jerk all the time to everybody um we are seeing

mostly his issues with black contestants um there was a segment on this episode where he was sitting down with some white contestants at a bar just like, you know, I love you guys. I would never say anything about you guys. And it's... So I want to get into some of the things that people have been writing about this because I feel like they summarize it a lot better

than I ever could. Here's an article from Refinery29 by Cecily Bowen. Lee embodies the most frustrating and common kind of racism on The Bachelorette. This's an article from Refinery29 by Cecily Bowen. Lee embodies the most frustrating and common kind of racism on The Bachelorette. This is an excerpt. Not only is Lee relying on racist stereotypes about angry black men to misinterpret their rightful feelings of frustration, but he is using them to position himself as a moral superior. Lee's Twitter feed suggests that he is most likely the least woke contestant on this season as it pertains to race. He used quotations around the word privilege and supported the presidential candidate that

wants to deport immigrants and ban Muslims. These beliefs appear to be influencing his interactions with the men of color on the show, and it's infuriating to watch. Today, asking me why I'm upset when I'm, this article, by the way, like opens up talking about her experience being a person of color in these exact situations that are sort of portrayed on the show. She says, today, asking me why I'm upset when I'm not is the fastest way to actually make me upset. It's a trigger that I've developed after years of unnecessarily and often unsuccessfully defending myself against accusations of being combative, threatening and disruptive. The feeling

of discontentedness often transforms into silent fury with the knowledge that even today, my protests will fall on deaf ears, or worse, put me in danger of arrest or harm watching kenny struggle against this last night was perhaps the realest moment the bachelorette has ever seen but hey at least rachel has peeped what's going on that links to a tweet that rachel did that um was in response to leah who was a contestant i guess on the last season of bachelor in paradise meaning she was on this franchise at some point, where she said something just shitty about like, she turned on the show and her friend asked, like, is this love and hip hop? And Rachel responded like, oh, I should introduce you to Leah.

It sounds like you two would really get along. So she's at least like now. Now she knows. Coming forward and saying like, i get it yeah i the thing that article hits on i felt like was so clear in kenny's reaction after he talked to rachel he just seems so defeated like here lee said this thing about me that's not true uh but rachel believes it just like i'm sure he's dealt with hundreds of times. And here it's happening again based on him losing his temper after being provoked by Lee.

I just, you really feel the kind of, gosh, just frustration from him, but like not frustration. I don't know. He just, he seems so defeated.

Yeah. And it's like, it's a real thing. Like, it's not like, it's not defeated because like, oh no, I went down a peg on this television show. It's defeated in a way of like, this is a fucking thing. This is a thing that, that I deal with. But these guys are like really, they're dealing with a lot more. I know. It's a lot. Emma and Claire from Here to Make Friends, the Huffington Post podcast, which I adore, wrote an article saying, Hey, ABC, racism on The Bachelorette isn't entertaining. It's gross. That's the headline.

A very good way to summarize how I feel about it. And this is the closer. how I feel about it. And this is the closer. There's something especially insidious about a show with such a checkered racial history using racism to drum up drama ratings and ultimately dollars for the entertainment of white people. It goes without saying that America has an

ugly history of white people making money off of black people's pain. Perhaps it was too much to hope that The Bachelorette would set the bar higher. Yeah, like, I don't know what I expected from this season, but, like, this is worse than what I expected from this season but like this is worse than what i expected from this season which is saying a lot because i don't think i was expecting a whole lot um one uh sort of great take on this uh came from the ringer roger sherman at the ringer lee does not belong on the bachelorette which kind of summarized like the um struggle i had with like

uh lee is obviously we know he's a big piece of shit right we know he's a bigot in a lot of different ways um while the role he is filling on this show is a traditional archetype that we've seen on this show you're the mid-season villain right and so you you turn cartoonish at some point like a fucking werewolf transformation and then all the actions you take from that point on are cartoonish levels of villainy yeah um that is seemingly what he is doing here but you cannot look at that you cannot look at his actions without viewing them through the lens of like also what you're doing is like super super racist so i had a hard time like this isn't anything this is nothing new this is stuff people have done before but the motivations behind it

and the context behind it is different and like hugely hugely upsetting. So this is that's a good point. This is the article from the ringer. Yes Lee is pursuing a black woman on this show. No he doesn't launch into over the top explicit racist tirades every time he encounters a black castmate but that doesn't mean he's not racist.

He sees his black castmates as manipulable quick to anger and easy to outwit. He's the instigator, but he likes to portray the black men he's instigating as aggressive. This is not the first time that this has happened in American history. considering there is a significant amount of vetting that goes into selecting cast members for this show and the tweets were public lee doesn't deserve the platform he doesn't deserve the attention and it's unfair that racial should be fantasy world is tinged with his views there shouldn't be this lee related drama there shouldn't be these constant escalations to near violence or as teasers to future episodes suggest actual violence and it would be nice if the bachelorette on the bachelorette could be black without her having to deal with racism but if lee must be on the show let's allow our knowledge of who he is to tint every conversation he has he is a reminder that racists are not always caricatures sometimes

they're just people who think they're better than other people even though all evidence points to the fact that they are not i fucking love that that's like yeah that's so well because lee never said lee doesn't say anything racist he doesn't do anything like explicitly racist he may have said something racist i'm i'm saying explicitly overtly racist right um but at the same time like what he's doing is pretty fucking racist like it's the thing that i think is so apt about that post is, and I told this to Griffin, this show has me viewing every interaction as who's right, who's wrong, who's the hero, who's the villain. You know, everything becomes very this or that. And so Lee doesn't say anything explicitly racist yet.

The world doesn't work like that no people who are racist don't always you know say racial slurs and they you know what i mean like it it's i just like and so and so the so this gets is gonna get drug out yeah we got at least one one more episode which i and i were thinking like this was going to be the worst one, and weren't we pleased to find out that there were going to be more of these. It's so bad. And we talked earlier about this show has been problematic in the past, but it's reaching a new echelons of like,

this season was make or break for them. This season was a big was a big season and they are handling things in a way that they have previously just kind of skirted over and they are still trying to avoid the subjects that they are actively engaging in and also exploiting nobody's saying the word racist. These conversations are not happening that much on a season where I feel like they should be happening, or at the very least, the show should be more responsible about how they handle these real issues, and they fucking aren't even a little bit at all. And it's so much worse than I thought it was going to be. It's so much worse than I

thought it was going to be. And it's much worse than I thought it was going to be. And it's not entertaining. It's not fun. I don't know who watches this. I don't even think you have to be necessarily very like keyed in to see this trailer for this next episode and not go like, well, that seems bad. Did anybody fucking watch this? This like white racist dude, like trying to egg on this black man to the point

where he comes off as as violent nobody watched that and said like that seems maybe we shouldn't do that it's it's so awful here's what i will say the saving grace this season, and we are probably not the only ones saying this, is Rachel Lindsay. Rachel's amazing. And there's a lot of the castmates who are amazing. And we are not getting that because if you want to, I think the most credit you can give this show

is to say like they are just so rigidly adhering to the structures that have worked for them in the past of like okay episode four we introduced the villain that they are just barging right ahead without even thinking about oh wait a minute that's really racist but i like the fact that fucking lee was apparently sought out i don't i don't trust the franchise um i feel like we could continue to speculate as to what they're doing, but we don't know. And the thing that keeps me coming back to this show is, I mean, and it sounds hokey, but is the compelling piece of this real person that I want the best for trying to find love and and learning learning about her and learning about some of the contestants in the process yeah there are pieces

of this and we've complained a lot about it because there's a lot to complain about but there are still parts of this show that i i find engaging that's what makes it so, for me, like, that's what makes it infuriating. So to put it like in the context of how it happened, if you didn't watch the episode, like we got this, this like really, really, really difficult to watch preview for this, what seems to be difficult to watch next episode that's coming up. And then we ended with the King Joffrey impressions, like funny stuff. And it's like, there's a light that shines through this show, and in a way, that's, like, what makes it the most, well, no, that's not the most

infuriating thing about it, but, like, I keep getting these glimpses of what this show could be if it was socially responsible even a little bit, if it didn't adhere to the same, I, like, I haven't talked about, like, how they are just doing the same fucking shit every season no matter what gotta introduce gotta manufacture a villain to the point where it's like a switch is flipped and now i'm bad that's i'm so fucking over it you've done that 20 times what the fuck are you doing it's it's it is so surface level a complaint to say like oh well it's really repetitive tv when like the real complaint is like it's fucking super problematic. But like.

There's there's there's there's this show could be so fucking great, and it's just I don't know, man, I don't I don't know that I have the patience for it anymore. We're we're going to finish the season. We should finish the season. Yeah. And then. Yeah. And then we'll figure out what we do next. I mean, we're going to have to because we'll have about if we don't do BIP, it's going to be the season. We should finish the season, yeah. And then we'll figure out what we do next. I mean, we're going to have to because we'll have about, if we don't do BIP, it's going to be about four or five months there where we're not going to have a television show to talk about.

Yeah, and please trust that we will work on this and we will let you know. Yeah. We've gotten a lot of great suggestions. At this point, we just need to figure something out. If you're disappointed that we're not going to be about bip i'm cool we're not gonna change our minds about this like this is this is we it's been a um it's been a tough couple weeks like again like i said like this show is really important to us and y'all are really important to us and we've really struggled about it and like i don't, there's no way we could fucking do it. So,

um, please don't, please don't ask, I guess. Uh, I want to thank some people for some gifts we got. Oh yeah. Uh,

so first I wanted to thank, uh, your trumpet labs. Uh, they have provided Griffin and his brothers with, um, Oh, they've actually given us whole mics. That mic you're talking into is near trumpet.

Uh, and they sent me my own pop filter that says, can I steal you away on it? It's really good. Which I was excited about. Thank you for that. Let's swap that out. We only use that mic really to record Rose Buddies now. Okay.

We also got this really cool paper cutout that says Rose Buddies on it from Sam. So thank you very much, Sam. If you're interested in seeing what Sam does, the Instagram is catfrendo. I want to thank

Rachel's parents for sending me a big box of hot sauce. Sent me like six big bottles of hot sauce, and I was like, well, hot sauce. I used to eat a lot of hot sauce, but now I don't because my tummy's really sensitive. But I've been eating that hot sauce. And I was like, well, hot sauce. I used to eat a lot of hot sauce, but now I don't cause my tummy's really sensitive, but I've been eating that hot sauce and it's good hot sauce. It's not really related to the show at all. Well,

I ate it before it gave me energy to do the show. So, uh, uh, thank you, Bonnie for, uh, sending us this,

uh, cute, cute, cute little onesie romper for Henry. It's adorable. It has a little H on it. It's really adorable. Bonnie's website is buddybeanboutique.com.

Love that. And she wrote us a really sweet note. So thank you for that. Anything else? Thanks to Maximum Fun for having us. You can go to Maximum fun.org and check out all the great podcasts there um or you can go to mackroy shows.com and check out all the shows that we do i don't i don't know what to say at the end of this episode like this this is um

we want we want um i talked to griffin and i was like part of i know you guys don't necessarily turn to us for all your entertainment news. So I don't want our show to become so focused on the headlines, but clearly we couldn't avoid that this week. But it is my desire to still do a funny, sweet podcast with my husband. Yeah.

And we would like to get back to that sometime very soon. But, but like, we're not going to ignore what this show does we're not gonna ignore like it it's it's what i want to talk about is like the sentiment that i also see going around the group because there are a lot of people when that that preview for the next episode came up we're like i'm done or like i'm skipping next week like fuck this and like i i feel that too like i'm i'm um i think the adjective i would

use is like i'm tired like when all this stuff was breaking and i was at e3 i was like this is so disappointing and it's so disheartening and this show used to like mean a lot to me and while i recognized its faults like i never thought it would get this bad or especially not this fast because fuck um we're tired we're really tired and i don't really know what to do about it like i don't really know what to do next and we're gonna we're gonna figure it out but um just be just be like just be good to each other. And know that Griffin and I started this show because we have fun talking to each other about things that make us happy. And if this show doesn't do it,

we'll find something else that does. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we'll do that fucking Quantum Leap. Anything I say now is going to be the thing that people tweet us about. I was going to say that Quantum Leap fan cast. Nobody that fucking Quantum Leap. Anything I say now is going to be the thing that, like, people tweet us about. I was going to say that Quantum Leap fan cast. Nobody wants the Quantum Leap fan cast.

Uh, I don't know about that. I have, I've talked to Scott Bakula in the last couple of weeks. Oh, jeez. Sorry, babe. I did. I talked to Scott Bakula. It was the fucking best. Um, yeah.

So, we're saying all this, and I know next week's episode is going to be so bad, and so we're going to be equally defeated in the next discussion. Maybe it'll be a quick... They're going to get through the rest of this date, through the solo date, through the rose ceremony. They'll have to do Rachel and Copper. Rachel and Copper just hugging for 20 minutes. In the Bluffton Fields. In the Bluffton Fields with the cow mare.

Hey, we had one joke this episode. All right. Thanks for listening, and until next time, I'm Griffin McElroy. I'm Rachel McElroy. I'm Rachel McElroy. When you're ready. Final Rose. Stay with us on this journey of joy.

Spoiler alert. She is up with Soulja Boy. Right reasons. Right reasons. Can't be the one for season. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

Listener supported. Hello, Internet. I'm your husband host, Travis McElroy. And I'm your wife host, Teresa McElroy. And together we present Schmanners. It's extraordinary etiquette. For ordinary occasions. We explain the historical significance of everyday etiquette topics, then answer your questions relating to modern life.

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