Rachel Lindsay is a practicing attorney who once took the LSAT. And you, dear reader, are an aspiring attorney who will soon take the LSAT. Rachel Lindsay is also an aspiring married person, serving as the bachelorette on this season of The Bachelorette, the love story these depraved times deserve. And you, dear reader, may also be an aspiring married person? Either way, you definitely have at least a few things in common with Rachel. So every Tuesday, we’re going to be tracking Rachel’s romantic journey on The Bachelorette, and see what we can learn about love, loss, and the LSAT. Welcome back to the Logical Rose-ning Section.
Last time: Rachel tested the contestants’ abilities in “husbandry.” Most of the guys are awkward dorks. There was a boring controversy over whether a catchphrase-spouting guy who was literally wearing a tank top he’s trying to sell to you is there for, you guessed it, the “right reasons. Kareem Abdul Jabbar showed up to watch some of the guys play ball, but considering the appearance of DeMario’s side girl Lexi, you wonder if they had Kareem confused with Wilt Chamberlain. Rachel showed some impressive lawyer skills when mediating between DeMario and Lexi, and then dismissed DeMario with righteous fury. Obviously DeMario respected her wishes and the legal concept of res judicata and left. JK, he showed up again to plead his case.
DeMario shows back up
We pick up right where we left off last week, with the opposite-of-triumphant return of DeMario. Rachel deigns to meet with him. And, to his credit, DeMario starts off pretty well with a polite handshake and an explanation about how he should have been more truthful to Rachel, whose motto is to “always keep it 100.” He drops a quote about how life’s joy requires experiencing pain. He explains how he hope joy will come from this painful experience. But then DeMario gets increasingly desperate and starts rambling about his Uber driver’s advice and completely loses the thread. Know when to end closing arguments, dude.
Rachel, whip-smart as she is, sees through all of this. She says, “I need a man who, when confronted with a difficult situation, doesn’t lie about it.” She can’t get passed DeMario’s initial response to seeing Lexi on the group date, which was basically the live equivalent of dropping a “New phone who dis?”
Then Rachel really drops some fury. My episode notes at this point just read “Dayumn girl.” Rachel tells DeMario that his quote about needing pain to experience joy was cute, but that his hypothetically joyful future is not in the Man-sion. “Forward isn’t that way, it’s that way, outside of this house,” she says.
After Rachel dropped the mic on a dumbfounded DeMario, the remaining guys are all like, “We’re here for you, Rachel.” And she just responds, “I’m good. I’m great.” She is. Rachel doesn’t need you guys. Let’s just kick all the guys off and have a show about Rachel and her dog traveling the world. A Travels with Charlie for the digital age.
Rose Ceremony
The rest of the cocktail party really just shows how not up to Rachel’s level these dudes are. Jonathan wears giant hands? Alex does a Rubik’s cube? Will dunks on a Playskool hoop. Dude, she just kicked off a dude who can dunk on a real hoop.
Blake continues to freaks out about Whaboom. The Whaboom guy tells a bizarre story about Blake standing over Whaboom guy’s bed sensually eating a banana. Blake’s defense is that he doesn’t eat carbs. These guys.
This all a prelude to the rose ceremony, where Rachel will take an axe to some of the chaff remaining in this group. At the ceremony, she apologizes for the DeMario sitch. But she doesn’t apologize for sending these jokers home. And she shouldn’t! Bryan, Bryce, Eric, Anthony (literally don’t remember this guy, he must be new), Will, Jonathan, Jack, Matt, Alex, Adam, Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King (who adorably accepts his rose offer by saying, “How Kenny say no?”), Brady (also don’t remember this guy), noted racist (which should not be surprising given his penchant for Richard Spencer’s haircut) Lee, Iggy, Fred the bad little summer camp boy, and Diggy get roses, joining Piggo Mortensen and DeanBot2000, who received roses on their dates last week.
This leaves Blake, and Whaboom out in the cold. And frankly, that’s fine by me. During the entire ceremony both Whaboom and Blake freak out about how each is much more deserving of Rachel’s affection than the other. Even when Blake is saying his goodbyes to Rachel, he brings up Whaboom. After their confessional interviews, they get into an argument that is literally the exact argument the protagonists of a romantic comedy have before declaring their love. These guys just need to kiss and get it over with. Maybe they’ll leave this show, discover their unbridled passion for each other, and make Whaboom every night under the stars. If and when they do though, it’ll be away from the watchful eye of The Bachelorette cameras. They’re gone. Anyway, drum roll for aspirant drummer Blake and a 12-Whaboom salute for Lucas.
Group Date Number 1
And with that, we are on to the episode’s first group date. The date card invites Bryan, Jonathan, Peter, Alex, Will, and Fred along for the ride. The card reads “Lights, Camera, Action. Come join me on the set of Ellen.” They’re going on your mom’s favorite show, Ellen.
On the set of Ellen, Rachel calls Ellen her “spirit animal.” Ellen follows Rachel’s creed of keeping it 100, and gives her unflinching assessment of these clowns. When Rachel tells Ellen about the creepy tickling Jonathan pulled during their first impression meeting, Ellen says, “I don’t like that. Why is he still here?” When Rachel tells Ellen about Will’s Urkel cosplay, Ellen says, “I don’t like that either.”
Once filming of the Ellen show begins—which again, your mom definitely saw, since it is her favorite show—Ellen implores the guys to take their shirts off and dance with the crowd. The guys could not be more eager to oblige her request. Alex, who possesses the physique and Russian heritage of peak Ivan Drago, goes especially crazy, dancing on woman of all ages. Hell nah, Alex, don’t discriminize.
Once things settle down, the guys play “Never have I ever” with Rachel and Ellen. Poor Fred can’t catch a break. He’s already playing at a disadvantage, having been a bad little boy at the summer camp Rachel went to. On syndicated television, Ellen asks about him being a bad little summer camp boy. During the game, it’s revealed that most of his fellow contestants on the date have already kissed Rachel. Later, he awkwardly asks her permission for a kiss. He uses a cheesy pick-up line about how she might catch feelings after the kiss. Rachel then tells him that she still sees him as the bad little summer camp boy, and for that reason, she can’t reciprocate these feelings. She knows all about reciprocity, given that she has that word tattooed on her ribs. Fred is left packing. Alex then gets the group date rose. Sometimes the Russian villain wins.
One-on-One Date
Anthony, who is apparently a human being who has been on this show the entire time, gets the coveted one-on-one date. “Meet me at the Rodeo,” the date card reads. He’s thinking bulls and rodeo clowns and cowboys and horses. Turns out she meant Rodeo Drive (pronounced “Roe-day-oh,” a street in Beverly Hills that’s literally a gilded ode to the conspicuous consumption demanded by late capitalism). But she’s on a horse. Because rodeo. They’re spelled the same. Get it? Get it? You get it.
They take horses around Rodeo Drive as tourists gawk. They buy cowboy boots, tacky shirts, and visit a cupcake ATM. Anthony is very buff and handsome, wears size 13 shoes, and looks very commanding on a horse. But he’s basically a cipher. He feeds a horse a cupcake, and hopes the horse doesn’t defecate in the store. The horse, of course, does. At dinner, he talks about being an “old soul.” That’s about the extent of the banter these two have. I don’t see them going far. Or maybe I’m actually falling for Rachel and view Anthony as a threat? Who can say? Anyway, he gets the rose and they re-enact a scene from memorable Oscar loser La La Land.
A Break for Some LSAT Studying
We’re having fun here with The Bachelorette. Hopefully we’re feeling like we’re unwinding from a hard day of studying for the upcoming LSAT. Taking care of yourself is an important step in the study process, after all. But with the LSAT less than a week away, I know the time spent on The Bachelorette can feel like, at best, a frivolous distraction. At worst, the show can make you feel like it’s actively making you dumber.
But it’s not! In fact, The Bachelorette can help you study for the LSAT. It’s especially helpful in reviewing the common fallacies, a super important skill for Logical Reasoning. Just take a look at all the fallacies committed by the dudes on this show!
Blake: After being booted by Rachel, Blake said, “I really thought that I was going to get the chance to spend more time with Rachel.” Looks like you’re committing a perception vs. reality fallacy, Blakey. Just because you think something is true, doesn’t make it so. And that weak logic is why you’re going home.
Chris Harrison: The nominal host of this program, who got literally five seconds of screentime this episode, said, “Get ready for a date that you can only do in LA” in reference to the Ellen taping. There’s actually two fallacies here. First, Chris Harrison relies a false equivalence. Ellen actually films in Burbank, which, although located in Los Angeles County, is a city separate and distinct from the city of Los Angeles. So that’s an equivocation fallacy. Second, Chris also commits an exclusivity fallacy in assuming that the greater Los Angeles area is the only place Ellen films her show. Ellen has taped her show in New York before.
Alex: In flirting with Rachel, our 80s Russian villain contestant says, “Your left eye goes to your emotions; your right eye goes to logic.” Despite being able to solve a Rubik’s cube, Alex doesn’t display sound logic here. Alex is actually committing an exclusivity fallacy, in assuming that these functions are mutually exclusive.
Anthony: During the one-on-one date on Rodeo drive, Anthony says, “I’m just thinking, [the horses] ate the horse cupcakes. I just hope they don’t let it loose in the store. That’s bad for business.” Here, Anthony is assuming that the cupcakes will cause the horses to defecate in the store. But of course, the cupcakes didn’t necessarily cause the horses to defecate in the store. Actually, the horses are devout Marxists and were merely expressing their displeasure with the store’s vulgar paeans to capitalism. This, of course, is a causation fallacy.
Group Date 2
Back to the show! For the second group date, Brady, Dean, Adam, Kenny, Bryce, Lee, Jack, and Eric all get invitations. Iggy is left out in the cold. The card reads, “Sometimes in relationships, the women have to take charge.” These numnuts immediately get sexist, and assume the “charge” is referring to charging items to a credit card during a shopping spree. Women be shoppin’, am I right?
Before the date, Eric begins his slow descent. He’s never been in a relationship before, and he feels like he’s making himself emotionally available to Rachel, but hasn’t seen her live up to her reciprocity tattoo and given herself to Eric. Eric wonders if her heart is in it. Eric then gets into a little tiff with Iggy when Iggy offers unsolicited advice.
On the date, Rachel brings Raven, Corinne, Jasmine, and Alexis—her fellow contestants from last season of The Bachelor. They’re going to give advice to Rachel, despite the fact that Rachel is older, smarter, and more self-assured than all of these women. But hey, they’re her “girls” so they’ll come along for the ride. Raven asks Dean and Lee who is here for the “wrong reasons” and the both say Eric.
For the second week in a row, the group date to be strongly tilted to professional-wrestler-slash-doting-father Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King. They go to a honky tonk where the boys mud wrestle. And for the second week in a row, Kenny doesn’t win. Bryce somehow manages to the muzzle the Pitbull, and takes home the chintzy championship belt that the producers managed to find.
Rachel consults with her “girls” about the contestants, and the girls bring up concerns about Eric. Rachel then bids her girls adieu. Corinne, upon realizing that her time on camera is coming to a sudden and certain end, makes this face:
After the wrestling it’s the after wrestling, and the guys get cleaned up and meet Rachel at a ranch in Agoura Hills for drinks and “deeper” conversation. The plea for “deeper” conversation means different things to different contestants. For Kenny, it means admitting to being a Chippendales dancer and giving her a taste of what he dished out to Bachelorette parties for many years. The other guys have super boring conversations in comparison.
Eric, who has been marked as a “red flag” by the boys and girls of The Bachelorette, admits to being vulnerable. Rachel then goes into lawyer mode again, and refers to statements made by Bryce and Lee about Eric’s “bad motives.” Any 1L could tell you that this evidence is objectionable as hearsay and conjecture, but Eric mostly looks dumbfounded and, increasingly, angry.
After this conversation, Eric confronts Bryce and noted racist Lee. Eric determines that Bryce’s concern genuine, but that noted racist Lee is being very suspicious. Eric says Lee has a lot of snake in his DNA. I mean, do you disagree?
Despite all this, Eric gets the group date rose.
Rose Ceremony
During the second rose ceremony, Iggy and Lee both realize that they’re captaining sinking ships on this show, and try to bring down Eric with them. They both bring up their issues with Eric to Rachel. Namely, that Eric brought up issues about whether Rachel was being genuine about the process. Rachel then wonders if she should have given Eric the rose. She ultimately lets Eric keep the rose, but tells him her “antennae are up” and she’s onto him. Eric then confronts the entire group, and when Lee gets smug in a very serpentine way, Eric gets a little heated. Just when the dramas about to get real, they hit us with the TO BE CONTINUED …
What we learned about love
For Blake, loving Whaboom is the greatest love of all.
What we learned about loss
Being a professional wrestler does not guarantee that you will win a wrestling competition. But Pretty Boy Pitbull Kenny King, you’re still a winner in our hearts.
What we learned about the LSAT
Despite getting a nice common fallacy review this episode, we still don’t have any idea how well Rachel did on the LSAT. However, some internet sleuthing uncovered that the median LSAT score for the Fall 2008 entering class at Marquette Law School—the class that included 2011 graduate Rachel Lindsay—was 157. However, Rachel is a +75-percentile human being if we’ve ever seen one, so our guess is that she scored between the high 150s and mid-160s. We’ll keep you updated on this story as more details become available.