Bachelorette Fantasy Suite Recap: The Triumph of JEF

By Finesse

[Follow me on Twitter and listen to the Raw Emotion Bachelorette recap podcast here]

This week the gang travels to Curacao under a contract that requires the contestants to say the word "Curacao" every 6th word in exchange for being able to do whatever the f**k they want to the island.  And like any good Fantasy Suite Week, this one starts with voice-over recaps of where Emily stands with each of the gentlemen.  She says that Sean possesses "so many things I want in a husband," which we translate to mean "except he's not Arie."  Emily says she loves JEF's style, that he "marches to his own drum completely," and that he is someone "who could make going to the grocery store interesting because he would skateboard there wearing purple pants with socks pulled over them while moderating a debate about love between his imaginary puppet and real puppet."

Emily says that she had an instant connection with Arie and praises him for bringing out the youthfulness in her.  Youthfulness was supposed to be JEF's forte given that he wears a size 6 shoe and weighs the same as one of Sean's bowel movements but now that Arie is leading the race for Emily's youthfulness?  As Artistry says, "Game over."

Also brings out the youthfulness in Emily.

Emily thinks that all of them would be the best husband ever and she just doesn't know which one she should be with.  When in doubt, ask God.

What is God's plan for Emily?  Find out the answer, and so much more, after the jump...


It's Fantasy Suite Week on the Bachelorette and you know what that means: we either get to make fun of our heroine for sleeping with three different guys in three consecutive nights OR we make fun of her for marrying someone without ever having slept with the guy.  It's like a Sophie's Choice, but without the Polish people.

Too soon?

Sean is up first, a horrible sign for him.  He fights against this ominous sequencing by wearing the Deepwater Horizon of v-necks.  Strong play by Sean.  But he quickly loses all the momentum he gained by maximizing the visible surface area of his hairless chest when he has the following exchange (summarized):

Sean: I don't hold back.
Emily: Yes you do.
Sean: Sometimes I hold back.

It may be controversial in some pockets of the country, but it's not controversial to Emily: STAND YOUR GROUND, SEAN.  After this fatal error, the conversation predictably devolves into exchanges of I'm-really-glad-you're-heres.  Emily reveals frustration with Sean for not telling her that he loves her, you know, because it's been 6 weeks and it's like omigod when is this guy going to propose to me?!!?!?

If you can't get the Walls down, get out.

Armed with a fresh v-neck at dinner, Sean decides that it would be a good idea to read a letter that he wrote to Ricki.  There are too many grown men spending too much time thinking about this 7 year-old girl.  Discussion at GTOG HQ shifts to whether Sean could be the next Bachelor.  To summarize:

Me: Could Sean be the next Bachelor?
My brother: Who cares.
Me: Yeah, he doens't have a cool enough job.  You need a cool job to be the Bachelor.
JEF correspondent: Wait. Does Emily have a job?

THIS IS A GREAT QUESTION.  Does Emily have a job?  Is she a "full-time Mom?"  That's great and all, but what about the fact that your daughter is 7 and goes to school?  Does she work during the day?  Has she ever worked?  Does she have skills?  A trade?  Did she go to tech school?  Did she graduate high school?  We have three guys dying to marry her, yet no one knows what she does nor does anyone seem even remotely curious.

Sean finally gets out the "L" word at dinner.  This makes Emily so happy.  To consumate this happiness, she goes for a swim with Sean back at the Fantasy Suite but does not let him stay the night.  "I'm a mom, it just doesn't line up with what I believe in," she declares.  After having a daughter at 18 and leaving her to go on the Bachelor not once but twice, Emily does not want to set the wrong example for Ricki.  What a hypocrite, but not for reason you think.  You'll recall from a few seasons ago that Emily laughed Brad Womack out of her house after he delivered his Gettysburg Address: 

"I want so badly to be affectionate with you. Ok. And to show you how I care. I just met your daughter, she's sleeping upstairs. I want to kiss you. I'm just not. I care enough about letting you know how much I respect you and your daughter. I want to leave, I want to hug you, and not let go. But I want to hug you and tell you goodbye and tell you I'll be thinking about you and I hope that you know that means I care so much more than a kiss. You ok?"

Wasn't ok then, but is ok now?

Next up is a date with JEF on a boat.  "There's no one else I'd rather have on this boat," says Emily.  They recount Emily's mission to Utah last week to meet JEF's brother STEV and numerous other unidentified women and children on the vast expanse of land JEF's family owns in Utah.  JEF says that he told his parents about the Hometown date and caps off the conversation by declaring: "I love parents."

Later that night at dinner Emily dons a blue ring the size of a baseball glove and tells JEF that she loves that he "gets her."  What is there to get?  She's a presumably unemployed single mom who likes to play dress up and displays virtually no intellectual curiosity beyond whether its possible to birth a new baby more frequently than once every 9 months because she wants that many babies.  I get it, too.  Where's my Fantasy Suite card?

From there they discuss where in the country JEF will effort to impregnate her with the ruthless efficiency of a Browning M2 machine gun.  Emily hedges at first before ultimately concluding that she would move to Utah.

Road trip!

Although preemption is usually a sound strategy on The Bachelorette, JEF takes it too far by jumping the gun and telling Emily that he will not be foregoing his individual room but will instead be foregoing the opportunity to forego his individual room and stay with her in the Fantasy Suite.  HE'S TOTALLY FINE WITH THIS.  He saw the abstinence example Emily was trying to set for Little Ricki and raised her a celibacy example he's trying to set for his unborn child MAT.

MAT

Arie gets the coveted final Fantasy Suite week date, the functional equivalent of a first-class ticket to the finals.  Their kissing is interrupted only by Emily saying how much she likes kissing him.  Arie is running an absolute clinic on how to win The Bachelorette -- when you've spent 8 weeks learning all you could possibly know about a person, your time is best spent passing the awkward silence with a sustained, day long make-out.  He sums up his approach to parenting Little Ricki as follows: "Yeah, I'm prolly just gonna kick it with her at first until she's old enough that I don't have to do much."  Emily eats it up.

But then the unexpected happens.

Emily foregoes her opportunity to offer Arie the opportunity to forego his own room.  She doesn't even bring out the overnight card, but not because she doesn't want Arie.  No, it's quite the opposite.  It's because she knows that if she gets behind closed doors with Arie it's Goodnight JEF, Hello Little Ricki 2.0. She proceeds to cry because she wants to sleep with Arie so badly but can't because she's a role model.  See Sophie's Choice, above.

[Side note: Was ABC pumping in artificial cricket noises all night or was it Purim in Curacao and all the crickets were shaking their Groggors at Hamen?]

Before the Rose Ceremony Emily sits down with Chris Harrison so he can see if he can make her cry.  He succeeds, obviously, and then forces her to watch The Bachelorette equivalent of The Notebook -- video messages from her three suitors in which they declare their love for her and v-necks, though not necessarily in that order.  Arie nails it and Sean survives it, but JEF raises the stakes.  "Together we will watch a thousand sunsets."  Incredible confidence by JEF, as the current world record for sunsets watched by a couple stands at eighty-one.  Can they pull it off?

Sunset #1

Sunset #2

Sunset #7

Sunset #11

Sunset #17

Sunset #21

Sunset #28

Sunset #30

Sunset #34

Sunset #41

Sunset #44

Sunset #49

Sunset #52

Sunset #60

All suspense surrounding the Rose Ceremony dissolves when JEF is awarded the first rose leaving Sean to fight for his life against the unstoppable force that is Arie.  Sean fails and is sent packing, setting up a David versus Goliath finale in two weeks, only if David was named Davi and wore baby blue knee-highs.

Bring it.