The Bachelor Five - Week 1 with Prince Farming

Recaps are boring. You watched the show. You know what happened. Instead, we'll do a tiny recap of each episode (four sentences) and then bring you "The Bachelor Five" - the five things you need to know about last night's episode.

Administrative note - Neither Chase nor I successfully named the recipient of "The First Impression Rose." But all five of each of our POWER 5 choices made it to Week 2.

We're also lucky to have Chris himself tweeting with us each week. Be sure to follow him on Twitter here!

Chris ponders a life of polygamy.

The 4 Sentence Recap 

We were force-fed treated to an hour of Chris Harrison interviewing previous contestants on the red carpet before we finally got to see our Prince Farming - Chris Soules - meet his 30 potential future wives (he did say he maybe wanted to be a polygamist). As can be expected, after the premiere we can question the mental stability of more than half of the contestants (the top of that list includes Tara and Ashley S. – more on them below in The Bachelor Five). Britt appears to be the front runner after receiving the “First Impression Rose.” The first cocktail party lasted until the NEXT MORNING (you can see the sun is coming up when the eliminated girls are being interviewed) and we were left with a cliffhanger inevitably drawing us all back next week (the cliffhanger carries much less weight, however, due to the extremely revealing “THIS SEASON ON THE MOST DRAMATIC SEASON OF THE BACHELOR EVER” preview we were shown).

The Bachelor Five 
The Five Things You Need to Know from Last Night's Episode

5. The Live Show – Ugh. This was so unnecessary. I get that there are people in Bachelor Nation who actually care about what D-level former contestants are doing with their lives. We “cared” when they were on the show (unless your name is Clare). But I’d venture to say the majority of us no longer care about people whose names we can no longer remember but are more than likely “Chris” or “Nikki.” Let’s get on with Prince Farming. This live addition to the premiere (which pushed THREE HOURS in total) was a dud. I hope they don’t repeat for next season.

4. Excessive Props – Look, we get it. Props have become something of a staple for Bachelor/Bachelorette contestants when they first meet the person they will attempt to woo. But man things got out of control last night. Sure some of the props were cute: a coupon for a “free hug” from Britt the waitress and the heart shaped rock from Nikki the former NFL cheerleader. But others were downright weird: a karaoke machine that looked like it was stolen from a kindergarten classroom from Carly the cruise ship singer and a heart shaped ACTUAL HEART WTF?! from Reegan the donated tissue specialist (she claimed it wasn’t real but YEAH RIGHT). Future girls - get it together with your props. 

3. Onion Girl and The Drunk – Sounds like it could be the newest offering from Sony Pictures, right? The two most controversial decisions Chris made after night 1 were keeping Ashley S. (aka Onion Girl) and Tara (aka The Drunk). Both are clearly off their rockers. This is BAD NEWS for Chris and WONDERFUL NEWS for every single viewer. We were treated to a beautiful soliloquy on onions from Onion Girl who was convinced she was staring at an onion growing in the bushes (it turned out to be the onion’s close relative THE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM AN ONION: the pomegranate) and nearly witnessed The Drunk falling off the platform during the rose ceremony (SO CLOSE). We can only hope these two stick around for a few more weeks – it’s guaranteed comedy! Speaking of comedy...

2. Shameless Promotion for The Wedding Ringer – Despite it being shameless promotion for the new movie The Wedding Ringer starring Josh Gad and Kevin Hart, it was absolutely the highlight of the entire three hour Bachelor block. Watching Gad and Hart fight over the "final rose cookie" from Chris (who made a surprisingly decent cameo) was actually pretty funny. Did it make me want to see their movie more than before? Perhaps. Oh wait, then I saw the actual preview for the movie immediately following the gag. Man that looks stupid.

1. CLIFFHANGER – The fact that Kimberley the yoga instructor from NY was eliminated but then came back and stole Chris for a "talk" during the champagne celebration instead of going home but then Chris Harrison interrupted saying that we’d have to wait until next week to find out what happened means CLIFFHANGER. My guess is that it won’t pan out for Kimberley but you better believe Chase and I will be tuning into see what happens next week. They got us again!