tarot_cards_feature
The two-on-one was in the cards for Taylor, Nick, and Corinne.
tarot_cards_feature
The two-on-one was in the cards for Taylor, Nick, and Corinne.

Bachelor 2017 Recap: Episode 5

Bachelor 2017 Recap Episode 5

This week’s episode resumes where we left off last week in the middle of Taylor and Corinne’s cat fight to the death. I gotta admit, I’m not a violent person but I really wanted to punch Corinne in the face… A LOT. It’s not that I think Taylor handled the situation well because she didn’t. But Corinne was overly nasty. I felt nauseous listening to her verbally shred Taylor.

Taylor’s biggest mistake was in allowing Corinne to engage her. As someone in the mental health field, she should have known better than to get into a verbal altercation with an emotionally manipulative brat. She also should have known better than to try to bring Corinne’s psychological shortcomings to her attention. What was she expecting Corinne to do? Thank her?

I feel like Nick is just humoring Corinne at this point. I remember seeing an interview with him after the first episode of Ben’s season aired and he knew immediately that Olivia was the season’s villain. Given everything all the women said to him at the pool party about Corinne, I very much doubt he hasn’t figured out that she’s the villain.

He might be giving her more of the benefit of the doubt because he, too, was a villain once but he’s very observant and Corinne isn’t exactly his intellectual equal. I think he sees through her even if he finds her physically attractive. Sometimes it seems like he’s trying not to laugh out loud at her antics.

Rose Ceremony

Danielle, Kristina, and Raven already have roses.

  1. Whitney
  2. Danielle M.
  3. Jasmine
  4. Rachel
  5. Jaimi
  6. Josephine
  7. Vanessa
  8. Alexis
  9. Corinne
  10. Taylor

Did anyone NOT know that Corinne and Taylor were going to get the last two roses and in that order?

Sarah and Astrid go home. Everyone else goes to New Orleans.

New Orleans

Raven: I would not be surprised if one of these girls went and bought a voodoo doll.

raven_by_one_of_these_girls_i_mean_me

Raven’s got a serious Addams Family thing going on which I dig about her (one of the many things I like about her).

Chris Harrison announces there will be a one-on-one, a group date, and a two-on-one.

Dun, dun, dun! The dreaded two-on-one! I wonder who will be on it!

Let me consult the spirits… will it be Taylor and Corinne, the two contestants who hate each other the most, the same as it’s been every other season prior to this one?

ouija_next_time_you_have_a_question_that_stupid_ask_a_magic_8_ball

The spirits are hostile today.

Rachel’s One-On-One

“Rachel, where have you beign-et all my life.”

I’m excited to see a Bachelor who is taking a black contestant seriously. I’m so sick of the tokenism on the show. If a man doesn’t like black women, why cast them and get their hopes up knowing they don’t have a shot?

matrix_morpheus_by_trying_not_to_be_racist_youre_actually_being_racist

While I’m glad that Rachel got a real date and things are going well between her and Nick, the date was boring.

They eat beignets, they kiss, they twerk in the streets carrying parasols. (Okay, that last bit sounds kind of funny now that I write it out.)

They promote a female musician named Lolo. She has 26K Twitter followers on Facebook so she’s in a similar popularity ballpark as Chris Lane from last week.

At dinner, we find out that Rachel’s dad is a judge and he’s intimidating. A black male in a position of moral authority intimidating? The hell you say.

The most interesting part of the date is when Nick lets his intentions slip with regard to calling Rachel’s father “Sir” as if it’s a given that he’s going to meet him.

Rachel gets the rose. Date over.

Let’s move on to the “haunted” house, shall we?

Group Date

“‘Til Death Do Us Part.”

  • Josephine
  • Kristina
  • Alexis
  • Raven
  • Jaimi
  • Vanessa
  • Danielle M.
  • Whitney
  • Jasmine
  • Danielle L.

(Which means Taylor and Corinne are on the two-on-one.)

I’ve got serious dirt on the story about the little girl who supposedly haunts the house and the alleged painting of her.

The short version is that the producers are a bunch of lying bastards (I know, shocking) who counted on American ignorance of art history to put forward the tale of the little girl in the painting being a portrait of a deceased spirit who haunts the plantation house Nick and the contestants visited. But I’ll let them dig their own grave first (pun intended) before I rat them out.

go_ahead_insult_my_intelligence_i_dare_you

The girls arrive at Houmas House in Louisiana.

Nick: Who believes in ghosts so I know who NOT to bring home to meet my family?

Nick raises his hand to encourage the women to raise THEIR hands. Most of them do.

(For the record, I believe in ghosts but I don’t think Nick does. It’s not hip in intellectual circles to believe in ghosts or anything supernatural but if you’re like me and you’ve spent a decent amount of time living with a disembodied entity, you either come to believe in ghosts or that you’re completely batsh*t and hallucinate constantly. I decided it was more likely that ghosts are real.)

Nick: This is one of the most haunted houses in Louisiana. And I will be available for naked cuddling to any of you who scare easily.

Raven: If I see a ghost, I’m gonna rebuke that thing in the name of Jesus!

tom_hiddleston_blowing_kiss
Raven is officially my new Bachelor raison d’Γͺtre.

The women are introduced to the hired actor the Bachelor producers hired to play “Boo”, the caretaker of Houmas House.

Boo: Our main ghost’s name is May. She was born in 1849. She died of yellow fever at 8 years old. She spends her days looking for her doll. It was her favorite toy and when she died, she didn’t want to give it up.

Boo takes Nick and the women on a tour of the house. They stop in May’s room.

Boo: This is the room she was born in. It’s also the room she took her last breath in. Don’t make her mad… don’t touch her doll.

He then points out May’s actual doll which is in a glass case. The women recoil in creepitude.

Boo continues the tour and points to a painting on the wall: There she is. That’s our little May.

Anndddd…

calling_bullshit

Nope. Most of that is total BS made up for The Bachelor.

Allow me to explain how I came by this information. First of all, the painting looked familiar to me. I was going to take a picture of it and try to get the internets to identify it for me but there turned out not to be a need. I found out the real origin of the painting through other means.

The story of May seemed made up to me, mostly because it’s very similar to the plot of a film called (coincidentally) “May”. May is a mostly obscure indie film made in the early 2000s but I liked the poster so much, I had a movie poster collector track one down for me and it’s now hanging on my wall. Let it be known (if it wasn’t already) that I’m a person of eclectic interests and I happen to have a fascination with the macabre. This is the poster that is hanging on my wall. Also the DVD cover of the film.

May_(movie_poster)

May is the story of a young woman who has something akin to Asperger’s. She’s sensitive and socially inept. She doesn’t make friends easily and is taken advantage of a lot. May loves dolls. She has a huge collection of them but May’s best friend is this doll (notice the glass case):

May_and_her_doll

I don’t think the film was as good as the poster but I’m still not going to give away the ending just in case any of you see it. But in order for you to understand the connection between the film May and this BS ghost story the producers tried to foist on us, it is necessary to tell you that, in the film, the protective glass around May’s doll shattered and shredded her doll. May gets very angry and takes revenge on the people she holds responsible for her tragic loss.

This is GHOST May’s doll at Houmas House:

may_ghost_doll

To me, the dolls look similar. The dark eyes and the glass case are what do it for me. The doll in the case looks like it’s from the 1950s or ’60s though so right away, this story stinks.

I can also tell you that those other dolls on the bed did not belong to a little girl who lived in 1849. They are all modern dolls. The big giveaway is all that shiny synthetic hair. They didn’t have plastic in 1849. Plastic was invented in the 20th century. That bed was staged by the producers.

I know about dolls because I used to buy these very same mass-produced porcelain dolls (which are virtually worthless) at the Goodwill, paint them and change their hair and clothes so they looked creepy, and resell them on eBay for a huge profit.

If you want to see some of my creations, you can check out the very old website I made for them (it’s a flash site so you probably won’t be able to access it on a phone or tablet).

So we have a ghost named May who loves dolls, has a doll in a glass case that she prizes above everything, and takes revenge on those who try to take her doll from her and a film character named May who loves dolls, who has a doll in a glass case that she prizes above everything, and takes revenge on those who destroy her doll.

It could be just a coincidence… but wait! There’s more! SO. MUCH. MORE. (Because I’m a crazy person.)

This is the portrait of “May” at Houmas House:

manet_painting_attribution

Notice the bit at the bottom where it says “Portrait of Julie Manet”. If you look at this photographer’s website, this is what it says about the painting:

“The present owner of Houmas House has installed an art collection that takes visitors by surprise. Two of the most notable treasures are placed within inches of each other on a mantle in one of the living rooms. The gilded clock is said to have belonged to the estate of Marie Antoinette, and later purchased by Napoleon. Our guide told us that the painting just behind it is attributed to the French painter Γ‰douard Manet. The woman in the painting is likely Manet’s niece.

First take note that it says the PRESENT owner installed the art collection. The present owner is Kevin Kelly who purchased the house in 2003. The painting was there no earlier than 2000 and f*cking three! So definitely not a painting of anyone called “May” who lived there in 1849 and died of yellow fever.

And Γ‰douard Manet, kind of a f*cking famous artist but what rube who watches The Bachelor would ever figure that sh*t out, right? Because we’re all just a bunch of bubble-headed wallflowers whose minds are full of hyper-unrealistic romantic fantasies from reading too much Cosmo and too many Danielle Steel novels, right?

I mean it’s not like he’s MOnet. Someone might catch the producers if one of the Water Lilies paintings was hanging at Houmas House and they tried to convince American women that’s where a little girl drown but MAnet? None of us morons could possibly know who he is.

pony_fck_you -this is for you bachelor producers

I think a lot of the women who watch the Bachelor franchise are a hell of a lot smarter than they’re given credit for. I don’t stalk you guys but I pay attention. Most of you are a bunch of girl nerds and I mean that as a huge compliment.

I wish that were the end of it but it’s not. I’m not at the bottom of the rabbit hole just yet. Julie Manet was the niece of Γ‰douard Manet but she was also the daughter of two other famous artists: Berthe Morisot and EugΓ¨ne Manet. The painting is attributed to the more famous Manet brother but his niece was only 4 years old when he died. Is that a painting of an at most 4-year-old girl? Or was it painted by one of her parents? Or Renoir? Renoir was a friend of the family and painted Julie more than once.

The mystery was driving me batty so I actually contacted Kevin Kelly, the current owner of Houmas House. He wrote back to me in less than 24 hours and told me the painting was of Julie Manet and was painted by her mother, Berthe Morisot, circa 1894.

I should just take that at face value and if I were a normal person, I would. But I’m a crazy person so I don’t.

I already know from all this digging that Julie Manet was born in 1878 which means Julie Manet would have turned 16 in 1894. In fact, here is a photograph of Julie in 1894 (not a little girl):

Julie Manet 1894

I also looked at Berthe Morisot’s paintings and her style does not even remotely resemble the style of the painting at Houmas House. It’s possible she was experimenting with realism. Most masters paint realistic paintings at some point in their careers but Morisot painted her daughter more than once during her childhood and they’re all VERY impressionistic. The style of dress on the little girl is also a little bit further in the future than I would expect but they were French and France tends to be ahead of fashion. So Β―\_(ツ)_/Β―

Despite having heard it from the horse’s mouth, I am still left wondering if that portrait is really of Julie Manet and painted by Morisot. If I were Kevin Kelly, unless the painting has a signature, I’d get a second opinion about it. Paintings by famous artists cost lots of money. They’re investments. I can’t find this painting on the internet except in reference to Houmas House.

I also found out from visiting the Houmas House website, there have been sightings of a little girl ghost but no one knows who she is and there were no reported sightings of her before 2003 when they did major construction on the house.

Maybe it’s Julie Manet! Maybe she’s not haunting the house, she’s haunting the painting! πŸ˜†

I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted. I think most of us are in agreement at this point that, while some hauntings might be real, this one definitely wasn’t. All the nonsense with the chandelier falling and the doll being missing from her case and the books falling off the shelf in “May’s” room was ALL FAKE.

sponge_bob_all_bullshit

The producers set it up because a haunted house was in keeping with the New Orleans’ creepy, otherworldly theme The Bachelor was going for this week and it would create drama.

***UPDATE*** I just acquired new information while looking up the owner of Houmas House. According to this website, there was a little girl named May Preston who lived in the house and died in 1848 of yellow fever – but not in the house.

The story is the historian of the house acquired the doll at auction from the Preston estate and they think it was May’s because there was a handkerchief with May’s birth date attached to the doll. And when the doll was moved back to Houmas House, May followed – according to a psychic who conducted a seance to find out who the little girl was who was wandering the halls (and we know psychics are never wrong).

So the story about May being somehow related to May the movie WAS a coincidence but I spent way too much time on this post already so I’m not going to go back and rewrite it.

BUT May is definitely NOT the girl in the painting and I don’t think the doll they used in filming was May’s doll. It looked like it was made of plastic. It *could* have been wax but it looks like a regular old 1950s doll made of hard plastic. ***

sponge_bob_mostly_bullshit

Moving on…

Jaimi: Let’s play with ghosts!

Kristina “finds” a Ouija board under a sofa in the living room.

Nick: What’s the worst that could happen?

legend_devil_Tim_Curry

Vanessa: I’m not messing with the spiritual world. No thank you.

Smart girl.

However, nothing comes of playing with the Ouija board other than cuing the lighting guy to shut off the lights in the house.

Boo is outside the house pacing: Oh, no. They touched the doll!

F*ck you, Boo. We know you’re an actor.

Back at the hotel, Corinne and Taylor are keeping their distance from each other.

Corinne: Nick will see Taylor’s not good for him. She’s way too high maintenance.

ricky gervais laughing

Corinne: I’m smart in my own way. I’m people smart. I bend people to my will by gaslighting them. It’s too bad she can’t see other forms of intelligensy. Is intelligensy a word?

agent_smith_checking_no

The date card arrives: “Corinne and Taylor, Meet me in the bayou. -Nick”

Back at Houmas House, Vanessa and Danielle M. disappoint me for the first time by trying to contact “May” and not realizing that the producers were f*cking with them. On the set, it should have been obvious.

Raven accidentally blurts out that she’s infatuated in love with Nick.

Danielle M. gets the rose.

Next Up: The Two-On-One

[jetpack-related-posts]

12 thoughts on “Bachelor 2017 Recap: Episode 5

  1. My name is Karen and my birthday is June 12. I would like you to do a reading for me, please. Thanks for the recaps – i really enjoy them!

    • Okay, Karen.

      I will do a reading for you and send it to the email address you used to post your comment.

      I’ll try to get to it this week but about 5 people have asked me for readings so far and each one takes me several hours. Please, have a question in mind.

      Thanks for the comment! πŸ™‚

  2. My goodness, I thought this episode was a yawn-fest. Your recap was a million times more interesting!
    By the way, one of my favorite movies is May, and I didn’t even make the connection between the movie and the haunted house until I read this! I blame the fact that I was barely paying attention. That whole date was so contrived. YAWN.
    p.s. Your dolls were amazing. You’re very talented!

    • Hey, Melissa.

      It would have been a yawn-fest for me if I didn’t have some experience with the supernatural and hadn’t studied the Tarot. I figure that most people haven’t had any experience with disembodied entities (I prefer that term because I don’t know what they are and while it’s comforting to think they are the souls of the deceased, there’s really no way to be sure) and we aren’t little kids. We know a put-on when we see one. It was hard not to think the whole thing was a joke. But I have an interest in such matters so I was willing to put in some effort to find out what was really happening there.

      But I could tell some stuff because the supernatural doesn’t give a damn when a camera is pointing at it or not and they managed to capture everything on film! Wow! The Bachelor of all shows proved the existence of ghosts! (Not)

      You like May? That’s so funny. I don’t know many people who’ve heard of it or seen it.

      I’m glad you like my dolls. I sold all but one which is the last one I made. I spent a lot of time and money on her and she’s my favorite so I never tried to sell her.

      The market was gone once people started mass producing them. You can still find some beautiful creepy dolls on Etsy but those dolls take a lot of time and I just don’t have it. I’d rather write even though I don’t get paid.

      I’m glad I could spice up the episode for you. The research was pretty fascinating for me so I’m glad you appreciated it.

      Thanks for your continued feedback and support! πŸ™‚

  3. Kudos Emily! What a fascinating recap! Wow – you really did a lot of research. As someone who took a few art history classes in college I found the information on the painting so interesting. While watching the group date I was amazed at how silly and contrived it was and just downright boring. Your recap was way better than the episode itself. Thanks for all your efforts. Well done!

    • Hi, Julie.

      I’m glad you enjoyed the recap. It WAS a lot of research but I was bound and determined to get to the bottom of that painting. I feel I went about as far as I could without consulting an actual art historian. I took a couple of art history classes too. The painting looks really familiar even though I couldn’t possibly have seen it if it was what Kevin Kelly said it was.

      I’m glad I could make the episode a little more enjoyable. Sometimes stuff on the show strikes me as funny and sometimes it sets my mind on fire. Sometimes it’s just boring and I find it difficult to write about.

      Thanks so much for your feedback and support! πŸ™‚

  4. The reader or reading was absolutely fake, generic and almost the same for both girls to pit them against each other

    • Hi, DG.

      I don’t think the reader was fake. It’s really hard to fake a tarot reading and still know what the cards mean. Her interpretation of the cards she pulled was accurate.

      It’s hard to say about the reading. You’d basically have to hire a reader and tell her what you wanted the reading to say and she’d have to dig the cards out of the deck that would best represent what you wanted to say. But I read 4 cards from Taylor’s reading myself. What she said was simplified but the cards accurately reflected the situation. Not just the cards but the arrangement. I think it’s safe to say that most people don’t know jack about reading tarot cards so it wasn’t really necessary for the producers to lay out cards that accurately reflected Taylor’s situation and film them.

      They were already pitted against each other so I don’t think the readings pit them even more against each other. You could say the reading was fake because it accurately reflected that they were already pitted against each other though.

      It’s a little strange that we only got one card from Corinne’s reading and 7ish from Taylor’s. But could Taylor absolutely represent the Queen of Swords? Yes. Much more so than Corinne could.

      I’m not saying the reading wasn’t staged and I’m not suggesting that you believe in tarot cards but tarot cards do have real meanings attached to them and the reader was dead on about how each girl was represented in the other’s reading. Corinne was represented by the page of wands and the knight of wands. That’s absolutely who she is. Taylor was represented as the queen of swords which is a very different card than the ones that represented Corinne, and she acted in the way the card predicted she would.

      I viewed the things the reader said as a bit vague but the cards themselves were pretty specific.

      How she got to those cards is very difficult to tell. On the one hand, she could have staged the reading. On the other, she’d have to be doing card magic tricks to ensure the right cards came up.

      So, I don’t know.

      Your guess is as good as mine about how the cards came up.

      Thanks for the feedback and support! It’s always appreciated πŸ™‚

  5. First things first, your dolls are freaking amazing. I was, and still am, thoroughly impressed. I couldn’t have one in my house, because I do believe there would be some pants pissing moments for me, but I love thm regardless! This was one of my fave posts of yours to date. I enjoyed the recap part, obviously, but I really enjoyed you just being you. Again, as always, thank you and you are the best!!!!!

    • Thank you, Jaime πŸ™‚

      I take all of what you said as a great compliment.

      Thank you for your continued feedback and support of my work πŸ™‚

    • Hi, Chuck.

      I haven’t been to Houmas House and haven’t seen the ghosts myself so I don’t know if it’s haunted or not. (You couldn’t pay me enough to visit a supposedly haunted house. It’s not worth what I’ve already had to deal with in my life with respect to disembodied entities.)

      I didn’t mean to imply that the property definitely wasn’t haunted at all. Just that everything we saw on camera was fake.

      From what I’ve read, the ghosts of the little girl(s) have not been seen often. A couple of times during renovations in 2003.

      The story was overblown and exaggerated by the producers and they lied about the painting being of the little girl who was haunting the house. That’s what I objected to.

      Thanks for the comment! I really appreciate it! πŸ™‚

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