"Bring on the men!"

After a recap of JoJo's journey on Ben's season with the whole L word fiasco and some shots of JoJo staring into the ocean, JoJo sits down with former bachelorettes Ali, Des, and Kaitlyn so they can give her advice.  JoJo asks if they have any regrets and Kaitlyn emphatically says yes.  She has a little monologue about living too much in the moment and how she needed to take a step back.  Translation: she regrets sleeping with Nick.

Kaitlyn (still with Shawn), Ali (engaged to someone not Bachelor related; pregnant),
JoJo (our new Bachelorette), and Des (married to Chris and pregnant)

Next up we have a few intro videos:

• Grant is a firefighter from SF who said a lot of generic stuff about wanting to fall in love but ended with hoping that "JoJo is the one that lights my fire."  Get it?  Firefighter- lights my fire?  Oof, lets hope the producers weren't relying on their puns for comic relief.
• Jordan has a famous brother who is famous for succeeding in Jordan's former profession.  Though since Jordan isn't focusing on football, he can make a priority for love!  Even though that's no excuse considering his bro is still focusing on football and has a famous girlfriend.
• Alex is a marine and has a twin brother who is married and he's jealous, so he decided to go on TV to expedite the process of finding a wife.
• James S. is a "Bachelor Superfan" and that's still all we know about him.
• Evan used to be a pastor, but found a new calling: helping men get erections.
• Ali's family came here from Iran and he has a couple of successful older siblings who are hard to live up to, so I guess he decided to go a different route and not even try.  He's a bartender and from his video, a surfer/skateboarder with a cute dog.
• Christian has a boring nerdy job but makes up for it by getting up at 3:30am to work out everyday.  Also, he "grew-up biracial" which leaves one to wonder what he is now as an adult.
• Our last on location intro is Luke, the small-town country dude from Texas.

Let's head to the Bachelor mansion!  The limo entrances were pretty cringe worthy.  Some highlights:

• Robby brings JoJo a bottle of wine for them to take swigs from a la JoJo's mom during hometowns last season.
• Will "accidentally" drops his index cards as he gets out of the limo so he can do a "funny" gimmick where he reads them wrong.  It's terrible.
• Jonathan comes out of the limo in a kilt and tries to make a joke about how he has a big penis (Half Chinese, half Scottish- the Scottish half is below the waist), but it ends up coming out a little racist and crude and also JoJo didn't seem to get it.
• Saint Nick is next and his whole joke is saying "Jo Jo Jo" (instead of ho ho ho) and giving JoJo a gift.  You gotta hand it to him though, he proceeds into the mansion and pulls toys out of his bag to give to the other guys.
• Chase wears sunglasses with a fake mustache and says "I mustache you a question, but I'm going to shave it for later" (he takes off the mustache as he says shave).  Pun game not strong this season.
• Sal has some blue stress balls for JoJo and I guess just wanted to make jokes about his balls.
• Wells, the radio DJ, brought an acapella group, so that's cool I guess.
• Luke was the last to arrive, riding up on a white horse that he gave a unicorn horn in reference to JoJo's limo entrance where she wore a unicorn head.

Unsurprisingly, the other guys though this was dumb, but probably
because they were already bored of making fun of the guy in a kilt.

The night gets started quickly.  After JoJo welcomes the men, Alex immediately steals her away.  The guys are mad and jealous they didn't do it, so they bitch about Alex being "that guy" and "short" and they all sound like jerks.  The first kiss comes awkwardly forced from Will and his cootie catcher.  The second kiss, though, is from Jordan who JoJo is clearly into.  He hasn't even name dropped his brother yet!  Chad thinks he's a more manly and rugged version of Ben which he thinks is perfect for JoJo.  She seems to like him, but every time he speaks to the camera, he comes off as a complete tool.  After Daniel tries to explain his limo entrance ("Damn, JoJo!") which is related to some internet meme called "Damn Daniel," but fails, he gets "white Canadian wasted."  Somehow between poking a guy's belly button and making fun of suits, Daniel loses his clothes and jumps in the pool.  A couple other guys get drunk too, but all they do is interrupt an interview and slur words at JoJo.  Daniel continues to be creepy, Ali plays some piano, and JoJo sits on Santa's lap.  Jordan, fairly obviously to us viewers, gets the first impression rose and everyone's super stressed out in time for the rose ceremony.

I guess JoJo likes sitting on guys

But wait!  Just as JoJo's about to hand out her first rose, a car pulls up and Jake Pavelka (a former Bachelor) whisks her off!  They guys are pissed, but all for naught.  In a weird twist, Jake is actually an old family friend of JoJo's and just wants to wish her luck!  Ok.  Maybe just text next time rather than giving 26 men a heart attack.

Anyways, the men who went home this week were kilt guy and five others I know nothing about.

"From Ben to 26 new men"

We left off last season with heartbroken JoJo going home to Texas while Ben H. and Lauren B. rode off into the sunset of love.  We begin this season in less than a fortnight, where we'll get to meet the 26 men vying for JoJo's heart in person, but for now we are left to judge them based on one picture and answers to some less than inspired questions (i.e. "what's your favorite flower?" and "are you more party starter, wing man, or laid back?")

I get the kilt (probably heritage related blah blah blah)
but a Santa costume?  He'd better have a great pun to go with it.

The guys are aged 25-34 and include 2 Canadians, 8 Californians, 5 Floridians, 2 guys from JoJo's home state of Texas, and then some guys from other random states.  Six of them look to be not white dudes, which sadly seems super diverse for the Bachelor franchise.

Here are some gems from the guys' bios:

• Brandon, a 28 year old from LA, has the profession of "hipster."  So, ugh, already.
• Chad (first off, his name is Chad) answered three questions similar to "who do you admire most in the world and why?" with "myself in 10 years, alright, alright, alright" and thinks his greatest achievement in life is being born good looking, which is more your mom's achievement, but ok.
• Derek is a 29 year old commercial banker who (a) hates cucumbers and (b) has a serious fear of fluffy kittens.  So clearly there is something wrong with him (to my readers who may not know this about me, I LOVE cucumbers.  Also, more obviously, fluffy kittens.)
• Daniel is a 31 year old male model who used a lambo (as in Lamborghini, the luxury car) as a metaphor for his body not once, but twice.
• Evan is a clear winner: he's a 33 year old erectile dysfunction expert who's favorite kind of dancing is "booty" and doesn't like girls with chipped nail polish or serious food allergies.
• James S. is 27 years old and apparently his "occupation" is Bachelor Superfan.
• James Taylor is a singer-songwriter named James Taylor.
• Jordan is a former pro QB, and for all my sports/Bachelor cross over fans, is the younger brother of Aaron Rogers currently playing for the Green Bay Packers.  And when asked what the wildest thing he's done in the bedroom, he answered with trying to hang a TV on the wall with out a stud finder.  Hot.
• Nick S. is a software salesman who doesn't like "scary cheeses" and I don't know what that means.
• Robby was the only guy to not answer the favorite flower question with "rose, duh," and instead went for honeysuckle.
• Wells is a 31 year old radio DJ who doesn't like pizza or cats, and what the hell man.

The rest of the dudes seemed pretty ok, or at least had no super weird answers to questions.  But then, the ones who seem normal at first often have a little bit of drama hidden up their sleeves.  So stock up on that wine and I'll see y'all in 10 days for The Bachelorette Premiere!