Becca and The 'Sea of Highway Patrol Officers'

We start this season with sad music and sobbing, followed by pensive walks in the snow, culminating in Becca driving a red convertible to uplifting music in a leather jacket with roses all over.  After being blindsided by Arie's break-up and returning home to Minnesota for a bit, Becca is ready to find love again.  Kaitlyn, Jojo, and Rachel are awaiting Becca at the Bachelor Mansion to remind her to "*bleep* Arie" and "trust [her] gut" and point out where they smooched their current fiances on night one.  Rachel and Jojo also want to sage the house.  Kaitlyn is confused "why do you light a big doobie and throw it around the room?"  Good question.  She doesn't find out since they set off the fire alarm and go outside to say cheers and drink champagne.

Things we learned from the intro videos:

• Clay is a biracial football player who cooks for his extended family.
• Garrett is a big goofball who loves all things outdoors.
• Jordan is a "pensive gentleman" who takes modeling incredibly seriously and looks like a douchey Ken Doll.
• Lincoln is originally from Nigeria and the US is different from there.
• Joe is an adorable Chicagoan who owns a grocery store and knows his tomatoes, but women? "Not so much."
• Jean Blanc reaaalllly likes fragrances.  He also dissed Trump, which I almost missed due to bleeping, saying that Port-au-Prince is "not a shithole" (it's where he's from).
• Colton is your Classic hot dude who played football, got injured, and now runs a non-profit helping kids with Cystic Fibrosis (which his cousin was born with).  Oh, and he has a big ol' black lab, so basically he's perfect.

Limo Entrances

Chris Harrison greets Becca: "This is now your mansion."
And now, the men:

• Colton brings giant confetti poppers and Becca thinks he's handsome.
• Grant tells Becca he respects what she went through, but they should forget about all that and have a good time.
• Clay makes like 8 puns about "catches" - including that she'd be the biggest catch of his life (and he's a football player, so he's made some big catches before).
• Jean Blanc teaches Becca how to say "Let's do the damn thing" in French and she thinks he smells good.
• Connor kneels and recreates Becca's limo entrance from Arie's season.

I do find it fitting that she wore black for
Arie's night one, and white for her own.

• Joe completely forgets what he was planning to say, so he tells Becca that.
• John's grandmother told him love can happen overnight, because it happened to her and his grandfather.
• Leo goes in for a handshake, but Becca is a hugger.  He tells her they should let their hair down and pulls his hair out of a bun.  Becca comments that he has better hair than she does.  He has better hair than everyone.
• Jordan tells Becca he's already having a good time.  He goes inside and gets one polite comment about how he looks good, and informs the other men that he spent 6 hours putting together this outfit.  The next limo entrances are accompanied by interviews with Jordan talking about how he picked out the specific articles to be unique, and shots of other dudes showing how un-unique his choices are.
• Ricky lists "all the adjectives" describing Becca.
• Alex also compliments Becca.
• Nick shows up in a car racing suit, says this is stupid, and rips it off.
• Mike shows Nick's Arie reference up by bringing a life-size cardboard cutout of Arie so he can see how happy she is.
• Garrett rolls up in a minivan filled with soccer balls and car-seats, to which Becca responds, "that was good!"

Ok, but for a show about a woman wanting to get married in like a month,
how has this entrance not been done before?!

Now we have the five guys Becca already met at Arie's After the Final Rose:

• Blake outdoes his horse entrance, riding in on an ox (his feelings are already "strong as an ox").
• Lincoln's birthday was on ATFR, so he brought some cake for them to share.
• Chase makes puns about this being "all about the chase."
• Darius says he's not as nervous as before.
• Ryan does not have his Banjo.

And back to meeting new men:

• Christon's entrance was unmemorable.
• Wills informs Becca that he's a closet nerd.  She says she's just a nerd.
• Jason shows Becca his and his friends' secret handshake, making it not really a secret handshake anymore.
• Kamil tries to make a healthy relationships meet in the middle by having her walk some of the way to him joke, but ruins it trying to make her come 60 to his 40.  It's a bit cringe-worthy and Becca is not impressed.
• Jake is immediately recognized by Becca who says "that's so weird" since they apparently run in the same Minneapolis social circles.
• Trent leaps out of the back of a hearse, informing Becca that he "literally died" when he heard she was the Bachelorette, but now he's back to life.
• Christian says something nice and spins her.
• David is the token costume guy, and he doesn't disappoint.  Dressed as a chicken, he clucks his way toward Becca, altering 'Ba-caw' to 'Becca' by the time he reaches her.  And then makes chicken puns.  I have to add that throughout these limo entrances, we are treated to Jordan just ripping the other guy's clothing choices apart.  Chicken guy shows up and Jordan is speechless.  He literally can't even with a chicken suit.

Not here to ruffle feathers, here to be eggcellent.

• Chris brings a gospel choir to impress Pastor Uncle Gary.  They sing a song that must've been written for this show since it's about bringing roses to heaven.

We get the typical montage of men milling about, commenting on how beautiful and funny and great Becca is, followed by the typical toast from the Bachelorette about how hopeful she is and how much love she has to give.  She barely takes a sip, and Connor pops up out of nowhere and steals her away first.  Jordan is convinced he dropped his playbook and Connor picked it up and the fact that Jordan is so concerned by his playbook makes me literally unable to even.  Leo has the best take I've heard on the stealing-first guy: "there's an old real estate saying.  You never buy your first house."

Clay has Becca play with clay (which looks like it's probably play-doh).  John informs Becca he made Venmo.  Christon dunks a basketball by jumping over Becca's head and the guys are begrudgingly impressed.  Jean Blanc reads Becca a poem he wrote and had engraved on a candle lid.  We learn that Joe got into the grocery business by wholesaling watermelons, which I find fascinating for some reason.  Chris Harrison spooks the guys by bringing in the first impression rose.  Lincoln gives her a bracelet from Nigeria.  David the chicken has a good conversation with Becca (after doing the chicken dance with her, obviously) which I'm sure pissed Jordan off as he refused to even talk to him.  Wills has an "Expecto Patronum" tatoo, which Becca reads as "Expecto Patronus" which casts a shadow of doubt on her being a "nerd."  Garrett teaches Becca a little fly fishing while the other guys scoff, leading to one of my favorite exchanges of the episode:
"Wonder if he's catching anything."
"Feelings."

Seriously though, Christon was straight up impressive.

Everything seems to be going smoothly, so it must be time for some  ~DRAMA~
Chris pulls a couple guys aside to ask some advice.  When ATFR aired, a friend of his texted him about Chase, saying she used to date him and that he's not going on this show for the right reasons.  Chris wants to know if he should bring it up with either Chase or Becca.  The other guys encourage him to confront Chase, so he does.  Chase responds that he and Danielle only date briefly a long time ago and that he's totally here for the right reasons.  Chase is upset, and decides he should tell Becca about this before Chris gets a chance to.  Becca asks what the texts said, and Chase doesn't know, so they bring in Chris to elaborate.  Chase keeps saying it was like two years ago and she's not really an ex since they only went on a few dates and he'd expect this from his two exes, not Danielle, which doesn't sound suspicious at all, Chase.  Becca, now thinking about guys being here for the wrong reasons, pulls Jake aside to ask why he's never pursued her before since they run in the same social circles.  He claims he has only one "conscious memory" of meeting Becca and he had a "transformative year" so Becca should give new Jake a chance.  Becca never felt they had anything before and sends him packing.  She goes back in to let the rest of the men know why he left, and they're all "holy hell" and "this is getting real".

The night is almost over, so Becca grabs the first impression rose and bestows it on Garrett, and they share the first kiss of the season.  The rose ceremony happens, and all of the guys are nervous that the chicken guy will get a rose and they won't.  Jordan claims that him not getting a rose would be "the biggest upset of all time," and if that didn't sound narcissistic enough, follows with him going home would be "unfair to Becca."  Good Grief, Douche Ken Doll.

I mean, she had to pick the guy in the $3,000 suit.  C'mon!

Who we lost this week:
Minneapolis Jake, 60-40 Kamil, wrong reason Chase, #GroceryStoreJoe, and then Christian, Darius, and Grant, who I had to look up to have their names in this list.

A Quick Summary of Becca's Men

It's almost time!  Becca K, here on out just known as Becca, will be debuting as our Bachelorette in a little over a week.  Well, I guess whatever second debuting is called, since technically she met four of these dudes at Arie's ATFR.

A summary of the men vying for Becca's hand in a proposal that may or may not last:

If ABC's choices are any indication, Becca has a thing for jocks.

One guy is from Becca's home state of Minnesota.  The rest are mostly from California (10 dudes) and Florida (7 dudes) with the remaining from Colorado (3), Illinois (2), and then one each from Georgia, Nevada, Washington, New York, and Ohio.

These guys are MUCH more age appropriate than Arie's season: Becca is 27 and her guys are 25-31 with an average age of 28.  A good third of them aren't white.

The weirdest "occupation" is social media participant, which is like the least unique way to describe someone, especially someone on this show that guarantees a little bit of Instagram fame.  The guy is actually in real estate and models part time, so who knows what the story is there.  There's also a "colognoisseur" who is really in finance and is named Jean Blanc and of course a guy names Jean Blanc is into something like cologne.

Overall, from a like two sentence bio each, they seem like an athletic, well educated group, so I have high hopes that are likely to be dashed if ABC has anything to do with it.

See all the suitors here: http://abc.go.com/shows/the-bachelorette/cast