‘The Bachelor’ Recap, Season 21 Episode 4: The Case Of The City Boy And The Farm Chores

I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that, gumshoes, or what you want me to say. Do most of the sorry cases that you’re asked to surveil make your job easy? Do they stop right in the light and pose so you can snap a perfect photo of them red-handed? Do they write down their real names in hotel ledgers so you can more easily track them across the country? Do they eliminate the women who might be hiding their likability one by one, in the perfect order, exactly how you would’ve done it? No, they don’t, because the only thing dumber than a subject is a detective who asks the wrong questions. Absolutely Nick Viall is botching this, and My Nanny Raquel should have gone home a long time ago, instead of sticking around to cause friction in both his lap and the mansion, but it isn’t a perfect world. Nick is still in the part of this where he chooses with his pecker, but we’re here to be above all that and choose with our minds, so get back out there, put your head down, and gather some clues. We have our assignment, and I don’t want to tell you again.
Roll tape.
We start with yet another reel of footage where My Nanny Raquel is missing from a group that’s feverishly talking about her, while Jasmine asks where she is and My Nanny Raquel snores peacefully in the background. Have I been through this box of evidence already? Nope, it’s just identical to a lot of clues we’ve already collected, but you’ll see it several more times this episode. I urge you not to make any part of it into a drinking game, or else we’ll both be at the bottom of a bottle of scotch by the end of this, and my ex-wife Dorothy will have my ass.
Anyway. We isolated Vanessa last week as a Person of Interest, and now we get to see the end of her conversation with Nick at the pool party, where she rips him a new one. Vanessa says this whole situation is making her rethink her connection with Nick, and she doesn’t want to waste her time, and if she gets any inkling that she is, she’ll give back the rose that Nick is keeping her safe with this week, and I believe her. She ends the conversation satisfied, believing that Nick has tacitly agreed to send My Nanny Raquel back to Her Nanny Raquel, but what I see in Nick’s eyes is relief that he was able to talk down one of his potential receptacles without having to change his behavior, so I can’t imagine this will end well.
In fact, Vanessa isn’t the only receptacle expression concern. The Wrong One and her friend Long Bob — love that haircut Sarah, and will be referring to you by that name henceforth — actually approach My Nanny Raquel to…I don’t know, tell her that they don’t like her? It’s pretty shoddy detective work, if I’m being honest with you, because they didn’t go in with a clear objective. They got their subject to say the insanely incriminating sentence, “I’m not privileged in any way, shape, or form,” with a straight face, out of a mouth that has also repeatedly said, “I have a nanny,” “million-dollar business,” and “cheese pasta,” but beyond that, I don’t know what they want. Somehow they made My Nanny Raquel a little bit more relatable, honestly, as the advice she gives them, to just be themselves and “do them” is pretty spot-on. If they don’t like the way she’s behaving with Nick, I’m pretty sure they have two options once they’ve brought it up to Nick and he’s done nothing: ignore it or go home. It’s not fair, but those are the options you’re facing, and trying to get anyone to adjust their behavior, let alone someone as irrational as My Nanny Raquel, is a fool’s errand.

Plus, she’s going home tonight, right? That’s the assumption that everyone’s making in their talking heads interviews, although they aren’t detectives like me, and can’t hear this foreboding music that’s playing over the top of everything they’re saying about how relieved they’ll be once this nightmare of blond entitlement is over. Which will surely be tonight. They also haven’t seen the previews of future episodes featuring My Nanny Raquel stalking through the halls of some hotel, saying she’s going to have sex with Nick, but I have, so I’m ordering myself another box of donuts and preparing myself for some blindsided women, because this is gonna be a long night. Even Chris Harrison pulls Nick aside in advance of the Rose Ceremony — so rude to take time like that when he knows he isn’t going home — and wants to talk about My Nanny Raquel. He doesn’t have anything real to say, of course, since we’re still in that producer sweet spot where My Nanny Raquel is good TV, and her presence is only just starting to undermine Nick’s credibility, so I think we’ll see her here for one more week before she gets sent home. Chad was sent home from JoJo Fletcher’s season in Week 5, so that seems about as far as a villain edit will carry you before you start damaging the Bachelor property and people want to see Nick cut the shit and find some love.
For now, he still has some reality television to make, so with Vanessa, Danielle L., and Rachel already with roses, Nick calls out the other women who are safe: Raven, The Wrong One, Pilates Whitney, who I’ve never seen utter a word in four weeks, Kristina, who forgot to have her weekly meltdown before the Rose Ceremony, Jasmine, Shark Week, Astrid, Mai Wife Danielle M., Jaimi, White Chicks, Long Bob, and, of course….My Nanny Raquel. Doy.

Immediately, the vibe in the room shifts, and we need to spend an hour discussing what this says about Nick (he a fuckboi), why he would keep her around (he a fuckboi), and if he’s really looking for marriage (maybe in a second, but right now he a fuckboi). On her way out, Miley Shoulders gives Nick a silent hug and a questioning, ice cold glare as she backs away from him on her way out, heels already in her hands. I’ll see you in Paradise, girl. Calling that one early. Brittany is eliminated too, and I wish I had literally any opinion about that, but neither one of these women was the clue, so it’s good to winnow down the flock.
Speaking of the flock, My Nanny Raquel is delivering a little impromptu speech to her remaining fellow wooly babies, about how glad she is to be here, and everyone else is participating in a tooth-sucking contest, with a fourteen-way tie for first place.

And what do the ladies get in return for their uneasy silence? Why, an all-expense-paid trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, of course, a journey that no one has ever screamed about quite as deliriously as these women. You do you, ladies, but no one has ever been this excited about Waukesha County before. Not even Nick’s parents can rustle up any semblance of enjoyment at being dragged in front of the camera for the third time in three years. Claire Underwood and her mild-mannered husband Bryan Cranston deserve a rest, but instead they have to sit down with Nick and talk about how optimistic he is that it’s really going to work this time. Good, because as his parents sneak in with a zinger at the end — “We don’t want to see you on the show again.” That makes three of us, Viall Family.Thank you for your service.
As far as uniforms, we’ve gone from Red Sex Dresses to Jean Sex Cutoffs, and now we’ve made our way to the state uniform of Nick’s hometown, which is apparently the Jean Jacket. It says, “I am a denim woman, I am casual and cool and you don’t have to take me too seriously, but you do have to take me to go meet your parents, right this instant.” And in fact, that’s exactly what he’s going to do, as the next one-on-one begins now, and he whisks Danielle L. off right away to accompany him. And the first face we cut to to see her reaction is Vanessa, so I’m more confident with every passing moment that she sticks around for a while, and I was right to bump up her priority to person of interest.
I’m not quite ready to escalate Danielle L.’s case up to the same level, and Nick seems to agree with me, saying he feels good chemistry with Danielle, but doesn’t feel like he knows really anything about her personality. I don’t know if she’s nervous, or what, but once you notice the awkward little laugh she does, you won’t be able to unhear it — she’s doing identical little versions of it constantly, and rarely adding anything to the conversation, even as the pair decorates cookies and eats icing off of each other’s hands. Even when the painfully staged chance meeting between Nick and his ex-girlfriend Amber takes place, I still can’t get a read on this suspect; the threesome sits down as a group to chat at a table, and all manner of emotions are crossing Danielle’s face, but none of them are coming out of her mouth. Amber and Nick are laughing over how they only dated for about four months, which is code for, “it was mostly just sex,” and Amber invites Danielle to ask any questions she might have about Nick. This. Is. The Weirdest. I wish Shark Week was on this date, because I feel like she’d know exactly how to handle what I’m pretty sure is a bizarre attempt on Nick and the producer’s part to check out how chill Danielle is. And she refuses to fail the test. She asks Amber why she thinks Nick isn’t married, to which she answers that if he isn’t all the way in, he retreats, and then cheerfully tells the camera, “I loved talking to Amber,” as her mouth smiles and her eyes do not. If this was me, I’d be saying, “Hi hello, I have been imprisoned inside of a mansion with all of your other girlfriends for the past four weeks, do you think this time could be about me and not the now-married woman you porked for four months however many years ago? Cool, thanks.”

But don’t worry, the awkwardness isn’t over yet. Nick brings Danielle to his Fuck Field, where he says, “I had a lot of firsts up here with friends — and with girls,” and even though I assume that that will be exactly the wrong thing to say, Nick is better at making the panties drop than I am, apparently, because Danielle kisses him in Fuck Field. Just not exactly on the spot where he lost his virginity. COOL. She also starts to open up a little bit, so Nick takes the opportunity to ask her about what’s below the surface, and there’s that laugh again as she talks about how awkward she was when she was younger. Okay, it’s not quite the clue, but it’s a clue. I can get behind that, but I need more for my background check. He asks her about her flaws, and the best she can do is talk about her parents’ divorce, which strikes me as super shallow and affected at first, but the more she explains it, the more I start to understand where this girl is coming from. Her father divorced her mother when Danielle was seventeen, after seeming really in love her whole life, which simultaneously meant a big hit to her trust, and that she had to reevaluate what it meant for a relationship to last. Basically, she doesn’t want to get divorced herself, so the stakes have been raised really high, as have her emotional walls, very understandably, and I don’t know if this show is really the place for her. She says, “I don’t want to rush into a relationship or a marriage,” on a reality TV program that’s asking her to do just that.
In short, I’m not convinced, but Nick is still feeling really confident about her — enough to give her the rose and take her to see a country artist that literally no one has ever heard of. This one is called Chris Lane, and while that name doesn’t ring a bell to me, from context clues, he’s Nick’s style inspiration.
Back at Girl Mansion, the group date card has arrived, bearing the names Rachel, Shark Week, Vanessa, Jasmine, Jaimi, Long Bob, Pilates Whitney, Kristina, Astrid, The Wrong One, White Chicks, Mai Wife, and My Nanny Raquel, as well as the clue, “Say Cheese.” (This also means that Raven gets the one-on-one, which is great because I love Raven, and I need to hear her thoughts on everything and be her best friend. Everything’s fine.)

The theme of this group date is Farm Chores, where you wear your chunky knit and your skinny jeans to a farm and get to scoop the poops in them. And if you’re wondering whether Nick spent parts of his childhood on a farm, the answer is no. He actually self-identifies as a city boy, but apparently is so lacking in the personality department that by Week 4, in his own hometown, we’re having to grasp at straws (and hay) and go on themed dates that have nothing to do with Nick’s actual life. Get a hobby, my dude. And no, it can’t be sex or going on reality TV shows. You already have those, and they’re very hard to fashion activities around. My god we have got to find this likability. And maybe it’s on the farm! The ladies are doing things like feeding cows, milking them, scooping poop, and sitting out because their hands are too cold and they’re big babies. Oh sorry, that last one only applies to My Nanny Raquel, who at some point had had enough and went to sit stoically on a hay bale as the wind whipped her hair picturesquely and the women griped to each other about her.
After they finished doing menial labor for no apparent reason, the women were hosed off and squeezed back into their spangled forms, as the group went to the second half of their date — sitting in a semi-circle glaring at each other and bad-mouthing My Nanny Raquel while Nick takes them away one by one to make out. Kristina teases her backstory but says she’ll need multiple conversations to tell it, and thus will be known as Scheherezade for buying herself more time on the show with the promise of a story, and Vanessa wants to show Nick a book that her students made for Nick, about her. And that she was ballsy enough to hold off showing him until Week 4! I know I’ve been clear about this in the past, but just to draw a red circle around this information in my notes, Vanessa is the Clue. Please keep her around as long as she’ll have you, because your chemistry together is palpable. Anyway, carry on.
Back on the Next bus, the rest of the girls are waiting for their turn to put their tongues in Nick’s mouth, and My Nanny Raquel decides to confront everyone about the fact that they’re all talking about her. She says she’d much rather they say stuff to her face, and then immediately blows up when a few people start to take her up on that offer. They have issues with all the usual suspects — the dry-humping in the bounce house, the frequent naps, the skipping of the Rose Ceremony, sitting out of the poop-scooping — and My Nanny Raquel has excuses for all of it, most of which are, “it was a medical issue”. But Scheherezade isn’t having it, and is tired of spending her 1,001 nights listening to My Nanny Raquel lie, telling her, “I’m not stupid. I handle things head on, and you hide away.” And no sooner am I out of my seat to give Scheherezade a standing ovation than My Nanny Raquel proves her right, detaching the conversation and running off to Nick to pretend like she’s the wronged party in the house. And because Nick’s time with the villain edit is still so fresh in his mind, he appears to buy her story, although he gives the group date rose to my hero Scheherezade, and I’m imagining it’s purely as a reward for shutting My Nanny Raquel down. In my mind, producers won’t let him send My Nanny Raquel home yet, but he’s sending a message by not kissing her at the end of their interactions, and rewarding Scheherezade for dunking on her.
Raven’s one-on-one date clue was “Let’s kick it,” but it’s fully just a hometown date, which is a huge clue that she stays around for a while. I mean, the girl is meeting Nick’s little sister Bella and Mr. and Mrs. Cranston and Underwood, so this is pretty serious. They watch a soccer game and rollerskate, and they’re super fun and goofy together. At one point, Raven is talking to Bella and Nick is skating by peacocking, which I’ve noticed on this show that he only does for the women he’s really into, like when he danced and high kicked for Vanessa on that zero gravity plane. So I had already elevated Raven to the status of Person of Interest in my mind, even before she went all Carrie Underwood at their fancy dinner at the Air and Space Museum, telling the story of walking in on her cheating ex. Raven just has this air of calm, straightforward intelligence about her, and girl can tell a story. She got the call that her boyfriend was at a bar canoodling with someone while she was out of town with family, and when she told her mom about it, her mom handed Raven the car keys and said, “Go.” (I have goosebumps.) She raced back to Little Rock, let herself into the apartment, kicked down the door (!!!), and threw her boyfriend off of the woman he was CURRENTLY INSIDE. I just can’t with this woman, I want to be her friend so bad.
She somehow found the strength to leave in that moment, and actually used the incident to do some thinking about her own value and the way she deserves to be treated — she says she smart and capable and “kinda cute” — and just talked about the whole situation with such self-awareness and candor that I’m half in love with her myself. They roller skate around the museum a little bit, and she tells the camera that she’s falling in love with him. Usually I don’t believe the ladies when they start dropping L-bombs this early, but in this case I do, and I’m excited to add another name to my list of Persons of Interest.
Back at the Wisco Mansion the next night, we’re gearing up for the Rose Ceremony, which based on the time left on my DVR, we’re not going to get to by the end of the episode. What we are going to get to is this insane beef between My Nanny Raquel and The Wrong One. As you recall, The Wrong One is so named because you don’t want to mess with her, but My Nanny Raquel has yet to learn this lesson, telling White Chicks that she’s going to go “rip her a new one” as both shove some sort of croquette item into their mouths so aggressively that White Chicks has to remind My Nanny Raquel to “chew your food.”

Mouth newly cleared, My Nanny Raquel pulls The Wrong One aside to ask what the issue is, and then gets mad when The Wrong One starts to calmly and rationally lay out her case. The Wrong One is trying to explain emotional intelligence and put her frustrations in some context — bear in mind that this woman is a mental health counselor — and My Nanny Raquel is in so far over her head that all she can do is keep repeating that she’s being treated like an idiot. Which I honestly don’t think she is. I think she’s asking a mental health professional what her problem is on a personal level, and she’s getting more than the benefit of the doubt from The Wrong One, who’s sitting there quietly letting My Nanny Raquel talk herself out, unless she’s asked a direct question. But it’s clearly at a boiling point, because the show cuts off with a “To Be Continued…” placard, and the promise that next week, one of these two women will go home. I’m not a betting man — please tell Dorothy I’ve changed — but I would bet my kid’s lunch money that the person to go is My Nanny Raquel, seeing as it’s Week 5 and we gotta earn Nick some credibility back. At some point, you
gotta join us on this case, Nick. So far, we’ve been doing a lot of the legwork and you’ve mostly been putting your tongue in mouths and your hands on butts. And there’s no shame in that, but you and I were both hired to do a job, so let’s get to it.
I’ll see you next week for more clue gathering, gumshoes, and to smoke two packs of cigarettes in quick succession while I eat an onion over the wastebasket because I’m out of groceries. Have I made it clear enough yet that I need this paycheck? Don’t let me down.

Stream 'The Bachelor' on Hulu