The Bachelor recap: Northern Exposure

O, Canada! Jillian’s home and native land! Will true Bachelor love in all these dates command?

Welcome to the Canadian Rockies, rose lovers! It’s here at stunning Lake Louise that Sean hopes to put all of last week’s “drama” behind him and get his “journey” back on track. Harrison gathers the “ladies” to give them the date rundown — two one-on-ones, one group date — and to offer some promotional consideration for the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise. (Confession time: I made my husband take me on a vacation to this very hotel after seeing it on Jillian’s season of The Bachelorette. It is, in fact, ridiculously beautiful.)

Date caaaaaaaaaaard! Which one-on-one-less “lady” will get the first solo date: Catherine, Daniella, or the Tierrarist? To everyone’s relief, it’s Catherine, who then bundles up in some warm gear (minus a hat, because, seriously, would you cover that hair?) and is dropped off in the middle of a frozen tundra to wait for her prince. Eventually he comes rumbling up in a giant snow bus and hands Catherine a snowsuit for their upcoming glacier playdate. Question: Why is the Bachelor allowed to drive the ginormous snow bus? Is not a special permit for that kind of thing required, or do the Canadian authorities assume all strapping young men know how to properly operate heavy machinery?

Anyhoo, Sean successfully steers them to the glacier, where they attempt to sled amidst biting, gale-force winds and swirls of sharp precipitation. “We’re being pelted with snowflakes and ice flakes and it hurts,” laments the Bachelor. “The wind is blowing so hard and it is freezing out here. I don’t know how it is gonna go.” But Catherine puts her game face on and frolics like her life depends on it, sledding and doing handstands and making snow angels with her man. And he LOVES it. “This is what I want from a wife!” marvels the happy but nearly frostbitten Bachelor. “There is no doubt in my mind, Catherine has passed the blizzard test.”

Phase two of the date begins with a horse-drawn carriage ride to a castle built of ice. (Sheesh, Sean — would it have killed you to have one part of the date inside? Canada is cold, dude!) They cozy up under furry blankets by the fire and proceed to reveal new things to each other: 1) Catherine has her nose pierced (okay, maybe Sean knew that already, but I didn’t); 2) At 12, Catherine witnessed her friend being crushed to death by a tree while at summer camp; and 3) Sean is “crazy” about her. (Rose lovers, please, help me out — what’s our “crazy about” tally at this point??) Of course, Catherine gets the rose. Sighs the Bachelor, as footage of the two of them making out in the ice castle rolls, “Catherine has melted my heart.”

Day dawns on the group date, and Tierra, Sarah, AshLee, Lindsay, Selma, Lesley, and poor, one-on-one-less Daniella meet Sean at the docks of Lake Louise for some canoeing. Immediately, Lesley starts crunching the date numbers: “So, seven girls, three canoes. If you do the math, one canoe gets three girls, one canoe gets another three girls, and obviously there’s one girl who’s going to get to go with Sean.” Ouch! As Barbie said, “Math class is tough!” Enough advanced calculus, Lesley — just elbow the other “ladies” aside and get in Sean’s canoe. And with that — and the obligatory “Sarah is pushing through the whole one-arm thing” moment — the gang is off, gliding across Lake Louise’s absurdly blue water.

NEXT: The Ice Queen Freezeth

The other women are not pleased with Lesley’s flirty behavior with Sean during the canoe trip, and they’re even less excited to learn that they didn’t paddle all that way to soak in an outdoor hot tub. Instead, the Bachelor announces they’ll be participating in the Lake Louise Polar Bear Plunge. I think Tierra speaks for all of them when she says, “What?” Don’t worry, “ladies” — it’s okay if you forgot to pack a defibrillator in your purses before you left the hotel; Sean has arranged for a lifeguard and an EMT to stand by to restart your heart and/or other vital organs after the swim. Selma, the Iraqi who hates extreme heat and also, apparently, dislikes extreme cold, offers a glib “Y’all are on your own!” and parks her butt down on a bench while the other women start disrobing. I mean, most of the other women: AshLee’s waffling, while Tiny T — perhaps already formulating her plan — is “scared of how I’m going to react afterwards.”

Eventually, though, everybody but Selma strips down to their bathing suits and starts bounce-jogging their way toward the water. Explains Daniella, “Sean is hot, I’m hot — so let’s just jump in and get cold and hot together!” What follows is a lot of high-pitched screaming and barely-decipherable exclamations of pain — aaiiieeee! aiieeee! eeeaah! aaaaieeeeeee! Wooo hooo! oh my aaaayyiiiiiia! that is so cold! aaaaaaieeee! eeiiyyyyaaaaaaa! — and then, just like that, eight wet human forms emerge from the icy teal water like a the earth’s first creatures crawling out of the primordial ooze. Selma’s all, Hey guys, here’s a towel, but everyone is too busy celebrating their adventure with Sean to pay her any mind.

Of course, the other person being ignored is Tierra, but not for long. Soon the cameras find her stumbling around the beach, still wearing nothing but a tin-foil blanket, her mouth opening and closing like a carp in distress. She’s whisked off to a heating tent where the medics wrap her in towels and blankets and more tin foil sheets and then carry her cocooned body to a waiting SUV. Tiny T stares dully ahead as her hands tremble uncontrollably. After the medic determines that Tierra doesn’t know what day it is, the decision is made to wrap her in about 10 more blankets and stuff her into a wheelchair. Once they have her inside, the EMT announces that Tierra is “doing better,” but the patient herself does not agree. Putting on her best Nellie Oleson pout face, Tierra whimpers, “I missed time with him!”

When Catherine and Desiree find their “disheveled” fellow bachelorette huddling under blankets and whimpering about being forced to jump in a “glacier,” they’re naturally concerned about how the other women on the group date fared. Cut to: Lesley, Daniella, Sarah, Lindsay and AshLee hooting, giggling, and hugging in the hotel room over their incredible bonding experience. “Once again the ambulance was called; Tierra couldn’t handle it,” scoffs Lindsay. “Same story, different day.” Indeed, Tiny T’s brush with death does bring her more unscheduled one-on-one time with Sean yet again; he visits Tierra in her hotel sickbed, where she reclines wearing a robe, fuzzy socks, and a totally unnecessary oxygen tube. “Oh, bless your heart,” coos the Bachelor, who for some reason doesn’t take off his shoes before getting in her bed. Gross! “I’m so sorry.” He smooches Tierra and suggests that she stay in bed rather than come to the group date cocktail party.

NEXT: “I just don’t want to be told forever how great I am”

The “ladies” actually believe that Tierra is going to stay home and give them more time with Sean. Lesley is practically giddy during her alone time with Sean, telling him, “I love love, and to start that process again is absolutely amazing and incredible.” Sarah uses her time to remind the Bachelor that she was a person with a life before she met him by showing Sean old family photos. “I just wanted to give you an idea of what my family is like,” she explains. “I would love for you to meet them someday.” Meanwhile, Tierra is back in her hotel room applying layers of war paint and shoving her frozen foot nubs into some high-heeled boots. “I’m going to the party!” she declares, dousing herself in a final cloud of perfume.

When she hobbles through the door of the lodge, the tension among the “ladies” is thicker than Tierra’s eye-makeup. “Everybody watch your back,” sneers Lesley. “We have a Tierrarist on our hands!” (Dude, I’ve been saying that for weeks.) Somehow, though, Sean must sense that his life would be in actual danger if he gave Tierra another pity rose, so he gives it to Lesley instead.

Everything’s going so well, I’m thinking all we have to do is make it through another smoochy one-on-one date with Desiree and we’re free for another week… but something’s not sitting well with Sean. “There’s a woman here tonight who told me just how much it would mean to her for me to meet her family,” begins the Bachelor. (Side note, at this point I literally started muttering Oh no oh no oh no under my breath.) “But I don’t see a forever with her.” Yep, rose lovers, the time we all knew was coming has arrived: The one-armed girl is being sent home.

Sean arrives unexpectedly at the “ladies”‘ hotel room and asks to see Sarah for a few minutes. Once they’re alone, he turns an even brighter shade of pink than normal and tries to let her down easy: “We closed it with a kiss tonight, and if I’m being completely honest, I just felt like we were reaching.” Sarah reddens, too, yet maintains her composure. “That’s the way love goes,” she sighs, her voice cracking. She only allows herself to cry once Sean has dropped her off outside the hotel room, where she’s expected to go back in and face the “ladies” with her news. When she finally makes her way inside, the women look genuinely sad — though they’re probably saddest about the fact that it wasn’t Tierra who got the unexpected boot.

Though the timing of Sarah’s departure was a surprise, the fact that Sean sent her home probably didn’t shock any of us, right rose lovers? Still, she gives what is definitely the most heartbreaking exit speech of the season: “I wanted to hear his explanation because it’s always the same,” she says in her tearful final confessional. “‘You’re an amazing girl. I know how special you are and I want to connect with you so bad, but I don’t. And someone is going to be so lucky to have you…’ I just don’t want to be told forever how great I am, what I deserve.” Hang in there, honey — eight million people watch this show, and I’m guessing at least one of them knows a nice guy to set you up with.

NEXT: “Mama, please forgive me!”

So… back to that one-on-one date with Desiree. Team Bachelor tries to manufacture some tension with the idea that Des was “questioning” her “feelings” for Sean last week and that the Bachelor has to use this outdoorsy date to “let her know how special she is.” They head to Banff National Park, where Sean pulls the same I brought you up here for champagne/a picnic but oh, yeah, it’s actually at the BOTTOM of this tall building/mountain crap he pulled on Sarah for her first date. In other words, let’s get ready to rappeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel! Do I even need to explain what happens next? They don helmets with cameras on their heads, Des talks in voiceover about how scary it is, and says (actual quote) “rappelling down the mountain was seriously like a relationship.” Okay, you know what, rose lovers? I can’t even pretend to recap the rest. Meet you back here for the dinner portion of the date, okay?

Hey! Nice to see you again. Des and Sean meet for dinner in a teepee cuddle under a blanket in front of a crackling fire. Now it’s Desiree’s turn to bare her soul: She and her family didn’t have much money growing up, and they lived in tents and trailer parks periodically when her parents were struggling to find affordable places to live. “My parents always made it work for me and my brother,” she tells Sean. “They just loved each other and they loved us kids.” Parents who built a loving family despite personal adversity? That’s like Bachelor catnip! (And now we know why Team Bachelor scheduled this date in a teepee — how else would they get this phenomenally ridiculous sound bite? “I opened up about spending some of my life in a tent, and here I am falling in love in a teepee.”) Date rose, meet Desiree. Desiree, meet the date rose.

The cocktail party is crucial for Selma, who didn’t take the polar bear plunge and also hasn’t kissed Sean for cultural reasons. Therefore, she tells us, “Tonight I want to show him… I still have the courage to show him my love always.” And that she does, by demanding the Bachelor stay still so she can plant an extremely tentative, close-mouthed kiss on his befuddled lips. “Mama, please forgive me,” she tells the camera later. “I had to bring out the big guns tonight.” In contrast, Lindsay has to force herself not to kiss Sean during their alone time so that they can have an conversation… but beyond “What did you love most about Canada?” and “I sleep naked,” she doesn’t have a whole lot to offer.

NEXT: Two “ladies” get deported

In keeping with the night’s theme of bizarre interactions, AshLee hands Sean a blindfold and instructs him to “lead” her into their future, or something, as proof that she can relinquish control. He’s all, Okaaaaaaaaaay. But rather than making her walk somewhere, the Bachelor swoops AshLee off of her feet and carries her to another couch for a smooch. Trust issues resolved! Let’s get this rose ceremony on the road, shall we?

As the snow falls ceaselessly outside the lodge’s windows, Sean hands out his final three buds of the week: Lindsay, AshLee, and… Tierra. Sorry Selma, but you shamed your family for nothing! And Daniella, well, at least now you know the difference between a cow and a goat.

Phew! Four hours in one week. How are you feeling, rose lovers? At least next week we get to go somewhere warm — St. Croix — not that it’ll stop Tierra from having another major meltdown. Tell me your thoughts on tonight’s episode: Which was more surprising — Sean’s sudden ejection of Sarah or the fact that Daniella lasted this long? Are you ready for The Tierra Show to be cancelled? And where’s the weirdest place your toddler has ever peed? (Mine refuses to stop using diapers… I’d give anything to find some pee in a desk drawer!) Post your thoughts now, and don’t forget to check out Chris Harrison’s blog on PopWatch — after all, the guy worked overtime this week.