Welcome to our very first Golden Bachelorette recap! If you’re new here, here’s how we roll: one of us writes the recap (this week it’s Karyn), and the other adds their comments indented in red, like so:
Jen’s comments will look like this.
We usually take turns each week, so stay tuned for alternating POVs! Now, let’s dive in!
Hi! I’m here!
The first-ever Golden Bachelorette is 62-year-old Joan Vassos. If you watched The Golden Bachelor, you might remember Joan leaving early to be with her daughter during childbirth. (Unlike Sandra, who missed her own daughter's wedding to stay.) So Joan missed out on love with Gary (which might not be the worst thing), but she’s been given a second chance! Hooray!
If you recall from the last set of recaps, I liked Joan but thought she might be boring. Prove me wrong.
Joan Shares Her Story
The show barely started and I’m already crying. While Joan’s putting on a golden ball gown, Rainbow by Kacey Musgraves plays softly in the background. She’s not sure it’s possible to have two great loves in one lifetime, but she’s hoping.
Joan then opens up about her late husband, John. They were married for 33 years. Joan says one day he felt lousy, and then he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Joan describes living in denial while John was dying, holding onto a dream world where everything was still okay. But then, one night, he was gone.
Pancreatic cancer is the worst. Ugh. I’m sorry, Joan.
As she recounts his final moments, I completely lose it. Dammit, Joan! Dammit, Kacey! When John passed, Joan says it felt like her future died with him, and for a long time, she just faded into the background, feeling invisible.
Just when I think I can’t take anymore, Take Me Home by Phil Collins starts playing, making the world feel brighter. Joan declares this is her moment. She says no one will ever replace John, but there’s room for someone new in her heart now. Joan is now all dressed up, and she’s a knockout.
I don’t aspire to look like her at 62; I aspire to look like her now, even though there’s one angle where her arms are so thin and she’s hunched in a way vaguely reminiscent of Mr. Burns. I don’t want to look like her in that shot, but totally all of the rest.
They show the guys getting ready, and one of them puts on a hearing aid like Gary. Let’s hope he doesn’t moonlight as a hot tub salesman too.
After a commercial, Joan arrives at the mansion and chats with whatshisface-the-host about the bachelors. (I don’t remember his name.) And then the men arrive!
Not to kill the vibe of being sad, but my DVR recorded two minutes of Wheel of Fortune before this and captured Vanna White having a conversation with Ryan Seacrest about how to cook salmon. I’ve said it again and again—the second you say you like salmon, someone will chime in with a recipe. Every. Damn. Time. Also, they play the same Phil Collins song in an ad for a different show during the commercial, so I suspect Phil owes the Big Mouse a favor.
The Bachelors Arrive
Okay, we’re going to play a game with these guys. With each one, I’m going to vote Smash or Pass. Let’s begin.
The first guy is Pascal. He’s wearing a blue suit. He owns a salon in Chicago, but he was born in France. He has a fancy accent and seems a little too suave for me, but I’d smash.
This is where I started screaming. I used to go to the Pascal Pour Elle salon in Glencoe! I have met Pascal a number of times! He owns a shit-ton of crazy expensive cars and is a total character. If you’ve ever seen Warren Beatty in Shampoo, that was Pascal. He never cut my hair because a session with him was about $300, and that didn’t include color. (Suspect Pascal is Not Here for the Right Reasons.) And one time after my haircut, I ran into Billy Corgan in the Starbucks across the street. I wanted to impress him with my great taste in music as I put down the top on my convertible and the first song that played was Miley Fucking Cyrus’s Party in the USA. He was not impressed.
Captain Kim is up next. He’s a retired Navy captain and shows up wearing a white uniform. I don’t know about him. He seems like a rule follower, and I like to do bad things sometimes. Pass.
He’s basically Captain Lee from Below Deck, sans the whimsy. Also, she has a long bow from her dress that’s trailing the wet ground. This will bother me for the next two hours. And you know someone’s gonna step on it. I am passing on the dress.
“Chock” is next. That’s his name; I don’t know if it’s real. He heard Joan likes chicken noodle soup, so he brings her “chock-o-noodle soup” and he makes her try it. This is sweet but also kind of a dick move because now she’s going to have soup breath while meeting the other men. Maybe that’s Chock’s plan so no one else likes her, which sounds manipulative to me. Pass. (Oh, who am I kidding? He’s cute. I’d smash.)
I was like, why is he carrying a jar of urine?
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