This week's recap is brought to you by this girl (not Mykenna, the other one) who appears to have just realized she is not sleeping and can't wake up from this nightmare:
I had to look her up because this is only week 2 and I cannot be expected to remember the names of 14 different blonde women. So Payton just realized this isn't a simulation and she is not pleased. Here she is on the far right during the group date (more on that later) trying to send help signals with her eyes to the producers while the other women try to stare an engagement ring out of Peter:
For a short-lived period of time, she is our blonde legend (she escapes this prison like show and is sent home during the episode). Speaking of prison, let's get to it!
This isn't a forced storyline at all
As we all remember, last week's thrilling cliffhanger left us with Peter and Hannah B. feeling conflicted about their feelings for each other and Hannah considering joining the house (it's apparently just a free admission thing). That angst continues this week and Peter, still so unsure of what to do, asks Hannah's crotch for advice:
And her crotch is like "no thanks." As much as this show has hyped up the Hannah drama by including it in all the series promos and billboards and writing it in bathroom stalls and in your wedding guestbook, this entire situation wraps up pretty quickly — and abruptly. One second, Peter is in Hannah's crotch and the next he's like "I can't do this" and she's like "K, cool, HAGS, TTYL" and they hug and she leaves. It's so transactional as if Hannah is the cashier at a cash-only bodega and Peter just told her he can't purchase this bagel because he doesn't have cash.
The point here is, it's clear the producers dragged Hannah out of her house that is surely decorated in everything from the University of Alabama's student stores and forced this storyline. I'm glad she can return to her real passion —promoting FabFitFun boxes (jk I don't think she does, but reach for the stars).
After all of this, emotionally spent Peter lets the women know he's canceling this first part of the group date, but would like to see them all later for the evening portion. This is the equivalent of a guy asking you out to dinner, but then canceling and saying "Wanna come over later tonight though." WOW, HEART EYES.
Did Lilly Pulitzer throw up here
After Peter scrubs the glitter from Hannah's dress from his beard, he joins the women for the evening portion of the date in what appears to be the fitting room of a Tommy Bahama.
He apologizes for almost getting back together with his ex and the women are like "Omg, no worries!" because this show is pi and everything is irrational (math humor, what CAN'T I do).
Some notes on the conversations during this group date:
When a guy tells you his favorite book is Catcher in the Rye
(He didn't really say that but I wouldn't be surprised if he did.) I'm actually shocked Alexa, the esthetician who was profiled in the first episode, hasn't decided to leave on her own yet. She is cooler than the center of a Hot Pocket (it is impossible to evenly cook one), which isn't to say Peter isn't cool — he's "kewl" which is how us youths spelled cool in middle school. He is middle school cool. Meanwhile, I am positive Alexa reads Vonnegut, listens to Vampire Weekend and only drinks coffee from her antique French press. Have you ever met an Alexa who WASN'T cool? The odds are in your favor with this name.
If she doesn't leave on her own, he'll eventually send her home after realizing her lifestyle is vastly different from his because it includes reading books.
Our little kookaburra
During their one-on-one time, McKenna asks Peter what his go-to dance moves are and he proceeds to show us moves that do impress — press our ovaries into darkness away from the visuals of him sliding around.
While he might not be the best dancer, he's a pretty good kisser (though our bar is pretty low considering how traumatized we are from Arie's horrendous season). So he puts his talents to use.
I've realized that Peter's "thing" is hoisting girls onto higher surfaces to make out (he did this to Kelley last week). And it's like, stop being lazy and just lean down. Also I can't get over how cluttered this corner of the room is, like the producers bought out 3 Yard Sales and crammed every trinket onto this bookshelf.
Mykenna will def be in the top 10.
Who ends up getting the group date rose
I don't really remember Sydney much from the first episode and neither does Peter, so she reminds him that she's from Alabama but isn't your "typical southern girl." She explains how much bullying and racism she faced growing up and Peter tells her he can tell she's strong and it's actually a semi-normal conversation despite them being in a room full of attic junk.
I like Sydney (AND THOSE HOOPS!) and therefore Peter should as well. Guessing she'll also make it to the top 10.
With this month-long group date finally over, we've reached another pre-Rose Ceremony cocktail party, which means...
BRINGING THE CHAM'PAIN
To refresh your memory, this is Busy Philipps-lookalike Kelsey:
Kelsey lets the women know she saved this bottle of champagne since last year for a "special occasion" and wants to share it with Peter tonight because nothing screams "special" quite like a dude you met a week ago. So while Peter is getting through the waiting room of women, Kelsey sets up this old ass bottle of champagne and some glasses next to one of the 40 fireplaces in the Mansion.
At some point, Hannah Ann's wackass is talking to Peter and sees this champagne setup and is like this must've been left for us by some champagne fairy. Peter opens it and it is the champagne pop that pops open a war. Kelsey knows the sound of her old champagne cork popping and has an emotional meltdown:
Props to Tammy for getting her screen time in. All of the women rally around her saying "Omg it's def not your champagne, don't ruin your makeup," but it is of course her champagne:
Kelsey walks over and sees them and is more devastated than a breadbasket within 25 meters of me. She runs off crying and doesn't want to speak to Peter. Meanwhile, Tammy still needs some camera time so she goes over to let Hannah Ann know she drank Kelsey's special old champagne, to which Hannah Ann is like:
Y'all, Hannah Ann is satan. I'm kidding, she's much worse — she's like a Nickelback fan, just unapologetically tacky. She says she didn't know it was Kelsey's, but at no point feels any remorse because after all she didn't know! And more importantly, she is Hannah Ann and all things are for her! She is like if someone took the cliche mean girl from every 90s teen movie and molded it into 5 feet of terribleness. It's almost unbelievable how much of a real villain she is.
Peter finally gets Kelsey to talk to him and makes amends by sharing this other bottle of champagne with her (there are just bottles lying around apparently). They start to lighten the mood when this happens:
I scream laughed. I know it's bad because Kelsey just had SUCH a traumatic experience (lolol), but I still cannot stop laughing. Also she has clearly never drank from the bottle before because EVERYONE knows you can't just go bottoms up with a full bottle.
Later, Kelsey and Hannah have the standard issue white girl fight where they stand 25 ft apart while lobbing insults and calling each other "honey." Kelsey calls Hannah a snake before saying she doesn't tolerate snakes and it's like, who the hell tolerates snakes? Like who is sitting around asking for more snakes? Stupid.
But don't worry! This stupid ass drama based on a fracking bottle of champagne ain't over yet, thank goodness!
There's still more of you here than we have bunk beds for so
At the second Rose Ceremony, Kelsey and Hannah are obviously forced to stand next to each other and Kelsey gets the last rose (as if we thought she'd get sent home while there's still flames to fan with this dumbass champagne ordeal). Payton, Lauren and Courtney (do these names mean anything to you) are sent home, which means...
100% of the Asians (2) are still here!
That's right, Asian American Heritage Month came early because our main girl Jasmine and deadlifting Tammy made it through another ceremony. I know this is exactly what our ancestors hoped for.
What's funny is while Tammy's out here trying to get as much camera time and be in the middle of as much drama as possible, Jasmine hasn't spoken to Peter since maybe meeting him. I am not exaggerating — she did not interact with Peter once in this episode. She's just here to follow her skin routine, have great hair and wear the best outfits.
It's time for the date featuring a wildly expensive gift
For our next group date, Peter brings the ladies to the Revolve store where they're greeted by Carson Kressley, Janice Dickinson and Raissa Gerona (Revolve's chief brand officer).
For this date, they have to pick out two outfits to wear on the runway and whoever is deemed most fashionable wins THE ENTIRE REVOLVE CLOSET, which visually translates into FORTY FUCKING BAGS OF CLOTHES. Honestly, I'd want to win just so I could leave and use those clothes to find a richer.....I mean hotter.......I mean richer and hotter dude than Peter.
Anyway, everyone is pretty excited about the challenge except for Victoria F.
She doesn't feel as confident as the other women, which is weird because she is OBJECTIVELY one of the prettiest women in the house (as a note when I say "objectively" I mean "per my expert, undebatable opinion"). As an amazing juxtaposition to Vicky F. feeling unsure, we have Hannah Ann feeling VERY sure and confident in this ugly ass train conductor hat:
When she comes across it, she acts like she struck gold, which actually, the original owner of that hat probably did strike gold as a gold miner in the 1800s. She wears this fugly hat as one of her outfits in the fashion show and this as her other outfit:
Um, what the actual hell. If any of the other women did this, it would be semi-funny, but it's weird for Hannah Ann to do it since she's never heard of humor. I mean, also in general, this is weird.
And Victoria finally gets her shit together and ends up looking infinitely better than everyone else:
For her second outfit, she wears some lingerie (pronounced lawn-jer-ray) under a trenchcoat which is apparently fine when she does it, but when I do it at Whole Foods, it's deemed "inappropriate" and met with "ma'am please there are children here." DOUBLE STANDARD. Anyway, feeling confident, she walks over to Peter for a kiss that seems to blow everyone's mind:
Victoria and Hannah Ann are named finalists for the wardrobe prize and to decide a winner, they have to partake in some sort of pose-off? Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds. Hannah Ann ends up winning because, well, she is a literal model and also plz remember she stole Ariel's voice a while back and can entrance people.
Victoria's response to losing actually mirrors my response to most of this show all of the time:
I should also mention, Victoria cries about 14 times during the course of this group date for a multitude of reasons — she's anxious, she doesn't want to walk in a fashion show, she dropped the last Dorito, she thinks about how Leo died in Titanic. Just a lot of emotions happening.
Time to move this group date to West Elm
I love how the producers are not even trying to hide the fact that they're in a furniture/home goods store. They literally took every planter and lamp in the store and stacked it around one couch. Where are the set design Emmys!
Victoria is lucky enough to be the first to test how good the lighting of 395 chandeliers is. She shares her insecurities with Peter, saying she feels unsure about this "journey" (I hate it). And because she hasn't reached her daily cry quota of 15, she cries:
Peter reassures her that when she has him, she has "all" of him and he wants "all" of her. Now, I'm not the brightest calculator screen in this math toolkit, but if Peter wants "all" of every woman, he's getting way more "alls" than they are. And in reality, each of them only gets 1/19th of him, so wait is this a Craigslist sales ad because we're getting scammed.
He tells her that he sees she's trying her best (even if she does whisper all the time) and he knows she has a good heart and he really wants her to stay. And that (along with the group date rose) is enough to convince her to stick around for another week.
The best buns on the show
THIS WEEK THEY IGNORE WHAT APPEARS TO BE SLIDERS FEATURING SOME BUTTERY ASS BUNS. I AM UPSET.
Back to ChampagneGate
In making a mountain out of a tiny pile of sand, we drag out this champagne drama a bit more.
During her time with Peter, Hannah (who has now had confrontations with women during both weeks) lets him know that Kelsey is "bullying" her, saying "She yelled at me and called me a beep beep beep," which is outright inaccurate because Kelsey didn't call her a beep beep beep, she called her a bitch. Totally different meanings. Hannah emphasizes once again that she did not know the champagne was Kelsey's.
Peter is like this school has a zero tolerance policy for girls bullying other girls while they are wearing such insane levels of contouring, so let me see what I can do. So he chats with Kelsey next who is like "Yes, I don't like her and I told her that, but I'm not bullying her. And she knew what she was doing" (props to me for both of these blinking shots, pure artistry).
And Peter is like "Well, she said she didn't know, so why would she say that?" BECAUSE SOMETIMES PEOPLE LIE, YOU STUPID HAM SANDWICH. And we end the episode with Peter feeling conflicted about Kelsey and Hannah Ann, when we could rectify this entire situation by sending both of them home. This obviously won't happen for Hannah Ann at least, she's def in the top 5.
The biggest takeaway of Cham'Pain 2020 is that I continue to regret watching this show. So I'll see you all next week for it! Til then, find me saving bottles of champagne to drink a year from now with people special to me like the clerk at the gas station down the street and the guy who made my Chipotle bowl yesterday, and also on Twitter (
@cocoakristis) and Instagram (
@kristimac9).
It's like they soaked in tubs of Doritos before showering off in orange juice and rolling in rust. Glam.
