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‘The Golden Bachelor’ Episode 2 Recap: ‘I’m Gonna Kill Him if I Don’t Get a Rose’
Hearty laughs, sweet nothings and sudden tears made the second episode riveting
Photo by John Fleenor/ABC
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
In the Oct. 5 episode of The Golden Bachelor, some of the women wishing to marry widower Gerry Turner, 72, fell more deeply in love with him, some fell out of the running, and many had interesting things to say about romance past, present and future, and how the producers should make the show more pleasant for contestants over 60.
Here are some of the memorable moments of the show and their lessons for lovers.
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John Fleenor/ABC
The women got to play dress-up for Gerry’s party
The women donned fanciful clothes with styles from the 1960s — Christina, 73, who wore tie-dye, had planned to be at Woodstock but wound up having a baby that weekend instead — to the neon-colorful 1980s. It’s a show partly about the drama of humiliation, but nobody felt at all humiliated about donning silly outfits. “If they can laugh at themselves, that’s huge,” said Gerry — and everybody could.
Photo by John Fleenor/ABC
But they had much more fun laughing at Gerry — and he had fun looking awfully silly
First, the show’s photographer teased him to pose like a macho man: “James Bond! Blue Steel!” (The latter was a reference to Ben Stiller’s pouty-mouth pose as the dimwit male model in the 2001 comedy Zoolander.) Gerry’s got a short hairdo spruce as a military recruit’s crewcut, so there was comic potential in the makeover that transformed him into a hirsute hunk posing on the cover of an imaginary romance novel, Road to Passion. Putting on a frightful, long-haired he-man wig, he quipped (or the show’s writers had him quip), “I feel like I’ve got a raccoon on my head … actually, I don’t feel too bad this way!”
Kathy (left), 60, a retired educational consultant from Austin, Texas, receives a rose from Gerry Turner.
John Fleenor/ABC
Maybe he should have felt bad, according to one woman trying to woo him
“Honestly, today Gerry was having a bad hair day — frankly, he looked more like his dog than he did Gerry,” said Kathy, 60, a rather sardonic retired educational consultant who reads 50 books a year and walks 5 miles a day.
This episode revealed the secret to Gerry’s success in making women melt
Photo by John Fleenor/ABC
Why do ladies go wild over this guy? Because, to paraphrase the 1970s E.F. Hutton ad, when women talk, Gerry actually listens. Typical Gerry line: “You have my attention.” Nancy, 60 — who shot hoops with Gerry in the premiere and started a cancer-battling foundation in honor of her late husband Mark Hulkower (prosecutor of Russian CIA spy Aldrich Ames) — said, “It’s really important to me to be seen, to be listened to.” Ellen, 71, gushed, “My emotions are going crazy every single second of the last couple days. He made me feel like the most special person in the world, like a princess!”
Granted, he dances as stiffly as the Tin Man in dire need of a shot of WD-40. But he’s uninhibited and fun, and he pays attention to who’s dancing with him. So who wouldn’t want to?
Laughs sometimes gave way to tears — but that’s a good thing
Gerry looked alarmed at the glum look on Nancy’s face. Why wasn’t she over the moon and mooning for him? He wondered, was it him? Her problems with women in the bachelorette mansion (which looked kind of like a college dorm)? A disconnect between the two of them? Or what? “Nancy just wasn’t herself.”
Afterwards, he discovered that Nancy was being very much herself
Nancy, 60, a retired interior designer from Alexandria, Virginia.
Ricky Middlesworth/ABC
Nancy’s costume was a wedding dress, she explained to the camera, and it made her awash in poignant emotions. “It just hit me — I haven’t had a wedding dress since I got married. It brought back memories. I know in my rational mind it’s been 12 years [since her husband died]. It was the best day of my life other than the birth of my three children.”
She then explained the cause of her bum-a-thon mood to Gerry. “That’s the worst of it, it just comes out of nowhere!” But Gerry was characteristically understanding, and in fact they bonded over this, since he’s a widower or he wouldn’t be on the show. He confessed to her that he feels the same way when he smells cinnamon rolls at Christmas — his late wife’s favorite.
Still, it seemed ominous when she kissed his cheek with what didn’t look like much passion. Was a rose in her future, or a bachelor's boot out the door? (Spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen the episode: She got her rose.)
April (left), 65, a therapist from Port St. Lucie, Florida, also received a rose.
John Fleenor/ABC
Two of the contestants gave the best lines of the evening
April, 65, who startled Gerry in the premiere episode by saying the F word repeatedly, said what possibly every woman was thinking: “I’m gonna kill him if I don’t get a rose!” It was hard to see which woman in the group said the other great line, but everyone seemed to relate: “When I’m 100, I plan to still be good-looking!”
Nancy wasn’t the only one who teared up
When they were alone together, Leslie, 64, the woman who inspired Prince to write the tune "Sexy Dancer," told Gerry, “I got a little choked up, because you are really amazing. There’s not many men like you.”
“You’ve got that soft, gooey inside,” observed Gerry sympathetically.
“I’m kinda like a lava cake,” she concurred.
Leslie (left), 64, a fitness instructor from Minneapolis, with Gerry Turner during the rose ceremony.
John Fleenor/ABC
Leslie and Gerry also bonded over shared disability
“If you ever want to whisper sweet nothings in my ear — I will be able to hear you!” she said, showing him her hearing aid. (He wears them too.) He took the hint and whispered in her ear, and she went, “Whoo!” But she refused to divulge just what he said. “That’s for me to know,” she said with a coy, cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. “You gotta keep some things private.”
Wait … isn’t that against everything the Bachelor franchise stands for??
(Left to right) Natascha, 60, a pro-aging coach and midlife speaker from New York, and Jeanie, 65, a retired project manager from Estill Springs, Tennessee.
Ricky Middlesworth/ABC
The ‘losers’ didn’t seem like losers at all
Jeanie, 65, who gave Gerry a genie lamp in the premiere and said "I can grant a wish!" did not get her wish. But she rose above any woes. “I know that he was feeling bad about hurting me tonight, but a lot of us were kind of giving up on love. But with Gerry, [you realize] there are nice guys out there, and there’s hope, and that’s all that we can ask for. My mama found love in her 70s and I can do it too.”
Natascha, 60, who has an infectious laugh and said that Gerry is so in shape, "I’m not going to need to resuscitate him if we have an intimate moment," didn’t get one. But he hugged her and murmured, “God, I love you, Natascha.” She thanked him and left the show. But she had some sharp advice for Golden Bachelor producers: “Guys, you have people in here 60, 70 and above — do the rose ceremony in the chairs. They have chair yoga, chair aerobics — do the chair rose ceremony!” Then she laughed long, loud and proud.
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