This week, we reach the fourth episode in the great gay saga known as Finding Prince Charming. We also reach the fourth episode in the great gay saga known as recapping Finding Prince Charming, because honey, these queens have social media and they are ready to rumble. But we’ll get to that later.
We open with Robby shouting, “What a night, queens!†as the guys come into the house, cooling down from last week’s Black Tie Affair. It’s an iconic opening line and it deserves all the praise I can give it. More of this from Robby, please.
The next morning, Dillon vents to Eric about the rumors of his bad attitude. Eric has gotten entirely new eyebrows just for the occasion. When Robert arrives carrying tote bags of groceries, Dillon is nervous about what’s left unsaid.
Robert proceeds to go through the house, waking everyone up so they can cook breakfast. This a punishable offense in my book, and Robby puts it perfectly when he refers to the whole encounter as “mortifying.â€
They eat breakfast in tank tops around the West Hollywood swimming pool, which is basically a Norman Rockwell painting of a Trump voter’s worst nightmare. Chad pulls Robert aside to find out why he’s acting so uncomfortable around him. For some reason I’ll never understand, he chooses to have this vulnerable conversation in one of those swinging basket chairs that is almost a hammock and almost a chair and almost a straight-up basket. These chairs need to make a decision and stick with it. However, Chad and Robert do make a decision and it’s to make out.
Robert pulls Dillon aside to talk about his reputation for having a bad attitude. Dillon is a nervous wreck and Robert tells him that the way we confront someone or talk to someone is very important. Great advice, Robert. He ends the conversation by saying, “You’re not that guy,†and I can’t help but wonder what he means by this, but I’m not going to dive into those theories because I don’t want to rustle Gay Bachelor’s feathers any more than I already have.
Lance Bass arrives in head-to-toe cream and speaks to the guys in the living room. It looks like a scene out of a Nancy Meyers–directed Corbin Fisher video that I would pay obscene amounts of money to see. Lance Bass announces that Robert will have a “three-course date†tonight. What is a “three-course date,†you ask? One man is the appetizer, one man is the main course, and one man is the dessert. Everyone oohs and ahhs like audience members at a taping of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch after Melissa Joan Hart got caught kissing a warlock troll in the broom closet (this wasn’t a real episode, but it should’ve been).
Robert chooses Robby for the appetizer (yay!), Eric for the main course, and Brandon for dessert. Solid choices all around.
First up, Robby and Robert sip martinis and nibble starters. Robert wants to know “why†Robby is funny and suspects that it’s an act because funny people are usually hiding something. It’s worth pointing out that I think Robby is the only person on this show fully capable of knowing who he is, but whatever. I’m getting paid to recap the episode, not explain why Robby is superior to everyone else.
Second up, Eric and Robert have a boring dinner date where they discuss their need for monogamy and wind up comparing parents. After Eric tells Robert that his father likes to sneak up behind his mother and kiss her, Robert replies, with the widest of eyes: “We have so much in common.†Uh boy.
And finally, Robert has dessert with Brandon, who claims that he’s “one of the only guys who actually eats dessert.†Rein it in, Brandon. Dessert is a major industry and how dare you suggest otherwise. And the dessert was just fruit so it wasn’t even dessert anyway. This date is the sweetest one because Brandon seems like a genuinely kind person. It’s a conflicting thing to watch because you’re like, “Wow, he’s lovely,†but at the same time you’re like, “Run for the hills, baby! Save yourself!â€
After the eating dates, Robert takes Justin, Chad, Dillon, and Paul to some terrifying warehouse full of wooden crates, mirrors, graffiti, and what I can only imagine are torture devices. Robert forces them to exercise and I get immensely bored. Want to know the one thing more boring than exercise? Watching other people exercise on television. Take those guys to drag brunch, take them out bowling, take them to T.J. Maxx and give them two minutes to find the only good pair of 31/33 Levi’s, please just do anything other than make me watch them exercise.
In the midst of this exercise debacle, Robert is shocked to learn that Paul isn’t good at sit-ups. He reacts the way you’d react if you found out someone had never seen The First Wives Club. Just like, huh? Paul explains that he works out for appearance and not necessarily for functionality. I really appreciated this honesty and totally get it.
At the Black Tie Affair that night, Robert ends up sending Paul home. It has nothing to do with his inability to do sit-ups, I’m sure. This was a surprising choice, but I get it. Paul was getting a little clingy and jealous, and frankly, he isn’t the most ideal of TV characters. Paul seems like someone who won’t ever show us his crazy side, and if only for that, I agree that he needed to go. He was nice, though.
In closing, I couldn’t write this recap without giving a shout-out to the Facebook message I received earlier today from Gay Bachelor himself. If you’d like to see the whole thing, I posted it on Instagram, but the gist is this: Robert is offended by my recaps of this genuinely fun show.
I get it, I really do. These things are silly and catty and I crack a lot of jokes about the show. What I don’t get is how he doesn’t get that. In the past four weeks, the guy has seemed genuinely perplexed at how reality TV works. For that, I can only scratch my beautiful head of hair. The reality of reality TV is simple: If you agree to be on one of these shows, you immediately become a character. The audience gets to decide if we love to hate you or hate to love you. Is it a bizarre thing to put a human through? Absolutely. But a human should also understand what he’s getting into when he decides to do reality TV.