Hello and welcome. Before we begin our first Cut recap of The Bachelor season 24, please find a pen and paper. If you can’t find paper, that’s fine. Maybe you could quickly hire a skywriter, or find someone to tattoo this message on a fleshy part of your body. I guess you could write it in the Notes app on your phone, too — up to you. Anyway, are you ready? Good. Now, whichever medium you chose, please write down the following words:
Hannah Brown and Pilot Peter had sex in a windmill four times.
This sentence, like a tiny seed that contains within it the makings of an enormous, majestic redwood tree, contains within it the makings of a three-hour-long season premiere.
There’s Peter, the Bachelor. He is a pilot, which we know because of the shots of him in a cute little pilot uniform walking confidently through various airports, shots of him flying, and the repeated flying puns we are overwhelmed with throughout the episode. He had sex with Hannah Brown in a windmill four times.
There’s Hannah Brown. She was the Bachelorette last season and eliminated Peter the Pilot after they had sex in a Greek windmill four times. Ouch. As we have been warned by promos, she shows up in the premiere multiple times.
Perhaps you find it prurient of me to repeatedly highlight the fact that Hannah and Peter had sex in a windmill not once, not twice, but four times. Indeed, I don’t feel great about mentioning it over and over again. Peter even said before the premiere that he doesn’t want his sex life to define him. “I’m not just the guy who had sex in a nonfunctioning windmill four times,” he basically said, though not in those words. Just stop bringing up the windmill sex!
Unfortunately, I, unlike Peter, cannot. I must repeatedly, continuously mention the windmill sex because the premiere repeatedly and continuously mentions it, and I am nothing if not a faithful recapper. The windmill sex is arguably the horny, environmentally friendly foundation on which this whole L.A. mansion of a season is to be based. Check your notepad/skywriting/tattoo again. Remember: Hannah Brown and Peter the Pilot had sex in a windmill four times.
After we are reintroduced to Peter as a Bachelor who has already had windmill sex four times, we meet some of the women who will be vying for his heart. There’s Alexa, a caregiver from Chicago who says, “Waxing is a lot like love: You have to bare it all.” So true. There’s Hannah Ann, a model from Tennessee. Madi, who later starts going by Madison, may or may not be Hannah Ann using a different name to double her chances. They look exactly the same. That’s smart of Hannah Ann/Madi/Madison. Good for her.
At the mansion, we meet the other women — there are 30 in all — who didn’t merit their own intro videos. There are four separate flight attendants. A lot of women make jokes about the windmill sex. Victoria F. tries to make a dirty joke about being wet (“I have a dry sense of humor, but that’s about the only thing that’s dry about me”) but chickens out partway through, which is somehow so much worse than if she had just committed. Hannah Brown appears at one point, and it looks like she’s coming back? But then she gives Peter back the pilot wings he gave her on her season, and it looks like she’s just wishing him luck. One woman, Jenna, brings a sweet cow named “Ashley P.,” whom she presents to Peter as a … gift? Offering? Sacrifice? Ashley P. is never seen again.
Inside the cocktail party, once all the women have been greeted, Hannah Ann, who is also maybe Madison, presents Peter with a painting she and her dad made for him and then proceeds to French him three times (Peter, not her dad). Other girls make out with Peter too — Tammy, Mykenna, Kelley — but only once. Victoria F. for some reason brings up her terrible joke about being wet again. There’s no way it could be worse than the first time she said it, you’re thinking, but somehow it actually is, because Peter doesn’t even remember the joke. Instead of ejecting from the conversation, or even just changing topics, Victoria F. decides to tell it again, just as noncommittally as the first time. It’s a disaster. She gets interrupted by another woman and then goes to cry, proving her sense of humor is the only thing that’s dry about her. Hannah Ann, unsurprisingly, gets the first-impression rose. She put in the work. She deserves it.
As the sun rises on Villa de la Vina, the Bachelor mansion, Peter gives roses to 22 women. Eight women, including Jenna, who brought him the cow Ashley P., are eliminated.
Wow, this has been a long episode. See you next week. Just kidding! There is still so much more premiere to go — two group dates, and a one-on-one. Please stick with me.
For the first group date, eight women go to learn about flying, because Peter’s a pilot. There’s even a little clip of him cleaning a plane shirtless to prove it. Two female pilots, who are very cool, oversee the exercises, which include basic math and getting strapped into some barf machine. The last challenge is a flight-themed obstacle-course race, which Kelley wins even though she clearly cheated, as you can see in the graphic below. Her prize is a scenic flight with Peter. They make out and she gets a rose.
Madison, who may also be Hannah Ann, gets the one-on-one date. The date is attending Peter’s parents’ vow-renewal ceremony, which he is officiating. His parents are lovely and welcoming to Madison, even though I would be furious if producers gave me a first-round girl for my staged vow renewal. That event deserves a hometown visit–level girl at least, I would think. Over a small, candlelit fake dinner, Madison gets a rose, and she and Peter both agree this is the “best first date ever.” The Hannah Ann–Madison combo seems unstoppable.
Five years after we first started the episode, it is time for the second group date. Nine women join Peter at the Avalon theater where, who is onstage but Hannah Brown!!! The one Peter had sex with in a windmill four times! Next to a cutout of a windmill, Hannah Brown tells the story again. Of how she and Peter had sex in a windmill four times. The women and Peter all look uncomfortable, because having a guy’s ex come and tell you about all the wind-powered sex they had is an uncomfortable experience. Hannah says the women, and also Peter, need to tell a personal sex story or fantasy in front of a live audience, which, sure. The women go away to write down their stories, but really they just spend their time being like, What the fuck is Hannah doing here? This is their constitutional right, to bash the ex of a guy they’re trying to date, and I support them.
Hannah, meanwhile, goes into a room and starts crying mascara-melting tears. Peter comes in and is all like, “Hey, happy birthday” — it was her birthday, I guess — and then is like, “Whoa, what’s wrong?” What’s wrong is that she’s questioning if she made the right decision sending Peter away after they had sex four times in a windmill. Peter, like Hannah, doesn’t know what he wants, but he was heartbroken when she dumped him after they’d had sex four times in a windmill. Does she want to come back to the house?, he asks. Hannah doesn’t know. Though certainly staged, this scene has the authentic look of a genuine “What should we do?” relationship talk, because it’s a lot of circular conversation punctuated by tears, protracted silences, and exclamations of “I don’t know!”
We, the viewers, don’t know either. The episode ends with a “To be continued …” in the room where Hannah and Peter are crying. I guess we’ll have to see next week.
Thank you for reading, and please don’t forget that Hannah Brown and Pilot Peter had sex in a windmill four times.