“Reader Emails,” BIP Ep 5 Thoughts, & Your Daily Roundup – Reality Steve

The last couple nights of BIP had a lot of storylines, but so much head scratching as to things that we were watching. Lets start with Ashley & Jared. They didn’t do anything wrong. It’s productions fault. There’s nothing wrong with bringing back alumni on this show. They’ve done it every season. We expect it. But what we expect is for them to pass out a date card or maybe even participate on a date. Not get 16 minutes of screen time (twice as much as any of the actual contestants people are tuning in to see) discussing farts, their sex life, and ocean peeing. The whole thing was just totally bizarre. I mean, we now know there’s 16 episodes this season, so clearly that was filler on Monday night. But wow, it was just too much. You can give them that amount of time on the show yet you didn’t have time on Gabby and Rachel’s ATFR to have a live discussion about Erich’s blackface photo. Got it. Again, Jared and Ashley did nothing wrong. It’s not on them. They’re not gonna turn down a free trip to Mexico, get a little camera time, and help out the show. It’s the actual content production made them do is what was questionable. Especially considering all Ashley and Jared did was meet on BIP. Both seasons they were on were miserable for them. They never even left the show as a couple. So this revisionist history about their time there was way off.

Does Wells, along with his bartending skills, now have a PHD in hypnotherapy? At what point did he hypnotize all these contestants in believing his BS story regarding Salley? Watching Salley get down to the beach last night and get jumped on by Genevieve and Shanae, while wrong, I’m not gonna put much stock into because I know there have already been apologies done behind the scenes. Remember, there’s 2 shows happening here: what’s happening on your screen and what really happened. The Salley story told by Wells was exaggerated and full of lies, he participated in a skit to make her look bad, so whether or not he knew it was true or not, he activately chose to do it. Granted, it’s because the money deposited into his account is directly from this show, doesn’t abstain him from criticism. At any point will Wells come out and apologize for essentially portraying Salley as crazy and setting her up to fail? Probably not. But doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be called out for it. C’mon Wells. Be better than that.

I think watching Genevieve get upset at Justin and Shanae get upset with Logan for not showing their interest (Shanae seemed to change her tune last night when Logan put forth an effort), I think says more about how men in this franchise treat women and relationships than the women do. I think we’ve known for a while that most of the women contestants take things more seriously. I’m not gonna tell Genevieve and Shanae they couldn’t feel the way they felt towards Justin and Logan respectively. If that’s how those guys made them feel, telling them they’re wrong seems pretty disrespectful. But the men in this franchise have been doing this for years. They keep their options open all the time, and we’ve seen numerous instances where they haven’t been clear with women about their intentions. So watching it play out on TV is really just bringing clarity to what happens off screen.

I’m not sure about the Kira/Romeo relationship post-show as a lot of you have asked. It was 4 months ago this filmed so I’m guessing a lot has happened. I don’t think they’re dating, but who knows? But in just last night’s episode, again, totally confusing. Kira came back to tell Jacob how she couldn’t stop thinking about him, to the point it brought her to tears. He says he’s not interested, and four seconds later, she’s convincing Romeo he gave the wrong rose out at the first rose ceremony and to leave with him. I mean, lets face it, what options did Romeo even have at that point? The answer? None. If he doesn’t leave with Kira, he gets eliminated at the rose ceremony anyway. So while the show wanted to make it seem like some romantic moment, I don’t think any of us were really invested and could care less who Romeo and/or Kira ended up with.

“Reader Emails” begins on Page 2…