After a premiere filled with blow-up dolls, original ukulele compositions, and one sketchy RV, the new season of The Bachelorette, starring a famously sex-positive marketing manager named Katie, is now in full swing.

“Ask not what your Bachelorette can do for you, but what you can do for your Bachelorette!” he crowed before attending the season’s first group date, tossing off other alarming maxims like “It’s go time,” and “This is the Hunger Games right now,” and “I’m fighting to the death.” This hypercompetitive attitude didn’t seem to endear him to Katie or any of the other guys, but it did make him a focal point of the episode, so I guess that counts as a win.

During that first group date, I expected to be terrified, as each contestant was challenged to show Katie, in a multimedia performance, why they were “the greatest lover of all time.” But aside from Karl’s presentation, which involved tracing a cardboard cutout of Katie with a banana, the performances were surprisingly tame.

But later, at the cocktail party before the rose ceremony, Katie was once again consumed by the idea that some men might be appearing on her TV show for reasons other than finding true love.

(Karl, firmly establishing himself as the show’s early-season villain, told her that multiple unnamed guys had bad intentions.) “This is my actual life that we are experiencing,” she said, through tears, to the men, which is a pretty terrifying idea to contemplate?

Log in or link your magazine subscription

Log in or link your magazine subscription

Log in or link your magazine subscription

Log in or link your magazine subscription