This week on the “Bachelorette,” a jovial jaunt to London goes very bad when “luxury brand consultant”/rich frat boy Kalon calls

Emily Maynard (Photo courtesy of ABC

Before the drama, however, the week starts off in relatively normal fashion. Host Chris Harrison, known for stating the obvious, outdoes himself: “There are 10 of you left, but only one of you will become Emily’s husband!” Chris, your audience is watching The Bachelorette, not Sister Wives.

Extremely good-looking insurance agent/fitness model Sean receives the first one-on-one date, and he and Emily take a tour of London. Sean, who has no idea what Big Ben is, unsurprisingly seems bored with the random bits of English history Emily keeps dropping on him (she doesn’t exactly seem riveted herself), but he does seem genuinely interested in Emily.  When they stop at Speaker’s Corner, a famous forum for people to give monologues, he makes a confident, cute speech about how he hopes to someday find love with Emily.  It wins Emily over, and impresses viewers as well.

Later, Emily and Sean kiss in front of Buckingham Palace and eat dinner in the Tower of London. She wastes no time in giving him the date rose.  Despite their exciting surroundings, their date on the whole is a little boring. That lack of activity isn’t necessarily negative, though, as Emily and Sean are comfortably at ease with each other. They already seem like a married couple – and with their matching blond hair and tanned skin, they look a lot like Barbie and Ken.

Speaking of tanned skin, Emily really needs to lay off the Kardashian Tan. Usually gorgeous, this week she looks like an Oompa Loompa who escaped from Jersey Shore.

Next, it’s time for the group date, with the date card reading “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  Chris, Arie, Ryan, Doug, Alejandro, Travis, John and Kalon are selected, which means Jef with one F gets the other one-on-one date.  Most of the guys are good sports, but Kalon, who has been in a foul mood ever since they came to London, complains that he still hasn’t gotten a one-on-one with Emily and that the date will smell not like roses, but like s**t.  Charming.  

On the date, Emily and the boys visit Shakespeare’s birthplace and act out a very unprofessional version of Romeo and Juliet. While Doug and Arie chuckle as they are relegated to the female roles of nurses, Alejandro, John, Ryan, and Kalon are the four Romeos. Kalon’s declarations that “I was born to play this role” and that “I am taking this role extremely serious” (nice grammar, buddy) will have viewers wondering why his Romeo can’t just die already.  

 Meanwhile, cocky Ryan, as his own Romeo, has his first kiss with Emily and hams it up for the audience – and the other contestants.  Indeed, the only parts of the performance that aren’t groan-worthy are Doug and Arie’s costumes and female voices.  Seriously, Doug is wearing a headdress that looks like a mixture of toilet paper and duct tape.

Broadway ambitions and weird props aside, the real action starts that night, when the group goes to a pub and all hell breaks loose.  When a Bachelor asks Kalon if he’s looking forward to talking to Emily, cranky Kalon replies that he is not excited to hang out with an “exhausted, sick mother.”  This remark prompts the boys to gossip about him and his intentions for coming on the show if he’s not comfortable with assuming the role of Ricki’s father.  Once one of the boys mentions that Kalon called Ricki “baggage” the day before, single father Doug becomes enraged, confronts him about it, and then rats him out to Emily.

Normally a sweet Southern belle, Emily’s face darkens (just a little bit, as it’s already pretty much black), and she tells Doug that she wants to rip Kalon’s lungs off and beat him with them.  As she says she’s going “West Virginia hoodrat backwoods on his a**,” she looks a little like the crazy girl from Swimfan and, well, she’s kind of scary.  She lives up to her threat and marches upstairs, ordering Kalon to “get the f*** out.”  Bye-bye, luxury brand consultant.

Absurdly, Kalon’s rudeness causes a major overreaction on Emily’s part. She storms out of the pub, declaring that she cannot trust any of the men and that she wishes they had stood up for her and warned her of Kalon’s villainy.  This makes no sense, as the men did call Kalon out on his inappropriateness and Doug did tattle on him. Maybe she just wanted an excuse to get out of that nasty bar?

Thankfully, she’s in a slightly better mood the next day for her first one-on-one date with Jef. After they ditch Jean, the world’s most annoying etiquette professional (whose idea was it to try to teach hipster Jef manners, anyway?), they head to another pub.  Jef sucks up to Emily over fish and chips and assures her that “if Ricki is baggage, she’s a Chloé handbag.”  While that is a very sweet sentiment, one has to wonder how the kid who rode in on a skateboard even knows what a Chloé bag is.

Despite his questionable knowledge of designer handbags, Jef proves himself to be a genuinely kind and intelligent guy on the rest of their date.  They eat dinner on the London Eye Ferris wheel, and he explains his attraction to Emily in an articulate manner that places him a cut above most of the guys in the group.  It is no surprise when he gets a date rose.  As they share their first kiss while looking out on the harbor, it is clear that Jef is definitely one of the front-runners for the prize.  He says, “Emily gives me the feeling that people write fairy tales about.”  Awww!

Sadly, the final cocktail party is not nearly as sweet. Emily spends most of her time grilling Arie about why he didn’t tell her about Kalon (give it up already!) and being romanced on a balcony by Ryan. Indeed, someone definitely took his Romeo role a little far.  “Leonardo DiCaprio, eat your heart out, buddy,” Ryan declares. Umm…no. Weirdly enough, though, Emily admits that she’s falling for him.

The rose ceremony is equally uneventful. There is virtually no suspense when the final two are Arie, the racecar driver who she’s made out with on every date, or Alejandro, the mushroom farmer/possible drug dealer who hasn’t gotten any airtime.  To no one’s surprise, Alejandro is eliminated.

The final decision that shocks everyone, however, is Emily’s declaration that she and her entourage of eight men are headed to Croatia next week.  Huh?

Reach reporter Lindsay Dale here.