The Downton Bachelor: Week One Recap
January is my absolute favorite month, because it marks the season premiere of the best show on television: ‘The Downton Bachelor!’
This season promises to be the most dramatic yet! If you missed Episode 1, here’s a quick recap…
Season five of ‘The Downton Bachelor’ begins by introducing us to Chris Soules. As the humble-yet-muscular son of a crofter, Chris has spent his life helping to tend Downton Abbey’s bountiful fields of alfalfa.
His life changes forever, though, when a kitchen maid with a crush on Chris learns math, and works out that he’s actually the third cousin of the Earl of Grantham’s grandfather’s nephew’s eighth great uncle!! This means, of course that Chris is the true heir of Downton Abbey!!!!
The Crawleys throw a lovely dinner party to celebrate the momentous news and announce an immediate search for a suitable wife.
Signs are posted throughout the countryside and the following night, thirty women show up to try and win Crofter Chris’s heart and vie for the title of Lady Grantham.
Contestants include Amanda, a ballerina on the hunt for a permanent pas-de-deux partner…
Sarah, an opinionated school teacher…
Britt, who enjoys giving out free hugs to villagers…
Single mother Edith…
Ashley, a researcher currently studying the similarities between onions and pomegranates…
And a pretty young widow who immediately establishes her dominance by insisting that everyone refer to her as ‘Lady‘ Mary.
Once all the ladies arrive, Chris employs the age-old trick of providing them with unlimited alcohol so that he can “get to know them better” in the shortest possible amount of time.
This results in that ‘Downton Bachelor’ staple: DAMES GETTIN SH*TFACED.
Tara, a fisher woman, knocks back one too many hot toddies and proceeds to scream ‘buggar off’ each time she’s on camera.
Ashley downs three pints of grog and then attempts to whistle “God Save the Queen” at the moon, whilst peeling a rare pome-onion.
As a subplot, Carson the butler watches Ashley from a window with disapproval. There’s nothing he hates more than watching someone ruin a perfectly good pome-onion.
Edith knocks back several snifters of brandy, then vomits all over Crofter Chris’s Wellingtons. Thomas, the underbutler, leads her away in disgrace.
Chris is understandably upset. That was his second-favorite pair of Wellies.
Edith spends the rest of the evening crying about her baby daddy in a guest bedroom.
‘Lady’ Mary, who has wisely stuck with tea, appears to be the frontrunner as she wows Chris with her knowledge of crop rotation and grain sales. Chris considers giving her the coveted First Impression rose.
But then Britt corners Chris, and whispers a scandalous and innovative secret that could help him grow 87% more alfalfa per ounce of applied fertilizer. Mary is forgotten as Chris rewards Britt with the rose– and a slightly sloppy makeout session.
With all the drinking and drama, no one notices that one of the girl’s clip-in hair extensions has fallen into the fireplace. The hair is acrylic, thus the fire spreads quickly.
The women are evacuated as the Crawleys emerge from their chambers in their dressing gowns to put out the flames.
Chris regrets that his lady party has been cut short. His request to move the party to Downton Abbey’s famous penis-shaped Jacuzzi is denied by producers.
Episode one ends with a cliffhanger, as Chris learns that Baxter, Lady Grantham’s maid, has stolen all of the remaining roses. We learn that she no longer has the roses in her possession, but we can’t figure out why she did it.
We then see scenes from upcoming episodes, which leave us with even more unanswered questions…
Who is the naked man Chris has been seen canoodling with in the fields when he thought that cameras weren’t rolling?
Does Lady Mary really hire a hit man after losing the First Impression Rose to Britt?
Will Chris accept the kidney donation offered by one of the contestants in exchange for his hand in marriage?
And what did the dowager mean when she said, “Principals are like prayers. Noble, of course. But awkward at a party.” There were no principals at the party! Teachers? Yes. Principals? No! Is the dowager trying to tell us something important?
Check back here next week to find out!
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I watch Downton and had every intention of watching this season’s Bachelor (he is a cutie!). This will be a perfect substitute and leave me with a few more brain cells intact at the end of the week! No, I’ll probably go look for the Bachelor online!
The most recent Bachelor episodes are always available on the ABC app, which I’ve found to be glitchy and not optimal– but it works in a crunch!
Seriously, The Bachelor and Downton Abbey pretty much keep me from going crazy from the cold in January. 🙂
great fun to read…clever…thanks
As the wife of a farmer I can attest to the fact that most of these women are doomed: as is Chris! Most seem to have NO CLUE as to what farming is all about. They want to marry a farmer, yet one has no idea what alfalfa even is! She’ll learn real fast on the back of the hay rack when she’s stacking bales of it and all that green crap is filling up that D-Cup bra! The first time he takes one of these girls home and they realize they have to get up at 6AM to grease the combine for harvest; and they then break a nail; they’ll be runnin’ back to Cali!! Sometimes our days start at 5AM and end well past midnight, if the day doesn’t just morph into another continuous 24 hour cycle. There are some nights someone crawls into bed with me and I just hope it’s my husband. I’m really too tired to ask (and really too tired to care if it isn’t!) and by morning the phantom is gone! Did anyone else notice that none of those women they brought into the studio from Chris’ hometown were wearing little, teenie-tiny size one/zero dresses?!! Those were hardy, take-it-all-on women! Chris is adorable and I wish him the best, but I see nothing good coming out of these encounters…
I’ve thought of this, too- Not to mention the fact that Iowa winters are C-O-L-D, and they mentioned in the open that Chris lives “20 minutes from anything.” That would be a HUGE culture shock for these women! It just seems unlikely that this could work out unless Chris is willing to give up farming…. or his title as Earl of Grantham! 😉
As an Iowan I can attest to the COLD Iowa winters not to mention that when they say he lives “20 minutes from anything” that anything is probably a gas station, a grocery store and IF she’s lucky a WalMart, it’s most certainly NOT a Nordstrom or a Macy’s! 🙂
My best friend is the wife of a dairy farmer. My first thought when I heard the bachelor was a farmer was “the type of woman who would try and get on The Bachelor is not the kind of woman who should be married to a farmer.
LOLLOLLOL!!!!!!!!!!
When are they ever going to give up on the whole Bachelor/Bachelorette series? It’s the same thing every season. They come, they drink, they see, they make out, they squabble, and they almost always break up. Woo hoo.
I NEED to see this stuff to make it through January. It’s a tradition!