Race to the Altar, Episode 2: Broken Commitments

Last week on Race to the Altar, we met the eight engaged couples who were competing for the wedding of their dreams. Andy and Becca approached Coyt and Susan about forming a commitment to not vote each other out, but Coyt and Susan then learned that Andy and Becca also had an agreement with two other couples – Tonya and Andree and Ethan and Carolyn. Coyt and Susan were convinced that they had been betrayed, leading to a nasty confrontation when Becca and Andy became the second power couple. Turns out Coyt and Susan were intended to be part of a four couple commitment all along and there was no betrayal. The couple resolved their differences with Andy and Becca during power couple deliberation and agreed to band together. The two couples chose to eliminate lawyers Jessica and Scott.

At the beginning of this week’s episode, the couples are all reeling from the experience. Chris and Cindy say it was really emotional. Tonya and Andree admit that they weren’t sure if they could trust the other couples in their commitment. Andy, on the other hand, feels really confident. He’s certain that with the couples in his commitment, he and Becca will go far.

The four committed couples meet in a hotel room to talk about which couple they’d like to eliminate this week. Susan says, “April and Vinny are on the chopping block.” Because April injured her eye in an unfortunate mascara accident last week, they have not been as competitive as some of the other couples, so they might be an easy choice for elimination. As if their ears are burning from being talked about, Vinny and April sense their danger. Vinny says, “I am absolutely worried.”

That night, the brides and grooms split up by gender. First we see the women enjoying a Girls’ Night Out. The women stroll through the shops of Las Vegas and talk about how nice it is to get to know each other better. Meanwhile, the men are enjoying a much less sedate Boys’ Night Out. As their fiancées try on clothes, they hit a go-go bar and do shots. Ethan is wearing the bathrobe from this hotel room, saying that it felt like the right thing to wear out that night. As the men enjoy another round of shots, we cut to the women eating ice cream. One of them talks about the fat and sugar content of their ice cream. Back in the bar, the men dance with strange women and Vinny plays the drums. Robert has had way too much to drink and is looking pretty rough. The other guys tease him and say they think Grace is coming, which makes him immediately snap to attention. Coyt laughs and says that Robert only had two drinks. Those two drinks must have hit him pretty hard, because Robert spends the night curled up on the bathroom floor. Yikes.

I really wonder if the contestants got to choose what they did for their nights out. It looks like the guys had a great time, and I think that if you got a group of men together for a night in Las Vegas, that’s pretty much what they would do. But I don’t get the Girls’ Night Out at all. If those women actually chose a night of shopping and fat free sorbet, then they’re a pretty boring bunch. If the producers of the show decided that was all women would want to do, then I’d like to introduce them to some of my friends. We know how to have a much better time than that. Why didn’t they raid a makeup counter and cover each other with glitter? Where were the silly frozen fruity drinks with little umbrellas? Where was the chocolate? Why wasn’t anyone salsa dancing with a guy named Alfredo wearing tight jeans? That is what makes a Girls’ Night Out!

At 9:30 the next morning, Robert is suffering from what looks like a brutal hangover. If that wasn’t bad enough, he is also suffering Grace’s wrath. As he covers his eyes with his arm to block out the brutal, brutal sun, Grace admonishes him, “Everyone else is all perky. Everyone else is all huggy. And you’re lying on the bed asking for a trash can!” Robert grunts in agony. Grace snaps, “Don’t expect any sympathy from me.” Ugh. When you have a hangover, you feel bad enough without having someone criticize you. If Grace wants Robert to be nice and huggy, she needs to get him some Advil, a big bottle of water, a vat of coffee, and some greasy food.

Chris and Cindy are having a much nicer morning. Chris says that when they first got to the hotel, Cindy wanted to sleep with a pillow between them because she felt uncomfortable with the idea of her parents seeing them sleeping together. She’s now feeling a little more relaxed and has ditched the pillow. That’s interesting, because last week she was so upset that she insisted on sleeping on the couch.

Ethan and Carolyn talk about how stressful the game is. Ethan says that the stress has made Carolyn hard to live with. He says, “I’m talking about you being bitchy. I’m talking about you being a bitch – your angry talk. Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to pretend it’s not true.” Amazingly, Carolyn does not breathe fire into his face and show Ethan some real angry talk, but remains silent.

At 11:00 that night, the couples gather for the first challenge, called Ball and Chain. Each couple will have a 100-pound ball chained to their ankles. They’ll be dropped into a swimming pool, where they will have to detach the chain from their ankles. Then, they will have to move the bowling ball to the other end of the pool, up an incline, and onto a platform next to the pool. To make the challenge more complicated, the pool has six-foot high breakers. Host Lisa Dergen explains that because of April’s eye injury, she and Vinny won’t have to compete. However, they will automatically be in seventh place.

The couples plunge into the water. They all have different strategies. Andree plans to pull the ball, then have Tonya push it. Coyt (who is wearing some sort of strange scuba outfit) will move the ball as far as he can, then come up for a breath while Susan does the same. Ethan plans to move the ball to the shallow end of the pool, where Carolyn will roll it the rest of the way. Everyone splashes and struggles. Ethan thinks his age is making the challenge especially hard for him, saying, “Probably for the first time, I realized that I am 36 years old.” Robert says his muscles cramped up and he panicked. He abandons the ball and Grace, swimming for shore. Grace is furious. In a post-challenge interview, she says, “You wouldn’t be cramped up if you hadn’t had all that alcohol in your system.” I seriously doubt that’s the problem, since this challenge didn’t start until 11:00 at night. Robert is irritated also, and he makes a meowy noise and clawing motion at Grace. She is not amused. In the end, the challenge comes down between Chris and Cindy and Coyt and Susan. Coyt and Susan prevail, becoming the first Power Couple.