‘The Bachelor’ Episode 5 Recap: Battle in the Bayou

Warning: This recap contains spoilers for Episode 5 of The Bachelor.

Hello, rose lovers! Time to rejoin Corinne and Taylor’s partially orchestrated catfight, already in progress:

Corinne: “You’re hurting my feelings, Taylor!”

Taylor: “Maturity and emotional intelligence can kind of go hand in hand.”

Corinne: “No, it can’t!”

And so it goes. Corinne calls Taylor rude and questions whether she’s here for the Right Reasons™ , while Taylor crinkles her brow and makes a Bish, please face.

This is the “most anticipated showdown of the season,” Chris Harrison? Try again, pal. Can we just get to the rose ceremony please?

Related: Chris Harrison Blogs ‘The Bachelor’ Episode 5

Nope! Because first, we have to watch Corinne pull Nick aside again, this time to trash-talk Taylor.

Nick’s all, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, OK,” and he thanks Corinne for being so honest. So, is he a total sucker, or is he just fending off a Corinne freak-out by telling her what she wants to hear? Survey says…

Yes, Taylor gets a rose. (Doesn’t she look happy about it?) The therapist joins Whitney (WHO?), Danielle M., Jasmine, Rachel, Jaimi, Josephine, Vanessa, Alexis, Corinne, Raven, and Kristina in the “winners” circle, meaning tonight we say goodbye to Astrid — she of the insufficiently supportive jog bra — and Sarah, who I had to look up on the ABC cast page. Bye, “ladies”! Now, on to New Orleans!

Wrong show, honey. Anyhow, after the obligatory “look at our awesome hotel suite” segment, Harrison drops by with the good news: It’s two-on-one date week! And judging by Taylor’s face, she knows exactly how this is going to go down.

Hold that thought, honey! Your abject humiliation will have to wait for a while, because right now Rachel has her first one-on-one date with the Bachelor. They stroll through the French Market sampling oysters and hot sauce, and smooching intermittently in front of bemused and confused tourists.

“My chemistry with Rachel is probably the most explosive chemistry I have at this point with any of the women,” says Nick. “She kind of has it all.” Agreed, Rachel is delightful — and she’s got some good dance moves too.

Kudos to Team Bachelor, by the way, for staging that parade directly under the women’s hotel room.

The day portion of the date ends with an oddly brief pit stop at a Lolo concert — and the next thing we know, it’s nighttime and Nick and Rachel are having their “take things to the next level” private dinner inside Mardi Gras World museum. There, Rachel reveals to Nick that she visited NOLA earlier in the year for a funeral, where she danced in a second line parade and vowed to live life to the fullest. “That’s why that moment meant so much to me,” she explains.

They go on to have an easy, sweet conversation about her family — particularly Rachel’s father, who’s an “intimidating” federal judge. “How do you think he’d respond to, like, you bringing this guy home?” Nick asks. But Rachel doesn’t get a chance to answer, because the Bachelor — perhaps worried that he’s tipped his hand a bit too much — starts rambling about how nervous he is to meet anyone’s parents, since he’s already gone through the whole “May I have your daughter’s hand” thing twice before, to no avail. “I might be breaking rules here,” Nick concludes, “but I’m super into you.” Good boy! Now give her the rose, silly.

Meanwhile, back at the hotel, it’s time for the two-on-one reveal. Vanessa, would you please do the honors?

That’s right: Josephine, Kristine, Alexis, Raven, Jaimi, Vanessa, Danielle M., Whitney (WHO?), Jasmine, and Danielle L. have made the group-date cut, meaning that tonight we might finally get to see Platinum Vagine sent packing.

After the group date, of course. Nick meets the “ladies” at a lovely estate named Houmas House, which is not only a historic mansion but also “one of the most haunted houses of all of Louisina,” says the Bachelor. Raven, bless her heart, is not having it: “If we see a ghost, I’m gonna rebuke that thing in the name of Jesus is what I’m gonna do,” she drawls. “I’m not puttin’ up with it.”

A gentleman named Boo (a little on the nose, don’t you think?) greets the group and gives them the rundown of the house’s history and spectral residents — including a dead little girl named Mae, who had a spectacularly creepy doll collection.

Some of the women are willing to play along, talking about how creepy the place is and how they can feel a “presence” among them — but Jasmine scoffs and boldly picks up Mae’s hat and tries it on (much to Jaimi’s chagrin). It’s unclear how Mae feels about it, though.

When Nick and Co. contact Mae via the Ouija board, the spirits confirms that she’s in the house… and the producers turn off the lights. (Team Bachelor also convinced Boo to pace outside of the house muttering, “They touched the dolly!” — another nice touch.) Nick, Raven, and Whitney (maybe?) head upstairs to look for the ghost girl — but she’s nowhere to be found, nor is her beloved doll. Everyone wanders around in the dark for a bit until Jasmine, fed up, lifts the sheet on the statue — the one Boo warned them not to touch, naturally — and the moment she does, a chandelier falls from the ceiling, right on cue.

By the way, what was under that sheet? Something truly terrifying:

Aww, I’m just joshin’ ya, Corinne! You enjoy your pre-date rituals — bathing, eating enough food to sustain a junior varsity football team, and making up words.

No, but that’s OK — the Bachelor likes to mangle language too.

Close enough, I guess.

Back inside the mansion, Jasmine and Raven tiptoe into Mae’s room, where Jasmine asks the dead young lady to forgive her for touching her hat. Suddenly, objects start falling off the shelf behind her! Is it the undead, or the Bachelor Interns shaking the bookcase from the darkened corner? I guess we’ll never know.

Man, this date is dragging on. Nick, move it along, won’t you?

Danielle M.? Sure, sounds good. On to the Battle in the Bayou!

Taylor is feeling confident. “I don’t think today is a hard decision for Nick because Corinne and I are two very different people,” she says. “I don’t have a nanny — I have a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling… If Nick gives Corinne the rose today, he’s thinking with his d***.” Girl, you should always assume Nick is always thinking with his d***. Am I the only one who started to worry at this point that things weren’t going to end well for Taylor?

The beefy boat operator drops Nick and his “ladies” off in the middle of the wooded swampland, where bones and giant bugs await them.

But the real romance doesn’t start until they arrive at a pop-up voodoo ritual, where a priestess and her… parishioners? coven? pals? Anyhow, everyone’s doing their voodoo thing. The priestess leads the trio to a tarot card reader, who is there to bring “clarity and light to the situation.” Fun fact: This isn’t the first time Nick’s participated in a producer-mandated tarot card reading. On last season of Bachelor in Paradise, he and his Ms. Right Now, Jen, got a reading on their last date — though by the time it aired, Nick had already been announced as the new Bachelor and we all knew Jen was a goner. What fresh hell awaits him this time?

The tarot card lady decides the situation is too “tense” to do a group reading, so she sends Corinne and Nick away to focus on Taylor first. And what kind of Bachelor villain would Corinne be if she didn’t use this time to undermine her rival? “I do feel a little obligated to tell you, there’s a situation in the house with me and Taylor,” she says. “She emotionally attacked me. She basically called me stupid.” Nick’s response — “How did that make you feel?” — is really odd. Is he a therapist now? It seems the more useful question would be, “What was the argument about?” or “What exactly did she say?” But why bother with details when you can make out in the middle of a swamp?

When Nick sits down with Taylor, he doesn’t waste any time getting to the question at hand: Are you a big ol’ bully like Corinne says? If Taylor flat-out denied the accusations that she bullied Corinne and called her “stupid,” we didn’t get to see it. Instead, we hear Taylor give Nick a speech about how he needs someone with emotional intelligence and confidence — and she also reveals with a smirk that Corinne didn’t know what “emotional intelligence” meant. Man, as much as we dislike Corinne, the more we see of Taylor, it’s clear that she’s no trip to Pismo Beach, either.

When Taylor returns from her chat with Nick, she finds Corinne sitting alone at the tarot card table playing with her new voodoo doll.

“I hope that you feel like you used your time with him wisely — because you lied to him,” Taylor snaps. “Not once did I say you were stupid, did I name-call you, and I certainly did not bully you.” They bicker back and forth a bit, with Corinne saying it blows her mind that Taylor is a mental health counselor, and Taylor retorting that Corinne’s claim that she runs a “multimillion-dollar company” is equally laughable. Then they sit in frosty silence while Nick makes his way back through the woods.

“To me it’s not about how Taylor and Corinne feel about each other,” says Nick. “It’s about how I feel about these women.” And how’s that? Well, a framegrab is worth 1,000 words:

Yeppers, Corinne gets the rose. And with that, she and Nick climb back into the boat and leave Taylor to get eaten alive by bugs, gators, and her own inner demons.

Actually, scratch that — Taylor’s not going away just yet. As we all know, this is the part of the process where the dumped two-on-one dater makes some kind of vaguely stalker-y return to “speak his/her piece,” and that’s exactly what Taylor plans to do — right after she’s finished with this ritual voodoo cleansing.

Ahhhh, refreshing. Hey Nick and Corinne, I hope you don’t mind a side of on-camera conflict with your dinner.

Oh look — our old friend the “To Be Continued” sign. I guess we’ll have to wait until next week to see if Taylor can change Nick’s mind — or if he ends up sending both her and Corinne home. Post your predictions below! And be sure to check out Chris Harrison’s exclusive blog right here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go make this into a T-shirt.

The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC. Watch clips and full episodes of The Bachelor for free on Yahoo View.