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Why does this show exist? It's a question I ask myself a lot while watching "The Bachelorette" as each week I slowly spelunk deeper and deeper into a cave of existential dread and despair. It's also a question that I routinely silence with copious amounts of boxed wine. It's a good system.

But no amount of grape squeezings can help me ignore how much this season – or at least the Clare portion of it – does not seem to want to exist.

Clare is clearly done; she's already announced she found her future husband, while the editor typically in charge of hiding the obvious final pairing must've been left out of the bubble. In Clare's mind, she's currently on a show about dating Dale while taking 25 other single men to surprise therapy sessions and directing her own NC-17 "Dodgeball" remake. Meanwhile, the guys break the rules, complain about her rose decisions and date choices, have nothing to say to Clare and sometimes seemingly straight-up ignore her for more bro chats. Maybe they're starting to notice that they're all tied for a distant second place. 

So to recap: Clare's checked out, the guys are harrumphing and half-hearted, the show's not bothering with rules or even the mere concept of drama, and the only person seemingly pleased to be here is Bennett aka Patrick Bateman – but that's probably just because he slipped Harrison $100 to give him a private penthouse exclusively for all of his docksiders. And we're just two episodes in. Welp, congratulations to Harrison and company for stealing the title of "2020 but a dating show" from "Love Is Blind."

At least we got the first dates of this already self-destructing season, starting with a group date featuring Clare's future husband Dale and ... uh ... some other guys? I think Patrick Bateman was there – wearing glasses maybe, looking like Clark Kent but instead of turning into Superman, he turns into a banker who forecloses on Ma Kent's farm. I don't know anyone's name yet, and considering how things are going, I'm not going to bother. They shall all be named variations on Handsome Stubble #1. 

Dale and the various Handsome Stubbles are there for a lesson in love languages with Clare, starting with proclamations of love to the bachelorette while she sits in a balcony styled like "Romeo & Juliet" style balcony, famously a story that ends happily. Dammit, it's "Listen to Your Heart" and "A Star Is Born" all over again! Anyways, no one says anything particularly interesting – not even Dale – so we move on to fondling. You see, touch is also a love language, so the men each take turns blindfolding Clare and communicating with their hands and bodies. Only one Handsome Stubble does sensual finger tracing along her arms while everyone else just goes in for a hug – boring but it does give Clare a chance to sniff out a winner, quite literally. 

Right about now is when I start missing the normal "Bachelorette" dates, when the show would head out to locales around the city and open the show up a bit. Everyone's stuck on this resort and in these glorified conference halls, making the show less romantic and adventurous and more like a very not-HR-approved work retreat. 

Anyways, the next step of the icebreaker challenge sends the Handsome Stubbles running off to their hotel rooms to snag a meaningful gift for Clare. One guy gives her the queen of his chess board. So I guess that's the end of playing chess during his downtime. Another gifts her a baseball from his last college game, which seems like a valuable thing I would want to keep and remember as opposed to presenting it to Dale's future wife. Speaking of Dale, he offers Clare dog perfume. Sure. For a guy destined to win Clare's heart, I'm still waiting to swoon. 

Clare is in full swoon, though, and she's looking forward to more at the afterparty, where she gives a hopeful toast to the guys, who respond with ... nothing. Not one thing. This would normally be the part where a guy steals her away for a second, but instead everyone – even Dale! – just goes from the toast to chatting with one another about the Rays-Dodgers game last night. Confused, Clare has to channel her inner Jeb "Please clap" Bush and ask the guys if, you know, they'd like to talk with her. And here's a sentence I never thought I'd say: Thank god Patrick Bateman was there, as he ends the discomfort and takes Clare aside for some one-on-one chats.  

Clare, however, only lasts about two sentences with Bateman before she cuts things off, too disturbed by how disinterested the other guys seemed about her. (But you KNOW she was only annoyed with Dale.) She comes back to the group and reams them out for being so apathetic toward the woman they're all here to supposedly date, to which the guys respond with their best "Spartacus" impression, standing up one by one to announce that they are indeed ashamed and sorry. Everyone except for Yosef – the guy with the Instagram DMs last week – who tells Clare she'd be "crazy to think that we didn’t all come here for you." Because nothing makes a woman feel better than being told she's crazy! It understandably does not go over well, nor does his use of the phrase "I think I speak for everyone here," which ignites a small tiff between him and a guy named Riley over semantics. AND THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD'VE KICKED HIM OFF ALONG WITH LINCOLN LAWYER LAST WEEK!

Thankfully, Riley moves on and flirts with Clare using prom-style slow dancing and Boyz II Men – a solid approach as, in a wild upset, he gets the rose over Dale. Glad to see somebody in the writers' room finally remembered what "dramatic tension" is! 

We move on to the first solo date of the season – and no, it doesn't go to Dale too. Instead, it goes to the season's other football player, Jason, who is thrilled ... until he learns more about the date's theme, which is about emotions, openness and vulnerability. He has a hard time with letting down his walls – a difficult thing for many men as our society still conditions men to suppress their feelings. The ominous way Jason talks about his struggle, though, makes it seem like he's got some deep, dark secret he's afraid he'll confess. Jason ... did you murder a person? SHOULD YOU BE VENTURING OUT ALONE INTO THE DESERT WITH THIS MAN, CLARE?!

Thankfully, that's not it. Instead, over the course of a long, surprisingly intimate date/therapy session – complete with screaming into the desert, waking up all of the coyotes, and some unpleasant word association – Jason vaguely reveals that he's maybe not been the best with women in the past, with his parents' rocky marriage teaching him to avoid meaningful romantic connections. Or something like that. He's still somewhat coy about it, but progress is progress – and as far as television goes, it's a compellingly real and intense conversation rarely seen on the show. Yeah, it was A LOT for what was essentially a first date – and I was very confused about what this episode of HBO's "In Treatment" was doing in the middle of "The Bachelorette" –  but I liked its attempt at tough, genuine conversation.

But enough about that: It's time for some jokes about balls!

Indeed, the final group date of the episode takes the remaining Handsome Stubbles to the dodgeball court, where they split into two teams to compete for Clare's honor. And if you thought Jason felt naked during his date with Clare, YOU DON'T KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD, because she decides to up the ante and make it a game of strip dodgeball. You know, that classic game! The winners score time with her; the losers walk back to the resort with their man bits out of quarantine. No one looks eager about it – least of all Harrison. Remember Peter's lingerie pillow fight date last year and how it was retrograde, objectifying and somehow even below "The Bachelor"? I did not need a sequel. Unsurprisingly, time and dodgeballs did not make it sweeter. 

Unfortunately for the blue team, they forgot the five Ds of dodgeball – dodge, duck, dip dive and dodge – and thus had to face the sixth D: dongs. Even worse, after setting records for the most black censor boxes on screen at a single time, they were kicked out of the most important D – the date – and instead sent trotting back in the buff to the rest of the dudes to sit and think about their choices. OK, but maybe don't sit on the couch with all your naked dodgeball sweat. (Patrick Bateman in particular seems peturbed about the guys soiling the sofa. Am I ... starting to like and relate to Patrick Bateman? This is a dark season, indeed.) 

As for the winning squad, they get to hang out and get some private time with Clare – seemingly a boon for everyone, except for a Handsome Stubble named Brandon. He starts off their time together with an unassuming opener, saying how when he heard she was the Bachelorette, he had to sign up. So far, so standard. Clare asks a normal follow-up about what it was about her that he was interested in ... and Brandon's got nothing other than she's beautiful and ... cue the crickets.

Now, in fairness to Brandon, the point of the show – and dating, as a concept – is to get to know Clare better. But instead of saying something like, "I thought you were a compelling woman who I really wanted to truly get to know as a person, not just as your TV persona," he stammers and stutters out a complaint about how the other Stubbles didn't really know her either. This falls under the category of "Maybe consider watching the show before coming on the show," something he'll have plenty of time to do after Clare preemptively gives him the boot for essentially not watching her season of "The Bachelor." And, most crucially, for not being Dale.

Somehow that's only the second biggest drama during the post-dodgeball celebrations, though, as Blake Moynes poutily makes his way over to the afterparty and steals Clare away ... despite the fact that he was on the losing team and not invited. Well, that's very un-Canadian of him! This marks his second rule-break as well after texting Clare before the show began taping. Surely, Clare won't let this bad behavior stand for a second (*puts finger to ear*) oh, I'm getting reports that's EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED BECAUSE SHE GIVES HIM A ROSE ON THE SIDE THE FOLLOWING NIGHT! Did we learn nothing from Peter's season?! Not to blame Clare for a guy's crappy decisions, but if you reward bad behavior on this show, you're dooming yourself to chaos. And these guys – who created a united front of Brooks Brothers to nudge Blake out of their date – don't even know about the earlier text conversation yet. I'm sure they'll LOVE that detail. 

Anyways, some guy named Chasen gets the group date rose. However, considering he's not Dale, this is utterly pointless.

Speaking of Dale, at the pre-rose ceremony cocktail party, Clare spends more time canoodling with her already-selected winner. Why are we doing this to these poor guys, Harrison? The game is over; where's the mercy rule when you need it? THIS IS A WASTE OF RAPID COVID TESTS!

One person has already had enough: Yosef, who was not pleased with the strip dodgeball group date – and not just because he saw far more contestant undercarriage than he expected. He's upset because he cannot believe Clare would DARE do such an indecent thing! He has a DAUGHTER to think about back home; what would she think of this? He very much objects to such crass objectification – and to prove it, the very next scene is a pointless beefcake shot of him shirtless getting dressed. Listen, we all understand that the naked dodgeball thing was low and sleazy ... but this is a show about 30 guys dating and kissing the same woman. I mean, he does know about Fantasy Suite week, right? Class isn't quite this show's bag, no matter the flowers and gloss. Again, this all could've been avoided if both the drama boys were sent home last week. #JusticeForLincolnLawyer

Instead, we get what looks like a blowout between Yosef and Clare next episode, with the former almost certainly the one who mockingly calls her out for being the show's oldest bachelorette. Intrigued to hear what his daughter thinks of that! And that looks like just the start of a season falling apart – but then again, it pretty much already has.