Another big Tuesday filled with a ton of information “Bachelorette” and even “Bachelor” related. So many things to get to. In order: this week’s podcast guest (which I’m very excited for), “Love Island” ratings, Peter’s ex speaks out (page 1), “Men Tell All” spoilers (page 2), a new venture the “Bachelor” is doing, ratings, Hannah & Tyler & just rumors surrounding them (page 3), a transcription from Luke and Hannah’s conversation at dinner last night, along with the twitter war that took place between them late last night (page 4), and then my thoughts on their disagreement, where Luke went wrong, where Hannah may have exaggerated a bit, a Christian readers thought, and preview for next week (page 5). A shit ton of things to get this week and because I’m such a procrastinator, that’s why it’s up a little later today. I swear I’m the worst. You should’ve seen me last night. The show ends at 9pm CST, and I didn’t write my first word until about 12:45pm because I’m a dilly dallier. Watched “Love Island,” watched RAW, texted people, had a conversation – just did everything I could to not sit down and write. Then I did at 12:45, wrote for about 30 minutes, went to bed, up at 7:00am, then didn’t start writing til 8:00. This exercise is basically wash, rinse, repeat every week.

Get your “Reader Emails” in today for tomorrow’s column. I’m sure you’ll have plenty to say on Luke. I might need to limit how many of those get in just because I have a feeling it’ll be repetitive. At the end of last week’s podcast, I mentioned that this week we could possibly have someone a long time coming and that was mentioned recently. Well it happened. Vienna Girardi will be on this week’s podcast as we recorded last Thursday. She was excellent and had some very insightful stories about her time with Jake. Also, she really went a lot deeper into her tragic story from 2 years ago losing her twins at 5 months than I thought she would. It got emotional as it would for anyone talking about that again. I can’t wait for you to hear it.

So “Love Island” started last Tuesday night on CBS last week and is running 5 night a week. It’s very popular overseas, and CBS took a huge gamble giving it a one month run and putting it on every night but Saturday and Sunday. Here were the ratings for the first 5 episodes:

Tuesday 7/9 – 2.61 million viewers (.6 rating)

Wednesday 7/10 – 2.59 million (.6 rating)

Thursday 7/11 – 2.51 million (.6 rating)

Friday – 7/12 – 2.03 million (.4 rating)

Monday – 7/15 – 2.11 million (.5 rating)

So basically it draws half the overall audience than the “Bachelorette” does, and about 40% of their rating. And it’s trending downward. I watched all 4 last week (and watched last nights), and the thing is, there’s just nothing really happening. We’ve seen this before. Like, a month ago and it was called “Paradise Hotel.” Tell me how it’s different. Guys and girls immediately couple up, they lay around the house all day talking about who likes who and who vibes with who, they have to sleep in the same bed with the person, then someone gets eliminated because they haven’t paired up yet. They’ve had three challenges that gave no one any sort of advantage in the game until last night’s that wasn’t much of an advantage. They’re just there to, well, I don’t know why they’re there. I just don’t know why CBS thought this was going to be some revolution in the reality TV dating world. It’s old, it’s tired, and nothing about that show is popping yet. Maybe it will at some point, I don’t know. I’ll stick with it through this week, but CBS is in trouble with numbers like those and committed for 22 episodes. Yikes.

So the big story to come out yesterday was Peter’s ex, Calee Lutes, did an interview with ET about their relationship. As you know, the week after the Haley story broke, I was going to run my interview with Calee about her relationship with Peter when she told me she saw the backlash Haley was getting and decided against it. Calee texted me yesterday morning giving me a heads up saying she had spoken to them and it would be running soon, but felt she should let me know first because we had been in contact since March. Reading her interview was nothing new. She had told me the exact same thing.

I think it’s short sighted, and probably coming from a place of bias, if your response is, “What’s the big deal? He broke up with her, it was December three months before he started filming, and they only dated for 5 months.” Yes, in a vacuum that argument sounds great. But because he broke in December and didn’t leave for filming til March, if you really think that this out of the blue breakup had NOTHING to do with him in contact with the show, then I’ve got some real cheap land to sell you. While he was emotionally involved with Calee and talking about moving her to CA, Peter is in talks with the Bachelorette. You don’t see anything wrong with that? I do. And I know Peter’s defense will be to say the Bachelorette wasn’t on the radar at the time of the breakup. Which is fine. I just choose not to believe that in the least bit because his texts and actions speak otherwise. Did you read the text messages? It’s more than just the time spent together. Families were involved. I Love You’s were exchanged. Efforts to move her to California were talked about. And then the relationship ends over a phone call out of the blue with no real explanation, only to find out he did the show? I know Peter fans will defend this, and no one’s saying Peter is the devil, Peter is a horrible human being, or Peter should be burned at the stake. Hell, I don’t think what he did was worse than Jed, but it doesn’t mean what he did wasn’t really sh***y to do to someone you cared about. It looks horrible. You don’t treat people this way. Because you don’t think it’s as bad as what Jed did, and therefore isn’t a story, is not what we’re arguing here.

Because this isn’t as egregious as Jed’s transgression, doesn’t mean Calee doesn’t have a right to share it, or that it’s “not a story” as some people who’ve hung out with Peter and taken pictures with him so eloquently put it yesterday. Yes, it is a story, and by saying it’s NOT a story, you’re immediately discrediting Calee and not giving her a voice. Or, basically saying her voice means nothing. Man, Bachelor Nation contestants will defend the ones they like to the death, screw objectivity. And of course you saw plenty of “she’s doing this for 15 minutes” or “she wants to be famous” replies yesterday, which is clearly ignorance, or Peter’s militia that refuse to see anything negative. Calee has already moved on and in a new relationship. This isn’t jealousy. She’s not going to all the sudden start appearing on TV shows everywhere, etc. This whole “she wants to be famous” line people love to throw out is so hollow. What does that even mean? What exactly is Calee gonna be “famous” for now for telling her story? Let me make this as simple as possible for everyone defending Peter now: Take this exact story that came out yesterday, and replace Peter with Luke P., would you still be saying “big deal?” No, you wouldn’t. You would be killing him because you’ve already been trained to not like him. But because Peter is cute and has dimples and hasn’t had any negative edit this season, it means it’s somehow not as bad to you.

The bottom line is this happened to Calee. This was her experience with Peter. I know it to be true because I’ve seen texts and pictures over the last 3 months that she shared with me from their relationship that back up everything she said in that story, along with talking to her on numerous occasions. She can tell her story to whoever she wants to and whenever she wants to. Doesn’t mean it’s not true. She didn’t get paid for it, you know she was struggling with telling it because she didn’t want our interview posted two weeks ago after all the hate that Haley got coming forward. Go look at Calee’s IG page now. Read the comments coming in. And you wonder why she waited so long? It’s trolls like that who make women everywhere afraid to speak. If you contributed to that in any way, you should be ashamed of yourself. “He wasn’t that into her. Get over it” is paraphrasing what the general consensus was saying. Seriously? Did you people even read the interview? If you’re going to minimize the whole relationship down to that, then you’re a lost cause and completely being biased towards Peter. And people who do that are irrelevant. Unreal that because he broke up with her, that means her story isn’t worth anything. Any woman who is backing Peter in this, remember how I said replace Peter’s name with Luke P.’s earlier and see how that would change reaction? Now replace Calee’s name in this story with yours. If this happened to you, you’re telling me you wouldn’t be pissed at the guy? Please. You’d be hurt and mad. She has a right to be, so let her.

“Men Tell All” spoilers on Page 2…

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