Bachelor in Paradise Recap: Did Jade and Tanner's Return Just Mess Everything Up?

What a depressing night.

We started off with Izzy and Vinny breaking it off for good, and Vinny heading home, all thanks to Izzy’s unbearable and inexplicable attraction to Lamp Man. It was actually really upsetting, and we did not blame Vinny for getting the hell out of there as fast as he could. And for Izzy, all we’ve really got is a bouquet of punctuation that looks something like this: ???!???

Izzy, you done messed up, girl.

After that devastation, ultimate relationship experts/Bachelor in Paradise’s only true success story Jade and Tanner arrived to determine the strength of all the relationships left on the beach.

Everybody sat in front of the BIP gold standard for love and basically felt really bad about themselves. Lace felt bad for not saying I love you back to Grant and now they’re both having doubts. Josh had to go back to thinking about how those two times he stole Nick’s girl, and Jen worried that Nick was backing off from her. Jared and Caila were whatever, blah, boring, but Ashley’s insistence that Caila was less into Jared than Jared was into Caila was probably what convinced Tanner and Jade to send them on a romantic date.

Here’s our hot take on this couple: we find them very boring. At this point Jared seems to be a shell of his former self, but we don’t remember what his former self was either. We totally see Caila not being all that into him, but they share a certain boring-ness that makes sense, and we kind of get the sense that no matter how she actually feels, Caila’s not about to just give into Ashley.

Jared is tired of Ashley following him around, and it certainly seems as if Ashley’s tired of being so in love with him. Caila’s tired of hearing about Ashley. We’re tired of watching this charade play out. Can’t everybody just admit Jared’s not that great and leave the guy alone to figure himself out?

Alas, no. After her ploy to keep Jade and Tanner from turning Caila and Jared into the next Jade and Tanner totally failed, Ashley decided to try telling Jared that she thinks Caila is bad news. Jared immediately went to Caila to ask her about this claim of being bad news, and Caila immediately knew who told him of this bad news. Caila confronted Ashley, and Ashley wanted to scratch her eyes out, and we wished we could join this convo to remind them that they used to be friends, and now they’re fighting over a boring guy. We also wished we could steal Caila’s hair for our own heads, but that is beside the point!

Tonight’s episode also focused quite a bit on Carly and Evan, who constantly walk the line between cute and way too weird. Carly’s constantly confused as to why she even likes this guy, and wishes he’d just be normal for a second, but not too normal, because she also likes how weird he is.

As glad as we are to see Carly happy, we just still haven’t gotten on board with Evan. If Evan were a dorky lab tech on a TV show, and we grew with him over the course of several seasons, watching him progress from super awkward dork to a more lovably awkward dork, we would 100% love him and root for him, and this would be our favorite relationship ever.

Instead, we were just plopped down in front of season four Evan with no knowledge of where he has been before, other than that time he nearly cried about Chad ripping his shirt, or that time he made up a fake date card to lure Amanda away from Josh, both of which were not great times for Evan. Give us three more seasons and we will love Evan. We just aren’t there yet.

Anyway, we’ll just leave you with this quote from Ashley, re: her emotional connection with Jared.

“You may be making out with him, but I can make out with his mind.”

Good night.

Bachelor in Paradise airs Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on ABC.