I spuddle.

OK, I’ll admit it, when I sit down to watch this show I have every intention of paying attention to the details but this season is SO ENTIRELY CRINGEWORTHY that I have to spend a lot of time looking at Clayton and cringing, looking at the floor and cringing, looking at my dirty feet and cringing, looking at ANYTHING BUT THE SCREEN BECAUSE IF I LOOK I’LL HAVE TO HAVE MY EYEBALLS REMOVED BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO SUFFUSED WITH EMBARRASSMENT TO CARRY ON.

I can’t quite pinpoint the problem.   Maybe it’s Jillian’s authentic excitement about finding True Love and Happily Ever After and Her Handsome Prince.   It’s hard to see someone so frankly setting themselves up for a fall.   Maybe it’s Brad’s red lips.   I just don’t know.   In any event, I watched.    Sort of.

So let’s get on with the show.    This episode opens with a thirty second segment, summarized here as “Dave looks psychotic and one of the other guys says, ‘Looks like he’s going to kill someone!’”   Yes, indeed.   He does look like he’s going to kill someone!   If his jaw were clenched any tighter, it would burst right through his cheek and punch someone itself.    And guess who he’s going to kill?   He’s going to kill Juan.   Cue music.   Because every time someone from South America enters a room, a mariachi band plays.   Right?  I mean, obviously.

Now let’s stop and take a moment.   Someone, please, for the love of all things on the planet Earth and maybe some of the other planets, too,  tell me what Juan did (apart from dumping the shot, which was certainly a slap in the face to all of humanity, or at least to Dave, whose relationship to alcohol is clearly deep and intense and passionate) to warrant this kind of rage.   I have been WATCHING THIS SHOW and I have NO IDEA.   I do not understand why the other guys are like, “Hey man, yeah, what he said.   I hate you, too.”   He seems like a normal guy.   Double-U Tee Eff?   Help.   I need to know.   I cannot go on without this mystery being solved.

But back to our show.   Our girl Jillian is very very busy proving how adventurous and spontaneous she is, at the same time as taking credit for the show’s production staff.   “I have a lot of adventures planned today!”   Uh, you do?   Or do the producers?   Because even Adventurous Girl would not say to herself, “Self, let’s go RAPPELLING OFF A REALLY HIGH BUILDING IN DOWNTOWN LA!”   She planned this date like I planned this headache that I’ve had for three days.   (Do I have a brain tumour?   Please say no, I am very suggestible.)   (My sister once fainted at the vet’s and now every time I even pass by a veterinary clinic, I get lightheaded for no reason.)

Ed plays along but he would rather not, which is very clear from his gritted teeth and nauseated expression.   I don’t blame you, Ed.   There is a very long list of things I will do before rappelling down a building of any height in any city.   Or town.   Or even village.   This list includes soaking myself in the guts of a fish and swimming in a tank of tiger sharks who haven’t been fed since last Christmas.    Roller skating nude down the red carpet on Oscar Night while being chased by rabid wolves.   And, oh, just about anything.    But bravo Ed because he goes along with it, likely more so that he doesn’t look like a coward on TV than to impress Jillian, who will fall in love with him anyway because she loves dark-haired men in general.   All of them.  Any of them.   Pretty indiscriminately.   Why they have anyone fair on this show at all, I have no idea.   She has a type, and damn it, she’s sticking to it.

So Ed and Jillian rappel very very very slowly down a rope which actually makes for much more lame TV watching than you’d think.   My hands were sweating, I’ll admit it, when they showed the green ropes dangling into space.   But when they actually got all hooked up?   Yawn.   Once safely on land, they plunge into a pool and set about making out vigorously.   Jillian should not be allowed in water in a bikini because she immediately becomes a soft porn version of herself.    While most of the time, she’s almost asexual in her frantic desperation to be perceived as “fearless” and “spirited” and “adventurous”, she certainly makes up for it when submerged in water.   She makes out with everyone so passionately, it’s like they are her long-lost lovers returned from the wars after being left for dead in a Korean war camp, or maybe just jail.   The whole thing makes me want to brush my teeth, if I’m being honest.   And perhaps gargle with bleach.  And then some boiling water.

The date trudges along awkwardly and Jillian ignores the red flag that Ed is waving when he says he actually has no hobbies, he just works, and his idea of fun is drinking at a hole in the wall with his buddies and maybe doing some karaoke once a week.    Ed’s idea of wild = Elton John night at Ye Olde Pubbie.    Jillian’s idea of wild = dry humping WHILE rappelling down the side of a building in a bikini.    Methinks a match is not made here.

Back at the farm, or bunkhouse, or stage set, or whatever, the rest of bachelors are sitting around staring at each other while Dave gets increasingly angry about everything, but mostly about Juan, who still hasn’t done anything as far as I can tell.     A group date is announced and we are all relieved that Juan is on it but Dave is not.    His rage (and the screen-time his rage is garnering) is getting flat-out annoying.   Juan is different around Jillian!   He can’t stand it!  But isn’t it true that Dave is also different around Jillian?   i.e. He isn’t constantly threatening to punch her?    I don’t know, it just is starting to make me want to change the channel.   But I don’t.   Why?   For YOU, my wee internet crowd of silent followers.    For you.

The group date is so painfully awkward that I can barely type about it.   For one thing, it isn’t a “date” it’s an awkwardly scripted film sequence where everyone makes out with Jillian on camera, except two dudes who are apparently starring in Brokeback Mountain and not in the shoot everyone else is participating in, which is a little more like Jillian Does Dallas.   There is kissing, kissing, kissing.  Please pass me the bleach.   Thank you.    Brad, who (don’t forget!) is the brains of the operation, is also a Badass Kisser (according to Brad), which is apparently a simile for “Bad Kisser”(according to everyone else).    It was painful to watch, it’s true.   Move your arms, dude.

Wes does a bit of weird Wes-ness where takes her aside, does some whining about how she’s cheating on him (SPOT THE IRONY!) and kisses her cheek.   Leave her wanting more, Wes!   He is so repugnant, he actually makes my skin crawl.   I keep checking my arms for caterpillars.   I was outside today and there were a lot of them and I must tell you that I hate their sticky feet and the way you have to kind of peel them off your skin if they land there.   ARGH.   Scuse me, I have to go check my hair for crawlers.    Maybe Wes has crawled in there, too.   If so, he’s probably singing that song, the one which has apparently only about three lines that he’s singing every time I look up at the screen.   I’m quite perplexed about why he’s such a big star in Mexico.   Maybe they’re all very sick there still with that swine flu and their ears are affected.

There is some making out with Robbie while the other men hoot and holler from the hottub.   Uh, AWKWARD.    Even as I type this, I’m shouting AWKWARD at random intervals, like I’ve suddenly been struck with Tourette’s and my verbal twitch is the word AWKWARD.   Robbie seems like a nice kid but also, indeed, like a kid, which makes the whole thing borderline creepy.   Anyway.  I think he says something about how he hasn’t kissed anyone for two years?   Jillian is probably happy to POP HIS CHERRY, a phrase she used on Ed’s date which I forgot to mention, which was perhaps one of the most cringe-inducing aspects of this entire episode.

Which brings us to one on one with Sascha of the Hairy Feet.   Jillian is very excited about the car museum and “squee!”s several times.    Sascha is visibly bored but according to Jillian, he’s “very excited” so what do I know?   Maybe his excitement is invisible.    He does get excited when he does a strange photo shoot with Jillian in a car, but then his excitement fades again.   He is a wolf and he’s looking for a unicorn (to hunt, kill and eat?).  Er, OK.   Well.    He doesn’t even seem to care that much when she sends him home.  On a bus.   What I want to know is why did they send him home on a BUS?   The show couldn’t spring for a driver?    I’m certain the Ferrarri rental set them back a few grand, they couldn’t have thrown him some cab fare?    Humiliating.   He took it in good spirits though, resting his hairy feet on the seat in front of him.  (Hey, wait, why is the bus empty?   Could it be that they rented him a private BUS?   If so, why?   So it appeared they were sending him off on a regular bus when really it was his own special chartered bus?   I think it’s possible that the producers themselves this season are playing that drinking game where they drink every time someone mentions the wrong reasons and are drunk when they are making up these scenes.)   (I myself had some wine tonight but it was clearly not enough.)

Back at the house, the bachelors are yawning.   When yawning footage is included, you know the show is too long.   Just a thought.   Which brings us to the Rose Ceremony.   Totally dramatic, dude.   I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT JUAN DID.    Dave has a few drinks and gets — guess what? — irrationally angry.   Juan attempts to talk to him, probably with the foot of one of the producers pushing him out onto the balcony where Dave is holding court and a couple of other guys are nodding and agreeing, mostly because they don’t want Dave to kill them later.   The whole thing is excrutiating to watch, so I look away for a while and check my Twitter stream, my e-mail, and the growth of lint in my navel.   I seriously hate belly buttons.   I cannot touch my own belly button without fainting.   It drives me crazy.   Even looking at it is making me lightheaded.

Where am I?

Oh, the roses.   Jillian gets rid of Tanner, the one without the foot fetish, and keeps the foot fetishist even though at one point in the program he grabbed her feet and rubbed them all over his face while making moaning sounds.   It was so disturbing that I actually did change the channel for that bit so I missed her reaction.   Perhaps she, too, is a fan of her own feet or maybe the producers just told her to keep him because he adds colour to the show.   If that colour is “red” and refers to the embarrassment he should feel and that we all feel when he’s in the presence of feet.

She also gets rid of Brad, the brains of the operation, no doubt because of that abysmal kiss.   No more needs to be said.   We will miss his red lips.

Now I’m tired and must sleep.   It was so hot today, like ridiculously hot and I need to drink about twenty glasses of water to replace the fluids I sweated out while we fed baby ducks and geese at the lake.    I don’t even have a funny story about that.   Sorry.     I am working on something funny happening soon though, so stay tuned.

Please.

Filed under: The Bachelorette