I spuddle.

Once again, I sat down last night to live-blog (OK, not really, but I like the drama and urgency the phrase “live-blog” suggests) Jillian Harris attempt to find love in various different coats.   Jillian, that is, not me.   I do not wear coats while I watch television.    Jillian probably does.   I have never seen a person with so many coats or otherwise belted garments that resemble coats.   What is up with that?   The most frequent search term to hit my blog today is “Where did Jillian Harris get that green coat?”   I think the producers of The Bachelorette should provide me with a list of where Jillian buys her clothes, or maybe we could have some kind of click and point interactive site where you could mouse over whatever she’s wearing and instantly buy it, but in your size, not hers.   She’s probably a size 0.    She’s very tiny.   The other most popular search term is “How much does Jillian Harris weigh?”  And the answer is, I have no idea.   But she seems like the kind of person who would weigh exactly 112 pounds.    I’m guessing, but I did verify it with the Magic 8-Ball.  (”It is decidedly so.”)   In other news, I weighed myself yesterday for no apparent reason and I weigh five pounds more than I thought.   I don’t particularly care, I’m just keeping you in the loop.   That’s what I do.    It’s the information super-highway, people.    The speed bumps are just information you don’t care about, such as MY height and weight.   Too bad.   It’s all just part of the glamorous journey towards the end of this post.   I should also point out that I’m an inch taller than I always thought, and I just found that out this year.   I have lied about my height for at least twenty years, but not on purpose, by accident.    If I’d known how tall I really was, would it have changed anything?   Probably not.

I have to refer back to my notes to find out what happened at all in this episode, so stand by.   OK, here we go.   I somehow deleted the first page, so we’ll jump right in at the part where the boys are all flown up to Jillian’s hometown of Vancouver.   Which is interesting because when she was on The Bachelor, her hometown was purported to be somewhere in Alberta, which Vancouver is decidedly not.   But who am I to be finicky?   The men are excited, mostly because they get to move out of the stinky bunkhouse, which is probably ceremoniously burnt after they leave because that kind of smell never really washes out.   Once in Vancouver, Jillian welcomes them all to her hotel (apparently she owns the Fairmont!) and her city (and Vancouver!) and tells them she has a lot of exciting things planned.    I wonder if the producers tell her to take the credit or if they are silently screaming off-camera, “HEY, THAT KAYAKING TO GRANVILLE ISLAND THING WAS MY IDEA.   MINE!”

Kiptyn gets the first one-on-one, which is — you guessed it — kayaking to Granville Island.   I have very few snarky things to say about this, they seemed kind of sweet together.    So instead of talking about the date, I will tell you about the time that I ditched (while rowing, not kayaking, but I’m not sure I have any funny kayaking anecdotes) right under the main bridge in town, directly in front of a pub patio filled to capacity with beer drinkers.   Nothing is more humiliating than rolling your boat and not being able to get back in while floundering in the toxic stew that we locally refer to as the Inner Harbour, because that is what it is called, clad in black spandex such that I looked like marauding sea lion.    My coach could have helped but felt that it would be a good experience for me to not-quite-drown.   At one point, my head was stuck underwater and I contemplated staying under just so I wouldn’t have to emerge, row home, and then RIDE MY BIKE TO MY APARTMENT WHILE SOAKING WET.    Which, for the record, I did do.   It was hard to explain in the elevator why I was pooling chromium-laced water around my feet, so I just acted normal.   No one asked.

But back to our girl Jillian.   She really enjoyed grocery shopping with Kiptyn, especially the part where he told her she had the most beautiful eyes.   She loves shopping as a couple.   FYI, that is EXACTLY what grocery shopping is like after you’re married!   Except it’s not, because you do it alone while the kids scream in the shopping cart and you ply them with cookies to keep their mouths busy until you can race to the checkout forgetting half of what you came for and thus having to make dinner out of a lettuce, a bag of cookies, macaroni and strawberry milk.    Anyway, then she took him back to her place, which looked pretty nice.   I liked her kitchen.    I’m obsessed with other people’s kitchens.   They cooked and made out.   There were no surprises.  They talked about their love for spontanaeity (rarely does anyone on this show admit that they like routine or predictability) and with this in common, they each mentally plan out their entire future while candles flicker enticingly, if by “enticingly”, I mean “dangerously close to dangly bits of fabric”.   I wonder if their spontanaeity extends to enjoying dramatic fire-exit escapes.   I’m kind of hoping so because that kind of excitement would really spice up this season.

Back at the fancy hotel, which has been refurbished for the benefit of the men to look like a boarding school that’s been redecorated by a 90-year old British woman,  another disembodied date box knocks at the door and reveals that Michael and Mark are going on a two-on-one date.   I recognize Gino Vanelli, but the other guy is a complete surprise to me.   Where has he been for this entire season?   He’s apparently a “pizza entrepreneur”.   I’m not sure what that means, but he also looks a few pills short of stability.

But before we see the two on one, naturally we must endure a group date, or a thinly disguised and obviously sponsored event.   It’s only a matter of time before they are jumping in and out of Ford Focuses (Foci?) while singing corny songs, a la American Idol.   In this case, our sponsor is the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, so the men go curling.   I wish the’d forced them to figure skate, preferably in pairs, but I do not produce this show.   If I did, I would have made Juan and David a couple, where David was the girl and Juan had to twirl him overhead.   No such luck.   Curling, it is.  The winning team gets a five on one, or however many there are, with Jillian.    It sounds dirty and sort of gross, but that’s because it is.   It’s pretty obvious from the get go which team is going to win, mostly because the entire show so far has been seen in “coming up next!” segments which really take the surprise out of the competition.    The five “winners” (and I use that term loosely) get to have drinks with Jillian, meaning she takes them all individually into a separate room and has a brief chat with them.    With this kind of “dating”, I can see why the track record of relationship longevity on this show has been so poor.   In any event, it’s plenty of time for David to act asinine enough that even Jillian’s poor radar for assholes starts its siren wail.     David, oblivious, says “I think she’s into me” which just goes to show that he is, in fact, insane.   Bye bye, David.    I’m sure we’ll see you in the future on the news when you are arrested for killing Juan, who you will continue to blame for your own idiotic behaviour.

After the group “date”,  Jillian takes Mike and Mark up on her own private helicopter!   To her own mountain!   On her own gondola!      Neither of these two has a chance to make it to the end, which makes this entire twenty minute segment just another twenty minutes of your life that you’ll never get back, in which you could have solved a complicated math equation if you liked math and had an equation to solve.    The only surprise is that Jillian picks Mark, who did nothing except murmur sadly about how it was possible that his ex-girlfriend might have cheated on him, something he cannot and will never get over, even though it’s only possible and he doesn’t even know if she did.   This suggests that if he does make it to the end, the final three overnight dates might kill him or at least keep him in therapy for the next forty years, but I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that, really, so am not sure why I mention it except for my kids are throwing blankets on me and thrusting plates through the gaps while screaming PUPPIES! so it’s hard to concentrate on what I think about any of this.

I’ll just skip ahead, for the sake of my sanity, to the final cocktail party.    It’s the most dramatic cocktail party ever!   Jillian is wearing a sequined dress.   I don’t know where she got it, but it looks heavy.    Sequins are heavier than you’d think.    Maybe I’ll invent a weightless sequin and get rich, although I doubt there is enough of a market for light-weight sequins to make that worthwhile.   Am I even spelling that right?   Sequin/s is one of those words that when you start repeating it in your head sounds either like nonsense or the name of a dangerous sea creature that stings like a jellyfish and floats like a whale that you should avoid while swimming and wading in the ocean or while sitting on the toilet.   A sequin could get into the pipes and swim up into the bowl, and then where will you be?

After a few awkward one-on-ones on Victorian furniture, Tanner (who this entire episode has looked increasingly shifty and upset, like someone who has commited a crime and feels bad about it but can’t figure out how to put the old lady’s purse back) blurts that someone is NOT THERE FOR THE RIGHT REASONS.    I know!  I’m shocked, too.   How could this happen?   And could he be referring to … WES?   In fact!  Someone!  Has!  A!  Girlfriend!   Cut to footage of Wes claiming that he’s often in love with five girls at once!    Cut to shocked expressions!   We think those are the WRONG REASONS!    You know when K-mart has a blue light special and they actually have a blue light, like those on police cars, that flashes in the aisle?   The producers should get one of those to flash whenever the right or wrong reasons are mentioned.    [Cue siren.]  Cut back to Wes saying that he just wants to get past this part of his life where he’s constantly getting laid and get to the part where he can just “relax and have kids”.   This is an oxymoron, which is fitting when you consider the moronic source.    I have not relaxed for a single second since having kids and have to pause for a moment because The Birdy has just pulled my glasses off my face and run away with them and I am now typing blindly.

Jillian is shocked by the news that someone may not be there for HER.   Shocked!   SHOCKED!   Do they not know how genuine she is?   And if they knew how genuine she was, how could they be there for the WRONG REASONS?   And can she not figure out that the only one who could POSSIBLY be using this show for exposure is, in fact, Wes?   Because no software programmer in the world is going to see an increase in job prospects due to the fact he was on The Bachelorette.    At least, I doubt it.     But our girl Jillian stubbornly refuses to see the writing on the wall and guesses, incorrectly, that they must be referring to Juan, who still — as far as I can tell — has done nothing incriminating short of wearing an ugly hat in one scene.    Bye bye Juan.   Oh, by the way, did you know Jillian’s first crush was a dark-haired kid who wrote her songs?   And she has a track record of dating “bad boys”?  I asked the Magic 8-Ball if Wes was going to be in the final and it said, “Don’t count on it”.   But sometimes, shockingly, the Magic 8-Ball is wrong.   I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true.

Jillian does some crying and all the men act outraged on her behalf and try to outman each other with their outrage.   Roses are handed out and the show thankfully ends without Wes manning up, but did you really think he would?   No, I thought not.

Juan and David are sent packing, David is heard ranting about how Juan threw him under the bus, which wasn’t true, unless they were sent home on the bus and Juan did, actually, throw David under it, which I wish he had.   That’s all for this week, tune in again next week for more outrage and THE WRONG REASONS REVEALED.

Filed under: The Bachelorette