I spuddle.

Because I was camping, (See: Today’s Other Post), I missed this episode of The Bachelorette.   I know!   Sacre bleu!   How can I go on living without witnessing this life-changing event?   I don’t know either but as tonight is the gripping finale of what amounts to the Most Appalling Season Ever (See: Wes), you know I’ll be watching (and blogging) and I’d be remiss if I didn’t blog the episode that I missed and only started watching and then fell asleep and couldn’t be bothered to re-watch the next day or any of the days after that, and now it’s Monday and I’ll have a new episode to blog tonight and I’m overwhelmed by the necessary blogging and help!   Zut alors!   What to do?   And why am I using random exclamatory French phrases?   Pourquoi?

What was noteworthy about this episode is that Wes had the brains to not show up.    Either that or his manager — who has thus far proven to be not very astute with his whole “go on TV and get famous” idea — locked him up and stuffed a sock in his mouth to prevent him from firing any more shots into the already leaky hull of his failing career.   If he HAD shown up, I might have been more tempted to watch because for some reason (probably a character flaw), I love to watch people I hate make asses of themselves on network television.    Also noteably absent was Reid, which was a bit of a mystery.   Yes, he’s a guy.   No, guys don’t like to be dumped on national TV (or anywhere else).   Yes, he really liked her (or I think he did, anyway).   But frankly I thought he was the frontrunner to be next season’s Bachelor, which would at least make next season more entertaining than this one, because say what you will about Reid, he was at least sort of human, could laugh at himself, and was neurotic as hell.   At least, more interesting than, say, Jake — who is rumoured to be next in line for the job — with his self-perceived perfection and overly dramatic need to do the Right Thing for the Right Reasons at the Right Time.    I’m sure he’s very nice.   But… yawn.   BUT if Reid was going to be next year’s Bachelor, he surely would have been there and have been talked up (as Jake was) re: the role of Bachelor, so that’s not what’s going to happen.   But… but… but…

I smell something fishy.    Methinks we haven’t seen the last of Reid, but that’s all I’m going to say about that in case I’m completely wrong and then end up looking like an idiot, which I might do anyway, but at least it won’t be because of an incorrect Bachelorette prediction.   (Has my life really come to this?   Really?  Wha__ happened?)

Even more obviously missing was Jillian herself, who appeared in pre-taped segments sitting with Chris Harrison in a room with a fireplace and a fancy rug.     Am I crazy or does the “star” of the show not usually make an appearance to face all the people he/she rejected in earlier episodes?   Is it not the jarring discomfort of seeing this that makes us tune in?   And if she’s not there, then … why… exactly… are… we… watching?   Except in my case, when I didn’t.

Anywho, I got as far into the episode as Jillian explaining how she always thought she’d marry a honky-tonk cowboy who likes beer, a sentiment that made me gag on my own uvula insofar as, well, HONKY TONK COWBOY?   Beer?  Just… I don’t know.   Honky tonk?   I don’t know if it’s the words “honky tonk” (or the idea that Wes embodied anything honky or tonky) that are annoying or maybe it’s just Jillian who annoys me with her ridiculous and on-going belief that what she saw of Wes was different than what we saw.   EVEN AFTER WATCHING THE SHOW, she still clings to the belief that although he STARTED OFF being their for the dreaded Wrong Reason, he did come to love her after all.    HE DID NOT, JILLIAN.   He was using you.    What does it take?   Seriously?   Skywriting?   A permanent tattoo on her forearm?    Some large red writing on the wall?   Anyway, he’s gone now, so who cares?   Not me, certainly, but I have a hard time letting go of loathing.     Maybe that’s what I’ll call my autobiography, it’s kind of catchy:   “Letting Go Of Loathing”.    But then I’d have to DO it, like actualy let go, which I can’t do, so I wouldn’t call my book that at all, maybe something more like, “How I Never Let Anything Go And Lived To Tell About It”.

Then she launched into a diatribe about Ed and how he left and came back and I started reading The Bun’s Lego magazine because I was so irked with the way that even though it’s clearly a different day, Jillian seems only able to say one thing.    There was nothing new in what she said, although the segment where Ed was drunk was worth watching because, well, “You just keep saying so many words!”   Yes, Ed, she does.   And if you marry her, she will continue to do so.   Words, words, words.   Baffling, really.   Then she went on about how she fell in love with Kiptyn on the ropes course because he looked like a baby giraffe, something that she plagiarized from herself on a previous episode.    And really, he looked nothing like a baby giraffe.   I’m willing to bet that a baby giraffe wouldn’t have been able to get up the ladder, much less cross the tightrope.   Still, I’m glad she’s finally “falling for Kiptyn” as he is, in fact, one of the last two guys she has to choose from and even if she’s only just now fallen for him, better late than never.

I was about to shut off the TV and go to bed and read a book or perhaps use a Q-tip to get the accumulated camping dirt and sand out of my belly button, but then who should appear on my screen but Mr. Jason Mesnick himself.    More loathsome even than Wes, Jason positively dripped with self-congratulatory smugness, as — draped over a now-brunette Molly — he explained to America that if he hadn’t taken such a huge personal risk, he wouldn’t be so damn happy as he is today.    Which made it seem like perhaps he had to rescue Molly from the mouth of a rabid tiger on a mountain top that he’d scaled by crossing forest fires and raging rivers, and not — as the case actually is — that he simply dumped another girl unceremoniously and publicly so he could un-breakup with someone that he’d previously dumped unceremoniously and publicly.  Because she’s the love of his life, something he hadn’t realized the month before when he’d thought Melissa was hotter.   Wow, that was a sacrifice.   But hey, wait, wasn’t Deanna Pappas also the love of his life?   And am I wrong when I say that there is something creepily over-eager about the grin he cannot wipe from his face?   And indeed if what Molly and Jason say is true, and that for a while after the show their lives were hell, why on God’s green earth did they come back to be on this ridiculously dull episode except to once again put their smug mugs in front of us so that we can recall immediately how dislikeable they are (well, how dislikeable Jason is and Molly only by association)(I note that she doesn’t even live in the same state as him, probably a wise move, although a wiser one would have been if she’d dumped HIM right then and there) and how, really, no matter how “happy” Melissa is today it doesn’t change the fact that she was humiliated for no good reason except that Jason is a wishy-washy prick who cannot make up his mind?

Hey, check it out, I’m not letting that go either.

Well, back to work.   I turned the TV off at that point, so I’ve no idea what went on to take place, but I hear that tonight is going to be The Most Dramatic Bachelorette Episode in History so I’ve got to go now and clear some room on the PVR.     Watch this space for tomorrow’s gripping recap!   Who will it be?   My money is on Kiptyn or Ed, but YOU JUST NEVER KNOW, DO YOU?   (That’s foreshadowing, people.   I have a creepy sixth sense for these things.) (Or maybe I’m making it all up.)  (Probably the latter.)

Filed under: The Bachelorette