I spuddle.

I’ll admit from the outset that I’ve had a really weird week and weird things have happened, mostly that involve my legs being numb.   I don’t like it when weird things happen to any of my body parts so I may have been distracted and annoyed even before this show began, but at the same time, looking forward to it in the same way that a vicious dog looks forward to the mailman’s arrival so that he can put on a big obnoxious show of ferocity and then go back to sleep.   That was a bad metaphor, right?  NOT AS BAD AS THE METAPHORS ON THIS SHOW.   I mean, seriously.   “Love is a two-way street!”   No, it isn’t, Jake.   It’s a one-way street and hopefully you are travelling in the same vehicle, because if it’s a two way street and you’re both in your own cars and going in different directions than the best you can hope for is some kind of gentle swerve that causes your cars to scrape each other causing thousands in damages but with no real injury.    I’m beginning to wonder if Jake exists, or if he’s a cardboard cutout programmed to spout random cliches that make no sense and do not apply to whatever situation he is actually IN.    But maybe I’m just snarky.   I admit it.

The show opens with a one on one date with Vienna, after a bunch of nonsense about how hard the previous week was.   Was it hard?   It took me a minute to realize that he was referring to Rozlyn screwing the producer while she waited for him to come back to the roof with a rose.   Come on, Jake.  That was hard for exactly no one.   In fact, if it hadn’t happened, the show would have got no ratings at all and you’d be performing this pantomime for an audience of three.    So it was for the best.   Ask ABC.

I have to tell you that when we “met” all the bachelorettes this season, when I saw Vienna with her small-dog-in-a-purse, a hairstyle she stole from an 80s hair band, and breasts the size of dodgeballs, I wrote her off as an annoying Paris Hilton wannabe who looked ever so slightly like a man in drag.    On the other hand, I’ve been wrong before.   I mean, I thought  Ali was like maybe like even like cute and like a frontrunner.    As it turns out, Ali is a psychopath and Vienna is just a 23 year old who rilly rilly rilly wants to be with Jake.    She is less annoying than every single other woman in the house, who have forgotten that they are on TV in a misguided attempt to land Jake as a husband and have turned the show back into highschool, where a random girl is crucified for no reason and every single other person in the school spends every single moment of their small lives obsessing about how annoying this girl is, not realizing that THEY are the annoying ones and will end up bitter and alone.

Anywho, the date involves a helicopter and bungee jumping and it becomes even more preposterous to imagine that Jake “planned” this trainwreck.   They are both terrified of heights, which means that they should jump off a bridge over a rocky ravine together because … uh, somehow it’s a metaphor for love.  Is it?  Because I think it is not.   If only they had looked at each other and said, “You know what?   This scares the crap out of me and also looks like it would do such a number on our spines that we will be in physiotherapy for the rest of our lives to recover.    Let’s go get drunk in a hot tub.”  THEN I would have been all, “HEY, WHAT A GOOD METAPHOR FOR LOVE!”   It makes NO sense to do something that terrifies you for no reason.   Is there something in the contract that stipulates they have to bungee jump?   Because it was really just so, so, so stupid.   Either way, Vienna was almost unreasonably tolerant of his baby-like sobs and did not push him over the edge as many of us would have been tempted to do, and as a result, Jake clearly has fallen in TV love with her, at least this is suggested by the way he repeatedly wrinkles up his brow in that “I’m a bad actor trying to show how I’m feeling by using my eyebrows” way that he has.

The other girls are not as stupid as they look (oh, I kid, they totally are) and they sense this lurve-connection and move in like werewolves on the corpse of a deer.    Somehow Vienna gets to have no room-mates now, which frankly I’d consider a plus if I were her, but she seems upset about.   Ali is ferocious in her jealous rage.    Really, really ferocious.   Apparently the Sheriff of Sordid Dating Show Etiquette died and she got the badge and is all about getting up in your face and telling you how you should or should not behave and what you should or should not say.    Good thing she wasn’t on the date or she would have cut Vienna’s bungee cord.   I’m going to skip around a bit here because you watched the show, you know what happened, and I will say it’s lucky that Jake got rid of the show’s two other nutcases because ol’ Ali is here to fill their shoes and then some in her new role as Captain on the SS Krazy Ship.

Next up is a group “date”, which sounds like something that is probably meant to be a fun way of Jake to get to know a number of girls without bothering to be alone with them, but is in fact a glorified audition.   Held at the comedy club of Jon Lovitz, which may be the most depressing venue of all time, the girls are expected to perform.  Nothing says “I planned a fun date!” more than forcing people to do COMEDY (which is the single most difficult form of public speaking — which in turn is the thing that people list as being most terrified of, after bungee jumping) in front of a crowd of disinterested tourists who thought they were going to Universal Studios to go on some neat rides.   That actually happened to me at Universal Studios, not the Jon Lovitz comedy club and being forced to do stand up, but being coralled into watching something that I had no interest in.   I’m sure I looked as depressed as most of the audience of this so-called “comedy act”.   The girls were universally appalling, especially Michelle who would have been funnier if she had just stood there and looked homicidal, as she usually does.   Elizabeth said a bunch of stuff that I couldn’t make out because of the censoring but I suspect it was appallingly cheap and made her look like the silly slut that everyone in the audience already assumed her to be by virtue of the fact that she purchased two of her most prominent body parts on sale at Boobs’R'Us.   Then Corrie, who I’d previously had no problem with, spent a bunch of time doing impressions of the other girls that made her look like the head bitch of the bitch squad at Small Town High.   Not classy, girls.   Which is likely why you were selected to be on this show in the first place.

Then there was a ridiculous “wrap party”, which was like a “wrap party” in exactly zero ways.   Why don’t they just call it what it is?   It isn’t a date, it’s an audition.    It isn’t a “party”, it’s the time when you all wait to take turns making out with Jake.   Only Jake is too moody tonight for that action because he’s confused about Vienna.   Maybe it’s too boring or too much pressure or some combination of both because Michelle goes apeshit crazy.   SHE WANTS A HUSBAND.   Does no one else GET that?   EVERYONE IN HER FAMILY THIKS THIS WAS MEANT TO BE!   Is no one listening?    SHE IS HERE TO GET MARRIED AND HAVE BABIES.  (Um, has she watched the show?  Ever?  Because that happened once and never again in four thousand seasons, her odds of getting married and having babies are better in exactly EVERY other circumstance in the world.)  She doesn’t care, she wants a kiss, she’s been there for TWO WEEKS and she needs ACTION.    The awkwardness of the scene that followed was so great that I can’t even type it out, but suffice to say that she was all, “I’m going to leave!” and he was all, “OK!” and she was all, “I can’t BELIEVE YOU ARE DOING THIS!”

OK, it was sort of awesome.

Honestly, I’m just waiting for Jake to reveal SOMETHING about himself or for one of the girls to ask him ANYTHING because so far all he’s done is look annoyed at the dramatics.   Honey, you put that many women in a house together and force them to spend hours and hours and hours waiting to get five minutes with ONE guy that they are competing for, you are begging for dramatics.   Were you really expecting they would just hang out and bake cookies and read each other passages from the bible?

Jake gets all pissy and no one gets a rose, which makes not very much sense because the fact that Michelle left means that really you have an EXTRA spot to fill, not one less.   But whatever, frankly I don’t much care at this point, but am made ridiculously happy by the fact that the phrase “Wes is a douchebag” still gets hit on this site a few times a day.

The next date is with Ella who is much too sincere for this program, she is the Stephanie of this season, which means she is the southern single mother who has as much of a chance to be picked for this as I do and I’m married (sort of) and also not even on the program nor would I ever in a million years want to be.    The scenes involving Ella’s son simply made me uncomfortable and Jake going on incessantly about what a sweet sweet sweet boy the kid was only added to that.   Does Jake REALLY have NOTHING to say?    Because if he does, he sure hasn’t said it yet.   I predict that Ella lasts one more episode.   Sorry, Ella.

There is a bunch of drama in the house about Vienna, which makes my head hurt.    I started to type it out but then The Birdy started playing with my toes and I hate it when people touch my toes and I got distracted and forgot what I was going to say anyway, but it probably was that I think they can eliminate everyone except Vienna, Tenley and Gia because I think those are the only girls that Jake is even remotely interested in, if by “Vienna, Tenley and Gia”, I mean just Vienna and let’s just call it a wrap.

Then!  Finally!  The most dramatic rose ceremony ever!  Elizabeth and Jake get some one on one in which she starts again with her lip-licking “Do you want to kiss me?” nonsense and Jake finally calls her on it because it’s so annoying that even one-dimensional characters can’t take it.   The answer is that really he wants to punch her, not kiss her, only he’s too Christian for that.   He points out that her reasons for not being kissed are stupid and she cries.    She is perplexed to be called on her manipulative bullshit and then furiously angry about it, probably because she’s embarrassed, which she should be because we all certainly were embarrassed to watch it.   Vienna interrupts and calls the Wrath Of Sheriff Ali, who let’s hope only is in this for one more show because she is really standing out as like totally like loathsome, you know.

So… Jake sends home a girl who as far as I can tell he’s never even spoken to, Valishia, and Elizabeth, but you already knew that and I’m out.    Remember, kids, Wes IS a douchebag.   See you next week!

Filed under: The Bachelor