I spuddle.

The funny thing is that watching other people kissing makes me really uncomfortable.   It’s just one of those things that ain’t pretty.   It’s AWKWARD.   It’s embarrassing.   Needless to say, I’ve spent much of this season of The Bachelor contemplating how our fireplace (which is below the TV) really is an eyesore and maybe I should get a screen to put in front of it so I don’t have to look at it, but then the kids would just play with the screen and it would never be located in front of the fireplace and probably there wouldn’t be any point.   So I’m stuck with the ugly fireplace but if I want to look away from the fireplace I’m forced to watch Jake LICKING the faces of these three tawdry beasts with whom he is polluting my FAVOURITE ISLAND with smut.   Oh, sorry, he’s just trying to “open them up”.   He wants to open these women up so badly that he ought to be a surgeon, not a pilot.   Oh, wait, I forgot, he didn’t get into medical school.   Oh wellz.   You win a few, you lose a few.   In the case of this show, I feel like everyone loses.   What is the prize here again?   JAKE?   Ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa.   Also, I think they’ve been opened up at least one time too many already.   Unless you’re opening them up to remove bags of plastic, I think they should be disallowed from surgeon’s offices for the rest of their lives.

So the show opens with Jake blathering on endlessly about the three remaining women in a way that made me want to hurt myself badly with a fork and I’m not really into injuries or pain.   You can see fantasies of naked boobies prancing through his merry eyes as he jabbers on, or maybe I just think that because the camera kept lingering on the preposterously large breasts of “contestants”.   Having bought (and read!) US magazine this week (an all time low in my life, I admit), I know that Gina has had hers done twice and Vienna bought hers while her husband was serving nobly overseas by emptying his bank account into the outstretched palm of the plastic surgeon at Tits’R'Us.

Anyway, it’s OVERNIGHT DATE week and Jake can hardly keep still in his seat.   After not getting any action perhaps EVER due to his negligible dating skillz, he is now going to go crazy THREE NIGHTS IN A ROW.   I hope he’s taking some kind of preventative antibiotics.

So now we’re in St. Lucia.   Did I tell you that Mr. Spuddle and I went to St. Lucia in 2006?   Well, we did.   And it was SO AMAZING.    Except now it’s ruined because it’s associated with this sordid travesty and YES I AM SOBBING OPENLY RIGHT NOW.   We did not stay in any of the places displayed on this show and we laughed merrily as they visited the market “to shop like St. Lucians do”, because, yeah, without a camera crew, it is NOTHING like that.   Trust me.   Also, native St. Lucians do not spend $50 on shell necklaces imported from China, they don’t have that kind of disposable income.   But whatevs.   I am not here to do a travel piece on St. Lucia because for some reason instead of writing intelligent and interesting things, I’ve decided to write about a show that I now openly loathe.   I will say, because I’m incapable of shutting up, that we DID go to a grocery store where St. Lucians actually DO shop and it was eye opening and made me feel like a greedy capitalist pig just out of the sheer guilt I felt about the choices we had back home.    Also, it was apparent that the friendly people of St. Lucia would really prefer it if the tourists stuck to the parts of the island that they’d already sold out and stayed the hell out of their Piggly Wiggly.   Except it wasn’t a Piggly Wiggly.   I just like saying Piggly Wiggly.

Oh, I interrupt my own post to say that I’ve just heard on the rumour mill that Ali is the next Bachelorette and if that’s the case, ABC, I am not going to be like you know totally OMG watching.   Period.   And where would the world be without THIS BLOG?   Exactly.   Please write to ABC and tell them “PLEASE, NOOOOO.”   I’d do it, but I’m far too lazy.

OK, fine, so now we’re dating and here is Gina playing with her lips and looking coy.   WHAT on earth is on her mind?   Gosh, I have no idea.   So after frolicking around on “their private island” (yeah, all those St. Lucians are actually just props on the SET that is YOUR SAD LIFE), going into the water in one bay and somehow emerging about five miles away (i.e. poor editing), and making out with all kinds of water in the background, there is a dinner during which Jake actually says, “Aw, she looks like a little ballerina!”   Which, frankly, made me dry heave.  I probably would have thrown up for real if I’d been bothered to get off the couch.   Then they ate, or rather, he ate, and she toyed with her lips to the point where I became downright angry.   STOP TOUCHING YOUR LIPS.   God.  I think I’m beginning to crack under the pressure of forcing myself to watch this show.    Then Jake produces the Surprising Invitation from Chris Harrison!   WHAT A SHOCK!   You know, I can’t help wondering if it would kill the producers to maybe present it differently each year, with different WORDING at least or maybe if one of the contestants could just go ahead and NOT be surprised by the Least Surprising Thing in Television History.   I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just snarky.   Anyway, off they go and Jake gets a night of playing with the boobies, which presumably he did because boy oh boy does he ever look happy (if not extra repulsively self-satisfied) the next day.

Which brings us to Tenley.   FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THINGS HOLY AND EVEN THINGS THAT ARE NOT HOLY, I’M GOING TO LOSE IT IF I HEAR ABOUT THE EX HUSBAND ONE MORE TIME .  She got a weird date that involved a picnic in the mud, which is mystifying because some of the most beautiful beaches in the world are on St. Lucia, and she scored a non-photogenic patch of mud.   During the picnic, she asked very very very important questions, such as “Will we picnic in real life?” and then prattled on about how grateful she is that Jake notices that she has values and how much she appreciates that even though she’s been married, he still is into sleeping with her.   LIKE BEING MARRIED AND THEN DIVORCED IS A CHARACTER FLAW?   I don’t think so.   Her husband cheated.  It would have been more of a character flaw to stay with him and if she apologizes ONE MORE TIME I’m going to start fast forwarding every time she speaks.   Because I know what she’s going to say:

1.  She loves to dance.

2.  She choreographed it herself!

3.  She has only ever been with one man!

4.  She has an ex-husband!

5.  He cheated on her!

Her heart is as tender as a baby clam that’s been dropped from a great height by a ravenous gull and gosh, what better way to get back into the game and open your heart to love than with a guy who slept with one girl the night before and then another the night AFTER you.   I’d think if you’d only ever been with one man, you’d be pretty choosy about who is next and maybe would want to avoid VD, as opposed to picking a man-slut and opening yourself up to syphillis.   But what do I know?   I’m an old-fashioned type girl, sort of.   But not actually, because I met Mr. Spuddle on the internetz, oh yes I did.   BUT AT LEAST IT WASN’T A SORDID REALITY DATING SHOW.    Jake explains to Tenley that their life is going to be one endless flight on United after another and she reacts as though she’s won first prize in the raffle during the church picnic.   Well, she’s not going to partake in these fantasy flights to Kentucky anyway, because we all know that Vienna is the lucky recipient of endless frequent flyer miles, but boy Jake is excited to sleep with her.    He’s practically panting, and we are all ready to actually forgo any future TV watching in favour of sitting in a dark room with our eyes closed undergoing intense hypnosis in an effort to rid our mind of the images of Jake getting lucky for a second night in a row and Tenley checking her “morals” and “values” at the door of the fantasy suite.

Next up?  Vienna.   Jake is in love lust with Vienna and as such, the show is already over and more embarrassing to watch than usual because even though he’s a good Christian boy, he’s in love lust with one woman and MORE than willing to boff a couple of others when the opportunity comes up.   I must say that if I were Vienna and heard how many times he called me “immature” on TV, I’d drop him in a hot second.   She’s YOUNG, Jake.   Not the same thing as “immature”.  She’s actually the approximate maturity level you would expect from someone who has only been legal for two years.   The word “immature”, however,  would describe YOU.   YOU ARE THIRTY THREE YEARS OLD.   Jake wants to mature WITH Vienna, but he’s overlooking the fact that he has a ten year head start.

Vienna is rilly rilly rilly rilly into Jake and rilly rilly rilly into winning and is also willing to spout on about how much she LOVES him, all the while beaming like a Price is Right model during the shocase showdown.  She is truly an idiot and although I swore I would never say anything openly mean about this bimbos on this blog, I guess I’m a hypocrite because I just did.   Oops.   She seems confused about whether THIS TV world would be her life, or whether her actual life would be one spent living with a personality-free*, $50,000/year pilot being thrifty with the grocery money and wishing they could afford a hotel in whatever dreary city they can fly to for free.    I’ve heard that Jake is now single again so I guess the scales fell from her eyes as soon as the frenzied excitement of “winning” passed.   I can’t say the word “winning” in this context without laughing so hard, I forget what I’m going to say next.   I’m sure it wasn’t important.

The amount of kissing and dry humping in this date was so cloyingly over the top that I had to check the cable box to see if I’d accidentally dialled up an adult channel by mistake.   Wink wink, nudge nudge.   Then I mentally renovated my entire living room and cried.   Then I hit the fast forward button because there is only so much I can take.   So I missed some in the sense that I didn’t WATCH some but I didn’t actually miss it AT ALL.

But wait!   Ali is not gone for good.   The producers sloppily clip together a scene that makes it look like Jake’s asking her to come to St. Lucia!   And we are fooled!   For almost two minutes!   Then we are forced — as punishment — to watch the World’s Most Painfully Awkward Conversation!   Jake is apathetic!   But Ali?    Like totally, she made a mistake!  You know, like!   The worst like thing in her life!   She wants him back!   But Ali is not a good actress!   And Jake is not a good actor!   So the upshot is that she fake cries and gets … to be the next Bachelorette!  And en masse, America stops watching ABC!

That segment dragged on for so long that I did fast forward to the end and not surprisingly — because I already know what happened — Gina is sent back to New York where she will be forced to find another major league athlete to decorate the arm of while toying with her lips coyly.   I just hope she can stop him from sleeping with all her friends.   There is something about her that I find downright sad.   I think it’s because I am a psychiatrist.    Oh, wait, no I’m not.   I mean, psychologist!   Except I’m not one of those either.   BUT I did take Psych 101 about 20 years ago, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Gina uses her sexuality to mask the deep insecurity that she struggles with as a result of being bullied as a child.   She really needs to downplay that shizzle because it’s really off-putting.  Almost certainly, she’ll marry a hockey/baseball/basketball player and go on to lead a life of privilege and wealth, so probably she’ll be OK, either way.    I’m just saying.   I mean, it wouldn’t be much of a blog if I didn’t practice some amateur analysis, would it?

Coming up next week, The Bachelor franchise ruins the South end of St. Lucia!   We meet Jake’s parents!   Jake chooses a wife!  Except not really because first the boring episode where The Bachelor Tells All by not saying anything new and/or interesting and scrunching up his face in what he imagines is a “charming grin” but in real life just looks like a self-satisfied smirk.    At least we’ll have Michelle explaining her particular brand of krazy, which might just be funny enough to make the episode worthwhile.   We’ll see, won’t we?

*  Seriously, he has so little personality that I think he may actually BE a black hole, a giant void into which the people around him also lose their personalities and wake up a week later scratching their heads and wondering why they are so bored to be alive.

Filed under: The Bachelor, The Bachelorette