I spuddle.

This episode was prefaced with a commercial for an upcoming news story about the best wiener.   It featured video footage of a couple of dozen bloated sausages sizzling on a barbecue.   WHY this made me laugh so hard is a mystery that could only be solved by Miss Marple, but I did start watching this with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart.   Except it wasn’t a song, it was just a bunch of blood being swished around in the four chambers because actually that’s all my heart does.   Unlike Jake’s heart which CRIES!  It does!  His heart cried at least five times in this way-too-long recap episode interspersed with footage of boring crap that we didn’t care about.   BUT also!  Tenley’s heart doesn’t just efficiently move oxygenated blood around the body, it SMILES!  It does!   Awesome!  They are a perfect couple!  Let’s wrap all this up RIGHT NOW!

But no.   Because first we are forced against our will to see something that will ostensibly surprise us:  WHAT HAPPENS WHEN FORMER CONTESTANTS GET TOGETHER!   I turned to Mr. Spuddle and said, “Well, I bet there’s a hot tub.”  And lo, it was like I had magical powers because, bam, there they all were frolicking merrily in an oversized hot tub that screamed “I AM SWIRLING WITH THE KIND OF BACTERIA THAT WILL CAUSE YOU TO HAVE TO USE AN OINTMENT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES!”   There is really nothing on this planet that is more tacky and horrifying than seeing what happens to former bachelors and bachelorettes when the camera goes off, I’ve just learned.   I’m not sure if this was meant to be some sort of warning to young people, like a public service announcement that says, “If you go on this show, it’s not just a temporary leave from your dignity, it’s a lifelong affliction.”   It was just flat-out depressing.   Yes, they jiggle along to do charity work, but even that was nauseating because doing charity work is awesometastic, but if you have to film yourself doing it and make sure everyone knows you did it, it’s just tasteless, self-aggrandizing nonsense that says, “I’M SO GREAT!  LOOK AT ME BEING GREAT!  AREN’T I AWESOME?”  Answer:   No.  You are annoying.   I was mostly disappointed to see Kiptyn.   I don’t know why.   I just thought the kid had SOME class.   Wrong again.   Sigh.

I don’t know WHY we were forced to look at the cleavage of these people for so long, but I initially thought it was some kind of misguided promo for a new series that I heard that was being spun off from The Bachelor, some horrific trainwreck of a Big Brother rip-off wherein former Bachelor contestants hook up indiscriminately in a “mansion”.  But they didn’t mention it, so maybe they came to their senses and cancelled it.   I, for one, have now seen enough of the former contestants to know that I never ever ever want to set eyes on them again.   Silicone just doesn’t age well and neither does constantly seeking sex with multiple partners.   What was “fun and sexy” when you were 21 starts to look “sad and sordid” when you are NOT 21.  SOMEONE TELL THESE PEOPLE THAT.   PLEASE.   FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND BUDDHA AND EVERY OTHER HOLY ENTITY THAT HAS EVER EXISTED.

You know those discount stores where you can find designer clothes for less?  But when you walk in there and look at the racks and racks of unique items, as a whole they just look like crappy junk?  That is the exact same phenomenon that applies to this show.   Individually, some of these people may be attractive or even possibly smart and nice, but as a group, they just look like a close up of a petri dish of herpes bacteria.

I think the upshot was that now that they are no longer on the show, they are still pulling each other.   Are we meant to be happy about this or just sort of disgusted?   No idea, but I do know that just watching it made me feel like maybe I needed to go bathe in a vat of boiling bleach.   Can you get an STD from just LOOKING at Wes?   Yes?   See, that’s what I thought, too.

But back to what we are really here for, which is this boring season and the dull, short pilot who we’ve been forced to endure.   There is a beautiful, fabulous irony entrenched in all this, which is the sharp contrast between Jake earnestly searching for love and Ali spouting a bunch of crap about love and Gia sobbing about love and basically everything about LOVE vs. reality.   The reality is that this show will introduce you to itching and open sores that you never before imagined you’d know about.  And looking at the 10,000 former bachelor/ettes, you realize that NOT ONE SINGLE ONE OF THEM FOUND LOVE.   Yes, yes, Trista and Ryan, blah blah blah.   Then, if you have any IQ whatsoever, you conclude that this is NOT a show about finding love, it is a show about showcasing the tatas that you paid good money for, after all.   Or, if you’re an idiot, you persist in your incorrect belief that this season UNLIKE ALL THE OTHERS is going to end with a fairytale wedding and a happily ever after that is not just a happy ending.

But oblivious to the endless footage of what really happens to you after the camera goes off, we have to endure all the heartache and pain of what it was like to not be selected by Jake.    At one point during the endless montages of crap we’d already watched, Mr. Spuddle went outside and came back in again and I watched him open and close the door.   He was like, “Why are you staring at me?”  And I shrugged and said, “It’s either watch you open and close the front door — which is gripping, by the way — or look at the TV and if I look at the TV, my head may actually explode, so I thought it was safer to stare pointlessly at you opening and closing the door.”   I probably missed the best part of the show doing this, but you know, it’s not my fault.   It’s Mr. Spuddle’s.  HE OPENED AND CLOSED THE DOOR.

Anyway, yadda yadda.   Jake didn’t pick them, they are bummed out.   He acknowledges that Christina was the most awesome chick he didn’t pick, which was true, she was the only one who was even remotely likeable.   Then it gets so boring that to spice it up, they bring out Rozlyn, who they should be thanking for giving them a scandal that at least temporarily improved ratings.   She was boffing a producer, she still is, she’s defensive and goggle-eyed about it, everyone else is disappointed in her lack of character for besmirching the Bachelor franchise with her sluttiness.   HA HA HA HA HA HA.   OMG.   HA HA HA HA HA.   HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.    Apparently, they overlooked the fact that the Bachelor franchise is a cathouse  that was built on a foundation of sluts.    Ella tells her story at least three times about Rozlyn being on all fours and asking someone to get Ryan to put her to bed.   Rozlyn denies everything in a way that suggests that she’s used to being judged, which I’m sure she is.   Because, well, yeah.    You know.   She somehow goes on to mention that Ryan was actually married and then spouts some nonsense about how Chris flirted with his wife.   Yeah, CHRIS is the worst player in this whole drama.   Let’s not overlook the fact that not only were you competing for “love” with Jake at the same time as boffing a producer, but you were boffing a MARRIED producer.  Awesome!  You come out of this smelling like a rose, if that rose smells like the really really cheap perfume favoured by hookers.

What mystified me most about the Rozlyn Hour was why they never said the producer’s name.  It grew tiresome as everyone self-edited to insert the words “the producer” where most of the time you would just say “Ryan Callahan”.   Because why are we so diligently protecting his dignity?   Does not compute.   Yes, I understand protecting his wife’s dignity, but really, he deserves no respect.

Finally, Jake was dredged up and some artful camera work made him look at first taller than Chris and then the same height and then like he’d been shrunk in the wash.   As much work has gone into making Jake look tall as goes into hiding the identity of Ryan Callahan.   Again, je ne comprende pas.   He’s short.   The producer’s name is Ryan.   Let’s all move on, shall we?

Michelle takes the stage and does nothing as amusing as I’d hoped that she’d do, so I really have nothing to say about that.   Next up, Ali jabbers about how her job is important to her and that women should be in the workplace.   Is she going to burn her bra?   Is it 1970?  Because if not, then Ali is about 40 years behind the curveball.   Ali, sweetie, women have been working for many decades.   It’s 2010.   Try to keep up.

This is all out of order, but who cares?   Ashleigh says a bunch of nonsense that makes her seem even trashier and less classy than she was on the show, which is hard to imagine.    Elizabeth laughs at herself and the whole  wacky kissing lark that she dreamed up and we’re forced to watch it all again, and I run from the room crying about what my life has become and WHY.

Then Gia tearfully takes her seat and lisps about love and opening up, I swear OPENING UP was the single most overworked phrase this season and I still don’t know what the hell it’s supposed to mean.   At this point, Mr. Spuddle piped up and stated that he was in love with Gia.   While I helped him fill out the application to be one of the twenty-five men competing for her breasts heart, I wondered if it was at all possible that maybe I’d created a monster by ever forcing him to watch this trainwreck in the first place.   Oh wellz, what’s done is done.

So now I’m going to stumble off and pick up the shattered pieces of my broken life and I’ll see you next week when Jake makes his final decision.   And even though I know (SPOILER ALERT!) that he picks Vienna, a little birdie is telling me that he’s not going to pick either of them and that we haven’t seen the last of like, you know, like Ali, even though many of us would voluntarily donate BOTH our eyes to science to just insure that couldn’t possibly happen.    STAY TUNED!   Also, FYI, I don’t have very much inside information, at least half of that spoiler was just crap that I made up.  But that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?  IT’S ALL A BUNCH OF CRAP STUFFED INTO A SAUSAGE CASING.   See what I did there?  I referred back to something I said in the first paragraph.   That’s Essay Writing 101.   Conclude with something that mirrors your hypothesis!   EVERYONE ON THIS SHOW IS A WIENER.

THE END.

Filed under: The Bachelor