I spuddle.

So I watched the first episode of Ali’s Bachelorette season and now I feel like a human failure, a giant sponge of enormous failosity, because I said I wouldn’t watch and I have made myself a liar.  There is something about Ali in general that makes me feel unkind, and it’s not just her inability to come up with a sentence that doesn’t involve the world “like” a minimum of five times, although I think someone must have talked to her about that because her “likes” are greatly reduced, or maybe Facebook kept all her “likes” when she left her job there.   No, I think my animosity towards her could just be the whole sobbing-like-a-baby-in-the-limo-after-she-chose-her-job-over-Jake thing or just the fact that she was in “love” with Jake to begin with, because as you know, I think that Jake is perhaps the most vapid, pointless, insipid character ever to be created by this nauseating franchise that I CANNOT STOP WATCHING.   (This is a thinly-veiled cry for help, not to mention that it took me three attempts to spell “veiled” correctly, and there I did it again.   If help does not appear within minutes of me posting this, I’m going to believe that none of you people really care, or are actually reading this.)

So anyway, this will be all out of order and not much of a recap, if you want to read a recap containing actual and correct information, you may want to check the official recap site of The Bachelorette which is lurking around somewhere on ABC’s website.   Or NBC.  Or whatever this network is.   I have no idea.  I watch it on some sort of jump channel so I can tape it on Eastern time which is its own entertainment.   I mean,  I was completely captivated by the commercials for the upcoming news hour which apparently was about to feature a view of Venus Williams accidentally flashing the crowd at a tennis tournament, plus WAS THIS WOMAN EXPLOITED BY HOOTERS?   Seriously, do you ever WORK at HOOTERS and expect NOT to be exploited?   I’m not down with exploitation but maybe I’d apply at a place that wasn’t named after a slang word for breasts if I was going to be a stickler for political correctness.   I did not watch the news on this channel, FYI, so forever I will be in the dark about the Hooters’ waitress and Venus Williams’ nether regions.

But back to the show, which I half-watched because the introductory show always has me looking at the floor for most of it because seeing other people being nervous makes me a thousand times more nervous.   In this case, I meant to look at the floor but ended up looking at my feet.   When I sit a certain way, i.e. on the couch, my feet turn a bluish colour.   It’s true.   Then I had to spend some time googling “bluish feet” in case I was dying without my knowledge.   And although The Bun would be able to cash in on the Dead Mother card later on a reality dating TV (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE MAY THIS NEVER HAPPEN) show, I don’t think it would be entirely worth it in the long run.   Not that I think Chris from Cape Cod was cashing in, because he didn’t tell Ali that his mother died and I was MOVED TO TEARS by his story, I was, I’m not even lying, which just goes to show that I’m quickly losing the cynicism required to properly snarkily recap this TV show.

Anywho, a bunch of white guys will be competing for Ali’s heart this season and most of them look similar to each other so I have yet to be able to tell them apart, but I can say that I thought the Canadian wrestler looked kind of sweet and I didn’t understand why the other boys were so determined to douse him with the haterade.   Fellow Canadian Craig looked a tiny bit creepy but that could be because he was making up for what he lacked in actual stature by giving himself tall hair and tall hair makes me nervous, I’m looking at YOU, Lee DeWyze, because I thought you were going to win AI until I saw that tall hair you were sporting.   And I love you.   I do.    But was the tall hair really necessary?

Apparently Ali has given up her marketing role at Facebook AND her apartment to be on the show and I’m a bit mystified by this because doesn’t the whole process take only 8 weeks and won’t she need a job and a place to live when it ends?   Or does this episode come with a castle in the sky?   Seriously, Delta Dawn, I don’t think it does.   You should have kept at least the apartment.  And also, actually, that job, because no small number of these boys are unemployed and living in their parents’ basements, or maybe it’s just the one mighty nervous kid who jumped around so much he seemed like at least twenty people.   I suspect that Ali is going to mention ALL THAT SHE GAVE UP (Everything!  She gave up EVERYTHING!) at least 12 times per episode and every time she does, a baby raccoon dies.  (I was going to say a kitten but it gets boring with all those kittens constantly dying for the sake of a joke and I’m angry at raccoons right now because one of them lives under my back deck and keeps eating my pea plants.)

So the men do the usual things they do to impress the girl on this program, there’s a ukelele song that I’ll admit I thought was really sweet and transformed Hunter in my eyes from being an odd-looking nervous guy to being a cute-ish ukelele player, so I guess that was a win.   Then Craig R. started bandying around sneaker keychains and I guess I wasn’t paying much attention because WHAT?   Did he grab those at a kiosk in the airport?  Sneaker keychains do not compute.   She also got a fish-hook (sweet) and  a wooden heart (sweet) (WHERE HAS MY CYNICISM GONE?) and then a bunch of other stuff that was forgettable or must have been because I’ve forgotten it.   Then there was all the posturing that goes on amongst the men when Ali is out of the room, which is both predictable and annoying to watch and made me think of Juan on Deanna’s season and I STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT HE DID THAT WAS SO WRONG.   Someone, for the love of every holy deity on the planet, TELL ME WHAT HE DID.   Anyway, the group all ganged up on the two Canadians which made me feel sad, being Canadian and all.   Did I mention the ganging up already?  I did?   What?   Oh.   OK.   Sorry.   I’m distracted by my need to go to bed and sleep sleep sleep for many hours.

I actually don’t know who Ali picked and didn’t pick because I started mindlessly staring at my Twitter stream and obsessing over the fact that every once in a while someone delists me and it just seems like so much trouble to delist someone that it must mean they really really hate me and WHY?  I’m nice, damn it.   I really am.   People like me.   Some people.   Well, my mum likes me.   And almost certainly my kids.   Everyone else maybe doesn’t like me as much and why not?   See, I start thinking about things like this and worrying about unemployed Ali’s homelessness becomes less of a priority.

Here’s my take on it:   I like Chris from Cape Cod.   Because he was so so sweet about his mom.   And he was cute and  seemed of a normal-ish height, whereas many of the other competitors were more in the Tom Cruise class of height-challengement.    Challengement is not, for the record, an actual word, but it sounded good in that sentence.   Not that height amounts to anything really, but on TV it just looks slightly odd when one person is very tall and has a big head and the other person is short and has a tiny little wee one.   Even Mr. Spuddle remarked on the fact that most of her suitors looked tiny enough compared to Ali that she could perhaps tote them around in her handbag.   And she’s not a big girl, she’s wee.  So, mystifying.   Was it camera angle?   Cruel production values?

I also liked the wrestler because he was so genuinely mystified about why everyone laughed at him (NOTE TO WRESTLER:  IT’S BECAUSE THEY ARE SKEERED OF YOU.)   I liked one other guy but I didn’t catch his name any of the times he was on screen.   Some of the other people she chose were completely new to me and made me wonder if the producers also fell asleep because they felt like they had seen this show 10 times before.   Aren’t they supposed to highlight the people who actually make it to the next round?   Because the fact she appeared to pick a handful of random strangers was confusing and made me yearn for a simpler time where reality TV does not exist and I stayed up late reading actual real books instead of blogging the tawdry lives of dating show pseudo-celebrities.

I guess I’m in it now, I mean, I do need to know who Ali was chasing down the stairs shouting at and who — for gravy’s sake, is there NO OTHER STORYLINE AVAILABLE? — already has a girlfriend and which of the twenty-five are going to leave the show because their job called.   We know who that’s NOT going to be, guy-who-lives-in-parents’-basement and other “between jobs” players.

I apologize for the reduced snark.   Sometimes I actually for a fleeting second believe that at least a few of these people are there FOR THE RIGHT REASONS!   I do believe in love!  I do!  I do!   But then luckily Chris Harrison is there with a ballot box to remind me that we ARE here to judge you all as harshly as humanly possible and you are all HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS and probably just there to sell your album, which will be released this month.   Oh, sorry, Wes isn’t on this time.  My bad.

Night all!   See you next week, same bat time, same bat channel.     I’ll look around the house for my snark, I’m sure it’s here somewhere.

Filed under: The Bachelorette