I watched the wedding episode because I felt I had a duty to be snarky about it what with the fact that I’m snarky about almost everything but to tell you the truth, the whole debacle made me love Molly just a bit myself.   I mean, seriously, it’s your WEDDING, a huge deal paid for by a network and it’s sheeting with craptacular rain.  I would have been a mite bit snappish but she was just so pleasant about everything that I thought, “Gee, I wish I’D married Molly”.   She was nice about the weather and she was nice to Jason when he trotted off to his bachelor party and she’s nice IN GENERAL and I cannot be as snarky as this blog requires about someone who is just flat-out nice.   It wouldn’t be right.   Honestly, I think she is far TOO nice.   If Jason had dumped me and then slept with someone else for a while and then asked for me back, I would have backed over him with a cement mixer.   But maybe I have anger-management issues.

So the wedding itself was a bit boring, but who cares?  I actually stopped watching before the end because I was bored but The Bun really found the vows moving and I still hate Jason Mesnick because TOTALLY CLASS-FREE, DUDE.    But whatevs, good luck to them, and can I just say that while Jillian looks to be planning a wedding herself, Ed still has the demeanor of someone who is being dragged along in the wake of a speedboat and hasn’t quite figured out how to let go?   Because that is a serious boating accident waiting to happen.    Also, I would like to add that I find all the post-Bachelor relationships creepy, especially when they cross seasons, it’s like what do you people DO all day, hang out in hot tubs with other ousted contestants because there is something kind of gross and incestuous about it, like you all are dating your cousins, and it’s FINE, whatever, I’m just pretty sure that I don’t want to see it, because whenever I do, I throw up into my mouth a bit and I’m not sure why.   Maybe I just have acid reflux.    It’s possible.   I mean, yes, I probably do.   But that doesn’t change the facts, does it?   Or maybe it does.

Well, let’s wrap this up.   Molly looked pretty in her dress and was nice about the weather!   ABC did not exploit Ty nearly as much as I was expecting!  Jason still has a too-eager smile that gives me uncomfortable heartburn!   Or maybe I just eat poorly and have too much stress!

The End.

Now I’m doing the “I told you so” dance around the living room, except not really because how could I type and dance at the same time?   That would be a real talent that certainly I WISH that I had.   Think of all the books I could get written!  We do a lot of dancing in this family, I’m not even kidding about that.   I never danced until I had kids and now it’s ALL DANCING ALL THE TIME.   (And singing.)  (It’s like a freaking Disney movie around here.)

Mostly The Birdy runs up to me and says “Will you marry me?” which she believes has the same meaning as “Would you like to dance?”  And then we dance while she screams “HAPPILY EVER AFTER! HAPPILY EVER AFTER!”   And yes, she’s 2, so this is probably somewhat normal, or is it?   Because seriously I’m beginning to get scared that she’s going to one day see a commercial (or a “mamercial” as she calls them, SO CUTE, right?  I KNOW!) for The Bachelor/Bachelorette and she’s going to think it’s a GOOD IDEA which it is NOT.    Fairy tales are ruining our children’s futures!  Discuss.

Thank goodness she’ll be able to refer back to this blog which will live on in cyberspace forever and know that MUMMY SAYS FOR GOD’S SAKE DO NOT DO IT.   I’m not kidding.   I mean, let’s assume I’ll still be here to tell her “NO” in person, but maybe I’m not here, and if that is the case then seriously, Birdy, do NOT DO IT.   You will never, ever get your dignity back.   You can’t.   It gets sloughed off like hairs by a laser and those hairs do not grow back.   EVER.

Obviously Tenley and Vienna’s parents offered no such advice because look, here we are back on St. Lucia.   This is the part of the blog where I remind you once again that I WENT TO ST. LUCIA ONCE.    And!   AND!   The place where we stayed — Jalousie — was actually featured on this episode of The Bachelor so instead of actually paying attention to the endless drivel that was being spouted in such a way that it seemed like Mt. Cliche had erupted all over the TV, I was shouting, “THAT’S OUR ROOM!  THE SAME ROOM!  OMG!   LOOK!  IT’S OUR BEACH!   LOOK!  LOOK!   LOOK!  THAT’S WHERE WE DRANK ALL THAT RUM!  THAT’S WHERE I ATE AN OMELETTE MADE WITH A POUND OF BRIE!   THAT’S WHERE I PEED IN THE WATER AND THAT BARRACUDA CHASED ME!”   Because those are  just part of the tapestry of happy memories we wove at Jalousie which now have been polluted by the ridicularity of this TV show.   I’m just saying.   WE HAVE TO GO BACK AGAIN TO RIGHT THIS WRONG.

Did I mention that we went there?  And Tenley was staying in a room just like ours, albeit with nicer furniture?   Did I?  Did I?   Here is a photo, in case you do not believe me, and indeed why would you, because I make stuff up all the time for a living.   If you click the photo, you can see all our pictures from St. Lucia.   Hopefully there are none of me in a bathing suit, but if there are, please go ahead and poke your own eyes out with a fork in an effort to erase the images.   Of course, that wouldn’t work because then pictures of me in a bathing suit would be the last thing you ever saw and it would be like that horrific song “ON THE WINGS OF LOVE” in that you would find yourself remembering it on a near-constant basis until you slowly went crazy.   So maybe just try hypnosis or heavy drinking.   Whatever gets you through the day.

But back to the show, which is why you clicked the link to begin with and for some reason I am avoiding writing about because HOLY HANNAH, the EARNESTNESS of this episode was enough to make me repeatedly bang my head against the wall while repeatedly chanting, “MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP.”  If by “chanting”, I mean “screaming”.

Jake earnestly talks about finding love and loving two people which we believe NOT AT ALL because Jake is nothing if not a crap actor.   Then Tenley earnestly tries to convince Jake’s earnest family that she totally is right for the job.    Her earnestness is near-heartbreaking because it’s totally obvious at this point that Jake’s compass is pointing straight at Vienna and will not be swayed in the direction of the Disney princess who is chirping away nervously in the background about her ex-husband.   Jake can’t even hear her.   At this point, it’s just (earnest) white noise.   Which I wish it was for us, too, because the sound of Tenley’s voice is making me feel like throwing myself out the window.    Except that our windows aren’t very high off the ground and apart from breaking the glass, probably nothing would happen except a bunch of time and trouble attempting to explain to the insurance company about how Tenley made me do it.

Vienna doesn’t bother to be earnest, she is too busy grinning because someone once told her that guys dig chicks who smile.    She cannot wipe that smile off if she tries.   Did you see that movie Coraline?  Which, btw, was totally creepy and am sure the cause of nightmares amongst all the toddlers whose misguided parents interpreted “animated” to mean “kid-appropriate”?  Anyway, in that movie the Other Mother sews the Other Wyborn’s mouth into a grin which is nearly exactly like Vienna’s grin and also, equally creepy.   Hell, we’re all having nightmares now and no one on The Bachelor had those scary button eyes.   Somehow — and I’m not sure how because I was busy looking at the scenery — Vienna manages to convince Jake’s overly-involved and earnest family that she would fit right in with their clan mentality.   I actually feel sorry for these people:   Having been vetted and approved by the matriarch, what happens if your marriage then goes on the skids?   You’d hardly be allowed to divorce because the WOMEN ARE THE GLUE THAT HOLD IT ALL TOGETHER.   What?   These people are adults, they don’t need “glue”, they are attached by “genetics” and the full-on crazy that is the Ruling Mother.

Wow, I’m getting tired of typing this all out.   If I were dancing simultaneously, I’d need a nap right now.

Let’s move on to the one on one date with Tenley where Jake says that she’s not as hot as Vienna and she THANKS HIM.  Oh no, she didn’t.   OH YES, SHE DID.    She THANKED HIM.    Tenley, sweetie, you are in need of therapy.   He dissed you in a completely inappropriate way.   You do not thank him, in this circumstance.   You gather up your dignity and advise him that you wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on earth because, actually, you think that it’s important that you’re attracted to each other, and then you shove him off the side of the boat where you can only hope that he pees in the water and sends a barracuda into some sort of a one-fish feeding frenzy.

But!  It didn’t stop there.  Because she thanked him again.   And again.   Then he went back to her room — SAME AS OUR ROOM! — and she thanked him again.  AND AGAIN.   AND THEN ONE MORE TIME.   Thank you, Jake, for making me even more insecure than I was before and pointing out that, indeed, to win love on The Bachelor, you need to buy the really really BIG fake boobies!    I could have cried at this point.  In fact, I might have.   I don’t even know.   It was actually worse than when — earlier this season — she set about apologizing 4000 times for having been married before.    STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT.   GAHHHHHHHHHHH.

OK, then he hooks up with Vienna, who is staying just around the piton from Tenley at Anse Chastanet, which really does have the best snorkelling on St. Lucia in case you are interested in going there, but seriously, Jalousie is nicer.   That place where Jake was staying was just being built when we were there, so I can’t comment but actually it looked pretty fabu also.   GOD, I WANT TO GO BACK.   I do.   PLEASE SOMEONE SEND ME BACK THERE AGAIN.

The date with Vienna is as expected, there is a bunch of making out and groping and panting and rubbing and then a bit of staring deeply into each other’s slightly crossed eyes.   Did you know that Rene Descartes had a fetish for cross-eyed women?   I’m just here to inform and I doubt there are many places I could really shoehorn that into conversation.   Feel free to use it to impress people at cocktail parties, I stole it from someone else so it’s really free for the taking.

It is so painfully obvious that Jake’s going to pick Vienna, and not just because he’s told us all season that he picks the girl that everyone warns him not to pick, that the whole fiasco becomes almost unbearable AND I forgot to buy any wine to get me through the episode, which makes it even more difficult, sort of like scaling Mt. Everest having forgotten your hiking boots and being forced to wear flip flops for the trek.  i.e. Painful.   Very very very painful.

I would have fast forwarded but I wanted to see the scenery and also because I have a responsibility to you, my people.   Still, I have nothing to say about any of what ensued except that I really did think Tenley’s dress was pretty.   Usually I hate what these people are wearing because they look like they are going out for Miss Teen Drag Queen USA but actually this one was nice.   The breaking-up-with-Tenley scene was at least fifteen minutes too long, ABC.  For the love of Mike or anyone else, we do not want to see people in real pain with actual crying and whatnot.   IT MAKES US UNCOMFORTABLE, if by “us”, I mean “me”.

Then there is Vienna in some sort of appalling number that looks like she is auditioning to be a mermaid in the Las Vegas production of The Slutty Mermaid.   We brace ourselves for the proposal, but what’s this?   Jake gives Vienna back HER ring and good lord, she looks like she’s going to toss him off the precipice!   She is shocked!   HE IS DUMPING HER!   For about ten seconds, I almost respect him.   Also, it always amuses me when rejectees get pissed instead of sad.   THAT’S A RED FLAG, JAKE.

But wait!  It was just one of those wacky red herrings, he’s proposing after all.   Craptacular!   And totally predictable!   She must hurriedly re-arrange her face back into her creepy Wyborn grin!    Ah, there it is.   Relief.   Then it’s the big YES and a bunch of tongue kissing that I could live without ever seeing again and certainly could live without hearing, but wait!  I don’t have to hear it!  Because ON THE WINGS OF LOVVVEE LOOK AT THE TWO OF US!  FLYING HIGH UPON THE WINGS OF LOVE!   Oh god, make it stoppppppppppppppppp.

La la la.

The END.

Also, “I TOLD YOU SO”.

But wait!  There is more!   Let us not forget AFTER THE FINAL ROSE even though we wish we could because there is Tenley and she is so thankful!  She is!   She can love again on national TV!   She thanks Jake!   AGAIN!   MAKE IT STOP SOMEONE, PLEASE!   OK, fine, I fast forwarded a bit here but I did see her lips forming the words “Thank you!”    TENLEY, hie thee directly to therapy.   Please.   For all of us.

Then there they are.   Vienna looking decidedly less thrilled than she did throughout the series.  Is this because she’s realized that without the fancy trips and wardrobe, Jake is just… boring?   OK, fine, I’ll admit it, AGAIN I bought US Magazine where I read that she wielded an empty wine bottle over her ex’s head sometime after the show wrapped and it’s an image that I cannot shake even though there was no picture, it just seems so plausible, and yes, magazines make crap up all the time, but there is something about Vienna that just screams, “I WILL BEAT YOU WITH A BOTTLE!”   So we’ll see how it goes.   I can’t honestly say that I care at this point and Jake spouting a bunch of cliches about love made me want to ball LOVE up and chuck it in the toilet and give it a flush and then I realized that Jake is not an authority on love and it’s all going to be OK for humanity as a whole because we won’t have to hear him talk ever again on any subject and then…

Christ in a tutu, yes we WILL have to see him again because he’s going to be on Dancing with the Stars which is where Bachelor contestants go to start climbing the ladder of TV success!   OH NOES.   I don’t even watch that show and I’m distressed by this news.    Actually, at first I thought they were talking about So You Think You Can Dance and THAT actually might have been funny.   Foiled again.   Drat!

Wow, this is long.   I’m going to wind it up because my wrist is hurting and getting carpal tunnel from writing books is one thing but getting carpal tunnel from writing about The Bachelor is really really embarrassing.   DON’T TELL ANYONE.   Seriously.   It’s our secret, mkay?

Oh, wait, I can’t wind this up without mentioning how WTF HAPPENED?   When did Ali become America’s sweetheart?  Because I’m really really starting to question America’s taste.   She, like, you know, like can’t even string together a, like, sentence.   I AM NOT GOING TO BE WATCHING, ABC.   You have finally — after all these years! — broken my spirit.   It’s over.   You do not get my final rose.

THE END.

This time I really mean it!  I do!

Bye.

Am going now.

Really.

Bye bye.

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.

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.

So anyway, regardless of the fact that he barely seems to know the first thing about any of these four women, Jake is off to their hometowns.   We’re off to… New York!  It’s Gia’s town and she wants to show it to him on a boat cruise where they seem to be the only passengers.   My inner environmentalist was offended because that’s a really big boat for just two people, but then I realized that everything about this show is offensive to the environment and mankind in general, so what was I doing caring about that boat?   They took cutesy pictures of themselves only the pictures that were shown on the screen were obviously not those ones, so I didn’t really get the editing, but so what?  I’m now mentally re-editing the show?   OBVIOUSLY I NEED HELP, or maybe just antidepressants or a drink.   Gia explains that her past was peppered with pain, including how her ex slept with ALL OF HER FRIENDS.   I’m not sure if this is more of a character indictment on her ex or on her FRIENDS.   Christ on a trampoline, who has “friends” who are  ALL willing to sleep with their “friend’s” boyfriend?   How many of these tramps were there?   At what point did Gia see red flags?   Of all these ridiculous girls, she was my favourite, in that I found her semi-likeable because she was bullied in highschool, which is generally a hallmark of a person who turns out to be far more interesting than the rest of their peers.   Now I just find her depressing.  I think Jake does, too, or maybe he’s just afraid of her step-brother’s hedgehog hair.   I know I was.  In any event, by the end of this date I was sure Gia was going to go home, even though I knew she wasn’t because I read spoilers and I knew that it was Ali’s turn to weep in the limo on the way to the airport.

But moving on!  We are now in Williamstown!  And there is Ali like you know herself!   She, like, you know, like, can’t believe he is like, you know there!   And I am ready to actually throw my heavy ceramic teacup at the really expensive plasma TV!   Because, like, you know, like, she can’t, like, even get through a, like, sentence, without you know, using the word “like” three times!   I CAN’T TAKE IT!    She took Jake on a tour of her dead Grandma’s house and said that her Grandma was more like her mother than her Grandma but then we met her mother, which was confusing, because if her Grandma was really her mother, who is her mother?   I laughed so hard when her mother (her actual one, not her Grandma) said that Ali had a “heart of gold” and was the “kindest person you’ll ever meet”.   HAS SHE SEEN THE SHOW?   Ali is about as kind as a viper who is eyeing a nest full of baby rats.    But what do I know?   Her boots were cute.

Onwards!  We are in Oregon.   I like Oregon.   It’s pretty.   What I do not like is AWKWARDNESS.    Let’s recap:  Geography = pretty!  Awkwardness = painful!   Almost everything about this was awkward starting with the dance (that she choreographed herself!) and the endless talk of her ex-husband.   STOP WITH THE EX-HUSBAND TALK ALREADY!   I said, “At least they should give him some air time to defend himself.”   Then Mr. Spuddle had this terrific idea that maybe the ex-husband should be the next Bachelor!   FTW!   I mean, surely the guy is a chump, I think that much is clear, but so is Jake, so what?   It would at least be entertaining.    After the awkward dancing, there was an awkward dinner during which everyone cried about how great it was that Tenley was on a sordid dating TV show on which she had a 75% chance of being rejected and humiliated and a 25% chance of accepting a proposal from a short guy who she barely knows.   WAY TO RECOVER FROM THAT PAINFUL DIVORCE!   Awesomesauce.   I’m starting to wonder if it’s beginning to seem culturally normal to meet your spouse on reality TV, in spite of the fact that no one really ever does.   Something like 90% of American teens think they will be on TV one day, so maybe this is just the natural evolution of that.  But what am I, a sociologist?  No, I am not.   Let’s move on, shall we?

Now we are in … Florida.   I had to think about that for a long time.   I’m really worried about my memory.  Did I mention that the other night I woke up in the middle of the night to go to a crying kid and I couldn’t find the door of my room?  I went into the closet.   Three times.   I WAS LOST IN MY OWN BEDROOM.   Why you are listening to my opinion of this show continues to be a great mystery to me.    Anyway, in Florida we discovered that Vienna was not a rich socialite Paris Hilton-like creature that the other girls believed her to be, unless her parents were just pretending to be poor and to live in a tiny house for the sake of entertainment.   The fact that her background was not what we expected made me like weird, bossy Vienna more than before, even though I nearly wept with laughter when her mother (was that her mother?) pointed out that she figured that none of the other girls would like Vienna because, in fact, NO ONE HAS EVER LIKED HER.   That’s a red flag, Jake!   But not one that you will notice because, yes, we get it, you’re in love with Vienna.    Love is blind and all that, and in your case, apparently also totally oblivious to obvious things, such as VIENNA IS WIDELY DISLIKED and also VIENNA IS TOO YOUNG FOR YOU.

But all this is just build up to the real drama!  Because Ali is like, you know, like she loves her JOB!   And she’s going to get fired if she stays!

What?

Wait, HOLD THE PHONE.   Didn’t this happen last season?  With Ed?   Don’t these people actually clear their time off with their bosses before they sign up for the show?   Is this a re-run?  Because, like, you know, like, I don’t know if I can take it.    This segment dragged on so painfully that I began toying with the idea of actually just going ahead and turning it off.   Then I thought of YOU and left it on, even though I spent part of it screaming from the PAIN of listening to Ali NOT MAKE A DECISION.   I’ll sum it up for you:   She, like, you know, left.

THANK GOD.

So!  No rose ceremony!  Just some awkward staring!  Because if any of those girls have half a brain, they’ll know that he would have kept Ali so ONE of them is just along for the ride!   Which isn’t all bad because they are going to St. Lucia which is the only place outside of North America where I have ever been, so aren’t you lucky?  That means that next week I will point out to you EVERY SINGLE PART OF ST. LUCIA WHERE I HAVE BEEN.    Awesomesauce.   St. Lucia, FTW!   I hope that poor cameraman who was forced to crouch in the corner of Vienna’s childhood bedroom while she and Jake made out embarrassingly like horny teenagers gets to take the trip because that kid needs a free trip to the tropics after what he’s gone through.   I’m serious.   I spent at least four minutes of this show being depressed on behalf of the crew who probably were happy to have a job on a prime time show and did not realize that ALL their dignity would need to be checked at the door on the way in.    If I had any drawing skillz at all, and rest assured that I don’t, I’d draw a witty cartoon where there’s a coatcheck and the camera crew are seen lining up, only it’s not a coat check, it’s a DIGNITY CHECK.   Get it?   Bwa ha ha.

OK, I’ll stop now.

*I’m KIDDING.  I know the show wrapped ages ago and the producers do not care what I think.  I ALSO know that apparently Mrs. Jake is already “up the spout”.   That’s a British-ism.  I cloak my spoilers in secrecy and apparently in quirky English sayings.

Anywho, I got to thinking while this episode droned on in the background of my wine-fest last night that ABC really messed up.    Jake — shockingly! — is just a flat out boring person.   The Bun has this picture book called Flat Stanley which is sort of awesome, about a kid who gets squished by a heavy bulletin board that his parents hung over the head of his bed and becomes one-dimensional.   For him, it’s all good because he gets to get mailed to California for vacations and can hang on the wall in an art gallery.   It’s just not working so well for Jake and I don’t even think he’s ever been squashed by a bulletin board, though God knows if he was, he’d be more interesting.   At least watching him being blown around by the breeze while the girls desperately fought over him would be amusing, like watching kittens batting at a dead leaf.   Everything — and I mean everything — this man says is just flat.   SOMEONE TELL ME THAT I’M WRONG.  Because I don’t think I am.   When he murmurs something like, “It’s OK to fall!” or some inanity about how marriage is not perfect but love is perfect, he sounds like he is reciting the folic acid content on the side of his morning Bran Flakes box.   I don’t get it.   I seriously don’t get why these women even give a crap about who he picks, but I have it on GOOD AUTHORITY (as in, I watched the clips of what is coming up next week and am guessing) that someone (Gia) comes to their senses and actually quits the show because actually she just really doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life dying a little inside from boredom every time her husband speaks.

But back to our churlish recap, because that is my specialty and I am not one to shirk my duties, although I am pretty excited that I just worked both “churlish” and “shirk” into the same sentence.

The show opens with the ridiculous RVs pulling into a hotel in San Francisco that obviously was either embarrassed to be featured on the show or refused to pay to have their name displayed.    I believe it was the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins but I’m just making that up based on my blurry memory of this episode and some pictures that I got on Google when I searched Nob Hill Hotel That Has Enough Dignity To Not Want To Be On The Bachelor.    The girls are back at their usual low-key catfighting in which Ali hates Vienna and Vienna scratches back with a big, extra toothy grin.   Does she have more teeth than most people?  There is nothing wrong with that, but I’m always stunned by the sheer extra toothiness of the girl.    Maybe I’m just noticing because I have a tooth ache so am extra tooth-focussed.    I do not have any cavities so any kind of dental pain sends me into a downward spiral of despair and angst.   No, I don’t really know why either.  And yes, actually I DO have a cavity, come to think of it.   Why am I talking about my teeth?

There is a two-on-one date which Corrie cleverly announces as being Ali and Vienna, allowing Ali to turn on all her vicious hate-filled “charm”.   But ha ha!  It was a joke.   I find Corrie annoying and insipid but I did appreciate this move, even if the producers made her do it.   Ali trying to backtrack was like trying to watch a toddler climb back down an escalator that’s going up.   i.e. Futile and also sort of sad.

No, the date was actually Vienna and Gia and I guess I wasn’t paying close attention because no rose was involved, instead they were taken to a 12th century TUSCAN CASTLE (please note, they are in Napa, which did not exist in the 12th century) and for some reason this makes them all believe that they’ve travelled overseas without their knowledge and are ACTUALLY VISITING A HISTORICAL MONUMENT.   Awesomesauce.    The date itself is both boring and awkward because Jake is helpless in the face of any situation that requires him to be quick or witty.   Instead, he flatly asks them boring questions and thankfully Vienna goes slightly batshit crazy which at least moves things forward enough that I didn’t fall asleep.   Trust me, there was danger of this.  Gia is somehow hurt that other girls also drape their legs on Jake.    Girl, that is Jake’s only move.    Did you not notice that?   It saddens us all.   He comforts her by licking her tonsils and the viewing audience leaves the room to go dry heave in the general vicinity of a toilet.

Am I getting these dates in the wrong order?  Because there is also a one-on-one with Tenley who suddenly Jake can picture as his wife more than the other girls (because she’s been married before and he has no imagination?) in spite of the fact that he’s spent virtually no time with her on previous episodes.    I think Tenley may be more than a few watts short of being able to fire up a lightbulb, she seems very pretty and also extremely vacant, and apart from discussing at length the break up of her marriage, she has nothing going on that she thinks is worth mentioning.   She and Jake both think that marriage is something she’s messed up before by not greeting her hard-workin’ man in lingerie every day after work, thus forcing him into the arms of his only female co-worker.   Whatever.   Maybe the guy was a chump.   I really hate it when women take responsibility for their husband’s cheating.   HE cheated.   This makes him wrong.   No one forced him to cheat.   Maybe if he wasn’t such a chump, she’d have been more tempted to open the front door in a thong.   Who can say?  And also, who cares?   Exactly.    At this point, my twelve year old stepson blurted, “DON’T PICK HER!”  And so I said, “Why not?”  And he said, “She has a horrible moustache.”   She doesn’t, but for some reason this was actually the highlight of the show for me and amused me almost as much as that Christopher Walken movie that involved a horse with rigor mortis being carried on the roof rack of a car, which still stands in my memory as the Funniest Movie Scene Of All Time.    (Not counting Monty Python, of course.)   Maybe I just think it’s sweet that he’s evolving to have some amount of snark, which while I didn’t pass on to him genetically, maybe I am still responsible for in that nature vs. nurture way.

The date drones on and then finally wraps up with a bunch of kissing, which is all Jake knows how to do because conversation stymies him.   Then we move on to a one-on-one with Corrie, who is the conversational equivalent of that really dry bread cracker stuff that my mum used to eat when she was on the Atkin’s diet in the 1970s.   I believe it was called Wasa bread.  Does that still exist?   If it does, trust me, it does NOT replace bread as a delicious carb-alternative, it just makes you want a piece of real bread so badly that you’ll be willing to start exchanging your own kidneys for toast on the black market.    Corrie awkwardly doesn’t kiss Jake in a move that confuses him entirely because if not for the kissing, he has no idea what to do or say.   Then she explains that she’s a virgin but also that she’s highly sensual, which is confusing because everything about her body language screams DON’T TOUCH ME, YOU REPULSIVE PERVERT!   Why they show so much of this date is a mystery, but maybe that museum that they are in actually DID pay the sponsorship fee, unlike the hotel, so they are giving them extra air time.    Either way, YAWN.

Finally, it’s Ali’s turn.  And it’s HER CITY!  So she’s super duper like totally excited, you know?   She really should be the next Bachelorette (although if she is, I may have to take drastic measures, like GIVE SOMEONE A PIECE OF MY MIND but still, you know, like watch the show) because she’s already naturally adopted the language of the Bachelor/Bachelorette in that she takes credit for things that she cannot possibly believe are anything to do with her.   Her city!  Look!  Her seagull is eating her crab!   Her boats are bobbing in the harbor!   Her bridge is big and shiny!   Kill me.

Jake takes her up to the rooftop (HIS rooftop) and she points out all the things that are HERS, like where she went for brunch once (or actually, a brunch place that was willing to be on this humiliating trainwreck of a show).   I don’t even know what happened on this date because I was so busy giggling drunkenly on the couch about how the producers obviously told Jake that Ali was going to GIVE HIM A PIECE OF HER MIND and he kept trying helplessly to make her say she hated Vienna and she refused to do anything but grin inanely and straddle him on the grass.    Then there was a bunch of making out and I wasn’t paying that much attention but then they randomly ran into the water and ruined their boots.   Er, whatever.   Waste of a pair of boots, if you ask me.

There was a bunch of posing and kissing and DOES HE EVER ASK THESE WOMEN ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY INTERESTING?   No?   NO.   Then suddenly we are at the rose ceremony and Corrie is sent home because a virgin who is saving herself is absolutely no fun on the pending overnight dates and PRESTO, Jake is off to meet the families of Gia, Tenley, Vienna and Ali.   I don’t know how this happened, is this an extra short season?   It seems awfully early to be asking Daddies for their daughters’ hands in marriage.   But who am I to judge?   I got engaged within weeks of meeting Mr. Spuddle.

I can only hope that at least ONE of the parents this season runs over a dove and then has a ceremonial burial in the backyard because only a suicidal bird can ressurect this season into some semblance of entertainment.

And I’m not even kidding.   WORST SEASON EVER, ABC.    Dudes.   You should have picked Reid.   I TOLD YOU SO.

I’m finding virtually everyone on this show loathsome this season, which means that it took me FOUR HOURS to watch this episode because I had to keep stopping it so that I could take a check on my sanity.     Then I realized that it’s not possible for someone insane to really KNOW they are insane because they probably aren’t the best judge of themselves, so I gave up and lay on the couch for a while and watched my Twitter count dropping, then I re-read some bad news emails and felt sorry for myself.  Then I ate half a box of Reese peanut butter cookies.   They were good.

After a bunch of nastiness between Ali/Tenley and Vienna,  the giant behemoths crawled up the coast.   Jake sensibly rode a motorbike, followed in the air by choppers and on the road by camera trucks in front of him and behind.   Boy, that must have felt like he was all alone in the world just drinking up the sights!   I’m surprised he didn’t fly because, you know, he’s a pilot and … yeah, whatever.  I know.

They arrive at a vineyard and Jake is doing a good (if by “good”, I mean “poor”) job of pretending to pitch a tent that has already been put in place by the crew.   He insists on continuing with the bullshit of “I’ve planned so many fun things for the girls!” which makes me want to stab someone with a fork.   We do not for one second believe that Sanford or whatever that winery was didn’t pay a million dollars to be the pitstop on this leg of the race.   He “planned” it, just like he “plans” the rest of this show, which is to say he sits around grinning dumbly while waiting for his line.  I’m really REALLY finding him dislikeable, I think it’s because of what he says and does and how he says and does it.   Or maybe I’m just kind of mean.

First date:  Gia.   I actually sort of like Gia in spite of the fact that when we first met her, she applied enough tongue to the word “Manhattan” to make me feel like I’d accidentally dialled up the Playboy channel.   She actually seems nice enough (although the whole “I want to have two kids and then adopt one from China” just sat wrong with me in a way that I can’t pinpoint, or can I?  Is it because she made it sound like she was going to pick up a rescue dog at the SPCA?)  and I do believe that she was bullied as all get out in school and that makes me like her better because I prefer the people who were bullied (Gia) to the bullies (Ali).   For some reason, her story prompts Jake to spurt out an incredibly inane anecdote about how he was called Mr. Dateless in the 9th grade.   Er.   Um.   Well.   OK, I have to say it.   Did ANYONE date in the 9th grade?   Really?  I mean, I can remember there was always a couple or two who would hold hands at recess, but dating?   I highly doubt that all Jake’s peers were dating up a storm and mocking him for not doing it.    And “Mr. Dateless”?    I don’t buy it.   No 14 year old in the world is going to call some other kid “Mr. Dateless”.    I call bullshit.    I guess he was trying to make Gia feel like he was in the same boat:  her shoes and bag were stolen and she was bullied to the point where her parents took her out of school.   And he didn’t date and his friends called him “Mr. Dateless” (which they did NOT), and so that’s the same.   EXCEPT IT IS NOT.   What an idiot.    In spite of that, they seemed to get along well enough to make out for long enough for me to make some tea to wash down all those cookies, so that was fine.   Go Gia!  If he’s really what you want, then I’m rooting for you, but frankly, you could do better and besides, I already know that Vienna wins.

Back to the cathouse, I mean the RV, the remaining girls are sitting around looking bored and cold and uncomfortable and for some reason howling like banshees.   Whatever floats your boat.   Oh!  I forgot what I was going to say before and that was earlier in the show when they found there was going to be a two-person date, Ali VOLUNTEERED TO GO with Vienna because she “knew” that she’d come back and she’d “take one for the team”.   WTF?   There is no team, kid.   It’s a dating show, not a team event.   Besides which, you WOULDN’T come back.   I really really really dislike Ali.   In case you haven’t noticed.   Then I started to hate Tenley because she looked at Ali, mouth agape, and whispered, “Oh, THANK you” like Ali had just unselfishly donated her heart to science.

Anyway, somehow we get dragged up the coast to the dunes and there is a group date in which there is dune buggy riding and Jake makes a real point of rolling around in the sand with the girls like the good actor that he is (”Look like you’re having fun!”) (”Pretend the bruises don’t hurt!”) and not actually ever talking to any of them.   The most painfully awkward moment on this show — across all seasons — is a scene where he and Ashleigh sit awkwardly on top of each other in a hotel room (we are treated to a view of each different “theme suite” — in an inn where CELEBRITIES go! — obviously Jake’s idea and not part of the sponsorship deal struck with ABC) and can think of NOTHING to say to each other.   Off camera, Ashleigh tells us how uncomfortable it is that some girls are very physical with Jake and then proceeds to rub him with her hands and feet until I felt a goodly portion of my skin actually crawl off my body and leave the room.  Bye Ashleigh.   I can only assume his one on one time with Jessie and whatshername was equally awkward because we didn’t even get to see it.    He gives the rose to Tenley because he’s really probed her innermost thoughts, i.e. he’s asked if she’s over her ex and she’s said “yes” so obviously she’s ready to marry him or at least sleep with him on the overnight shows.

Yawn.   I don’t know what it IS about this episode but by the halfway point I was feeling incredibly irritable and punchy, sort of like I’d been stuck in an elevator with someone boring and malodorous for my entire lunch break and forced to eat my own leg for nutrition.

Let’s summarize:  Two on one date.   (AWKWARD.)   Both Ella and Kathryn are sent home.  (PREDICTABLE.)    He even used the same line that whats-his-name used on Stephanie last season (GET YOUR OWN MATERIAL, DUDE), which was some baloney about how because she has a child, he doesn’t want to lead her on and keep her from her son because he (Jake) is really just such an awesomely thoughtful person and besides, he doesn’t want to marry someone who already has a child, he wants to make his own and also maybe get one from China as a spare which he hadn’t thought of until Gia suggested it and now he’s thinking is an A#1 idea because he’d agree to anything that any of these women say because he knows in his real life, he’s “Mr. Dateless” and by the “9th grade”, he meant “up until I was on The Bachelorette”.   For some reason, the departure of Ella and Kathryn (”I didn’t even properly say goodbye!” SOB) meant another group fake-cry where the remaining girls try to out-sincere each other in the I CARE MORE ABOUT THE OTHER GIRLS THAN I DO ABOUT WINNING bullshit that they whole-heartedly sell to the camera.   Honestly, girls, the crying is so utterly ridiculous, it’s practically offensive.    You cannot be upset that there are two less competitors for the one-dimensional heart of your so-called “future husband”.    Christ on a bike, get on over yourselves.

The rose ceremony finally is upon us and he doles out the roses slowly and painfully and sends Jessie home because she actually hadn’t been on the show at all and they just realized there was no need to drag an extra along for the painful ride, and Ashleigh because of the awkward touching and complete lack of ability to make small talk on camera.   Ali The Prom Queen promptly loses her shit because Vienna got a rose and BOY OH BOY is she gonna give Jake what for.   What a sec, Prom Queen!   You actually don’t control everything!  SURPRISE!    I would have actually enjoyed watching her give Jake what for, but she didn’t (of course) instead she just clutched her rose desperately and shot daggers at Vienna and stage-whispered under her breath.    PLAY YOUR OWN GAME, ALI.    Honestly, she’d make a terrible athlete, she’d be storming up and down the field shouting, “THAT PERSON DOESN’T DESERVE TO BE HERE!” and then she’d be clobbered by the other team.   In this scenario, I’m picturing the sport as rugby.   I know I’m becoming my mother when I say this, but it’s true:   Everyone is pretty when they smile.    And for God’s sake, let’s also take from my mother’s wisdom that EVERYONE is ugly when they spend all their time talking smack about someone else wearing a sucked-lemon expression and rolling their eyes.

Which winds it up for this week, and I’m being sincere when I say this was the most boring episode of this show I’ve ever seen and if nothing interesting happens next week, I may just pack it in.

Oh, I jest.   I’ll never stop watching, it’s an ugly addiction.   I … can’t… fight… it.     Maybe there is Bachelor rehab.   I should look into that.

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!

And yet.

I sort of love it.   I mean, what’s not to love?

This episode opened with a group date that involved an extremely contrived photoshoot for InStyle.   Is InStyle owned by the same conglomerate that owns ABC?   My guess is ‘yes’, but we’re still supposed to believe that Jake just planned this as a ’surprise’ for the girls and his good ‘friend’ (it’s impossible to type this without the sarcastic use of quotes, sorry) just HAPPENED to be the stylist for InStyle and bam!   Jake thought, “The girls would love to be in a magazine!   I’ll just set that up!”  Either that or the producers did.   I don’t know.   Call me cynical, but I’m betting that maybe if you knew the stylist from InStyle and you were on a group date with four or five or eight (or however many of them there were) fake-breasted girls, YOU TOO WOULD BE ABLE TO JUST HAVE A PHOTOSHOOT!   No?   Really?   You’re kidding!    Gosh.   Well, maybe Jake didn’t ‘plan’ it per se, but it’s just semantics, if by that I mean “a blatant lie perpetuated by this show season after season that the ’star’ is actually planning and organizing the dates him/herself.”

The photoshoot was embarrassing to watch, as you might have guessed, the cringe-factor upped considerably by Christina who was determined to not even pretend that she wasn’t a painfully insecure mess.   Someone needs to tell this girl that fake breasts are available for a couple of grand (probably less in the case of some of the other contestants who appear to have bought theirs on sale in some third world country where pesky rules and regulations about how hideous they can be do not exist) and that having fake breasts does not make a girl prettier or more interesting.    Christina, who had a shot at Jake, blew it completely by getting plastered and blathering incessantly about how sexy the other girls were.   GIVE YOUR HEAD A SHAKE, GIRL.

Rozlyn spent a good amount of this date shivering alone on a rooftop waiting for the rose that she set about getting with the kind of slimy intensity of a pimp at a bus station.    Maybe plastic breasts provide some sort of warmth, but I doubt it.   She looked cold.   And she got the rose.   Big surprise.   The other girls were depressed.  I’ve forgotten everything else about this date because it was all trumped by what was happening back at the house, which was that Michelle was completing her metamorphosis into Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.  I swear, even her facial bone structure is changing.    Girl is getting so psychotic that I’m surprised they haven’t put a metal detector at the door.    I will not be at all shocked if it comes to pass that they need one.   Seriously.    Get the girl some medication, ABC.    A one-on-one date is announced with no name attached and Michelle simply cannot contain her crazy.    Oh, sorry Michelle, it’s going to Ali and will involve … Cloud Nine.   I think maybe the production staff sat down and wrote down every cheeseball phrase they could think of that could somehow be attached to flying and they came up with:  On the Wings of Love (THEME SONG!) (FTW!), cloud nine, and … nothing else.   Needless to say, “cloud nine” is going to be drummed out a lot this season and if you are playing drinking games while watching involving the phrase “right reasons”, you may want to add “cloud nine” but only if you want to be so wasted by the end of the episode, you’ve forgotten your own name and why, exactly, you’re asleep in your bathtub.

The one on one date was so filled with cringeworthy moments that I actually found myself standing up, shifting from foot to foot, like my body was wanting to run screaming from the room while my brain said, “NO, YOU MUST STAY SO YOU CAN BLOG THIS MESS!”   Ali, who I liked somewhat until she started talking because she originally seemed sort of almost normal, apparently wants to add Jake to her litter of J-boyfriends, a list that was long enough that I felt like she should have dropped one or two of them just so she didn’t sound so sluttily insane.    Most of what else she said was drowned out by the SOUNDTRACK, which was a relief because most of it was probably the word “like” over and over again because like that’s just like how she like talks like you know.     Oddly, the band Chicago was dug up from the crypt where old balladeers go to end their careers and we spent a good ten minutes listening to songs that we’d prefer to forget while Jake and Ali struck dance poses and pretended to have ever heard of the group.

How old is Jake, anyway?   It occurred to me somewhere around this point in the show that I should look it up, because I’m guessing he is actually in a different generation than these girls.  Oh, he’s 31.   Figures that most of these girls are 23 then.    Nice job, Jake.   If you can’t find a partner your own age, pick someone young enough not to know any better.

Anywho, Ali is predictably on CLOUD NINE and is the LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD.   She sheds some tears about this, which is embarrassing because it’s a little early for tears.   IT IS A LITTLE EARLY FOR TEARS.     I repeat this because this is a memo that none of these kids received.   There are more tears on this episode than at Michael Jackson’s funeral.

On to the next group date, which is at an amusement park and does not feature the entirely un-amusing Michelle.   Fitting, really.    I feel sorry for these girls on this date because not only does Jake want to see them acting twelve (er, why?) (creepy), it means that all day long they are going to have to pretend to enjoy rides that make them want to vomit.    It does not make you a better person to like fair rides, says the blogger who hates fair rides, but these women have no choice.    Off they go for a day of photoshoots of them pretending to love it!   Yay Six Flags!   Product placement galore!   Then Elizabeth trumps everyone by whipping out a note she’s written on a tiny piece of paper (do they not provide regular sized paper in the Bachelor mansion?) about how he only gets to kiss her if he picks her.   Uh, what?   She is willing to AGREE TO MARRY HIM without ever having kissed him?   This guy has a tragic track record when it comes to dating, you don’t KNOW that it’s not his revolting kissing style.    This note strikes me as perhaps the dumbest note I’ve ever seen on this show, and I’ve seen a lot of dumb notes.    In any event, Jake is “intrigued” (but keep in mind, he’s the same guy who finds Rozlyn “mysterious”).    He keeps Elizabeth and sends the others back to the mansion and then proceeds to lick her forehead while she coyly says, “I really want to kiss you, don’t you want to kiss me?   Don’t you?   Do you want to kiss me?”   Elizabeth, honey, this little game will only intrigue him for about two more episodes, then you’re going to start to look like the manipulative game-player that you clearly are.    So good luck with that.

Somehow this brings us to the Rose Ceremony which is interrupted by what we’ve seen 80 times already in teasers.    It’s so painfully spread out over the last HOUR of this episode that it has upped this series to The Most Cringe-Worthy Of All Time, which you’d think by my measure would make it the best, but somehow has the reverse effect.   Maybe I only like to cringe a little, but not this much.  In this instance, Chris Harrison was forced to say things so painfully awkward, I was actually forced to scream and leave the room briefly to get more tea.    I came back to find him  very very very very awkwardly (SO AWKWARD) telling Rozlyn that he knew what she did last summer, oops, I mean, yesterday, and he hopes she’s proud of herself because the guy she was with in the back room has now lost his job and probably contracted some kind of irreversible STD.   Rozlyn looks first confused — weren’t ALL the girls blowing the staff? — and then just slightly pissed off.   I think she’s had Botox, which is weird because she’s pretty young.   In any event, her face was blankly impassive.   Off she went and packed and left in the longest packing/leaving/not speaking sequence in Bachelor history.   For a minute, I thought I was watching ANTM.  (FYI, Rozlyn is not still with the producer in question, but they are still “really good friends” in the way that you are friends with the fake-breasted slut who was using you in the hopes of getting more air-time on the show and subsequently cost you your job and your pride and probably your clean bill of sexual health.)

Then, inexplicably, the other girls started weeping and gasping like fish who had been unexpectedly thrown up on the shore by a rogue wave.   Why in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks were these people crying?   IT MAKES NO SENSE.   NO ONE could be shocked that Rozlyn was a bit of a slut who will now get rich from the lawsuit that will follow because like Bill Clinton, no sex took place.    And are they really upset that she’s gone?    Je ne comprende pas.    Nor can I spell in French.    Jake takes some time to contemplate how he’s not going to get a crack at Rozlyn in the final episodes and to feel sad about that because he knows that outside the context of a TV show, the likes of Rozlyn would not be interested in a mere commercial pilot, they’d have their sights set on, you know, rich guys or TV show producers who can control how much camera time they are given on the sordid, embarrassing reality shows that they star on.

Finally the roses are doled out while the camera pans slowly on the pained expressions of Michelle and some of the others, but mostly Michelle, who finds it better — during rose ceremonies and other stressful moments which include EVERY MOMENT OF HER LIFE — to practice her breathing techniques for childbirth.   Shockingly, she gets a rose but Jake is so depressed to have lost Rozyln’s chest that he probably let the (remaining) producers choose.    Ashley is sent home for goggling too often at the camera — seriously, do NOT widen your eyes every second syllable, it makes you look like a robot whose batteries are running low; and Christina for being too drunk and insecure.   Bye girls.

That’s about all I have to say, which is good because my wrists are cramping.    See you next week for more irrational open-mouthed shrieking, fake dramatics, and a whole big fat plethora o’ sobbing.    Enjoy!

What I DO know is that I AM RIGHT.   About most things, and in this case, about the fact that Jake is a tiny, wee man of diminutive proportions.   I have it on GOOD AUTHORITY (i.e. unsubstantiated gossip) that he is 5′6″ and the fact that ALL reference to his height (and the height of the girls on the show) has been removed from sites (like IMDB) that usually give this information up substantiates this.    The fact that he’s short is really no big deal (although explains a lot about why he feels he has to be Super Extra Nice Guy all the time), or it wouldn’t be, if it wasn’t so obvious that ABC was trying to hide the fact that he’s short.    That makes people like me go insane with joy when they hear on the grapevine that indeed, the man is both short and likes to discuss his emotional state on his cell phone while strolling through airports.    It doesn’t take much to thrill and delight me, obviously.   But it DID make it pretty amusing when Chris did his one-on-one interview with Jake and it was pretty clear that Jake was perched on what amounted to a high chair (or was he sitting on a phone book?  Or two?), legs dangling over the floor, in order to appear to be the taller of the two.    THAT, my friends, is TV gold.    Am not sure why.   It just is.

So, to the show.   After the opening scenes of Jake running around with no shirt, swimming, showering, building furniture (with no shirt) and strolling around town (no shirt) and his house (no shirt), the audience was in a veritable frenzy of wondering:   Does Jake even own a shirt?   (Apart from his uniform, which we know that he wears generally all the time when he’s forced to wear a shirt against his will.   Hey, maybe Jake could start some kind of shirt-free airline where all the pilots and stewards are all shirtless all the time.   I bet that would turn around the fortunes of some of those small, struggling US airlines.  And I give you this marketing gem for FREE, SouthWest.   Enjoy!)

An absolutely nauseating montage of biographies of the various contestants followed, during which I mostly pondered why some of the surgeons who performed the many many implant operations featured on this show were not in jail.    I mean, seriously.   Some of these girls have (fake) breasts that are larger than their heads.   That’s just not right.   When your cleavage starts to look like a stretched piece of chewed gum, you have to worry.    Don’t you?   I mean, is it just me?    In any event, it was easy to tell from the way that some girls got ten minutes of screen time to discuss how their last boyfriend liked to sneak into their room-mate’s bed at night, and others weren’t mentioned at all, who would be picked.   I may have nodded off because when I try to recall details, I just get that disoriented feeling you get when you’ve been awake since Christmas Eve.   Which I have.

I think I can summarize nicely when I say that there were a bunch of girls, all of whom enjoy frolicking in their bikinis on the beach, often doing gymnastics at the same time, while regaling people with sordid tales of that time their ex-boyfriend cheated on them.   So, the usual.

According to Chris Harrison, Jake is the first contestant in Bachelor history to have “truly come to find his wife”.   Um, so the others didn’t?   ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THIS SHOW IS NOT REALLY ABOUT TRUE LOVE?   Shocking, Chris Harrison.   Really, really shocking.   But also depressing.   Has Jake never watched the show?   The odds of him finding “true love” here are really really poor.   I’d wager he had a better chance of finding “true love” by purchasing a bride from somewhere in Eastern Europe.    The girls on this show are fairly obviously interested in their appearance, their breasts, and their hideously awful bright-coloured prom/pagaent dresses and, you know, FAME.    But maybe I’m cynical.   I mean, maybe he WILL find “love” with one of these bizarre TV Barbies that the network has built in their basement lab using only a bag of silicone, 25 wigs, and a pack of Bubblicious.    Maybe.

Er, or maybe not.

Anywho, the show dragged on and the details blurred together.   The one girl I actually liked, Elizabeth from Washington, didn’t stand a chance.   I knew it.   I mean, she had no breasts.    Durh.

So then I had some tea and regained consciousness/focus and there were a bunch of girls screaming (WHY do girls in a group always scream with their mouths wide open when they are presented with something “exciting”?   It’s a mystery more profound than crop circles, I tell you.) and a great many breasts partially exposed in a way that caused the people in charge of the blurring function to up their dose of Cymbalta.  Was it Jake?  With no shirt?   Elvis?   GOD HIMSELF?

No.   Of course not.

It was (drumroll!  trumpets!)  Jillian and Ed.    Ed looking sheepish and slimey.   Jillian looking annoyed and suspicious.    Just who you want sizing up your future wife!   A girl who dumped you on national TV and the lying, cheating bastard she chose over you!    Perfect.   I can see why the girls were screaming.    Ed predictably picked the girl with the largest rack and Jillian picked …. actually, I can’t remember.   And does it matter?   No, it does not.   Because they both emphatically stated that Michelle was a nutcase (OBVIOUS) and Jake picked her anyway.     Maybe there is some kind of production requirement to choose at least one contestant who is off her meds.

I’m going to wind this up and say that he picked a bunch of girls who I can’t yet tell apart but who uniformly had gigantic hooters.    It’s not important yet who they are, it only gets good later when they’ve distinguished themselves through degrees of relative insanity.    For now, it’s just a gaggle of girls, gagging to get at Jake.     I hope they are also gagging for God because Jake ranks God above friends and family which makes me wonder just how this show is going to go over in the Bible Belt of America, an audience that ABC is obviously attempting to pander to in some misguided way.

Oh!  I forgot that I was going to mention that I need to stop referring to Jake as a failed actor.   He didn’t FAIL, people.   He was bored with acting.   Acting?   Dull.   Flying a commercial plane between small American cities?   GRIPPING!   Why I bet that right now Chuck Norris is thinking, “Why did I waste all that time on Walker, Texas Ranger when I could have been working for United, taking people where they want to go?   Now THAT would have been an exciting career.”   On the plus side, and I’m actually being semi-serious, I think it’s great that Jake loves his job.   He’s clearly overcompensating for the fact that EVERY SINGLE PERSON in his family is a doctor.   He had planned to SHOW THEM ALL by being a famous actor, but when that didn’t work, he had to do SOMETHING.  So instead of being rich and successful and saving lives, he is going to proselytize the joy of flying at every chance he gets until maybe, just maybe, he believes it himself.    I’m starting to believe it, if only because every time we see a silhouette of Jake (shirtless) against a setting sun, a plane flies by.   It must be some sort of a sign!  And not a clever use of editing tools!   FLYING IS … GOD’S WORK!   Or something.

I don’t have a pithy conclusion to this post, so I’ll just stop typing and I’ll see you in a week for the next episode, during which I’m going to bet JAKE WEARS NO SHIRT, GIRLS WEAR BIKINIS, and A BUNCH OF PEOPLE CRY.   By golly, it just makes you feel ALIVE, doesn’t it?