The Women Tell All

• Darla - Who?
• Leona - Back from the Overlook Hotel, she still just wants to play with us, Danny
• Samentha - It could just be because my four-year-old niece has that name except she spells it correctly, but seriously? Buy a vowel, Samentha. Now buy a different one. Now we're getting there.
• Stacey - Yeah, um, who?
• Lindsay D. - She looks soooooort of familiar...was she on television once, or something?
• Shelli - Oh, great. Another perfectly-timed cameo from Elka 2.0.
• Heather - Hey, Heather, babe? Don't mean to bug you, but you've got something on your...no, right there, to your...oh, never mind.
• Shea - The Lioness In Winter finally gets the season right.
• Lauren - And you are...?
• Christine - I'm sorry, but I don't see your name on this list here. But seriously, nice hair.
• Julie - Oh, great. Another perfectly-timed cameo from Token 2.0.
• Jenn - Hey, that's just Antoinette with one more X-chromosome pasted on!
• Lanah - Shut up, Lanah.
• Kristi - All together now: Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
• Antoinette - Nice to see you again, sir.
• Karin - Oh, she gets a big, big cheer.
• Lindsay K. - Oh, she does not.
• Jenny - Um, Jenny, if I wanted you to wave, I would have said "JENNY."
• Brooke - No, seriously. Stop looking at me like that.
• Misty - Who?
• Lee-Ann - You were pretty bad, but Kirsten still sucked more.
• Meredith - Hi, Unfrozen Caveman Bachelorette. What happened to your hair?
• Mary - Who let you out of the house wearing that outfit? And, more importantly, when is the estate of Jennifer Beals coming to get it the hell back?

At some point during the hastily edited introductions, Chris has made his way over to a comfy chair on a small stage in front of the ladies. I love me a little Inside the Bachelor's Studio, so Chris get things kicking in the "Hot Seat" to him by calling down the his first interviewee: "At thirty-five, she's our oldest bachelorette ever [emphasis his, entirely]. Mary, come join me in the Hot Seat." She's first! Just like how they let children traveling unaccompanied or "people just needing a little more time" board an airplane before everybody else.

Mary -- wearing an off-both-shoulders sports jersey of some kind (I guess we can at least be thankful that she didn't end up getting chosen for the "Skins" team) -- winces visibly at the Oldest! Bachelorette! Ever! moniker, but somehow ambles her creaking self down to the Hot Seat. Suppressing her urge to tell Chris, "I may be in the Hot Seat, but you should be wearing a sweater" (because that's what old people say), she smiles gamely as Chris introduces a clip package of Mary's time on the show. Mary and Bob meet. She speaks Spanish. She tells us, "I'm just an average girl. I'm not a desperate girl." But then, Moose runs out on stage and tells us that this is just the introduction to the Opposite Sketch, and all is understood. Mary, don't encourage her!

The rest of the clip package we've pretty much seen every single shot of before. If I recapped it again, it would be considered double jeopardy and I'd actually be in violation of applicable laws. I could go to jail! Suffice it to say that Bob's shirt on his Fantasy Date is the Gayest! Shirt! Ever! It doesn't want to have any babies with Mary. It wants to go out, grab a few Cosmos, dance all night to "Lady Marmalade" and find a nice booty shake to bring home (tm Potes). His shirt is really gay. It could have babies with the shirt Mary is wearing tonight. Or adopt them. After getting married. In Hawaii or Vermont.

Back in the Hot Seat, Chris tells Mary, "It is very apparent you were head over heels in love with Bob." Mary responds that she thought Bob was a "special guy." I agree that he is somewhat "special." Chris asks Mary if it still "hurts" to be her, and she speaks to the masses in conjecturing, "I'm sure everybody in life has gone through a heartbreak." Probably one too many definite articles to describe the situation adequately, but I see where she's going with it, honestly. She continues, "I've been through heartbreaks and heartaches before." And she's, what, turning into a Patsy Cline cover band to prove it? She also cops to having been a party to two broken engagements, telling Chris, "This one hurt just as much, if not more." Consistently rocky sailing on the U.S.S. Ovary, eh, Mary? Chris asks Mary if she still has feelings for Bob, and she delivers this treatise: "I believe that you don't stop loving a person, but that your level of love changes." Well, at least we can take cold, cold comfort in the fact that Mary may love Bob, but at least she now loves him a lot, lot less. Me, I'm feeling better already.

In a carefully orchestrated moment of well-planned spontaneity, Chris throws the ball to the assemblage of bachelorettes and asks if they have any questions. One does! It's Lanah! "Why did you go into detail about the children?" she asks. She expounds that it's better to wait until you have the man "wrapped around your finger," a comment which elicits uproarious laughter from the studio audience, and is, indeed, an excellent tactic in any relationship, provided that said relationship plans on existing entirely inside of the song "Marry the Man Today" from Guys & Dolls. I know that sounds like an arcane, far afield reference for absolutely no reason, but seriously. Look it up. You'll be on my side in no time.

"They say age is just a number," Chris says, introducing a series of clips intended to show the difference between the older women and the younger women in the house. Kelly Jo -- her hair understudying for the role of every hair style in Dirty Dancing -- tells us early on, "There's a difference in the house, with the girls of the different ages." Karin and Mary are seen as being at a disadvantage, Kristi Cute Cheeks tells us, because they really want to settle down. Which is usually what happens after a suitor gets down on his knee during the final episode and ASKS YOU TO MARRY HIM, which has not failed to happen on one occasion, right? Lindsay tells a disbelieving Estella how much she loves Britney Spears and how many times she's seen her in concert and then she does some funky, Britney dance moves on the table. And let me tell you something, people. This behavior is not a product of age. This behavior is a product of idiocy. Just as Mary practically bent herself into a Spanish pretzel to get Bob to notice her at the karaoke bar, which is the same level of base stupidity that can come at any age. Lindsay just looks better doing it.

Lindsay now sucks. She and Misty break into a series of cheerleading routines that are judged harshly and with great anger by Meredith ("Something I can't relate to") and Estella ("I don't do pyramids"). Out in a field somewhere, Misty creates an ad hoc cheer that goes, "Bob, Bob, he's our guy, I really hope he doesn't pass me by. Go, Bob!" Heh. I mean, BOOOO! I know I'm supposed to be finding them criminally annoying right now, but I've got to say it's a little amusing, what with the not having been there and never actually having to meet them ever. And because I never went to a football game in high school, so it was always kind of fun to make up what I thought the cheers sounded like, wondering how our brave pixie-esque blondes were able to fight their way through the wilds of words like, "M! A-S! M-A-S-S-A-P-E-Q-U-A!" I always thought that would be kind of fun to see. How it makes for compelling television for longer than nine seconds still remains to be seen. Somewhere in a confessional, Kelly Jo notes that Meredith's own attempts at cheerleading (briefly depicted in a -- wait for it -- hot tub) are "comic." Dear "-al" suffix...will you accept this rose?

Back out of Montage Land, Chris -- or the guy at who writes his clever copy -- endears us to him forever when he reports to Meredith, "You got the spirit stick at the house. You were our top cheerleader at camp this season."

How about a question from the audience? A girl asks the Lindsay who got eliminated at the Elimination Date how it felt. She says it felt bad. And, speaking of which, Misty then turns around and follows up with a question. I can't quote what Misty asks because the words aren't technically the dialect of the English language known in most of this country as "words that make sense," but I'll try to translate: I think she wants to know why she and Lindsay were so close in the house, but then in her final confessional, Lindsay said that Misty was the one Bob should have ditched. They both laugh and giggle through nonsensical replies, Misty saying that nobody understand what it feels like until you're there. Lanah agrees. Lanah agrees? Lanah, dear, you were about fifteen seconds more "there" than I was. Another audience member asks Mary whom she would have picked, and, after copping an egalitarian stance for a moment, she busts out, "I kind of thought he wanted me!" Yeah, well, he didn't. Titties resistentes, como decimos en la vecindad. Can we go home soon? (For those of you lunging for the Alta Vista translator, that's supposed to be "tough titties," rather than "titties resistant." And "hood" became "vicinity," which I might actually use regularly from now on.)

Kissing montage. No, I won't even discuss it. Except that Kelly Jo's grandmother, Bubka, tells us in a confessional I can't believe they didn't use on the show proper, "When he kissed me. And hugged me. It made me feel young." And Kelly Jo, who asks the incorrectly suddenly non-rhetorical question, "Who wouldn't want to make out with Bob?" A million human hands raising in the air creates a million-mile-an-hour wind that throws the planet off its axis and knocks Earth into Jupiter and Bob ruins humanity again, the thieving bastard. And then he rapes Estella's mom.

There's nothing surprising about the appearance of Bob at this point, and no one even bothers pretending to be shocked in any way. To another standing ovation, Bob comes out to the Hot Seat. Mary tells him, "You still make me wring my hands." She tells him that he's a great person and that she hopes he found happiness. Tellingly, he says nothing. "But I do love you," she follows up. Boo hoo, Mary, you had me and then you lost me. He tells her he loves her too. Which he does not. Bob asks if he can talk, and then tells Meredith how "floored" and "devastated" he was when he found out about Nana. Chris asks Bob if he would do the show again, and he says that he would because he's really excited about how things turned out. He then says he also wouldn't, because of how difficult it was to choose. He knows he's not going to garner much sympathy, he continues, but really, really, really, it was hard. Meh. It's hard being me, too, and I keep coming back and doing it again. With nary a kiss from anyone to cajole me to return.

Yes. That really was a proposal. I'm just that pitiable. And, I mean, I'm practically dateless since I got the hell off Friendster.

Questions from the bachelorettes abound (well, one), with Darla (that is who that is, right?) calls out from the waaaaaaaay back, "What do you have against blondes?" Bob inelegantly segues away from answering the question, responding that that's just one of the things he's taken heat for since the show hit the air. Chris wants to know what else makes people's lists of complaints. Ooooh, I'll make a list for you later. Nah, screw it. I'll make a list for you now, Feud-yle (but without the creepy Richard Dawson vibe):

• The hair
• The laugh
• The book
• The laugh
• The overwhelming, unrelenting Bob-liness of it all