By Djb
The dripping-vines pretentiousness of the exterior of this season's Ladies Villa is a subtle though surefire indicator that if you're skanky enough to appear on the seventh season of The Bachelor, you really have earned your advanced degree in Ivy League Famewhoring. Inside the house, the dulcet tones of Chris "Is To Television Entertainment As Memorable Presidents Are To William Henry" Harrison bellows this week's opening shot up the stairs: "Ladies, if you would, come join me in the living room, please." The ladies come running, smelling the cameras and those cameras' consistent and strategic ability to point themselves in the direction of the implants at least twelve of these women paid so much money to showcase on television. Man, it's like being a really overbearing stage mother of twins! Maybe they can also smell some of Jesse's money, which perhaps rubbed off on their clothes and hair at last night's Rose Ceremony ("Hey, I'll bet it smells my money!"). Once collected downstairs on couches and divans and the odd ottoman, Chris asks the sixteen remaining women their thoughts on the house, a seemingly innocuous question that meets with thunderous, unabandoned, the-Sun-In-has- finally-seeped- into-their-brains applause. In: Faux-Spanish Southern California architecture. Five minutes ago: Silent appreciation of the inanimate. Out: Paying rent. Seemingly self-satisfied, Chris volleys, "Yeah, I thought you'd like it," while practically wiping his fingernails against his jacket in an effort to shake free the rest of the plaster and paint he used in apparently building the house entirely on his own. Chris then wastes no time before launching into the introductory stanza of his epic song-poem, a recitation known to scholars and aesthetes alike as "The Song Of Perpetual Last Season Sameness." Let us nod to its rhythm and consider how much more beautiful it could have been would someone have thought to accompany it with a lute: "This week, there will be two groups dates and one individual date. Now, Jesse did not know" -- and believe me, what Jesse doesn't know could fill the cavernous and empty black hole known as "his football team's win column -- "but when he handed out that First Impression Rose, he was giving Trish the first individual date." Oh, I have had it with the damn First Impression Rose already. It's such a dumb, myopic concession to the idea of change, when it doesn't do anything or change anything. If The Bachelor is the McDonald's of reality shows -- with its prepackaged sheen and its homogenous product and its ability to one day just absolutely fucking kill you -- then the First Impression rose is its Arch Deluxe.
"Arch Deluxe."
The ladies agree, and they'll stretch the metaphor far enough to agree that if The Bachelor is McDonald's and First Impression rose is the Arch Deluxe, Trish is the roach eggs found in the urban myth about the special sauce. Except Trish's eggs are real, they've hatched, their hair got caught in a windstorm, and they're hookers. And thus the metaphor became so strained it found it could never walk again.
"I'm a pretty good judge of character," Suzie the prosthetic technician tells us of Trish, clearly willing to point plastic fingers at those less qualified to love. "Something's definitely off about her." She's just jealous that Trish has a leg up! She wants to tear her limb from limb! She just doesn't want to share her new boyfriend with just an-knee-one. That's right! The genre is "Prosthetic Technician Jokes," and I've got a million of 'em! Say, boys, why did the bumbling prosthetic technician get fired for treating the crippled dancer? Because she accidentally gave him two left feet! Rimshot!
"As for the details about all the dates, you will find out as your Date Boxes arrive," Chris continues, utilizing the USDA maximum number of words allowed in the universe to convey no actual information at all. "All the dates"? All two of them. "And your first one has just arrived outside!" The women erupt into fresh seal-with-fish-level gales of clappiness, as something called "Mandy" is dispatched to retrieve the parcel from the front porch. She returns a convenient cut (or, as it's known in real time, three hours) later, placing a rather enormous box -- it must be filled with all the words Jesse doesn't know -- on a table. It seems to be wrapped entirely in white fur, as if the poachers were all, "Oh, quit your complaining...most pandas never even get to see California" before pulling the trigger. What's in it? What's in it? First, Chris has to take his leave. Oh. Didn't realize you were still standing there. "Enjoy the dates, enjoy the week and I will see you at the Rose Ceremony," he advises, parting to deafening exit applause. Because, as we've discovered, these chicks give it up for inanimate objects.
Oh, look! It's an adorable orphan in swaddling clothes! Tell the minister! Actually, from the scream that erupts from around the box when it's opened, you'd think it was something as good as the briefcase in Pulp Fiction or as bad as the box from Se7en. Suzie grabs (so nimble! Where does she get it? From DuPont) the note first, launching in: "Mandy J., Celeste, Jessica B., Julie, Tara, Karen, and Katie" -- oh, my god, they all have exactly the same name -- "Today we'll spread our" -- tee hee! -- "wings and fly to a winter wonderland." Oh, god. The winter wonderland doesn't need this, especially during this time of year when people aren't always around, mucking it up with the sleigh bells and the flat harmonies. It's the Spring. Those people just want to be left alone. Oy. I can already picture the limo pulling up to find Parson Brown sitting on his porch with a cocked shotgun and seven girls in its sight, muttering, "Bitches? Get off-a my land." It's a much tougher neighborhood than the song makes it sound. The note's not even over: "I'll see you soon. XOXO, Jesse." The women squeal again in Jesse-loving glee, but they should really be sighing for the production assistant who wrote that note. The only thing Jesse contributed was one capital "X," and he wrote that because it's what he always puts down when someone asks him to sign his name.
Rather than continually pointing out how absolutely exhausted the concept and execution of this show is, I'm going to turn the tables and only remark on it when one of the characters says something that has never been said on this show before. Each of the women will be able to collect points for their rare stabs at originality, and the highest scorer will at the end of the game be awarded the prize of a plush-toy SpongeBob.
Let's start with Jessica B. She wants us to know that "being on a date with six other women, I think, is gonna be fun, but it's also gonna be challenging to get some alone time." Jessica B. does not live in a pineapple under the sea in a plush toy kind of way, nor will she ever.
Holy great junior high fashion's ghost, Batman! Is that...a mock turtleneck? And is it...bright orange? Is Jesse in this game not only to find a women, but also to make that woman his...Chess Queen? Out from the back of a white stretch Hummer (claaaaaaaaaaaaassy) emerges Jesse "The Pumpkin" Palmer, having bathed himself in a pool of direct sunlight and causing fashion-conscious Us Weekly editors to go positively Aeropostale at the sight of his troublesome top. Yech. I hate his big, stupid face. His face looks like a pumpkin, too. Shut up, Jesse O'Lantern. The Pumpkin outlines the day ahead: "On this date, I get to take the women to Lake Tahoe to go sledding and tubbing." Tubbing? Go, Jesse! Plus-five points for the linguistic anarchy of spontaneously making up a sport. But then: "I've never been on a date with six women before." Negative a thousand points for that. For a current total of negative nine hundred ninety-five. Hey, I never said the game was easy. If the game were easy, we'd all be playing.
Yeah, yeah. We still don't know the spy is Jenny. Totally. "None of these girls know [sic] who I am," the SAM-altered voice tells us. But we do. It's Jenny. We learn later in this episode. We knew last week anyway. Jenny. Why hide it? Jenny. Don't be fooled by the rocks that she's got.
The group steps off a private plane and onto a snowy expanse called "Resort at Squaw Creek." You can either take I-80 to the Truckee exit or, y'know, charter your own jet. Hoo boy. With The Pumpkin up there in the air and the sun out right to them, it must have looked like that scene in Star Wars, with the people on the ground being all, "I didn't know this resort was all the way on Tatooine." Awwww, Karen's so cute when she's all thinking we care, and shit. She's clearly disoriented from staring into the mock turtleneck for too long. She tells us with glee, "There's our own private tubing area! How neat is that?" On a scale of one to ten, you can't count to that height of "neat." And then we're tubing, which is basically sitting in a tire and riding down a snowy hill, like skiing but for the talentless masses looking to recapture their lost youth by riding around inside the photography of Anne Geddes. Tara notes in a confessional that Jessica B. is "overpowering" in her attempts to woo The Pumpkin, which she apparently finds crass because...well, what kind of a person would sacrifice her pride so capriciously by just throwing it all away to go on a show like this?
"I am very attracted to Julie," The Pumpkin will have us know. "I wanted the chance to kind of pull her aside and talk to her a little bit and kind of see where her head was at." That right there is a commanding comment of the English language, is what that is right there. Is what that is. They're in the hot tub, the cornerstone of any successful snowbound getaway, where he explains to her that some girls he's dated aren't comfortable in his "element." Because she's a cheerleader and he's a football player, Julie believes she and Jesse are in exactly the same predicament, because she spends time in that world as well. Yeah, but not playing football. It's different. It's worse. And what's worse than being worse is how much she comes across as the I Want A Famous Face loser 2.0 version of Jesse Palmer. It's the only thing sadder than being him. No. It's the exact same amount of sad. Julie's voice is so calming that it's lulling me into utter fucking insanity. Jesse continues on to the question I find myself asking at some point during nearly every date I've ever been on: "What do you want to do, you think, when you're done cheerleading?" Maybe she could read to the elderly. Her voice is sure to keep them too alert to die. But no. She's got dreams. And those dreams are as follows: "I want to open up a studio for children." What? "A studio for children"? What on earth does that mean? A cheerleading studio? Some other kind of studio? A studio apartment? She just said the name of a space and then another noun. Considering last week's misadventure known as "our Bachelor may be an NFL quarterback, but this is going to be one of the biggest nights of his life," maybe they're perfect for each other after all. If only I had thought to say it during my alone time with Jesse, I might have remembered to tell him that it was my lifelong dream to open up a lavatory for penguins. Admit it. It doesn't make any less sense than what she said.
Yeah, so, Julie should stop talking soon, because this is getting weird. She vamps on like a four-year-old that she wants to have "at least four kids," with one of the boys being a football player and one of the girls being a cheerleader. Just hope that the other girl turn out to be totally goth and the other boy turns out to be gay so at least two of Julie's kids will turn out cool against her best efforts in the schools of tomorrow. "I'd love you to meet my parents. I'd love to you to meet my brother," she squeaks, moving in on Jesse in a subtle the-natural-currents- of-the-hot-tub- are-totally-just- pushing-me- into-your-crotch- just-like-that fashion.
Back at the house, everyone hates Trish. Mostly because of comments like this: "I've had the opportunity to really [sic] see what it's like to be with someone who is absolutely wonderful and who makes a lot of money and be exposed to great people, great connections, great trips." But no punctuation. Jenny S. -- who is the spy even though she's not in spy regalia right now -- tells us that she thinks Jesse is being "fooled by Trish," opining, "If he got to see what happened in the house...about hating children and how much money is so important to her, there's no way he would end up with her." Yeah. If only. Why is this a subplot? Every time The Spy talks, the caller ID on my phone shows that the dialer is calling from 310-867-5309. Even Tommy Tutone is all, "Y'all, she's the spy. Can I have a quarter?"
Mandy Jaye (who? Never mind) steals Jesse out of the hot tub for a visit to...another, teenier hot tub. He goes into some detail about his post-game ritual, during which he finds himself walking to the player's parking lot (the place for love), and seeing all of the other players with their wives and their kids and their ability to throw. He notes, "The hardest thing is meeting somebody that doesn't judge me by what I do." Well, it doesn't seem to have gotten in the way of any of your teammates' finding love, now has it? I'm just saying it seems like a well-tended rationalization that really means, "I'm a dick," and that it's not just Jesse (though it's mostly Jesse). It exists in every line of work. "Oh, no one understands how hard it is to be a professional football player because no one can ever kick for the field goal of my soul" means "I'm a dick." "Oh, no one understands how hard it is to be a professional actor because I live my life inhabiting other characters so how can someone ever love me for me" means "I'm a dick." "Oh, no one understands how hard it is to be a professional male model because all of these women just want me for my body" means "I'm secretly gay." And, finally, "Oh, no one understands how hard it is to be a professional cheerleader because, quite frankly, nobody gives a crizzap" means "I am Julie."
Trish's Date Box arrives at the house. It's a small black box the approximate dimensions of her heart, which I'm seeing that the producers would like is to believe is "two sizes too small." Trish won't read her note out loud, complaining "It's a private invitation!" People, the fact that she says that to ten attending camera crews makes my job harder, not easier. She pulls a red dress and a pair of opera glasses out of the box and notes, "I assume we're going to the opera." At that exact moment, somewhere in a hot tub in Tahoe, Jesse Palmer fights to stifle a yawn.
Not only does Trish get to pretend she's not an enemy of culture, but she also gets to have her hair and makeup for the date artfully rendered by a stylist named "Christoff." However, Christoff's publicist must have been so adamant that the entire viewing audience know who he was that his name (and subsequent titles "Stylist" and "Girls Don't Know He's The Spy") does not appear anywhere on screen, leaving me unsure as to how to spell it. Christoff? Christof? Kristov? Even the slightest variations have his name resembling a vodka or a Messiah. It's a lot like "Chanukah." Except for the "Messiah" part.
Trish: "I'm sure some of the girls felt maybe a little snubbed when they found out that I got the first one-on-one date. But this is a one-woman game, with one winner. They probably do view me as a threat. But, y'know, get over it." She may be a hooker, but if the mainstream media of my youth taught me nothing else, it's that hookers' sole purpose in television and movies is to teach us enduring moral lessons. And seriously? The hooker's got her herself a point.
And a makeover! As Crrisstahv preps her and compliments her hair to the vast dismay of the others, Jesse (I think) and a few other girls try to convince the stylist to do something ugly to her hair. Like, for instance, leave it exactly the way it is. Which is kind of what he does, except he makes it just a wee bit more mullet-y, if that's possible, and she emerges into the living room and announces to the rest of the girls, "I'm sorry, I'm pretty [word -- hopefully the word "not" -- deleted] fabulous!"
Jesse's car pulls up to front of Cruella DeVilla, Jesse's utterly inconsequential confessional all but drowned out by the sound of all of the other girls seething with a jealous rage. Jesse carries in a small box filled with diamond jewels to adorn Trish on their date, causing female Jesse to observe, "All we were saying was, 'Those better be loaners. She better not get to keep 'em.'" Back in the house, the bedazzled Trish giggles with girlish glee and warns, "I turn into a pumpkin at midnight, so let's get this show on the road." Too bad for that, Trish. You know what the law says about twins marrying.
The limo pulls up in front of The Orpheum, and the camera holds there for a good while, because blinking neon always inspires in me the sense that great opera is about to take place here. They walk through the cavernous, empty lobby of the building, Jesse noting on their processional, "I've heard so much about the Orpheum." Did they watch an instructional video the limo on the way over? They walk up to a box that seats the two of them, which is when the realization sets in that they two are, in fact, the only people in the theater. The theater seats two thousand people. And they are alone. Normally, I would just default to the creepy feeling I get during all of these dates when the couple is hermetically sealed from the rest of the universe and attending events at The Biosphere II Theater, but this time I think I'll just let it stand as a signpost of the popularity level of opera in present-day Los Angeles.
Trish and Jesse sip champagne and read what I guess are menus. He asks her if she can read it, and she glares at him as if they'd been married for fifty years and responds, "You're the language person." Yes, yes. He's the dashing, debonair, inveterate internationalist because he grew up in the exotic cornfields of Canada. Sometimes this country makes me sad. And sometimes it makes me sick: "There are things I can do in French, but I can't speak French." Do any of them involve a series of menu options and a sentence ending, "And to drunk...Peru"? Because Jesse doesn't seem to have the vaguest notion of what she's talking about either, so poor Trish has to retreat to Bad Flirting Base Camp and reload her love gun with the ammunition of exceedingly slow explanation: "I'm a damn good kisser." She whispers that sentence because she doesn't want to turn The Orpheum into an opera house of lies.
On a practically empty stage with just a piano, a man and a woman in formalwear, looking like they're understudying for the role of Jesse and Trish, sing two notes before being interrupted by Trish's confessional: "I think one of the most powerful aphrodisiacs you can have is wanting to kiss somebody." I thought one of the most powerful aphrodisiacs you could have was Spanish Fly. That's what the song said, anyway. Not the song in the opera. I don't understand that song. It's in the language of Foreignia, so I never thought to learn it. The opera couple kisses on stage, and the song ends to thunderous applause from Jesse and Trish. If you rewind it and play it back really slowly, you'll notice that the four hands clapping actually spell out the words in Morse Code: "A Master's at Juilliard, and for what?"
The second date box is here! The second date box is here! It's a rough-hewn old wicker thing decorated with pine cones. Jesse-XX will do the honors: "Mandy, Amber, Anne-Catherine, Suzie, Jenny, Kristy, Jean Marie, and Jess. Let's leave the mansion behind and experience the great outdoors." The Spy -- who is Jenny -- recounts her stock speech to tell us how excited she is to talk to Jesse about some "very important things." Hey, we're ready when you are, Jeffersonian Vice-President Aaron Blur.
Back at a night at the opera, the curtain rises on the post-opera stage (yeah, stupid performers! Get outta here. Who needs you?) to reveal a table set for a faaaaaanchy dinner. Rose petals fall from the sky. Jesse asks Trish to join him at dinner, confessionalizing that it's like "a fairy tale" because that's what you say at this point in the...oh, sorry. No SpongeBob for him either. Although considering the physical description "absorbent and yellow and porous is he," Jesse might actually be the SpongeBob plush toy. No wonder they keep referring to him as "a prize."
Jesse wastes no time: "Do you ever see yourself having a big family?" Trish volleys back that she thinks about not ever having children, adding, "I don't know that I'd be popping out four kids." An utter turnaround is suddenly in progress, Jesse saying he didn't think he was ready to have kids at this point anyway, and we kick it to a confessional in which Jesse tells us, "She talked about kids and she talked about family, and she's talked about things that are very, very important to her." Like how much she doesn't want kids and hates all families. Back at the house, Tara notes, "I don't think that Jesse needs to waste any more time getting to know Trish." And, at the end of the date, Trish and Jesse make with the nookie as Trish tells us, "In my dating experience -- and my god, I've had a lot of it -- this one takes the cake." Hooker.
A big-ass honkin' RV pulls up to the house and picks up the eight women for the date. After a game of football best played in montage, they sit down to a Q&A with The Bachelor. A girl I'm going to guess is Kristy tells Jesse, "When we all found out you were the The Bachelor, I had someone that printed me off a question-and-answer with Jesse Palmer" in which he said that he didn't want to be married until he was thirty. That's a hell of a way to use your assistant, Kristy. Jesse replies that he's been "playing the field" for the last two and a half years, and that he's tired of waking up and seeing a face he doesn't recognize. Kristy takes to a confessional and takes major umbrage in that statement, telling us that someone who would say that isn't the kind of person she wants to be with. Totally. Enjoying marrying a virgin.
Jesse tells us that he's happier than ever that his spy is with him on this date, and the two of them retire to a private room to speak of this further. She's all blurry faced until they get inside the room, but the time the camera lands on her, she reveals herself to be -- dun-DUN-duuuuuuuun -- Jenny. And she would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids. Jesse expresses confusion, so she clarifies by asking him who his top picks are right now. "I had an amazing time with Trish last night," he tells Jenny, and she wastes no time before explaining, "She has made quote after quote after quote about money and being comfortable and I know what I want." ["'Made quote'? Good thing she's not a spy in the house of syntax, because it wouldn't be long before she was...well, made." -- Wing Chun] Jesse responds that he finds this news "interesting," saying it in a long, thoughtful drawl that means, "I already knew that, but, see, she's a really easy lay." Jenny adds that her favorite is Tara, and Jesse makes Jenny cry when he tells her he wouldn't be able to do this without her. Without her, he'd merely be flagrantly neglecting the advice of the forums and the nation, rather than just a well-meaning friend.
The limos pull up to Jesse's house, and the milling portion begins. Tara shares with Jenny the feeling that she can't be herself in the group setting, and we cut to her third-degreeing Jesse about his "tired of waking up to a random face" comment of mere group date earlier. He tells her that he is sincerely looking for someone in his life now, and that his old, bachelor-y behavior (as opposed to now, when he's on a show called The Bachelor) is in the past. She returns to the rest of the girls and reports that she thinks he's "in it for the right reasons," the reason of course being a sports anchor job on ESPN. Er, "true love." I totally meant "true love."
Jenny is the spy, y'all. Jesse walks in on Trish and Jesse chillin' together, and he sits and talks to them about their faults. He wants to fall in love with a woman and all of her faults, and he wants a woman to fall in love with all of his faults. It seems there will be plenty to love. Elsewhere, Tara mentions that she thinks three people are definitely getting a rose: Jessica B., Mandy Jaye, and Trish. Now, I still can't tell the difference between "blonde" and "other blonde," so I have no idea whether these Kreskin-y predictions ultimately pan out, and really the only girl I really remember from last week is the French-Canadian one, but she hasn't said so much as J'adore Terre-Neuve this week, so I don't even really remember which one she is, either.
Jesse takes a private meeting with Kristy is a back room somewhere. And, okay. Basically, when I say I think someone rocks on one of these shows, I mean it in the most relative way available. After all, it takes a lot of not being like me or anyone I know to go to a television network's website, fill out a lot of paperwork to appear on a reality television show where the central conceit is finding true love, submitting urine tests with a mailing label "c/o The Office Of Mike Fleiss" affixed to them, informing an employer that you need to take a leave of absence for some reason, and ditching your life to fly to L.A. for six weeks. But within that framework and imagining for a moment that's something normal people do -- or maybe we can even imagine that it's required by law, like the Israeli Army or something -- Kristy rocks. And why? Because she thinks Jesse is a tool. Why she didn't just wait until the rose was offered to her and then turn it down remains a mystery of this show, but this is good enough. Jesse sits down and tells her, "You look wonderful." She shoots back, "You look well." Ha! Let that woman park wherever she wants, because her license plates scream "Diplomat." She goes on: "I know in my heart that you're not the guy I'm supposed to marry." Knowing that, she adds, she has no choice but to get the living hell out of this moral hellscape.
Good thing whores like Julie are there to prop Jesse up. But as soon as she sits to him on the couch, Chris ting-ting-tings and Jesse retires upstairs. But, in an unprecedented admission of the fact that there's simply too much to get to this in this episode (yeah. RIGHT), there's no visit to The Penalty Box with Chris Harrison. Wow. They really must have hated my nickname. And so Jesse is right back in the living room, the women lined up for their judgment. Jesse has some words at the ready: "This week, I really tried to open myself up to you and be honest so that you can see who I am." Yup. And he walked one of them, with more to come, I suspect. "And I've been met with trust. And I've been met with challenge. And I appreciate them both." And here we go:
Katie, will you accept this rose? "You mean me?" she asks. Oops. What if he meant someone else?
Tara, will you accept this rose? She will.
Jessica B., will you accept this rose? She will.
Trish, will you accept this rose? She will.
Mandy Jaye, will you accept this rose? She will.
Jenny, will you accept this rose? She will.
Karen, will you accept this rose? She will.
Suzie, will you accept this rose? She will.
Jess, will you accept this rose? She will.
Shut up, Chris.
Julie, will you accept this rose? She will. Of course, they all will. Where's the drama in the accepting of the rose process if we know before the Rose Ceremony who isn't going to accept the rose? Bah. Nobody listens.
Jenny is glad she got a rose tonight. We needed that confessional? Bah to it all.
Jesse tells us that he offered a rose to these women because he wants to get to know them better. They toast to the pathetic cynicism of human existence. Fin.
I will be away on assignment week, so there will be a sub in class. But I want everyone to behave as if it's me in front of that room, because I tell you this much: YOU WILL BE LEARNING.