By Djb
Oh, you guys. You've been so good to me. But sadly, the part of my brain that comes up with wacky nicknames for the Bachelor and the house he lives in has ruptured past its natural ability to regenerate or heal. So, following the completion of this recap, this once stout-hearted (and now husk of a) recapper will be checked into The Psychoneurotic Institute For The Very, Very Burnt Out for a period of twenty-eight days, during which time I shall (1) undertake a "journey" of self-discovery and forge a "connection" with recovery; (2) go on a series of meaningful overnight one-on-one dates...with myself; and (3) tell Sandra Bullock there's still a chance for her career, but not if goes much longer without her having made another film since this one.
I will also follow the twelve steps of reality show recapping recovery, in which I will submit myself to the Higher Power, and seek a deeper meaning in my own life among said steps:
(1) I will admit that I am powerless over The Bachelor and that it has made my life unmanageable.
(2) I will come to admit that a power greater than The Bachelor can restore my damaged psyche to sanity.
(3) I will make a decision to turn my will and life over to a Higher Power of my choosing, so long as that deity does not bear likeness to the false idol we have worshipped until now, that dark overlord M-ike Fl-iss.
(4) I will make a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, rather than a series of baseline and fearful moral inventories of other people, even if they're over-edited caricatures masquerading as actual human beings, desperately as they may deserve it, so it's a good thing Kim will do it for me from now on. Thanks, Kim.
(5) I will admit to the Higher Power, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrong...or, I'll let the Meet Market thread continue to spin into total chaos and let you guys prove the utter wrongness of the world for me.
(6) I will make myself entirely ready to have the Higher Power remove all defects of character. Or, at least, to have them cleverly edited out in post-production.
(7) I will humbly ask the Higher Power to remove my shortcomings, including the pettiness that would ordinarily lead me to point out that Step #7 bears an almost embarrassing likeness to Step #6.
(8) I will make a list of all persons I have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all. Unless they reeeeeeeeally deserved it, like if they went on television to fall in love, in which case I won't apologize. Which really cuts down my list considerably. Which means, basically, here I go: sorry, Trista's ugly sister. Trista's sister, you didn't ask to be on TV in that dress. Not that TV had a choice in asking you, poor TV having to show such ugliness. Damn! One step back to Step #7. Someone ought to make a board game out of this! May I suggest they call it Steppin' Out? Or, I mean, whatever you guys think is best. Do I need some sort of "8b" addendum where I apologize to anyone who was hurt by my Steppin' Out joke? Sigh. Getting better is hard!
(9) I will make direct amends to such people wherever possible. Erm, okay. What's her email address, then? Tristas_ugly_sister@thebachelor.com?
(10) I will continue to take personal inventory and when I am wrong promptly admit it. Unless it's a grammar correction. In which case I'm sure you guys will just take care of pointing it out for me.
(11) I will seek through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with my Higher Power, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. If by "prayer" and "meditation," you mean "red" and "wine" and "don't skimp on the."
(12) Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I will try to carry this message to other Bachelor recappers. Oh, very well: Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim! Save yourseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelf!
Good thing I have pretty much exactly twenty-eight days until I start recapping the first season of America's Top Model. The timing! She is perfect!
"This week is my hometown week," speeches the geographically-confused Jesse "Cana-DUH" Palmer, who I really thought was playing this game as a real-life I Married Dora, in which he was playing the part of, well, Dora. But to land in Indianapolis and learn that it's "Jesse's Parents' Hometown" definitely raises more questions than it answers, primarily among them, "Huh?" No, seriously. Aren't they Canadian? I really thought they were. Maybe Fleiss set up Canadian consulate in the middle of Indiana to make Jesse and his family seem more authentically red-blooded American (or, really, American at all) and they're not allowed to leave the grounds of the house or they automatically get tagged by INS. Ooooh! Mike Fleiss is...The Hollywood Deporter. Now there's a reality-show pitch for you. And I guess so was this show, once. Seven long seasons ago in simpler times. When even the notion of winning a million dollars on television met with a response of "A million whole dollars? Surely, it would cause the Mint to empty and the national currency to collapse!" But that was a long time ago. Now, we're going through the motions, motaging through Indianapolis while no one asks since when the hell Jesse was from Indianapolis. He stands in some sort of utterly empty town square (ah, tourist season comes to Indiana), confessionalizing, "I'm at a point now where I am very confused," all the while looking confusedly up as if to ask the total lack of passersby, "You guys? Um, is this Canada?"
Jesse continues on, "I never thought it would get to this point. I could be engaged to somebody that I spend the rest of my life with when this is all said and done." Yeah. No, you couldn't. Can't rob a bank with a telephone, can't force a plane ticket onto the fourth finger. Not even if he takes pains to point out that it's "first-class." I know. It's still, like, a hour and fifty-seven minutes away. But, still. Dick.
Jessica walks up the steps of the Indianapolis Four Corners Monument (which sits at the exact geographical crossroads of Indiana, Canada, false pretenses, and Jesse's fault line of a jaw), wearing a pink shawl that thinks it's keeping her warm because of the crisp wintertime air of Canada. Jessica and her shawl look around, confused. "Are we in Canada?" they ask. "This bullshit pashmina street-vendor fashion sample from I Love 2000 would be, like, totally 'in' in Canada. By the way, why aren't the cars driving on the other side of the street? I thought that we were in Canada!" Shut up, Jessica. Or, as she still known to the man who is about to not propose to her, "Jessica B." In Canada, the "B" stands for "Canada."
Jesse and Jessica walk hand-in-hand into a darkly-lit bar in downtown Indianapolis I'll arbitrarily call "Moe's," a musty town institution appealing to NASCAR dads with their mistresses, lost tourists who think they're in Canada, and idea-strapped reality television location scouts in lame second-tier American cities who find out they're not allowed to set a date at Hooters and have completely run out of other options. Once ensconced, Jessica wastes no time jumping right in, admitting to Jesse that "it was hurtful" when Jesse told her he was in love with her, but also falling in love with "another woman." Jesse blinks like it got really dark in the bar and he missed his wine glass on the way to his mouth and he ended up with a big eyeful of shiraz, responding with a guttural "Ungh." Man, that's Slick Jesse for you. Always charming his way out of every conflict with his silver tongue and lightning-quick wit. He's totally Canada's answer to Noel Coward, were neither of those words "Noel" or "Coward" capitalized and the word "noel" then removed. And then swap "coward" for "asshole." And, screw the Canada bit also, I guess. Jesse offers absolutely nothing in the way of reassurance, instead reminding Jessica that this process has been "difficult" for him as well. Jessica responds with words that probably include repeated uses of the words "yeah," "totally," and "tort reform," but we're instead shown her ensuing confessional, in which she confides in us, her friends: "To put my heart on the line to just Jesse would be fine. But to do it when there's also Tara is a scary, scary feeling. But I feel in the depths of my soul that we are supposed to be together." Ah, the fabled depths of Jessica's soul. Where veritable thimbles-full of squishy soul juice collect. And I'm not trying to say that she's shallow or that the expression "depths of my soul" don't indicate a vastly untapped well of emotion. What I am saying is that I blew across the top of Jessica's soul like you would across the top of a Coke bottle -- right at its depth -- and the pitch was really, really high.
But the thing Jesse hates most about segues is how damn French that word sounds, so why not just cut right to the thing and not remind him of France or Canada or the French-Canadian locale that decided it no longer spawned him: "Actually, I have a surprise." I'm a man! Well, nobody's perfect! Anyway: "You remember Jenny?" Does she remember Jenny? Does she REMEMBER Jenny? Jenny, Jesse's best friend? Jenny, posing as a Bachelorette? Jenny the Capital-S Spy? Does Jessica remember her? She lived with them in the house for, like, three weeks. Cumulatively -- and this is really just a guesstimate, as it were -- Jessica has probably spent between three to five times more of her life with Jenny than she has with Jesse. Ugh. Jenny, Jesse, Jessica. My computer feels like it's trapped on a Soupy Sales greatest hits album. It hates that feeling. Anyway, Jenny The Spy and her husband Nick enter the establishment, to probably the most shocking! Confessional! Ever! From! Jesse! And here it is. It's fantastic: "I'm excited about seeing Jenny and Nick. More so Nick." Oh, man, he hates Jenny so much for making him give up the leggy whore. If it weren't for Jenny and her heinous and numerous invectives to Jesse against Trish and her controversial t-shirts, the producers would have cut a whole different version of this show that made Trish look completely normal, and she would be sitting at that table with Jesse right now and everyone knows it. So she has to be the fall spy and take the rap for the fact that Jesse's ended up with these two identical bottle blondes while Trish will now only be able to go on a date with Russ from the Trista season at Social Pariah Hall.
"There's been [sic] relationships in the past that I've had where I've been blind to certain things that Nick really picked up on, and Nick was able to kinda bring those to my attention, and a lot of times that's affected how I've viewed the relationship," Jesse mouth-poos, setting up one of the biggest non-payoffs in plot-development history. But more to come on that. Loud banter ensues around the table for a moment, and Jesse removes Nick to some upstairs bar area for a Flaming Moe. Nick asks, "How close have you gotten to these girls? You know what I mean." Yes. It means, "Have you boned 'em?," is what it means. Tell me I'm wrong. Because you can't. When Jesse non-admits that he has completed a pass (his first ever!) on the boning of them both with his response, "Pretty close," Nick asks, "Who are you gonna pick?" Jesse tells him he really has no idea whom he's going to pick, and that he needs Nick to make up Jesse's mind for him, and a huge fight suddenly ensues, where Nick gets all flail-y-armed and screams, "You want me to pick one and then you pick the other and then she hates me for the rest of my life?" Nick rants on, repeating his central thesis: "That'd be real fun hanging out on Christmas!" Whoa whoa WHOA! First of all, let's scale it down a bit. No one's making it to Christmas. To drive his point home, past home, down a boardwalk and into the ocean, Nick continues, going so far as to do a little impression of himself if he picks one person and Jesse picks another and they have Christmas together: "Hey, second choice girl!" he screams, parodying his own self-made role of bumbling friend in high comic fashion, "How you doin'?" Oh, bravo! Improv genius all the way. Now do it again, but this time pretend that you picked the right girl and be all, "Hey, first choice girl!" And set it in London. In a hospital room. At the turn of the nineteenth century. God, I love the legitimate thee-ay-ter.
Back upstairs, a lack of testosterone keeps the ladies from raising their voices at all. Jenny needs Jessica's shawl on over her linebacker shoulders. Why wear something that will do everything in its power to accentuate your worst feature? Jenny wearing something off-the-shoulder is almost as silly as if Jesse had walked in wearing something off-the-brain. We know it's a low point of your overall make-up. Seems like the classy thing to do would have been not to call attention to it. Jessica tells Jenny that she's "falling head over heels" for Jesse, but that she's scared and vulnerable about the other girl. Jenny tells us that she wanted Jessica and Tara to be the final girls, and makes it all about her by saying she's sad about either of them getting their hearts broken. Nah. I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's kind of hard to get your heart broken when it's already all over your sleeve. By which I mean you've puked it up all over your sleeve.
And...wife swap! We're back up at the bar to discover Nick and Jessica, a reality pairing which, for once, could actually be worse. Nick asks Jessica if she's come on the show to win, and Jessica is all spin when she volleys back, "I'm here to win...his heart, hopefully," which is then followed by a silent moment where she sits awkwardly, waiting to see if she's going to get away with it. Nick tells us in a confessional that Jessica has a "level head," but that he's worried her age might be a problem. Like, for instance, that his best friend will be banging a twenty-one-year-old and he won't.
This has become such a random, lame, untenable talking point for Jesse. It's like he doesn't even hear what he's saying anymore: "The one thing that confuses me right now about Jessica and also about Tara is that people struggle expressing themselves to me." Now, granted, the cut that took place between the words "that" and "people" means these two thoughts were culled from two completely different sentences and the actual sentiment could have been "The one thing that confuses me right now about Jessica and also about Tara is that their names sound so similar to me." But the problem is, he really does believe, I think, in the central theme the editing is driving home. They haven't begged enough. Jenny warns Jesse that no girl wants to "play the fool," and then grabs Jessica for one more private moment when Jessica is on her way out. Jenny warns, "Say everything you need to say." Jessica retorts that she doesn't want to "scare [Jesse]," but Jenny whispers that she just has to make some good TV by falling at his feet, wrapping her hands around his legs, and yelling, "Jesseeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I looooooooooooooooooove yoooooooooooooooooou!" Because if there's one thing he wants? It's a girl with integrity. At least in Canada her pride would have spiraled the other way down the sink.
Ding-dong, Jessica! Also, the doorbell rings. Zing!
Jesse quickly opens the door and screams, "We don't want any!" closing it in a hurry. He's doing prop work now? Also considered were the alternate sentiments, "I gave at the office!" and "I never learned in charm school that it's rude to slam the door in a girl's face right before she meets your family for the first time. I must be Satan." After the usual meet-and-greets, we're toasting in the kitchen, Jessica explaining that she has two younger brothers, the ages of "eighteen and fifteen." For some reason, this makes the whole assemblage go, "Oooooh!" Why? Are they William and Harry? Who cares? The Stache (for that was Jesse's father's name when we first met him, and I find it still holds true today) asks Jessica how old she is, and Jessica shoots back, "I'm twenty-one. But I will be twenty-two in exactly one month." Which is exactly the kind of thing you say when you want people to think you're too young for a committed relationship, like if she'd been all, "Nuh-uh! I'm not twenty-one! I'm totally twenty-one and seven-eighths!" But this kicks it to an immediate confessional, one that features The Stache telling us that Jessica's too young. Because he understands the temporal relationship between all things necessary to keep a balance in the universe. Father Time wears a stache, ladies and gentlemen.
How come they never let the kids talk? Oh, wait. Jessica. They already did. The Stache wants to dispense some dinnertime wisdom: "There's something that's really important to understand aboot [sorry, but he did] this business of professional athletics. And I was in it. And Susan had a career in professional modeling." Not a sport. Nice try, though! It's the lip service that counts. "The thing is that when you're playing professional sports, you can have a career that lasts ten years, you can have a career that lasts three years, it can last a week." Why? Who plays professional sports in that room? Jessica walks right into it, replying that she's not with Jesse for the sports (and neither were the Giants! Zing!), saying she doesn't see him as "Jesse the football player." She nobly notes that she would still think Jesse was groovy even "if he was [sic] a janitor," which inspires a facial expression from Susan that seems to say, "What on earth is that?" But Susan still feels Jessica represented herself well, and she stops her in the kitchen to make sure "Mr. Palmer" (as she refers to him) wasn't giving Jessica "the one over." Whatever that is. Back in the living room, Jesse asks his brothers what they think, and the younger one rubs his eyes and is all, "I don't know," because he just wants to go upstairs and play videogames and we just want to go with him. The middle one adds, "She's not ugly, I tell you that much." All right. You're not invited to play videogames.
And now, real men. Jesse sits on a couch somewhere with The Stache, who is thinking that in another year or so he's going to need to add The Stache to the combover, which is going to be tricky, but he's totally the man for the job, y'all. The Stache asks Jesse, "What do you feel compelled to do at the end of this effort?" What does he "feel compelled to do at the end of this effort"? For heaven's sake! Speak like people, people! Jesse swallows hard and responds that he doesn't know, and The Stache reminds Jesse that a good relationship is still good a year from now. "Be true to yourself," The Stache fortune-cookies. Jesse knows that his father is worried that Jesse will propose, because, according to Jesse, "that's what the Bachelor does." I love when it hits this point in the season and since they're the ones in love they feel like they've risen above the show itself. What that is? Is a load of crap. But there's no time to think about it, because it's the end of the talk and Jesse kisses his father full on the mouth. He does. It's paused. I'm looking right at it. It's disgusting. Made barely less so by the fact that, from this angle, it kind of looks like Jesse has boobies, so you can maybe understand why The Stache might have gotten confused.
Jesse walks Jessica outside at the end of dinner. Jessica launches in that she really is falling in love with Jesse and sees a future, but it all just seems so perfunctory. He thanks her for "putting up with" his crazy family. Don't you love how everyone thinks his or her family is the craaaaaaaaaaziest? Back in the living room, Susan shares that she thinks Jessica is "ideal." The Stache, however, finds her "devoid of experience" and "too young to take this seriously." Jesse wraps up for us that his parents had different opinions on Jessica because, otherwise, we'd have chaos.
It's been a long time since The Gap used a song in one of its commercials that made me feel, well, just mad about saffron. But I have something to say to you all at this time, and it is this: "Summer breeze makes me feel fiiiiiiiine. Goin' through the jasmine in my mi-i-i-ind." Oh, childhood memories. You weren't really all bad, after all.
Jesse and Tara met at the Indianapolis Zoo? I don't even remember that from when I first watched this. They sip red whine out of plastic cups in the middle of the animals looking like they're about to have The Picnic Of The Crazy, and Tara launches right in with the most pragmatic love talk ever: "What are your reservations about me?" Romance. Not dead. But, lucky for fans of repetitive rhetoric, Jesse has an answer at the ready: "My biggest reservation is, y'know, you being able to express yourself to me verbally." Tara really is confused, asking Jesse how many different ways she has to say it, and she makes a facial expression that says, "Really, I think this is fake and you suck." Because it really doesn't make any sense. "At this point, I'm not sold on everybody," he continues. Everybody? What is he talking about. What's going on? Let's bring out Nick and Jenny. Tara is thrilled to see Jenny, but...well, it's about not to go well. They embark on a walk right away, Tara telling Jenny, "I really want to marry him...There is not one bad thing about him." Jenny leaps on that, telling Tara, "Well, that's not true." Good point. Unless it's just the introduction to the opposite sketch. Back at the table, Jesse tries again with Nick: "Who do you see with me?" Nick starts to get all riled up again, and Jesse continues to some ambiguous purpose, "You've known them for fifteen minutes," stopping before his follow-up thought, "And I for sixteen." How would Nick feel, Jesse asks, if he found out Tara has been engaged before? Jesse shouldn't care. He doesn't. Nick likes both of them, but tells us in a confessional that Jesse is concerned that -- wait for it -- Tara hasn't expressed herself to him: "I think it'll be Jessica." But wait. Isn't she too young? I don't understand this show if the conflicts can't be reduced to one sentence each.
Meanwhile, Jenny has already decided that Jessica should be the winner. You can see it in her body language. She doesn't rush to hug Tara. She's kind of ignoring her now. They walk arm in arm, but it is a hug of lies. Jenny asks Tara if she's falling for Jesse, and she responds that she's already fallen. Jenny tells us in a confessional that she loves Tara, but that she's not there to find a best friend. She sure ain't. Nick, on the other hand, pulls Tara aside and asks her if she's ready to give up her business and get married. What does she do, run the Gen'ral Store? And, back at the table, Jenny says that she would choose Tara, but that she thinks Jesse should choose Jessica. She feels like Jesse and Jessica looked like more of a couple, whereas Jesse and Tara seemed more like "friends." Totally. Who the hell wants to be friends with the person you spend every day with?
Listen to these fantastic stakes, compliments of super-linguist Jesse Palmer: "Tonight's showtime. Tara's gonna meet my family and my family's gonna have an opinion, and I'm interested tonight to find out if Tara can rise to the occasion or if she'll crumble and fail." But, no pressure. And in they go. We skim back through the same meet-and-greets, as Tara voices over that she wants Jesse's parents to like her, even though she doesn't know whether that would be "a deal-breaker" or not. Well, it would be. But Jesse thinks his parents have trouble expressing how they feel about him. Except when they're kissing him full on the mouth.
"And what did you study at university?" The Stache kicks things off, and I expect Tara be all, "What I studied in college was marketing, because ain't no yoo-nee-ver-si-tees where I done come from." She explains that her job is to "build and remodel homes," and The Stache leaps in that they have "similar backgrounds." She's also a failed professional football player? Golly, it's just so difficult to get everything in! Jesse tells them about meeting Tara's father, much to Susan's reaction of rank horror. Over at the table now, Susan was totally not coached at all in posing the question, "How do you let [Jesse] know where he stands with you?" Well, first you say it. And then you say it again until your tongue bleeds. And then you lose big-time anyway after causing the decommissioning of a limousine will be sending her the dry-cleaning bill for. Tara responds that it's hard for her to put everything "out there," and Susan notes that sometimes "actions speak louder than words." Like how not looking Tara in the eye expresses Susan's true feelings for Jessica. Susan kicks it to a confessional, where she tells us that she really doesn't think Jesse is that special to Tara, because all people need to interact exactly the same way all the time and they should be pawing each other to death to prove their feelings, because if sex is good enough for her in Quebec City, it's good enough for her at the dining-room table.
They get to the topic of Tara's having been engaged, which Jesse's confessional tells us does "raise a red flag." Just as the sight of some dick like him having appeared on this show should raise a red flag for every girl who will never date him again in the future. Honestly, how dare he? Don't break an engagement! Don't hide your feelings! Don't avert your eyes while I share an intimate kiss with my biological father! The Gospel According To Jesse Palmer, people. I do not have that book.
But the father doesn't matter at all, does he? No, no, no. As is so often the case, the big, strong man is felled by the knee-jerk reaction of his mother, Susan "The World's First Supermodel" Palmer, who is more than happy to offer her opinion with her son: "I think that Tara is the type of girl that really takes a long time to get to know." Lesson: never try to love anyone with complexity. "I think she's about finding herself and establishing a career." Lesson: never try to love anyone who loves her work, particularly if you think it means she's going to love it more than she loves you, particularly if you're worried about your own job prospects because you suck at what you do and she majored in her job at univeeeeeeersity. "I'm not seeing her interested in boys in general." Lesson: strong women are lesbians.
Jesse frets that it's hard for him to elicit Tara's feelings for him, and Susan frostily reports, "She doesn't have feelings for you." She tells us she had to be honest with her son, and that she didn't see a "connection" between him and Tara. The Stache, however, whispers in the kitchen to Jesse that he finds Tara to possess a "natural warmth." But Jesse is afraid to take that "leap of faith," though The Stache thinks she shows her feelings for him all the time. Jesse pronounces his parents' feelings for Tara "almost a split decision." "Almost"? As she takes her leave, Tara tells us that she didn't ever want to go. Don't worry about it, dear. Susan Palmer wants you to leave enough for all of them combined. Outside, Tara speaks the words, "I am falling in love with you." Jesse doesn't know her feelings for him. I wish someone had no feelings like that for me every once in a while. Sorry. Did that make you uncomfortable? I just figured, like, last recap ever, we were kind of friends by now and I could tell you that I'm sad I'm not in love. It's not going to make me, like, kiss my dad on the mouth or anything, but anyway. I'm better.
Oh, Los Angeles. So soon shall I see your smoggy, shabby, sun-shine-y self once more. I guarantee you that by the time I get out there in early June, the first In Touch cover saying that it's over between Jesse and Jessica will already have run. Someone fact-check that and let me know. I'd do it myself, but I can't on account of the cover of that magazine singeing my fingertips every time I try to touch it. Jesse's chillin' in a pimpin' limo, telling us that we've returned to L.A. and that we're going to go ring shopping. Tara, similarly, is going ring shopping. They're meeting there. In lovely, historic Beverly Hills, the borders of which are cleverly denoted by a montage-friendly sign reading "Beverly Hills," the one they show heading west on Wilshire Boulevard, exactly nine feet away from my old office building. For those of you captivated by the thrilling new field of me-ography.
And, Tacori. Man, did they do right by Trista and Ryan, or what? Wasn't this show all about the Harry Winston until the wedding? Strummy music plays as Tara tries on some rings, and she tells us in a confessional that she wasn't nervous until now, but that she now is. She tries on a ring that's basically just a circle of all diamonds, and when she pronounces it is "shiny, even more so than the rest," Jesse mutters in utter seriousness that she'll have to "compete with the other player's wives. It really is an unironic dismay I feel for him. With Bob, I had to emotionally invest in my hate for him because it always manifested itself in such new and interesting ways. With Andrew, I hated him as a stinging indictment against all the world's wealthy. But this? It's so straightforward. It's the dumb, over-aggressive kid in your seventh grade gym class's flag football team. It's the moron who was your lab partner in four consecutive years of science class because his name came alphabetically right after yours. It's the kid who did arm farts at graduation even after the principal himself got up to the podium and announced, "Such immaturity is no way to commemorate what is supposed to be a passage into maturity. You should be ashamed of yourselves." It's the hate that lives closest to home.
Jessica, meanwhile, heads to Tacori in another limo and tells us that this day is "bittersweet," because she knows that this day is one that finds her looking forward to the future, but that she knows Jesse will be spending the day doing this very same thing with another girl. Jessica picks up the circle of diamonds, and tells Jesse that that's the one she thinks is the one she wants. "I could not believe it," Jesse tells us. "I couldn't believe it! Both Tara and Jessica liked the same ring." They both chose the one that is a giant circle of all diamonds. It would be like if there was another ring made entirely of rotting human flesh and then he was all surprised, like, "I couldn't believe it. Both Tara and Jessica didn't like the rotting human flesh ring." Go figure. Some girls just really prefer the giant circle of diamonds.
And now, it is the time when each of the girls goes to Jesse's house one final time before the Rose Ceremony and it is very dramatic. First up is Tara, who confessionalizes on her way in, "I am in love with him." Yeah, but how does she...oh, never mind. Jesse opens the front door with an I'm-not-choosing-you-esque "Hey!" He kisses her on her surrounding air aura, and asks her what she's brought with her. "Cheesecake," she replies breathily, unaware that the perfect mix of cheesiness and beefcake-iness means we should have been calling Jesse that from frame one, and oh, what a lost opportunity it is.
"We are q-ing today, you and I," Jesse announces. You're what? We retire to the kitchen to discover a barbeque in the kitchen, so I guess that's what "q-ing" is. And not "queuing," as in "lining up," which is what we could be doing were we poised to leap off a cliff in lemming-esque futility, or were we readying ourselves to enter a suicide booth, had those as yet been invented. Jesse tells Tara that he feels like he's "on the spot," but she patronizes him on how well his food preparation seems to be going. She tells him that she's been eating all day out of nerves, and Jesse is glad he's not "the only one." They sit at the table and eat some big, bloody steaks, Tara telling Jesse that she knows he can't say much, but asking, "Are you settled with everything?" He spirals off on a tangent about how he felt ring shopping, and she follows that up by asking if she feels he knows enough about her to make an educated decision. "You know, I still, y'know, have, y'know, y'know, some questions," he reassures her. Tara looks like she's going to take that butter knife up through that jaw and into the part of his brain that...actually, it's all pretty useless up there anyway. Jesse tells us again that he's having "serious doubts" as to whom he's going to choose. You mean, like, aisle or window for Jessica's seat on the plane? Just ask her. Some people even like the additional leg room of the exit row. But me, it feels like a lot of responsibility.
They polish off the cheesecake and drink some red wine. I love all of it, but just not with that particular combination. Also, I don't enjoy a side dish of Jesse's big, pink, fleshy tongue. "Is that supposed to make me not worry?" Tara asks when kissed. It sure calmed down his dad.
Jesse also wants to know more about Tara's engagement. Tara sounds like she's explained this fifty times as she tells Jesse that he was a "great guy" whom "everyone else liked." Oy, so he's a gay. But it helped her "grow a lot as a person," though it certainly didn't ingratiate her to Jesse, who speeches, "I want to be engaged once, and I want to be married once." Well, you know what, Moral Majority? Sometimes things just aren't that easy. Just because you were raised with a certain set of values, it...oh, my god. I'm giving that speech again. The one that I've written here sixty times. The one that I recite in my sleep. The one that often ends, "and that's why you can't vote for him, and I will judge you personally if you do, as hard as it is for me to say that." So Tara lays it all out there: "If you were to ask me, I would say yes to you." Well, why not? She's already said yes to everyone else. "I would say yes to you right now. I would say yes to you five years from now." I would say yes in a box. I would say yes with a fox. I do not like him in this house. I do not like him, he's a louse! I do not like him in L.A. The things I hate a vast array! I do not like this oily cad. I will not watch him kiss his dad! I do not like him (nor does Pam), I do not like him, Sam-I-Am.
Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiill.
Find all/replace all/Tara/Jessica. It's nighttime at Jesse's house, as Tara's limo pulls up triumphantly. They toast their -- are they drinking delicious mojitos? Oh, the crushed mint was destined for better than them! -- drinks and sit down for dinner. Jessica tells Jesse how stressed she's been, and he asks, "How ya doin'?" No wonder he doesn't know how they feel. He gives her the same speech about the engagement rings and the forever and the green eggs and the ham, and she shoots back her feeling that shopping for rings was "bittersweet" for her. Jesse puts way too fine a point on it, telling Jessica that she and Tara tried on the exact same rings, which points Jessica into a major shame spiral that bottoms out with Jesse's emotional torture climax, "I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow...I don't have the answer right now. It's gonna come to me, but...." Jessica narrows her eyes with the proper amount of suspicion and says exactly what she should say ("I don't know how I feel about that") without doing exactly what she should do (leaving, spitting, cascading reams of epistolary fury). Jessica asks us in a confessional, "I don't understand how I can give of myself if he isn't sure." Yes. Yes! Great point. If the world thinks she's not emotionally mature enough to handle a relationship, said world is certainly going out of its way to harden her heart to the point where she can. But then becomes too bitter, and once again can't.
Not that it's going to stop her from trying. And, when in doubt, bikini and hot tub. They climb on in as Jesse tells us that he doesn't know if Jessica knows what she wants out of her life or understands what his life entails. He gives her a for-instance: "You're at a football game, and I'm playing. And it's in New York City. And 75,000 people are booing me." Ha! Situations taken from real life! Except for the "playing time" part.
From the perch of the hot tub, Jesse and Jessica can view where the final Rose Ceremony will take place. He asks her if she's "ready for tomorrow," and she says that she's really excited. She tells him that she's not a jealous person, but that she really feels like "this is right." Vomitous kissing makes me sad. Jesse's confessional says it all: "I've got this amazing woman with this amazing mind who can make me really happy. And, on top of that, she is just hot."
"I do want a fairy-tale ending," Jesse tells us over the beginning of a season-long (that's right. All seven episodes) montage of Jessica. And then of Tara. He loves that she's "a bit of a challenge," but he could see himself being "with someone like Tara." Heh. Someone "like" her. He puts on his suit and stares out the window, continuing, "It is so hard for me to separate them right now in my mind." Because they look like twins and you're a moron?
Jessica wakes up in her hotel room, telling us that she's both excited and nervous. That's totally how I feel, with both of those words replaced by a giant saw working its way through a log, in the Archie Comic Digest visual representation of "sleeping soundly, snoring loudly."
Tara is also nervous. She doesn't want to wait too long. But there's all that vomiting still left do.
And, with all immaculate timing, Jesse goes to pick up the engagement ring. Surprisingly, he goes with the one with all the diamonds. "I finally now feel like I'm beginning to lean in a certain direction."
And it's "toward Jessica's hairspray," like a moth to a flame. But for the love of all things holy, keep the flames away from that thing unless you want the whole city going up in a fireball. The "city" in question, of course, being the one that contains the Van Nuys location of the Supercuts chair, which Jessica marched into earlier that day and insisted, "Give me the Medusa! And don't skimp on the real snakes."
"I kind of felt bad about things," Tara suddenly realizes. "Like things weren't going well." She closes the door to her hotel room. But alas, there's a camera on the other side also! She tears up and frets about being "too invested" in the whole thing. An evil minor synth chord holds on the soundtrack as she tearily repeats the sentence, "I just don't want to go. I just don't want to go." You have the power not to, Tara! For the love of god! Change shows! I did.
Okay, Tara's got her dress on. And her hair looks fine. She puts in some eye drops and tries to de-crack-addict-ify her face.
Meanwhile, Jessica leaves her room and walks to the lobby of her hotel, noting in a voice-over that she would marry Jesse if he asked.
Tara walks down as well, telling us how anxious she feels. She has a "bad feeling" that she can't explain. She knows. She totally knows. As we all know.
And, inside the house, Jesse stands in the woefully underused Room Of Reckoning, telling us, "It hit me right away like a ton of bricks. I know how I'm feeling. I know what my heart and my head are telling me. And I now know who the woman is. I mean, it's obvious. She's the one. And it's so funny how, all the sudden [sic], in a day, I'm completely convinced." It IS funny! How that happens! Every season! During this exact scene! He can't wait to see the girl and speak "from [his] soul." Oooooooh. That's ghoulish. I don't want to see that at all.
Jesse walks out to the rose-petal-and-candle-festooned altar and waits for the clean limo and the vomity limo to pull up. In her car, Tara puts her hand up and waves it back and forth, as if she's all, "Hello, vomit! How aaaaaaaaaaare you?" Jessica tells us she's "freaking out," but I don't think she knows what that means until we go back to Tara's car, where she practices her Lamaze on the floor of the limo.
Meanwhile, a car pulls up to the front of the house, which we well know means is the car that carries the loser to the house. After all, first girl out gets booted, in order to preserve the happy ending, right? Which is why such a gasp arose in my apartment when the door opened to reveal Jessica, who we (oh, fine. "I") was certain was the surefire winner. Chris Harrison opens the limo door and takes her hand. He walks her up to the front of the house and leaves her to walk down the aisle to him as she voices over that she really thinks it's possible to find her "Prince Charming." She doesn't care about "anything else in the world" when she's with him, because when you get into his stupid orbit, it's impossible to think straight.
Or keep down your lunch. Tara apologizes profusely to the phalanx of surrounding producers and camera people, bends down to a hedge, and heaves. The sound and the picture don't match at all, but we get it anyway. At least someone around here is sorry about something.
"Jessica, when I came here, I was very skeptical and hopeful that I would find the one." He gave her hope. Since they met. Is there a but? Is there a but? She's charming. She makes him laugh. She makes him a better person. "You've given me everything that I've asked for, and never once did you ever expect anything back." She'll make an excellent housecat. "This whole thing, to me, is like a dream. And tomorrow morning, I'm going to wake up from that dream into the real world. But..." -- oh, now that is just shitty, putting a "but" right in the middle of it -- "I don't want to wake up tomorrow morning if I can't wake up with you." That smile? On Jessica's face? Relief. And nothing more. Jesse thinks they should be together forever. "Jessica, I am not ready to propose to you tonight." She doesn't want a proposal. Ech. I can't imagine why not. Jesse looks forward to when he can ask for her hand in marriage, at which time he will make her "the happiest woman in the world." Is he going to become someone else? They kiss. She won. She won! No ring. And this guy. But other than that...victory! What does it taste like?
Not the Slim Jims from four hours ago in the hotel minibar, that's for sure. That's not what victory tastes like. That's what Tara tastes like. As she climbs back into the car...
...we shoot back to Jesse, producing the piece of paper Jessica's father gave to Jesse at her family date, with trembling hands. He promises he will respect her always, and then gives her a one-way first-class plane ticket to New York, telling her, "Chase all your dreams. But do it with me." Who the hell uses paper tickets anymore? Jessica hazards, "Let's get out of here." But alas, there's a catch. Jesse whispers reverently, just like he has every other thing he's said since Jessica arrived: "I have not yet had a chance to say goodbye to Tara." Jessica barks a laugh at this, because she never gave one crizzy about Tara. They kiss goodbye and she enters the house, taking a convenient perch on a second-floor landing to watch the whole thing. How romantic.
Tara can't get out of the car. She calls out to everyone in particular, "Don't send him, please." Don't send who? Chris? Jesse? Send where? Chris comes down nevertheless, and she steps out and takes his hand. They begin walking to the house as she tells us, "I've never loved someone the way I love Jesse." She walks through the house crying, and she stops Chris to pull herself together. Jesse waits, forgetting whom he's chosen. Tara cries more. Chris asks if she's okay, because he's a little bit of a host, a little bit of a friend.
Tara takes the long walk around the pool by herself and meets Jesse center stage. She apologizes to Jesse, but I don't think he knows for what. He asks her if everything is okay, and she shoots back an immediate "No, not at all." She asks for some tissues, and you can see the scramble going on off-set, which a cut later produces Chris toting some tissues. Jesse mutters a quiet "Thanks, brother," which is an appropriate line either (a) in a 70s blaxpolitation film or (b) if you're actually talking to your brother. ["I don't even think it's appropriate to say if you're talking to your brother, unless you're talking to your brother in a play written before 1800." -- Wing Chun] As Wing may point out, "bro" is no good either. ["That's goddamn right." -- Wing Chun] Jessica leers down at the happenings like Cruella DeVil waiting to make a coat out of 101 Taras.
Tara will go first, thanks. "Today I've had such bad feelings. And I don't know if it's because you're not feeling the same way I am, which is really hard for me. Or I don't know if I'm having such bad feelings because one of my very best friends in the world is going to be hurt. But either way, I feel like this not a good situation." She was skeptical, blah blah blah, and she fell "head over heels" with Jesse. Oooh, don't go on! He would make her happier than any other person in the entire world. Bad time to plead the case! So he's going to be honest with her, too. He goes into his stump speech: "You are so beautiful, you take my breath away." She provides the transition word, asking "but?" in his stead. "Tara, I've fallen in love with somebody else." She lets him keep holding her hands, but doesn't wait long before responding the way she should: "I'm going to try my hardest and be happy for you. You and Jessica both." But she wishes he hadn't led her on. Oh, he totally boned her! That sucks. He tells her that he never led her on, and that he "felt those things." She tells him that "things that were said and done" on their last one-on-one date were "completely inappropriate" if they weren't going to end up together. He's sorry she feels that way. "I do feel like there were a lot of things that were completely inappropriate. Okay?" He ekes out a chastised "okay," and you'd be able to think this was a lesson that teaches him not to take advantage of girls, except (a) he still get the happy ending, so he manages to come off looking like the good guy anyway, and (b) when he's back with his stupid, date-raping friends, he'll be able to rationalize the fact that the bitch was just pissed because she lost. So that is all credibility lost for the entire female half of the species, right here. But it's no one's fault individually. It took a village, and they should all be very proud of the role they played.
Tara will get the door herself, thanks. As her limo pulls away, she tells us that Jesse did "a lot of things that were inappropriate." She adds that he "said too much." Which, I mean. She kind of knew she was losing, though, right? Whatever. She lost, so the world doesn't get to care about her anymore.
Jessica was there waiting for him, which made it "all better." She accepts the final rose and Jessica is all, "Tara who?" And I'm all, "Bachelor who?" A happy ending for everyone.