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.
“ '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. ”
"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.
“ 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? ”
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?