Sean #10: No, We Can't Still Be Friends

Finally, the always disappointing Women Tell All show, or perhaps more accurately, The Women Who Are Sean's Friends, But Not His Best Friends, Tell About Half of What I Want to Know.

We get it, okay? Sean's been looking for his BEST FRIEND. I wish I'd known how important that term was going to be so I could've started counting. Let's just agree he's said it a lot. He mentioned it at least once in describing his relationship with each of the final two women, and the lack of best-friendhood as his reason for jettisoning AshLee. But it sure turns into a different show if you describe it that way. "Week 7 in Sean's Journey to Find His Best Friend! This week? Labradors!" Honestly, though, within six months most Bachelors end up watching TV in a recliner with pizza crumbs and a beer can shoved into the cushion, scratching the head of a golden retriever, wondering what's gone wrong with their love lives. Relationships that start out at the Humane Society have a much higher success rate than ones that start at the Bachelor mansion.

Before opening up the kennels and letting the barking begin, though, Bachelor producers took a moment to congratulate themselves about what kind of cult following their show has by having Sean & Chris crash viewing parties. I love that Bachelor viewing parties are a thing. That mob at the sorority house was impressive. Fifty girls? More? I can't think of any other shows that inspire that kind of viewing behavior. Having Chris Harrison and the bachelor du jour crash in on me would be...a novelty, certainly. But given the way I watch the show and the kind of stuff I say, I'm afraid it'd also be kinda a buzzkill. But Sean doesn't seem to get that. Providing further evidence of his ignorance about women, Sean believes these gatherings of viewers suggest throngs of people are watching his "journey" the same way they watch the Olympics, cheering for his "journey" the way they cheer for Missy Franklin. 

"It's great to see so many people are invested in my journey," he says, "that there are so many people in my corner." You silly. They just want to laugh at the other women and watch you take off your shirt. And before you tsk-tsk about how catty women are, keep in mind that we'll do the same thing for a house full of bachelors this summer (starting May 20. Mark that.) With even more glee, in fact: I love watching how ridiculous these men can get trying to outdo each other in sensitivity.

But finally, back to the women. I hope everyone noticed that in the rundown of women, in the captions showing their names, professions, and ages, Kacie B's job still shows up as "Ben's season." Girl needs to hurry up and get a real job. That one's not going to carry her too much further. And I can't miss calling out Chris's comment that DEFINITIVELY proved true my claim of a few weeks ago:

• Chris (to Desiree): Did you anticipate the drama?
• Desiree: No.
• Chris (laughing): So you've never seen the show.

BAM! Yes, the worst-kept secret in television is out in the open. Bachelor producers know what they're doing. Casting the crazies ("black diamonds") is deliberate. This show is about entertainment, not love, as every female busting a gut at a viewing party can tell you. And the contestants are the only ones who don't know. Which is what makes it so wickedly entertaining. Genius, I acknowledge again. Pure comic genius.

Which leads us directly to...Tierra the Tierrable. First, obviously, when you want to talk about people, start by asking others to talk about them behind their backs. So the women were invited to discuss Tierra while she was out of the room. Chris probably nailed it when he suggested that having a common enemy made everyone else get along pretty well. With lesser competition, Amanda surely would've caused fissures, but nobody could be bothered with her. She disappeared in the glare of Tierra's sparkle. The women seemed pretty sure that the fall on the stairs was fake, as was the severity of the hypothermia. My take? They were real to Tierra. As was every perceived offense. As will be every future offense, every festered hangnail, every insufficient display of attention from the lucky man she's engaged to. Buckle up, imaginary friend. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Finally, enter the star of the show herself. Maybe her parents were right about Tierra's sparkle after all, because she's certainly more interesting than Sean. But her attempt to repair her image was unsuccessful. The girl we saw on the sofa--sidestepping reality whenever confronted with it, responding to questions by deflecting and arguing, making logical leaps that completely obscured the original questions--was exactly the same one we saw driving the other women crazy on the show. For example (reconstructed from notes. There's a limit to how much backing up and replaying I'll do. This girl is just too exhausting):

• Q: Did you expect you'd be "that girl"?
• A: Yes and no. I light up in a room. I bring joy into a room. When people judge me and don't give me a chance to have that light, they judge me based on what I look like, rather than the heart I have, the good family, my morals.

Wait, the-- what, the-- huh? Back to the question, please.

• Q: When did you get engaged?
• A: I don't want to comment on that.
• Q: Ahh???? (Even Chris can be rendered speechless.)
• A: January.

So..."I'm confused by my own story" is what you're stumbling over saying. Further proof: she said they got together after she got back. All stories up to now have involved him coming to St. Croix, coincidentally as she left the show. (Thanks, Cheryl--didn't notice that one as it happened.)

•  A: I had a target on me with that first rose.
• Q: That didn't happen to others who got roses. Why you?
• A: They felt I didn't want to be friends with them.
• Q: Did you?
• A: I didn't want to be friends with them.
• Q: So the feeling was justified.
• A: But would you go into a situation with them in competition and want to be friends?

Again, the question? Oh, never mind. Conversing with Tierra is like trying to unpick a single hair from the gummy mess clogging the drain.

Cameramen earned their pay catching all the eye rolls and significant looks the women gave each other while Tierra pled her case uninterrupted. But when finally unleashed to confront her, they made the classic mistake of believing that if you just explain reality, the crazy will be revealed and the perpetrator of crazy will admit defeat. Were they not listening to her conversation with Chris? When feelings are facts, the feelings are the only things that matter. When you feel persecuted, women talking to each other are automatically talking about you, no matter what their actual conversations might have been about. Perpetrators of crazy will never see things the way you do. Let it go, girls. Just pull the clog out of the drain and throw the whole mess away without quibbling over which hair did what.

(Sorry about that.)

 

Finally, she who cannot control her face or her eyebrows, who said she had nothing to apologize for and then found an unreceptive audience when she said she apologized, who learned about her sparkle when she was Little Miss Nevada, was excused. Phew. We are done at last. 

Next in the seat was Sarah, who we've been told repeatedly "stole America's heart." Anybody else feel as if we're being told we're supposed to love her more than we do? She's a lovely girl, certainly, and her story of hearing the same breakup explanation again and again is touching, but without the one arm I wouldn't remember who she was. My heart's not stolen. And now America is going to break up with her the same way all the men in her life have: We think you're great, you're admirable, you're an amazing woman, but we want to talk to somebody else now.

Next: Desiree. Ahh...she's great. Loyal to her family. Lovely and spunky and fun. Yes, she does look like Katie Holmes. And I didn't retain a thing she said. Except the general impression that she was being very light and breezy about how she was doing post-Bachelor, which does seem to be an expectation for future Bachelorettes. And I'd prefer her to...

AshLee. who's giving off the rest of the signs. New hair color, check. Overdone extensions, check. Looking like she needs a square meal, check. Rats. It's the Bachelorette makeover. I would SO rather have Leslie the Funny as the next Bachelorette, and AshLee at 32 doesn't have time to waste another year on an exercise in romantic futility. I really want her to get some help and end up with a better life than the Bachelorette will give her. However, she was most definitely NOT popular in the Twitter crawl. (Get over it! He's not that into you! Move on! Wake up!) Surely this is something producers know, so I'll hold out a thin thread of hope that they resisted the temptations of "Abandoned and betrayed!" and "Had her heart crushed!" and tapped the girl who will entertain me more. And who got no makeover and almost zero camera time tonight. Come on--you're making a funny show. Why the resistance to picking a funny lead? Sigh. I really am wasting my breath.

When AshLee says she's no longer in love with Sean, I believe her, but she's far from done with him. (Yet another reason to not dive straight into a houseful of men for a new relationship.) I believe her claim that Sean told her he didn't feel anything for the other two women. You'd better be sure she was listening VERY CLOSELY for those kinds of clues at the time. But I also believe he doesn't think he did. At that point, he was clearly living in the moment with each of the three women and professed himself as far as the Rules would allow, absolutely and completely, to each of them. Because this is what happens when one is living as (gasp!) a playboy. But my goodness, she sure had a lot of expectations about what he would have done after the breakup if he'd been a real gentleman. Good luck, future men, in guessing your way correctly through that list.

With that, and after a too-quick trip through the blooper reel, we turn away from the Not Best Friends and await the rest of Sean's "journey" to find his True Best Friend. Next week: Fetching! Agility! Obedience! And close examination of the quality of tail wagging. Closing credits, I hope you note, did run over pictures of the producer's dog. I think we're onto something.