Sean #11: What Was That Again?

The publishing industry has Rules for romance. The point-of-view character must be female; she and the love interest must meet within the first five pages. (Don't question; just obey.) The obstacle to True Love should be established just as things are getting warmed up. There cannot be a love triangle because someone won't get a happy ending. (Except for villains, of course, which are knocked off in the interest of True Love.) A primary obstacle might be overcome and celebrated with some level of physical intimacy, just in time for a new, more impossible one to be raised, and then the story ends with the happy resolution of the problem. And that's it. Once you're there, wrap it up fast. 

Established authors can try to break these Rules, but the smaller your following, the less likely you are to get away with it. The people who give us The Bachelor are acquainted with these Rules, and like most others, they feel free to break them at will. Hey--they've already got their audience. And generally, we're willing to go along with it: the wrong-gender protagonist, the same obstacle every time, the love double-dodecahedron. All accepted. Until the final episode, that is. Good grief, this last show is TOO LONG. They need to pay more attention to the "wrap it up" rule. It's the romantic equivalent of that interminable motorcycle chase at the end of The Bourne Legacy. Admit it: Most of the action happens in the interactions between the girls in the earlier episodes. Cocktail parties and group dates, folks. That's where you get the money shots.

                        

It's really easy to be distracted during this show. I, for example, was watching during a family birthday sushi party.

Not bad for a bunch of amateurs, eh? Did you know you can make spicy mayo for salmon or tuna rolls by just taking regular mayo and adding sriracha to taste and a little lemon juice? (It was post-sushi travel that made the blog late. Sorry about that.)

Oh, right. The show. The family visits are kinda surreal, don't you think? Perhaps my sense of it not seeming very normal started with the lunch table at Catherine's meet-up, which looked like this:

Nothing more natural than a bunch of folks sitting together along one side of a table, right? Kinda fitting, though, because that meal is always going to be the last supper for somebody. My primary takeaway from these meetings is that A) Sean's dad is a pushover for a pretty girl, and B) Sean isn't actually interested in anything they have to say. You'd think he was, by the way he started out by saying he hoped they'd have some clarity to enhance his clarity, and together they'd get some real clarity. But no, when Mom started to express some geniune, rational concern about him making any decision in this bizarre situation, he shut her down right quick. Let's be clear, Mom. You're just here for show.

No, what he wanted was for his family to just understand where he was coming from. Not for them to contribute any opinion. "What do you think" was intended as only a rhetorical question. Ah. Was this the "clarity" you were looking for? Not that that's a bad thing, truth be told, because this gathering is a losing proposition for the family no matter what. There's no established etiquette for how a family is supposed to respond when their precious boy introduces two potential brides to the family on the same day. (Though a few more seasons of  The Bachelor may provide enough of a base to establish one.) Favor the wrong one and you're estranged forever. Keep your mouth shut when he's headed for a bad and obvious breakup and you're unloving. In very few cases are the chips going to fall in a way that works out well. Best to fake a migraine on the morning of the meetings, enjoy the free trip, and go home without having stuck your neck out.

Cutaway to the live audience enjoying the show sitting upright in their fancy pants in uncomfortable chairs, roasting their toes in the flames of 10,000 votives in glass cups. The time spent covering this gathering is clear evidence that producers know there isn't enough entertainment to fill a two-hour show. Where does this audience come from? Casting rejects? Not entirely, because some of them are certainly outside the age demographic. Of course, so is my mother-in-law, now hooked on the show and still watching with this face:

"How can those girls help falling in love with that boy," she says, "with all those things he says?" She's not a big fan of Sean. Hardly a gentleman, saying all those things to all those girls. She thinks I'm heartless for not feeling sorrier for the girls. Perhaps she misunderstands. I'm not questioning anybody's genuine pain at the breakups. No, I'm watching in wonder at humans completely capable of falling in love and utterly incapable of understanding how the process works. Look, if you combine cake mix, eggs, oil, and water in the proper proportions, expose them to the proper temperature, you get cake. No one seems surprised by this. If you combine attractive, available people with elaborate dates, an unlimited candle budget, isolation, alcohol, and heartfelt conversation about hopes and dreams and feelings, you get love. Every time. So people who think they're SO special that their cake is automatically the only true cake just because it exists, well, yeah, I'm not going to cry a river when you don't win at the fair. You're trying to say you didn't know how the fair works? (That squealing sound is an analogy being stretched just past its limit.)

I mean, let's take Lindsey, for example, who tells Sean's parents that "Our relationship is real. It's normal." You've been on, like, five dates. Intensely abnormal dates. With a camera crew. Nothing about this strikes you as odd?

I'll tell you what was odd. Being the river boat tiller for their date on the Mekong River. Poor guy sure had to do a lot of whistling and looking toward the distant bank he's seen four thousand times while a foreign couple made out four feet away from him, under the unblinking gaze of a camera only a few additional feet away. I think this is where that relationship actually died, though. Baby Lindsey likes childlike play ("Let's make binocular hands and look around!"), and I can see the appeal of somebody who reminds you of your carefree childhood. And inflects up at the end of every sentence. And doesn't close her mouth all the way to make consonants. But there's a reason we all stopped playing pretend (well, most of us--live-action role players are the topic of a separate discussion). We're over it, and I think right about then a light started to dawn on Sean that he was, too.

As for Catherine's date, well, shucks. The one that scores the elephant ride is always going to be the winner, right? I realized on this date that I was starting to like her, too. Doggone it, she's got some substance, and I don't think it's just that after Lindsey anybody would sound thoughtful and serious by just ending her sentences decisively.

Question: Does the Neil Lane ring come with a contract that in the case of breakup the ring must be returned? Does their marketing budget include actuarial tables on the likelihood that they'll actually have to give up a ring permanently? Sorry. As I said, I'm easily distracted during this episode. Wait--gosh--Sean sure has a lot of confidence in his towel tucking capability. Sorry. Again. And can someone pass the eel sauce? We're onto round II, which looks like this:

Oh yeah, the show. Okay, if the elephant factor wasn't enough to predict who was going to win, the dresses should've done it. I mean, silver is for second, right? Gold for first? And flattering versus not flattering? My fashion sense is limited to making pretty decent picks on Project Runway, (and when I'm wrong, it's because the judges are out of line. Come on--that Jiffy Pop/emergency blanket dress last week? Are you kidding?), I will go far enough out on a limb to put in print that a wide plunging neckline is just never, never good. Nice shoes, though, and used to good effect in the end. You don't want to marry me? Fine. I can stop pretending I'm a grown-up and take these monsters off. Let the dress drag in the dirt. Who cares, now? Sticking one of these six-inch stilettos into your vitals is a tempting thought, but I'll restrain myself. Kudos on that, little girl. I'll excuse the unnumbered repetitions of "it's okay" as shock, and applaud "This hurts" as honest and straight and a sign that you're going to mature well. Crying "I don't want to be alone" afterward, though? You're twenty-four-slash-fourteen. Relax. Things will work out.

Finally we get to Catherine's Walk of Still-Unknown Triumph.

• First: Did Chris tell her she had to find Sean in the woods? She sure seemed to be picking around in the trees for quite a while. 
• Second: Opening with "I think the world of you," is a kiss-off if there ever was one. Catherine must've felt a gut-bomb go off at that moment. But all for naught. 
• Third: I loved Catherine's genuine surprise when the question she'd been waiting for actually came out. And I loved being surprised by how much I was delighted by it. As my daughter Cheryl put it as she defended herself for backing up to see it again, "I'm feeling things!" Her prediction? "I think they're gonna make it. I really think they're gonna make it." And with the lack of dithering about wedding dates in the After the Final Rose interview, she just may be onto something.

And at LAST we are delivered from Sean's season of The Bachelor. A better one than I expected, thanks to some gifted casting. And I like Desiree's spunk as I imagine the upcoming season of The Bachelorette. I'm picturing a special blog feature for that one: Grammy's takes on the bachelors. She's a single lady herself now. And being as she can't see the men very well, she should be able to provide an unbiased evaluation of character. As long as neither of us gets distracted.

Is that avocado and salmon? Give it here. And come on, who doesn't think Desiree's brother would make a fun Bachelor?