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?

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.