'BACHELOR DIARY': Week 3 - The return of the funeral director
Another week, another drama filled episode of “The Bachelor”. It’s America’s favorite guilty pleasure. Or at least it is for me.
This week I’m introducing something new – the Chris Harrison Face Time Meter. This is where I measure how much time host Chris Harrison actually spends on camera so I can have data that proves he has the easiest job in the world.
But before we get to the running diary, I do want to encourage everyone to join the Gazette/KRDO Bachelor Fantasy Contest. It’s free to play and by participating you can win prizes. Check here and here for details.
Now let’s get this thing started!
7:02 – Ben meets his sister Julia in San Francisco where this episode is taking place. Meet the next Bachelorette! She certainly got the looks in the family. In fact I’m positive she took Ben’s share. This is also the earliest in a season we’ve met a family member in Bachelor history. Oh no! I’m turning into Chris Harrison!
7:03 – Sister Julia was just told by Ben that she’d really get along with Courtney the Model because she’s “super mellow, down to earth, and drama free”. Boy does she have him fooled. Courtney is the type of woman who wraps a guy around her finger then has him kill her husband for the insurance money. If Ben ends up committing a felony after giving her the final rose don’t say I didn’t warn you. Courtney’s a Lifetime movie waiting to happen. I’m sure Selena Gomez and the Geico Caveman are available.
7:06 – We have a Chris Harrison sighting! Its liking finding Waldo. He reminds the bachelorettes to make sure they spend their time with Ben wisely. Then he looks at Blakely and tells her she needs to tone it down because The FCC hammered the network for her risqué behavior last week. Something about a law regarding the amount of time silicone is permitted to be shown in primetime. Okay, so I made those last two sentences up.
Chris Harrison Face Time Meter – 42 seconds
7:11 – Ben is taking Emily for a walk up the Bay Bridge. Pfft. Is the Golden Gate not good enough for Emily? Is that what you’re saying Ben? If I was Emily I’d of stormed off and cried in a luggage room.
7:13 – Emily has “nightmares about falling off really tall things”. I’m sure the evil Bachelor producers accidentally missed that little detail on her application. The lesson to be learned? If you want to do something cool on the Bachelor, tell the producers you’re afraid of it and not only will you get to do it but you’ll get a one-on-one with a Bachelor who will fawn over you like a newborn puppy. Here’s how you do it:
Bachelor producer: Buffy, what are your fears?
Buffy: Bungee jumping, scuba diving, parasailing, traveling to foreign countries, and committing to long term relationships with men on reality shows.
Bachelor producer whispering to another Bachelor producer: I think we have a winner.
7:14 – And Red Head Jennifer is the first person in this episode to earn the “No the producers didn’t tell me to do that” award by miraculously spotting Ben and Emily on the Bay Bridge with a telescope you couldn’t look more than a quarter mile with.
7:16 – To encourage Emily to conquer her fear and get up the bridge Ben kisses her. I’m sure that was magical. She probably had dry mouth, chapped lips, and tasted like the cotton you find at the top of a bottle of aspirin. I hope a little bit of vomit made its way into Ben’s mouth; he’d have it coming for that move.
7:18 – Emily and Ben successfully make it to the top of the bridge. Says Ben, “If we can accomplish something like this there’s nothing we can’t do together”. Yet another successful date for someone who takes his relationship metaphors too literally. Yo Ben, when people talk about peaks and valleys they don’t mean actual peaks and valleys. Climbing a bridge is not a sign.
7:20 – Later that evening Emily professes her like for Ben then tells him how an online dating service matched her with her brother. Sadly for Emily but luckily for Ben, it didn’t work out.
7:24 – I’m stunned that Emily received a rose. At the pace he’s eliminating women Ben will be The Bachelor for the next 3 years.
7:30 – Time for the group date or as I like to call it, Man Torture. Eleven catty women on a date with one man, doesn’t that sound fun guys? The answer is NO.
7:31 – I’ve never heard of the term Leap List before but I’m already tired of it. I think Bachelor producers are trying to start a new catch phrase like GTL or Smizing. I refuse to bite. We have too many of these already, as it is we need to be getting rid of “right now” and “it is what it is”. People should start talking more like characters on Downton Abbey or Spartacus Vengeance.
7:33 – Bachelor producers need an excuse to get women in bikinis so they put fake snow in the middle of a San Francisco street and tell everyone to ski. This is done both for the men who watch at home and for Ben to check out what the ladies look like in their underwear. Thank you ABC.
7:37 – Front Range Brittney finds out she’s getting the next one-on-one date with Ben and is freaking out because something doesn’t feel right. I think she just realized she is on a nationally televised dating show. Most dates don’t start with the delivery of a note and a gaudy necklace you only get to borrow until the end of the evening.
7:42 – Woohoo! Group date night! Time to throw back some drinks and make a fool of yourself. Go for it Blakely! And I’m not saying that because she’s on my Bachelor Fantasy team this week.
7:43 – Rachel, who I’ve never seen before this episode, straight out lies to Ben. She calls him funny. The only thing funny about Ben is his hair.
7:46 – Over at the bachelorette pad, we see Front Range Brittney deciding to leave the show. She meets with Ben and gives him the “It’s not you it’s me” line. I’m totally cool with this. I’m sure some women would view this as unfair to other applicants but I disagree. Unlike Survivor, where I hate when people quit, this is about a relationship, not a competition. Good for her.
7:50 – Rachel gets the group date rose. No surprise there. The formula for getting Ben to like you is about as complicated as the instructions for making chocolate milk.
7:57 – Forty-seven year old Lindzi (if she’s 27 I’m Tim Tebow) takes Brittney’s place on the one-on-one. We see Ben commandeer a streetcar, cut in line at a busy ice cream parlor, and break into city hall. He’s beginning to look like Ray Liotta’s character in Goodfellas.
7:59 – There’s some no name guy and his band playing in city hall. My money is on him being the nephew of some big wig at ABC.
8:04 – Ben takes Lindzi to a speakeasy. Somebody needs to tell him that prohibition ended in 1933. Now if he took her to one of Colorado’s countless medical marijuana stores, we’d have a different kind of show.
8:05 – Lindzi, who needs to learn how to spell her name correctly, tells Ben that her last long term relationship ended with her getting dumped by a text that read, “Babe, welcome to dumpsville. Population you”. My wife says she was dating a married man. I think her ex-boyfriend’s buddy sent the text as a practical joke because his friend was dating a woman old enough to be his mom.
8:08 – And now Ben, after shockingly giving Lindzi a rose, breaks into a piano store. He’s probably looking for some spare wire to strangle Chris Harrison with. By my count Ben’s already committed 4 felonies and he hasn’t even given Courtney the Model the final rose yet. Lufthansa vault here we come!
8:13 – And we finally start seeing the part Bachelor producers have been teasing us about for three weeks – a mystery woman is going to crash the cocktail party. If Ben is taking this seriously, he’ll kick this person to the curb. But, since Ben is as brave as a French solider, you can count on him keeping her around.
8:17 – Our mystery guest is former bachelorette Shawntel, who was on Brad Womack’s last season. Chris Harrison greets her after the cocktail party has already started. Why? Because that’s the time producers figured it would be most dramatic, obviously. I thought Shawntel was relatively normal. Well, as normal as a funeral director can possibly be.
Chris Harrison Face Time Meter – 47 seconds
8:19 – Courtney the Model was correctly diagnosed by PhD student Emily as having a social disorder. I’m totally on board with that. She is threatened by other women (especially those who are educated), never looks Ben in the eye when she talks to him, and makes weird facial expressions. But on the plus side she’s super mellow, down to earth, and drama free.
8:22 – Courtney the Model just told Ben that they’d make “cute babies”. If Ben had ANY dating experience the Star Trek red alert siren would be going off in his head right now.
8:24 – Shawntel walks up to Ben and is greeted with a “Holy $%&*”. Which translated into man language is, “What is that weird woman who’s been stalking me online doing here?”
8:29-8:38 - Shawntel’s appearance went over quite well. She was called a female dog, a fake, a loser, and it was pointed out that she has thick thighs. Now we’re cooking with gas! I hope Ben keeps her, despite the fact that a few women are promising to walk out if she gets a rose. This show needs a new hilarious Bachelorism. Here are the ones I’ve created over the years and how they could be used in a sentence:
The Pappas: Wiping away imaginary tears with your pinky.
Example: Get over it! The Broncos lost, don’t get all Pappasy about it, it’s not a big deal.
The Mesnick: Crying while leaning over a balcony.
Example: So instead of Tebowing did you Mesnick after the Patriots pummeled the Broncos?
The Womack – Not being able to make up your mind, like Sophie’s Choice but over a trivial matter.
Example: Dude, make up your mind about what food you’re going to order. Don’t be a Womack about it.
Chris Harrison Face Time Meter (he came out to tell the women the cocktail party is over)– 31 seconds
8:42 – Rose ceremony time! I doubt Shawntel sticks around.
Chris Harrison Face Time Meter (Harrison stating the obvious) – 27 seconds
8:47 – Harrison comes out for 11 seconds to tell Ben he only has one rose left. Thanks Chris!
8:48 – Erika faints. Her life flashed before her eyes when she realized she was competing with a woman who deals with dead bodies on a daily basis for a guy who looks like he has an underdeveloped frontal lobe.
8:53 – Harrison returns for 7 seconds to make sure Erika is okay. Thanks Chris!
8:55 – Unbelievable! Ben doesn’t hand out the final rose. This means Shawntel, Jaclyn and faint victim Erika are sent home.
Chris Harrison Face Time Meter Total (for coming out and making sure Ben was sure about not using his last rose) – 17 seconds
8:59 – We find out why Erika was sent home during the credits – she had “amore” tattooed inside her lip.
Conclusion - Tonight’s episode was a much better show than the one that aired last week. Hopefully every three weeks we’ll see another former contestant trotted out by ABC to pretend she’s really into Boring Ben. By the way, Chris Harrison spent a total of 182 seconds on screen tonight. That’s approximately 3 minutes. Try not to feel bad about a guy getting paid more for 3 minutes than you make in a month.
