Tuesday

The Bachelorette 4 - Episode 3

We open with host Chris and all 12 bachelors in the bunkhouse. Chris informs them it is time for the 3 who received date-roses over the week to swap places with the 3 who spent the week in the mansion with DeAhnna. This means:
-science teacher Richard is replaced by (former) pro basketball player Graham, who was selected on the basis of his day-at-the-beach date with DeAhnna.
-(current) pro snowboarder Jesse is replaced by the Chipmunk Kid, 23 year old Canadian sales manager Paul.
-Dallas attorney Jeremy replaces himself and starts his second straight week in the mansion.

While Guests of the Rose frolic in the pool with the bachelorette, the bunkhouse boys discuss Jeremy, who has been set up as the odds-on favorite to end the show as a formerly eligible bachelor. The response of the guys to their chief rival is both funny and sad. Funny in that as uninvolved spectators we get to laugh as they invent nonsensical reasons to justify their bad feelings toward him (chef Robert thinks, “he’s too perfect and that’s just not real,”), sad in what their behavior says about human nature. Evidently we would rather embrace irrationality and delusion than feel inadequate.

DeAhnna gives the Guests a date card and sends them down to the bunkhouse, where Jeremy reads the card to the guys. The individual date (“join me for rooftop romance”) goes to just-evicted Guest of the Rose Richard. Remember that this season if you get an individual date, you come back with a rose or you don’t come back. Given that DeAhnna has just spent a week with him as a housemate, I can’t help but be worried for the guy, who I like. She could be giving him one last chance to get her pulse rate up. And from his response, it’s clear Richard sees things the same way: “Looks like it’s time to go big or go home.”

That night, DeAhnna, dressed and ready to start her date with Richard, addresses the camera. What she has to say does nothing to lessen my unease. She tells us Richard is an easy-going, sweet guy and she’s really hoping to find a spark with him.

DeAhnna arrives at the bunkhouse to pick up her date. She is stunning in a knee-length black dress with matching wrap. In an aside, Jesse wastes a lovely line he should have saved for her: “It’s like she has a closet full of perfection. She just walks in and gets dusted with it.” In the limo on the way to dinner Richard asks why he got the invite. DeAhnna suddenly finds the floor of the limo interesting. “I can’t tell you all my secrets,” she says. This thing has I-love-you-as-a-friend written all over it.

The date takes place on a skyscraper rooftop in the heart of downtown LA. They never tell us the name of the “landmark building,” which is kind of weird, and the romantic dinner is on a set, not in a restaurant; so I’m thinking this is a heliport decorated especially for the occasion and start watching the night sky to see if I can spot Neo or John McClane or any of a thousand other action movie heroes swinging by. During the course of the date we learn that DeAhnna didn’t know that shooting stars aren’t actual stars. Good thing she went on Ellen and not Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

It’s 9:30 at night in the bunkhouse. The Rose Guests are back with the group-date card. Everybody but Jason is going on a group date, meaning Jason is finally going to get his chance to tell DeAhnna about his 3 year old son.

On the rooftop Richard is explaining to our bachelorette how little teachers’ make. We also learn that this 31 year old has never brought a girl to meet the folks. Cut to DeAhnna addressing the camera. “The clock is ticking. I have to make a decision on giving Richard a rose or not. I have to be able to figure out whether I can see him as my husband or whether he’s just a friend.” We cut to the two settling in on a sofa, a stone fireplace behind them. We are supposedly still on the rooftop, but where the hell are we, really? My guess is the “landmark building” includes condos on the upper floors. Richard tells the camera he is going to make the move for the first kiss, which he has mentioned before. I suddenly remember this is the guy who told us he was bullied mercilessly throughout high school, add in the fact that he’s never had a girlfriend close enough that she and his parents crossed paths and realize he doesn’t have a clue how to seduce a woman. It may be that he isn’t concerned about his first kiss with DeAhnna; he might be concerned about his first kiss, ever.

From here on in the date is hard to watch. She needs to feel the love but he is too nervous to cop the feel. They go for a ride in a horse drawn carriage and while he’s working up the courage to kiss her (he is growing more and more confident that she has romantic feelings for him) she is working up the courage to dump him. DeAhnna asks the carriage driver to pull over. Right there, on the streets of Manhattan, in a glowing horse drawn carriage, she sends him packing.

I actually have to give her her props; better now than halfway through the most romantic final rose ceremony ever. And what an object lesson in the importance of timing. Hope Richard has learned something. I think we should nominate him for the next Bachelor. They can call it The Bachelor: Virgin Territory.

A crew member enters the bunkhouse and removes Richard’s bags (all bachelors going on individual dates are required to pack their bags before they leave on the date). The guys are shocked and unsettled.

The next morning DeAhnna delivers a crate of cowboy clothes to the bunkhouse and tells the guys to suit up for the group date. As they pile into the waiting vehicles Sean addresses the camera and sets the tone and theme of the date: get Jeremy.

They meet DeAhnna at a dude ranch. First humiliation on the menu is a line dancing lesson (reminding me of a bumper sticker I once saw: Real friends don’t let friends line dance). Next up is riding the mechanical bull. Jesse, who won the impromptu push-up contest just before the last rose ceremony, stays on the bull the longest, winning some alone time later in the day. During their tête-à-tête, he smartly shows DeAhnna his serious, romantic side and I’m thinking this guy is going a lot farther in this contest than I thought he would when he first stepped out the limo in that loud sport coat, jeans and Mary Tyler Moore haircut.

Jesse and DeAhnna join the others around a campfire. DeAhnna asks to see Ron in private. She confronts him with the fact that he confronted Jeremy about receiving 2 roses in a row and tells him it was inappropriate. He says it wasn’t about the rose. “My sense about Jeremy is…” He pauses and changes his approach. “I’m a guy’s guy.”

Shout out to Ron: first, you’re a barber, man. I’m not all that clear on what constitutes a guy’s guy, but the image of a barber doesn’t pop immediately to mind (unless we’re talk a guy’s guy in the sense that if a guy is looking for a guy, hair dressers are a good place to start). Second, a guy’s guy doesn’t say he’s a guy’s guy, other guys say it. Part of being a guy’s guy is you’re not a blowhard playing his own horn.

Ron continues: “Iron sharpens iron. You need a guy as strong as you are to make you stronger.” Maybe he thinks she’s looking for a personal trainer? She tells him that Jeremy opened up to her and “you guys don’t think he’s a guy’s guy, but I feel very confident that he’s here for the right reasons.”

Ron now makes a very telling slip. He says, “And it is about you.” He says it softly, but to me it had an argumentative undertone. If we asked his ex if he ever told her, “Yeah, right: it’s all about you, isn’t it?” I wonder what her response would be.

The chat ends with a classic awkward pause, a bizarre frozen smile on Ron’s face and a skittering look in his eyes. He has just realized DeAhnna isn’t looking for a guy’s guy: she’s looking for a lady’s man.

Ron rejoins the guys around the campfire and gives them his version of his talk with DeAhnna, during the course of which he reminds the others that he is a guy’s guy, which earns him a knuckle kiss from martial arts master Sean (who already gave him a love pat on the shoulder when he sat down. The two of them should hook up after they get eliminated). It ends with Ron addressing Jeremy directly: “I do think you’re lacking something, brother.” Like what? Repressed homosexual tendencies?

While Jeremy and DeAhnna snuggle up together on a bale of hay, Fred and Twilley spy on them and eventually interrupt. DeAhnna chats then returns to what has become a very tense campfire. She gives Robert some one-on-one in an effort to lower the tension level. They do well and DeAhnna gives him a rose.

Next day it’s Jason’s turn for the individual date. A chopper takes them on a tour of southern California, eventually depositing them at an observatory. They watch the sun set and have a candlelit dinner in the library. Over dinner Jason breaks the news that he has been raising his son Ty since his first wife walked out on him two years before. Jason’s love for his son is moving. It prompts DeAhnna to talk about her mother’s long, losing battle with cancer. If anyone can rival Jeremy, this is the guy. She gives him the week’s 2nd rose.

Next day DeAhnna takes the whole crew to the set of the Ellen Degeneres show (no audience). Ellen interviews the guys, starting with asking each to tell the group what they like about DeAhnna. Fred, of all people, seems to impress Ellen the most. The guys then have a dance off, which wasn’t nearly as funny as I thought it would be. The guys are sent to the green room to wait while Ellen and DeAhnna pour over pictures of the guys and discuss who should get the 3rd rose. In the green room The guys congratulate Fred on opening up. Meanwhile Ellen warns DeAhnna that Graham is scared and not communicative and if he can’t be convinced to open up, it is not a good idea to keep him. She also points to one picture (we don’t see who) and says, “I don’t see him lasting much longer.”

After an unfunny bit of the guys in Ellen boxers, Fred gets the rose. I didn’t think anybody could make Ellen not funny, but The Bachelorette did it.

It’s time for the pre-rose ceremony one-on-ones. DeAhnna is dressed in a clinging, strapless, sparkly silver dress that really compliments her butt. Ron is our bachelorette’s first sit down. He tells her he woke up that morning thinking maybe she isn’t his type, but when she talked about opening up earlier in the day he “got a little case of the DeAhnna’s.” He is so transparently trying to manipulate her that even DeAhnna can see it. She tells him he needs to convince her and asks him to tell her something fun about himself. It’s a great ploy. Oh, you’re ready to open up? Alright, tell me something personal. And of course, because he’s full of shit, he gets busted.

His response: “Something fun about me? Well, uh, geez, everything about me is fun. Our questions have been serious, our answers have been serious. I’d like to just have a little fun with you.”

The look on DeAhnna’s face is perfect. It says, “bye-bye.” And we get another awkward pause. Jeremy walks in on them. Ron heads inside. As Jeremy leads DeAhnna away from the windows (where the other bachelor’s are watching like a nosey next door neighbor) she whispers, “Thank you very much.”

Jeremy asks DeAhnna if she would be willing to move to Dallas. She answers in the affirmative. Graham and DeAhnna talk. He says the right things. This is the guy who inspires the most sexual heat. Jason’s next. DeAhnna has had a star named for Ty. Pass me the Kleenex.

Rose ceremony time. In order: Twilley, Jesse, Jeremy, Brian (has this guy gotten any alone time yet?), Graham, Sean. Canadian Paul and Barber Ron are out of here.

In his farewell face time Ron tells the camera, “If Jeremy’s the guy for her, I wish them the best. But I would say, it’s absolutely doomed for failure. DeAhnna tonight didn’t reject me; she chose other guys.” Uh, the truth is, Ron, she hasn’t and won’t choose anybody till the end. Right now she’s just rejecting men, and you are one of the rejected ones.

No comments: