Watching Sitcoms

Here is another fun guest post from Sandy the Reality TV Guru:

Perhaps it’s because most of the reality shows are on hiatus for the season but I’m still trying to figure out how ABC can give up 2 hours of prime time television for both The Bachelor and now for The Bachelorette. I expected it for the season premiere last week but I was surprised that the trend continued this week. I hope they don’t plan on doing this for the entire series. I can do with a little less face time from the majority of these psycho dudes.

Last night we were treated to the reason why “Hot Tub Harris” got that little moniker during her run on The Bachelor last season…the girl’s a bit…how do I put this gently…”loose with her affections”? Not since Bachelor Bob Guinney, the kissing fool, have we seen that much face sucking when we are still this early in the game and in this case we’re dealing with twenty guys still vying for her attention instead of the usual 16. I think she hit about 6 or 7 of them last night. Our little Jilly is definitely going to be making the most of her time on this show. Well you know what they say about having to kiss a lot of frogs….

The show started off with the always fun punking of the guys standing in front of the big fancy Hollywood mansion. See this gorgeous house guys? Guess who’s not going to be staying here. Yep that’s right, we’re letting Jillian have the place to herself while you guys get to stay in the tool shed out back. And if you bring your “A” game in the face sucking department to the dates that you may or may not be able to go on, you might get a chance to upgrade from the hole we’re putting you up in and stay in the big house for a couple of days. The “Bunk House” as it’s been affectionately called is nothing more than 20 single beds crammed together in one room. The guys are not impressed. I can see some major testosterone fueled hissy fits coming down the pike here.

After watching the guys jump from bed to bed, which wasn’t difficult since the beds are practically on top of each other, our ever present host Chris Harrison announces that we’re getting two group dates and one “one on one” date this week…and not everyone is going to get a chance to see Jillian at all. Now this just makes no sense. She’s going to be cutting this list down to 16 without ever having the chance to talk to some of these dudes at all? And we’re looking for her “future husband” here? Whatever. The first group date has 8 guys coming up to the big house for a pool party. And there is the opportunity for one of them to get the coveted rose that will keep them safe from the next round of eliminations. So we cut to Jillian relaxing by the pool in a bikini that I think I owned back in 70’s when I was about 4. Okay we know that Jillian is tiny…really tiny…but couldn’t she have picked out a suit that made her look older than 12? It was a disturbing image to see all these beefed up dudes throwing her around in the pool like she was someone’s little sister. And then all of a sudden Jillian and the rose disappeared and we cut into an episode of “The Amazing Race”. The guys had to race around LA in those little electric cars in nothing but their swimsuits seeking out clues to finding Jillian and getting the chance to have dinner alone with her. Now this was just weird seeing these half naked guys crammed into these little cars, two per car, while one guy drove and the other navigated through the streets of LA. But I have to give props to the “Break Dance Instructor” and the “Psycho Foot Fetish Serial Killer” for some pretty funny moments. They were sharing a car and were honestly hysterical in their commentary and squealing like school girls. Of course they didn’t get the prize of dinner with Jillian but I think they did find one thing…each other. More on that later.

So the country singer Wes (who’s CD is available at his website which I again refuse to plug) and some other dude, who’s obviously fodder and doesn’t make it too far in this game because I can’t even remember his name, get to the final “pit stop” first. I was almost expecting Phil Keoghan to be standing there with one eyebrow lifted but no such luck, wrong network. And Jillian has to decide between them who’s going to get to have dinner with her in a locked bank vault while she’s wearing a million dollar diamond necklace. No folks I’m not making this up, I actually witnessed this. Who comes up with this schtick anyway? I want their job. Well since Jilly has already confessed to her love of “bad boys” it’s no contest really as to who she’s going to pick. Wes Craven (watch for him on Itunes) is the biggest “bad boy” of the bunch…in other words…he’s a whining douche. Which should not have surprised me considering the fact that I still think he’s Michael John’s sporting a Texas accent now to keep his face on the tube. And in the tackiest move yet by the Bachelor/Bachelorette series, the other 7 guys get to hang out drinking outside the vault while watching this dinner date on surveillance video. So when the face sucking commences, we’ve got 7 drunk dudes peeping in on the show. Just horrific. And of course even if he wasn’t such a douche, Wes Craven (CD available) is now public enemy number one in the old tool shed. Except, wait, he gets the rose so he gets to spend the next 3 days in the mansion with Jillian. “Hot Tub Harris” is going to be rather busy I can see.

Date number two is the “one on one” date with my future husband “Jake the Pilot”. Jake is gorgeous, with a smoking hot bod and sparkly blue eyes but he‘s a hopeless romantic and comes off as a complete dork so I love him. Oh and did I mention he flies PLANES?!?! If Jillian passes up on this guy I’m buying a corn field and building an airstrip. Build it and they will come and all that crap….Jake must be mine. So anyway, Jake and Jill (see it just sounds right…and I hate that) go up the hill…no wait…they go on their date and it turns out that Jillian is a country gal at heart. Considering she’s from Calgary, Alberta, no surprise there really. And Jake can two-step with the best of them. Okay this was a bit of a turn off for me but I’m sure I can get him to wear leather and guy liner for our first date. Well Jake gets to go and try on some country outfits for this date and props to whoever staged that one because the whole date should have just been Jillian (or preferably me) watching him try on clothes. He was like a Ken doll come to life. Oh it was glorious. Then they went and had dinner and talked and danced to their own personal concert by Martina McBride…whatever. Sometime during the date Jake swooped in for the kill right in the middle of a sentence Jillian was saying and threw down the dorkiest first kiss I’ve ever witnessed and while I did kinda say ewwww….I will deal with it. And then after much more face sucking, the date rose was his.

Date number three was just stupid. They got to play basketball, shirts vs. skins…more gratuitous male nakedness and Simon the British 7ft tall Vulcan couldn’t get that ball in the basket for all the tea in…well Britain. And then Jilly ran away to get her “friends” and while the guys were standing there anticipating a group of hot sweaty chicks showing up to play ball with, they were punk’d once again when members of the Harlem Globetrotters showed up and wiped the court with them. This was our first real look at the biggest psycho of them all, Dave. Dave is pumped up, tattooed and he’s in construction. He’s a man’s man. This Bachelorette game is not for him. The competition is killing him and I‘m not sure he‘s used to losing at anything. He hates the sensitive and cunningly sly Juan, the Spanish ladies man who’s a snake in the grass and a little feminine, everything that Dave is not. And the hate is just festering in Dave. He keeps talking about “man code” and how Juan just doesn’t respect it. Is there such a code? Can anyone explain it to me or is it just a psycho code in Dave’s mind? I expect great things from this story angle. So after the basketball they all sat around on the beach which was obviously cold and Jillian of course mentions something about how it would be funny if someone ran naked into the cold surf. Ladies, let meet Mike and his speedo. Mike was a little shy about going butt naked, hence the speedo, but that’s okay because Brian the IT douche who dubbed Jillian “Hot Tub Harris” in the first episode is going to make up for that later. So Mike gets the date rose for his efforts.

Finally after what seemed like the longest show on television (as evidenced by this long winded review) we got to the final cocktail party before the elimination. So we’ve got Wes (check out his myspace) the whining douche, Mike the speedo guy, and my future husband Jake the Pilot already sporting roses and therefore safe from elimination. Now remember that some of these guys haven’t even had a chance to talk to Jillian and one of those is sweet little Reid. He looks 12, just like little Jilly, and seems like a nice boy. Therefore, he is fodder. The other is Robby the Bartender who whips up his own creation called the “Rosmo” for our little Jilly. By the end of the evening, she looked completely hammered so I’m guessing the “Rosmo” was a big hit. So of course Wes the singing douche, who already had a rose and has spent the last 3 days in the mansion with Jillian, just has to cut into Robby’s conversation with her, the only one he’s had so far, during the party. Now all the guys have to pipe in about how he’s not there for the “right reasons” (are any of them really?) and Wes the douche makes no excuses for his douchiness and tells them he’s not there to date them and he’s not going to slow down so they’ll have to “step it up”. Well if that’s not a request for one of these psycho guys to take him out I don’t know what is. Me thinks that Wes is going to have one of his CD’s shoved up into an unmentionable place before this show is over.

So we move on to the “Ballot Box of Doom” where the guys get to write down the name of the guy that they’d most like to see get the axe. Now luckily for Wes (yes he has a website) the douche, they can’t choose one of the guys who already have a rose so naturally Dave, the psycho with rage issues, invokes the “man code” on everyone and Juan the “sensitive” ladies man gets chosen for the cut. But of course since the final decision is Jillian’s, she saves him so that we can anticipate more of Dave’s rage in future episodes. But the best part of the cocktail party was watching Tanner P the foot fetish serial killer put Jillian’s foot in his lap and proceed to salivate about how “into” feet he is. And that was while he was sitting on the couch with his new bff Michael the Break Dancer’s arm around him. Those two are going to be a riot in the coming weeks. I hope they both get cut at the same time so they can ride off into the sunset together squealing like girls in their funny little electric car.

So in a last ditch effort to get a rose, Brian the IT douche takes off his glasses and then the rest of his clothes and proceeds to jump into the chilly pool. I can only guess that the effects of the booze and the cold water shrinkage made for a less than impressive profile because Brian the IT douche got cut PDQ after that. Ouch…that’s got to play havoc on the ego. And he takes with him Simon the 7ft Vulcan, some guy named Julian, and Mathue with the stupidly spelled name and the Charles Manson killer stare.

And Ed from Chicago was there too I think but you’d never know it. I can’t even remember what date he was on but he got to stay so I’m hoping he is the sleeper this season and he plays a more prominent role in future episodes. I still think he’s obviously the perfect choice for Jillian since I am claiming Jake the Pilot for myself and there’s no one else in this train wreck that I can see any woman wanting to them to know her phone number much less where she lived.