Watching Sitcoms

This is a guest post by a friend of mine, Sandy the Reality TV Guru:

Just when you thought it was going to be safe to tune your television sets to ABC again on Monday nights after this week’s finale of “Dancing With The Stars”, and be free of all that was wrong with last season’s instalment of “The Bachelor“, alas…it is not to be. Immediately after the 4 minute run over of the “Dancing With The Stars” final dance off, in which our poor broken hearted jilted Melissa Rycroft is an odds on favourite to take the shiny disco ball and hopefully remove herself from my television set permanently, on comes the fourth instalment of “The Bachelor’s” testosterone overloaded little sister also known as “The Bachelorette”. And front and centre for this season’s douche fest is none other than that scrappy little Canadian Jillian Harris…or “Hot Tub Harris” as she’s been affectionately dubbed by at least one of the dirt bags and various serial killers who are vying for her affections this go around. You may remember the infamous hot tub scene last season on “The Bachelor” between Jillian and Jason Mesnick that came complete with ass grabbing and soft core porn music that still ended up having her get the jilt in the number three spot. Jillian is still trying to recover from this alcohol induced faux pas and judging by the line up of douche bags, egomaniacs and just plain creepy dudes that make up her list of men who are still willing to humiliate themselves on national television, I’d say she’s got her work cut out for her trying to come up with just one who is teetering on the up side of normal.

Now I realize that Jillian is not your typical young Hollywood beauty. She’s pretty, adorably cute really with a bubbly personality and getting very close to the big three oh, age wise, but what gives with the picks this year? That was one fugly bunch of dudes that exited from those limos last night. Poor Jillian, I swear I thought she was being punk‘d. How hard must it have been to have had to actually attempt to talk to these guys all night instead of just picking them off one by one based on their spectacular eyes or lips or biceps like all the previous girls have been able to. Or maybe it’s just the setting, the stiffness of the suits and my high definition television that wasn’t being kind to them last night but I’m a little more optimistic about their qualifications for our Jillian after seeing the previews of the shirtless scenes from the upcoming weeks.

They had an interesting twist on last night’s show. Instead of the usual line-up of 25 hopefuls, they threw 5 more into the mix about half-way through the evening. Now I was all for this twist if those 5 had been drop dead gorgeous and had stood out from the original 25 like a mirage on the horizon after a particularly cruel trek through the Sahara. But no…just more of the same. It was interesting that she ended up choosing 4 out of the 5 of them though. Perhaps after spending a couple hours talking to the original 25, they were like a mirage to her. This is a sad testimony of what she had to choose from.

Another interesting twist this season is that the show started last night, but it has not finished filming so Jillian has not yet picked her final guy. Perhaps they think this will cut down on Reality Steve scooping the ending but I doubt it. Steve’s got connections.

Since 80 percent of the guys were interchangeable and it was hard to tell them apart, I’ll short list the selections down to the few I can even remember.

First up is the obvious “I’m just trying to plug my CD and make a few bucks” country crooner known as Wes Hayden from Texas. Yes he has a website and a myspace but I’m not plugging them here. Now I’m not sure but I swear that Michael Johns from season 7 of American Idol has re-incarnated himself once again to appear on this show. Wes is a dead ringer for Johns and is definitely going to make it pretty far in this thing, not withstanding the apparent drama that will dog him on his rise to the top. Between accusations from the other guys about his “intentions” for appearing on the show, his probable girlfriend back home and his attempts to sing and strum his guitar as often as possible to plug his career, it should make for some interesting television.

Then there’s Jake the airline pilot. All tall, blonde, blue-eyed Californian and…well he flies planes…I see him making an impression and outlasting quite a few of the interchangeable dark haired dudes.

Simon the giant from England who requires sub titles when he speaks and looks like lurch from the Adam’s Family with Vulcan ears. I’m sure this was a producer’s pick as we did not see her speaking to the guy once throughout the whole night, he’s scary looking and he’s about 2 feet taller than her. I wonder what drama they figure he can bring.

Mathue who’s name is spelled stupidly and has a Charles Manson stare that totally creeped me out.

Michael the break dance instructor who must have thought he was applying for “So You Think You Can Dance”. Do people really still break dance?

Of course no one can top the stalking, creepy, serial killerish Tanner P and his foot fetish. If for no other reason, Tanner P is there for us to remember just how scary the dating world can be and to hang on to our significant others for dear life, warts and all.

And then there’s Ed from Chicago. A seemingly nice, decent looking normal guy. The only one that stood out on last night’s show. Now Deanna Pappas from “The Bachelorette” season 3 had a Fred from Chicago on her show. By all accounts he was not the best looking of the bunch but he was the nicest and most down to earth normal guy there. Both the fans and the other guys on that season would agree with this. Did she pick him? Of course not.

Pick Ed, Jillian…or run for your life.