On tonight’s episode of “The Bachelorette,” the question of whether Jillian would choose Ed or Kiptyn as her soul mate next week was put on the back burner.
Instead, the “Men Tell All” episode focused on more pressing matters: Does Wes really have a girlfriend? (Unresolved.) Why does everyone hate Juan? (Basically, because he’s there.) Is Jake perfect? (Yes, but in a bad way.) What is the “man code”? (Don’t ask.) Is Tanner P. really a foot fetishist? (Yes. Ew.) Are Molly and Jason (from Jillian’s “Bachelor” season) still together? (Yep.) And is Reid, as rumored, coming back next week? (Signs point to yes.)
That last point could almost have slipped past us. The final moments of the show were a tease for the season finale, airing next Monday. Amid shots of Ed and Kiptyn meeting her family and Jillian preparing to make her choice, the narrator, Chris Harrison, promised that “an unexpected confession would make her question everything.” A series of dramatic quick cuts followed, the last of which was a shot of a ring in a man’s hand; then the camera pulled back to reveal that the hand belonged to…Reid!
Chris had said that Reid wasn’t able to make it due to a prior engagement. As in being engaged to Jillian?
It’s possible, however, that that shot of the ring could be another trick of the series’ wickedly brilliant editors. Maybe we’ll learn that Reid stayed home, where he found a ring on the floor and picked it up.
Wes, after all, has claimed in interviews that his comments were edited or taken out of context to seem worse than they really were.
The editors riposted tonight by cutting together a montage of Wes’ greatest moments, set to his song “It Don’t Take That Long” (a.k.a. “Love, It Don’t Come Easy.”) We saw him saying all the same rotten things about being there for the fame and feeling like a free man once Jillian sent him home. It’s possible that some of those quotes were presented in a false light, but some seemed pretty damning no matter what the context was. The studio audience, which was largely female, booed at the end of the segment.
Chris Harrison said that it was too bad Wes couldn’t be there to defend himself (without saying why Wes couldn’t be there), but that didn’t stop the show from devoting a huge chunk of airtime to the cowboy singer. In a one-on-one interview without a studio audience, Chris asked Jillian what she saw in Wes; she said he was her type: “the country singer with tattoos that wants a family and wants to sit by the fire and drink beer.” And, she added, “I fell for his song. I’m sorry.” Having now watched all of the episodes we viewers have seen, she said that she’s sure that Wes didn’t come on the show to find love and that she thinks he had another woman “on the sidelines.”
The men who returned for the special also rehashed the Wes controversies. Tanner P. (the foot fetishist) said that while he and Wes were commiserating about sharing a room with a bunch of smelly guys, Wes told him, “I’ve got a girl back home. I don’t need this.”
David (the angry ass man), trying to defend Wes, said, “Everybody’s got a girl back home.” The audience erupted in “Whoa!” and Dave quickly added, “Ex!” Dave also claimed that Wes had told the others that he had originally gone on the show to promote his music but had become interested in Jillian as the weeks passed.
Some men thought Tanner had done the right thing by telling Jillian that one of the bachelors had a girlfriend; others said he should at least have said who the cheater was.
Jake (the perfect guy) claimed that when he returned to the show after his elimination to tell Jillian about Wes’ girlfriend, he was acting on his own, having called a producer because he was losing sleep worrying that Jillian would choose Wes.
Under Harrison’s prodding, the men discussed whether these instances of tattletaling violated the “man code,” which Dave defined as “an unspoken rule, set of rules, that you don’t have to talk about.” (For example, you don’t sleep with your friend’s ex-girlfriend.) It seems that Juan (the quiet one) violated the man code by keeping to himself but then pretending to be one of the guys when the cameras were on.
His worst crime, according to Dave, was pretending to drink a shot with the other men but actually pouring it out. Juan said that he drank half. Chris Harrison asked, “Who gives a crap?”
Chris, if all the viewers started asking themselves that question while watching this show, you’d be out of a job.
Juan tried to put Dave, his chief antagonist, on the defensive by pointing out that it isn’t manly to make a woman feel uncomfortable. He was referring to the notorious segment in which a visibly intoxicated Dave, who had received the “first impression rose” from Jillian in the season premiere, complimented her for how she looked in spandex, repeatedly referred to hot her ass was, said her breast was hanging out, pulled at her neckline and then went in for a kiss.
In order to clarify these events, Dave got to move from the guys’ peanut gallery down to a one-on-one interview with Chris, where he denied that he had made Jillian feel uncomfortable. Chris asked the women in the audience if it was a compliment to hear that you have a nice derrière; they shouted no. Dave asked them, “You wouldn’t like it if a guy came up to you and said, ‘You’ve got a great ass’?” They shouted no even louder.
Unfazed, Dave refused to admit that he misread Jillian’s signals, saying, “I think she put them out there and then retracted them.” Speaking for the women in the audience, Chris asked whether the man code included respect for women, and Dave said that after he’s dated a woman for a month or so, he often compliments her ass. Chris finally asked Dave if he would apologize if Jillian said he had made her uncomfortable; Dave said yes and, to his credit, did so when Jillian came to the studio later in the show.
Jake got a one-on-one interview with Chris after getting pummeled by most of the other bachelors for pretending to be so perfect all the time. (Tanner F. also mocked him for getting emotional after telling Jillian about Wes. “You really pulled a Mesnick,” he said, referring to the overly emotional Jason from last season. “That’s when a grown man leans over a hotel railing and cries.”)
When Jake denied ever pretending to be perfect, the others said he had complained that girls like having something to fix in a man and he had nothing to fix. Even Jillian had finally called him out, telling him he could just be himself in front of her before sending him home. “Nice guys finish last,” he told the camera, pretty much confirming what the other guys had said about him.
The women in the audience seemed to be eating it up. One asked him if he still had feelings for Jillian. “I always will,” he replied. “In some ways, I’m still getting on my feet.” Another asked if he would star in the next season of “The Bachelor.” As the audience applauded, he stalled, saying that it was still too soon, and he would have to decide when the time is right, but it would be an honor.
The footage of Ed and Kiptyn didn’t really give any clues about Jillian’s eventual decision. Ed looked endearing in a scene in which he was incoherently drunk; Kiptyn gained points for the segment on the charity for troubled teenagers that he supports. Chris Harrison was typically cagey. He only asked Jillian, “Are you happy?” She replied, “I can’t recall a time I’ve been this happy. I think it all turned out good in the end.”
Speaking of happy endings, Jason and Molly walked onto the stage to enthusiastic applause from the audience. She said that earlier in their relationship, they weren’t getting that kind of response, having been “just absolutely ripped to shreds in the media and tabloids and on the Internet.”
Jason said that the negativity brought them closer together. After he had broken up with his first choice, Melissa, and told Molly he wanted to date her, they had spent two days just talking about their future. They have been seeing each other on weekends, since she hasn’t yet moved from Milwaukee to Seattle. But, she said, “there will be a wedding.”
As for the hurt he caused, Jason said that Melissa is happy now, so he’s willing to take responsibility for that. He said all of this in that painfully sincere and thoughtful tone he always took while on camera; it worked a lot better before he showed that he was willing to break a few hearts to find happiness.
Maybe it will all work out for everybody. The episode ended with a montage of Tanner P. ranting about Jillian’s feet. “I may not be able to play the guitar,” he said. “I may not be able to break-dance. But Daddy can suck a mean foot.”
As Jillian had put it earlier in the show, “There’s some woman out there with incredible feet who’s going to make him happy.”
Reality Bites
Travis Wall, a fan favorite from the second season of “So You Think You Can Dance,” returned to choreograph a contemporary number for Jeanine and Jason that was this week’s highlight—unless you count the sight of Evan’s tribal skirt and pasty bare chest in the guys’ African group dance. Evan literally failed to measure up to Kayla in their Viennese waltz, even though she danced it barefoot, and Kupono and Randi flopped in their paso doble—her Spanish-lady wig didn’t help. The latter two landed in the bottom four in the viewers’ vote (this being the first week that the judges wouldn’t decide who was eliminated), as did Melissa (who was good in a Broadway routine from “Hair”) and Ade (who was excellent in a hip-hop number). The viewers seemed to have really hated that wig, and both Kupono and Randi took the fall.
On the series premiere of ABC’s “Dating in the Dark,” all six participants, after forming first impressions of one another in a completely darkened room, chose to pursue the person with whom they were supposedly best matched according to a compatibility test and the opinions of relationship experts. Two of the three couples decided to date each other after the reveal. Rather touchingly, Allister, the good-looking DJ with the cute accent, had been worried that his quirkily pretty partner, Melanie, would turn him down. Christina, however, rejected Seth because his looks didn’t match her romantic image of him.
Ronnie, a member of the brainy clique, emerged as the first power player of season 11 of “Big Brother.” He managed to ingratiate himself both with his original alliance, led by the jocks Jessie and Russell, and with the slightly nerdier group led, more or less, by the popular girl Jordan. (The houseguests’ original cliques had little effect on whom they chose as allies.) After Russell won the power-of-veto competition, involving squeezing giant “pimples” (remember, this is the high-school-themed season), Lydia lobbied him hard, and he took her off the chopping block, leaving his ally Chima vulnerable. Jessie replaced Lydia with Braden, his alliance’s new target. When the two nominees pled their cases, Chima attacked Braden for being a “racist” and a “misogynist.” Both sides expected Ronnie to vote with them; he voted against Braden, and Jessie cast the tie-breaking vote. Ronnie went on to win the head-of-household competition, a guessing game based on viewers’ early impressions of the contestants. On Sunday, after a game to see who would get to attend a heavily promoted new movie, Ronnie nominated two of the nerds, Jeff and Laura, for eviction, after telling them they would just be pawns so he could go after Russell. Laura, belying the assumption that she’s just a babe, had figured out that Ronnie was playing both sides. Earlier, she had complained that people disliked her for her appearance, saying, “It’s not my fault I have big boobs.” Casey, in an interview, begged to differ: “You can help it. You chose to get implants.”
The housemates on “The Real World: Cancun” started their job, chaperoning kids on spring break. If you think this was like putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse, you’re right. Despite being told not to fraternize with the clients, Derek hooked up with a boy named Tyler. (In Derek’s defense, he was a little heartbroken because his ex-boyfriend had come to visit him and then had picked up an older man.) Meanwhile, CJ had a bad date with his local crush, Jacqueline, who subsequently told him she wanted to be just friends. She might not have liked his joke about going to a donkey show. Their double-date partner, Joey, confessed to the camera that the secret to his success with women is that he just wants “the lay.” But he showed he did have a sensitive side when he cried after learning that his grandmother had died.
On “Brooke Knows Best,” Brooke’s roommate Glenn was invited to give a speech at his old high school in the small town of Clare, Mich., and he asked Brooke and Ashley to come along. After arriving at his family’s farm, Glenn worried if his father could handle meeting his boyfriend, Daniel, as well. Brooke and Ashley had a few “Simple Life”-style moments while artificially inseminating a cow. They also met up with Glenn’s hilariously incredulous high school girlfriend. (“So…you’re really gay?”) It turns out Glenn didn’t need to worry about whether his parents or the town would accept him: After he gave his speech to a wildly cheering crowd, his father said to him, “Good job, Glenn. We’re very proud of you.”
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