The Bachelor 15-3: Brad Womack to star in Love Hurts

Tonight’s episode of The Bachelor teases a story… so… devastating… it will break everyone’s heart, and will cause someone to… gasp!… walk out!

Having watched two full episodes of The Bachelor out of fifteen seasons, as well as a third of one “bonus video” at abc.com, I now consider myself an expert on this show.  As such, I will confidently make two predictions right here… right now, with the show still more than an hour away from west coast broadcast.

1.) The devastating story that will break everyone’s heart is Homespun Emily’s – losing her boyfriend in a plane crash and then discovering she was pregnant with his baby. The story the home audience has all known about since the premiere episode. This means that by “everyone,” the show really means that only Brad and the sixteen bachelorettes who are left in the running and aren’t Emily are the ones headed to heartbreak. And since fifteen of these bachelorettes are definitely going to have their hearts broken before the season ends by Brad anyway, this suddenly doesn’t seem all that compelling of a reason to tune in.

2.) On the subject of a spontaneous early exit, it’s possible that the producers are going to launch a new story line tonight featuring one of “The Others” which is my way of referring to the 12 or 13 girls we have yet to learn anything about, while pulling a reference to those nutty jungle-dwelling bloodthirsty murderers from LOST.

If so, it could be one of these nameless “others” making the teary-eyed (you know it’s gonna be teary-eyed) “exit stage-left.”  But I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict that it will be Homespun Emily, overcome with guilt, loss and missing her daughter who makes a break for it.  Brad will dutifully follow, corner her, console, and convince her to return to hair and make-up – I mean, his arms –  and take her rightful place alongside fellow leading ladies Fang Face Madison, Dentist Ashley H., Merciless Michelle – and all the other girls, who are without a doubt “the supporting cast” this season (Come on… how much can you tell me about Kimberly the Marketing Director or Alli the Apparel Merchant??)

But before we go any further… and stick with me on this, picture it… fall television season 2011… ABC Wednesday nights… “You watched him on LOST.  You couldn’t get enough of him… Now, the leader of The Others is looking for a love of his own on… “The Bachelor: One of Us”… featuring swinging single Benjamin Linus carousing on an island inhabited by twenty-five recruited and/or taken by force single women.”

Miss Clough: “There is A LOT of competition here tonight, and I definitely want Ben to give me a coconut.  I can’t just lie back and rely on my kidnapping and manipulation skills to impress.  So I’m gonna slit Walt’s neck.”

Cindy (ex-Oceanic Airways flight attendant): “I’ve made sooo many bad choices in the past looking for love.  But when I see Ben… those buggy eyes, those sloping shoulders, the little hands… HELLO! The seatbelt sign IS OFF!

Ben: “This is amazing!  It’s a dream come true.  Twenty-five hot girls on an island… and I don’t even have to worry if they get pregnant!”

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’d watch.  LOST fans, what do you think?  NON-LOST fans, thank you for staying with me.  On with the recap!

Okay, the show is now in full swing.  First to be called up from the minors tonight is Ashley S., and you know you’re special to the guy whose heart you’re trying to win when he has to include your last name initial to distinguish you from the other Ashley he’d like to bang.

That other Ashley is Ashley H.  She’s a dentist.  This Ashley is a nanny.  Aside from that, there seems to be very little to differentiate them.

For their date, The Bromack takes Ashley to the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, which is actually kind of cool.  He leads Ashley into a recording studio and surprise!  The two of them are going to record a duet of the most romantic song ever written… “Little Spanish Flea!”  No, not “Little Spanish Flea.”  Who wrote that?  They actually are all set to take Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” back to the top of the charts.

Check out their sound, man!  All the kids are sure to go in big for it!

Outta sight, guys!  Enough to bring tears to your eyes, isn’t it?

Later, atop the Capitol Records building for the “cough up something deep about yourself and use it to try and emotionally blackmail the man you’re on the date with” segment of the program, Ashley confides in Brad that “Kiss From a Rose” just happens to be her all time favorite song. Can you believe it? Me neither! Plus it turns out that she and her dad used to sing it together practically every day until… guess what… he died, and she had to start singing with the dog.

For all of her hard work and soul exposing, Nanny Ashley nabs herself the first rose of the night, but the only sad part of this whole story for me was that Ashley reveals she was only ten when “Kiss From a Rose” was released. Geez, I’m so old I remember when “Sisters are Doing it for Themselves” by Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin was the big song fathers and daughters sang together, but that’s a story for another blog.

Meanwhile, back at the Crab Shack, Merciless Michelle is not going to be getting a private date with The Bromack this week, and she is none too happy about it. “None of these girls are right for him,” she declares, and she more or less admits on camera that if someone were to get the ball rolling on having a few of the ladies kidnapped and forced into white slavery in Nepal, she might be willing to pony up for the duct tape and chloroform.

As for the group date, each of the eleven ladies selected got to shoot a scene from an action adventure “finger quotes” MOVIE “end finger quotes” with the Big Bad Bromack! This basically appears to be an opportunity for ABC to see if any of these on-camera oompa-loompas have any acting ability and might be marketable at a zero rate as a second banana come next pilot season.  I’m sure that’s the way the oompa-loomps were looking at it.  There’s got to be a clause in the contracts these soft heads signed dictating the network can option them into another show for a couple hundred dollars and a sack of flat leaf parsley.

The girls all boast that they intend to “kick butt and take names!” (is that a saying?), but the only two that make any sort of impression here are Merciless Michelle and Funeral Director Shawntel N., who probably never expected they’d have to stick a last name initial next to her name, but they did.

Shawntel’s name nemesis is Chantal O., who gets a little one on one time with The Bromack later in the evening and reveals that she grew up without her father and finally went to seek him only to discover that…. guess what, he died too!  Brad places his hand on Chantal O’s knee and she immediately proclaims, “I’m the most special beautiful person in the world!”

But Chantal didn’t get the rose.  Shawntel did.  And she planted a kiss on Brad, making it the third chick he’s kissed in this episode.  A good day for Brad.  Not such a good day for dead fathers.

And if you think I’d forgotten Homespun little Emily, still wrenching her hands over whether or not to tell Brad about her emotionally-bruising back story, fear not!  Let’s head back to the Crab Shack for a heart-to-heart between the unpicked losers, er, women still waiting for “the right time to make their move.”

Emily confides in the other leftovers that she was in love with a man and then, guess what, he died.

The women all tear up, none more so than the lovely Madison, who begins to question whether or not allowing herself to compete on camera against twenty-four other women to get a man who’s already jilted two women on camera to propose to her might not be the most direct path to finding true love.  While Madison considers dusting off her old Craigslist ad, Emily discovers she’s got a one-on-one date with The Bromack!  What to do?

As far as dates between emotionally shorted-out women with the inability to make eye contact and emotionally infantile men with deep commitment issues goes, this one was pretty good.  Brad: “Tell me about yourself.”  Emily: “Oh… you know… when I’m tired, I get grumpy.” (desperately scans the horizon for a bird… a bunny… anything.)  Not only is Homespun Emily losing the interest of the home audience, she’s losing the interest of her man, and she knows it!  Brad is beyond frustrated!  ”I want so badly for there to be a romantic connection with Emily.  From the very first time I saw her, she’s been a front runner.”

Well, he should tell her that.  What lady wouldn’t swoon after being labeled a “front runner”?  That’s right on par with other love gems like, “You’re really neat,” and “If I squint, you’re the hottest thing going!”

Later, in the barn… let’s just enjoy the beginning of that sentence for a moment.  So many possibilities.  Okay.  Later, in the barn, Emily musters up the courage to admit the entire truth about herself using the exact same technique I used when I told my parents I was gay. And it works just as well!  The mystery is solved for Brad.  He accepts her past.  Cue the acoustic guitar that has accompanied Homespun Emily all these weeks, and the girl is back on track!  Says The Bromack, “I can see Emily being the person I want to spend my life with.”  Thank you, Blue Nun!

Now, let’s get to the most interesting part of the evening.  As I fully disclosed at the top of this post, I have only ever watched two episodes of The Bachelor.  I have never seen the show before this season.  So, I don’t know if women have walked off in the middle of a rose ceremony before.  Perhaps this is a trick that has been played to death.  Those of you out there who know more than I do, feel free to fill me in with your comments.  But I actually thought this part was played fairly well, and mostly because it involved my favorite chick in the Bachelor stable this year… Fang Face Madison.

Madison took Brad aside and told him that she wasn’t sure she wanted to continue in this noble pursuit after seeing what Emily had to face up to in order to stick around.  In other words, Madison is starting to feel that by surrounding herself with desperate women, one might reach the conclusion that she is desperate herself.  She’s so serious about making this case to Brad, she even took the fangs out of her mouth.  Woah!

Brad, who really needs to skip a couple of therapy sessions and look into some backbone replacement, told Madison he didn’t want her doing anything she wasn’t comfortable doing.  ”If you are about to tell me you’re gonna leave, I respect that… let’s leave it at this… if I do offer you a rose, if you don’t want to accept it… don’t!”

But Madison ended up not waiting to see if her name would be one of the lucky called, and stormed out, shocking all of the other women including this one, who we have never ever seen before.

Aside from being wrong about which woman was going to bolt, I was wrong on another front as well.  I had concluded that the producers of The Bachelor were giving us hints of the lovely Madison here and there these past few weeks because she was actually going to be around for a while, and I really thought Brad was going to convince her to stay.  But no, off she went, fangs and all.  Too bad, really, as she’s the only one of all of the women this season who had any sort of… say it with me… bite!

In the end, since Madison left ahead of the conclusion of the rose ceremony, we’ll never know if Brad was planning on keeping her around.  He only ended up dismissing two women, who’ll get the most internet buzz they’ll ever receive directly below:

This is Kimberly.  She’s a marketing coordinator, whatever that is.  Her final words: “I wouldn’t have done a thing differently… I think he was intimidated by me… you know, I’m talented, smart, successful… the list could go on.  His loss!”

And this is the other girl.  Our files have very little on her.  She had a dress with pockets in the front.  Never a good move.  She may or may not have a dad who died.  And she wears an unfortunate amount of mascara.

Well, I don’t know how interesting this season is going to be without Madison.  What about you?  Merciless Michelle is somewhat interesting but I’ve seen the “confident bitch” card played a thousand and one times on these here reality shows.  What are you thinking?  Will you miss Madison as much as I will?  And any suggestions on how I might be able to tweak the Benjamin Linus-led “The Bachelor: One of Us” before I pitch it to ABC?  Your thoughts are much appreciated!

Tags: ABC, Alli Travis, Ashley Herbert, Ashley Spivey, Ben Linus, Brad Womack, Britt Billmaier, Chantal O’Brien, Chris Harrison, Emily Maynard, Jackie Gordon, Jill Ruskowski, Keltie Colleen, Kim Coon, Kimberly Coon, Lindsay Hill, Lisa Morrisey, LOST, Madison Garton, Marissa May, Meghan Merritt, Melissa Schreiber, Michelle Money, Raichel Goodyear, Sarah Powell, Shawntel Newton, Stacey Queripel, The Bachelor, The Others