The Bachelor 15-4: Brad Womack and the Dull Days of January

The schmaltz was flowing more plentiful than the Merlot on tonight’s episode of The Bachelor. With all the promises of black eyes, catty confrontations, and hopeless romantics dangling off the sides of skyscrapers, I was expecting a little more bang for my buck. But I forgot that The Bachelor likes to save its “hard core banging” moments for February sweeps, and so we will all have to plod along through one more ho-hum episode before the bikini strings and acrylic fingernails really begin to fly. Don’t cry. Here, lean on my shoulder. I won’t abandon you. Together, we’ll get through this.

Fourteen women are left standing at the top of tonight’s episode, including front-runners Homespun Emily, the Ashley Twins, and Merciless Michelle, who woke up at the start of the episode graced with one mysterious black eye.

Where did said black eye come from? Who cares. Didn’t she really just have it coming? Michelle leans on the ultra-confidence card a little too heavily to actually be taken seriously. I’ve worked with people like her before (who hasn’t?) – all brassiness and ferocity, all day, every day. In real life, those personality types are shunned so fast they end up with no one but the Arrowhead delivery guy paying attention. Nevertheless, in this sea of spineless twits, who in between tears and tequila shots, mutter things like “I just need to make sure, like, I don’t know… that you’re still into me,” we all really need a Merciless Michelle, don’t we? But a little goes a long way. Here’s to hoping they cut back on her camera time next week. Even the chicks on The Hills gave it a rest once in a while.

As for the black eye, it’s never explained adequately. Do you really think Michelle actually thinks anyone believes she beat herself up in her own sleep? Has that ever happened to anyone?

First up for a solo date tonight is the lovely Chantal. She’s the lovely Chantal who isn’t the funeral director, if you’re keeping score.

Chantal is afraid of the water. No doubt, she indicated this on her audition application, so of course, off to Catalina she and Brad are sent to take a tour of the sea floor. Chantal whimpers and hems, and says things like, “No! You don’t understand! I’m afraid of the water,” in case her whimpering and hemming wasn’t irritating enough for the entire crew to pitch her over like an under-weight Alaskan cod. Nevertheless, she decides to face up to her fear and show The Bromack what she’s made of, and before we know it, she’s allowing Brad to show her “a whole new world.” You might be expecting a singing Jamaican crab to swim on by at this point, but if so, you’d have been as disappointed as I was.

Back on dry land, Chantal and The Bromack share a meaningful exchange of the minds:
Chantal: “When you find the right person, everything else falls right into place.”
Bromack: “Yep.”

Well, it may not be Noël Coward, but it’s enough to win Chantal the first rose of the night. If you’re a fan of good girls, you might find yourself rooting for Chantal. She’s like the free plastic tape measure you get when you sign up for the Deluxe U-Verse cable package. You don’t really expect you’ll ever have much use for it. But it’s small and it’s cute and you didn’t have to do a whole lot to get it, so what the fuck.

In between solo date one and solo date two, we face the ego bomb that is Ashley Herbert. She’s the Ashley that’s not a nanny, but she’s just as over the top as any girl you’ve ever met named Ashley. The other girls in the Crab Shack call her “dramatic,” which really means they think she’s actually crazy but unsure whether or not she’s within earshot. Ashley, worrying that Brad is slowly forgetting the life-changing memories from their glorious date to… wherever the hell they went, butts in on a particularly intimate moment between The Bromack and Britt, the sexy food writer.

People need to start giving this food writer a chance. There’s something about this chick I like.

Why Ashley goes to the trouble of shooing away food writer Britt (and though I still love her, can we just call her what she really is… “unemployed blogger”), only to plop down next to Brad and unload all her insecurities made no sense to me. Generally, when one of these women sidles up to the Big Bad Bromack, they paste on their forlorn expressions and say things like, “Wow, it’s really chilly out,” or “When I’m with you I really want to bring down my walls.” Instead, inebriated Ashley went with, “This is what I signed up for… I’m getting everything I deserve,” and looked up at him with the glassy, crossing eyes of the sorority girl that’s about to start incoherently accusing everyone at the party of stealing her Ray-Bans and is located the next morning face down on the soccer field.

Needless to say, Ashley didn’t get that night’s “cocktail party” rose. Luckily, there were some shots around to calm her nerves.
Holy Jesus! Thank God Merciless Michelle got the second solo date! More excuses for the girl to utter her catch phrase, “It’s MY day!” Seriously, is she going to try to trademark it the way Snooki is trying to do with “Snookin for Love,” and “Team Meatball?” It’s not clever, it’s not original. It’s just plain irritating. Someone needs to throw this chick off the side of a…
…well, it’s not exactly what we all hoped for, but if we squint, we can pretend there are no cables.

Michelle is afraid of heights. No doubt, she indicated this on her audition application, so of course, off to a tall building she and Brad are sent. When she discovers that she and Brad will be rappelling down the side, Michelle whimpers and hems, and says things like, “No! You don’t understand! I’m afraid of heights,” in case her whimpering and hemming wasn’t irritating enough for the entire crew to pitch her over like… ok, I know, I basically just copied and pasted the drama from solo date one down here into solo date two, but the producers of The Bachelor did the same thing, and I need to get to bed soon.

Conveniently, Michelle and The Bromack stop to kiss in front of the window where the producers happened to have stationed a cameraman. Maybe they put a cameraman on every single floor in order to honor the spontaneity and truth that is reality television?
Wouldn’t it have been a kick in the pants if Brad had decided not to give The Merciless One a rose? That would have meant she would have had to go home right then and there… a true smack up the side of every home viewer’s head, that would have been. But again, we are not yet in February sweeps. It’s strictly by the book until then. Michelle got her man, and her rose, and all she had to do was spit obscenities, take a mystery crack in the face, scale the side of a building and threaten physical violence on her fellow female competitors. She’s the new Doris Day!
And in case you’re wondering where Homespun Emily, the single mother who lost her racecar driving boyfriend in a plane crash, was this episode, the producers did not disappoint. A quick mini-date on the driveway kept Homespun on the radar. ”I hope I can live up to all this!” Emily gushed with the modest, Southern “aw shucks, I’m just folk” B.S. that John Mellencamp gives whenever interviewers remark on his success.

The particular attention Brad is paying to our fair little Emily is enough to send sea-floor scrubbing Chantal into an hysterical tizzy the size of which would leave Faye Dunaway’s jaw on the floor. After cornering him on the wicker love seat in the middle of the Crab Shack’s backyard and confessing her deep, soul-eating insecurity, The Bromack steps up with the most romantic re-assuring line I’ve ever heard declared on television: “Please be confident in the fact that I’m so wildly attracted to the fact that you’re everything that I’ve not been with in the past.”

Yea, boy. I’m putting that one in my back pocket for Valentine’s Day!

In the final rose ceremony, despite the protests of viewers across the land (and yes when I say “viewers” I really mean women because I’m fairly certain I’m the only guy watching this show), Ashley (both of them) and Chantal (both of them) were saved, along with Emily, Lisa (I have no idea who she is), Alli (I sorta know who she is), Jackie and Marissa (there are women named Jackie and Marissa on this show?)

And in the Loser’s Gallery this week:

“Never Seen in a Bathing Suit” Meghan – “I’m totally bummed out. It’s a blow to the ego, let’s be serious. Maybe I’m not as cool as I think”

Bartender Stacey – “I’m sick of dating.”

And First Grade Teacher Lindsay – “Rejection is always hard, but I think I was true to myself and I think my dad is gonna be sooooo proud of me!”

Well, I thought Lindsay was pretty, but she apparently had no interest in bringing the drama, so it’s back to escorting leg-twisting five year olds to the bathroom. And I gotta say, I’m still missing Fang Face Madison a little. With her gone, who’s left to give Merciless Michelle a run for her money?

Next week, the gang is heading to Las Vegas, so get ready to hear “Vegas, baby!” over and over until you want to murder your cat. Also, Homespun Emily will face the demons of her past when an unwitting Bromack takes her to a race track. Plus multiple women will say things like, “This sucks!” “My heart is breaking” and “Oh… my…. god!”

Hang in there, peeps! One of them is sure to turn up dead in the jacuzzi come February, kicking off “Bachelor Murder Mystery Month.”