Second Hand Rose vs. My Girlfriend, Tessa (Bachelor Ten final three review)

"Bah'ai symbol that represents man's universal connection to God. I'm trying to figure out if it looks familiar."


In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since,

“Never take romantic advice from anyone named “Gatsby””

It was, after all, Jay Gatsby, who obsessed over Daisy Buchanan and basically got himself killed. So what were the chances that our officer-doctor-triathlete would have a best friend named for a major fictional character who looks vaguely like Byron Velvick?
I do think it would have been far more fun if Andy’s friend had turned out to be named “Yossarian.”

“You have to be crazy to look for love on a tv reality show. So, if you find love on the Bachelor, then you’re obviously too crazy to be someone who can manage a stable relationship. That’s Fleiss 22, it’s in your contract right next to the Jen Schett clause.”

Andy, woud then say, “Darn, I knew that if I’d taken more English lit classes at Duke, I wouldn’t be calling all the women “incredible” and “amazing” and this might be a much more interesting conversation.

Let me share something for a moment here. My wife and I were both once married to other people. We met when we were a little older than Andy is now. At no time did I label my wife “Liberal or a wild child” because she’d once married the wrong guy when she was younger. In fact, I married into two children as well, neither of whom I refer to as “major life mistakes”, unless I’m really mad at them :}.

This Gatsby’s sage advice turns out to be “Which one of the three do you see there at the end of a triathlon waiting there with your kid?”

Instead of sending Gatsby back to 1927, though that actual era was a bit more modern than this Gatsby in his cameo on the Bachelor, Andy thinks his friend, Mitch Thrower (Gatsby)'s, advice through, but the producers don’t let us see him verbalize anything that would remotely spoil the rose ceremony. Am I the only one who thinks that training twenty hours and dragging your wife and kids to the triathlon isn't nearly as manly or romantic as spending that time with your wife and kids doing what they love to do?

Oddly, Gatsby’s advice got foreshadowed during Danielle’s home visit when between drum concerts her dad was sharing a framed photo of the finish line at the New York City marathon. Andy said “Now, that’s my idea of a family photo.” Given that Tessa runs triathlons herself and Bevin also appears to be a competitive athlete, Danielle appeared to be the one bachelorette who was totally down with Andy and Gatsby’s concept of wife as pit crew for triathlon. It’s fascinating that he didn’t choose her.

Many years ago, I lived next door to a gay couple who looked like Andy and Gatsby and acted around one another a lot like the two training buddies. Oh geez! Better not go there. That would make the Bachelor some version of Desperate Housewives.

I was sorry to see Danielle go and my wife was rooting for her to the end. I do agree with her. Given what Andy says he wants, Danielle might have been the best fit to share “his” life as opposed to making a life together. I did hear that as consolation, the producers gave Danielle 10,000 free minutes on the Psychic Friends network. I am a little worried that Andy brings in a psychic to help him do medical diagnoses, but it was very good tv. I believe the big tell though was the way Andy frolicked in the water with Danielle. When Tessa does the zipline, Andy shouts “I think you’re wonderful!” When Bevin pushes him underwater in the waterfall, they’re grabbing one another and it’s full on mouth to mouth resuscitation. When he was scuba diving with Danielle, it looked like teenagers flirting.

I am left with a bit of a mystery re: Danielle. We certainly heard enough about the sad history of the first boyfriend, but Andy was supposed to be third. Why didn’t they ever show him asking the obvious question, “Well, what happened with number two?”

On one of the boards, someone came on to suggest that number two might have been a married guy. I have no reason to believe that, but it kind of jumped out at me that there was this interim relationship that always got glossed over. Andy was not the first guy Danielle dated post-Bethel boyfriend, yet they kept making it sound that way.

I did appreciate the way Andy and Danielle found a way for her to leave the show, dignity intact. That line about Andy being her new measuring stick for what she wants in a guy may have gone a bit far, but not everyone survives this show with his/her dignity intact. Danielle left without a rose, but also without a dive into the psycho end of the bachelorette pool.

Ever since Bevin told the camera a few episodes back that she’d really be upset if Tessa got a rose instead of her, she’d….(I honestly can’t remember what she threatened), I’ve expected this to become a Tessa-Bevin showdown. I’ve also thought, based on the Moana edit she’s gotten, that Bevin always had a much better chance to make the final than she did to get a proposal.

The scene with Tessa at the Pearl Harbor Memorial at the beginning of the show tended to confirm that. As Andy and Tessa toss petals from a lei towards the remnants of the either 1,100 or 900 sailors who went down with the USS Arizona a little girl comes up next to them. Andy immediately starts thinking “Wow, this could be like us with our kid,” then introduces Tessa as his “girlfriend.” Had it been Bevin would he have said, “This is my friend Bevin, who made a terrible mistake with her life once, but I’m glad she told me about it”?

Much later in the show, we get to see Bevin’s second much larger tattoo just above her bikini line. Not only is this very Moana like, I’m also thinking that it’s the sailor who’s supposed to have the tattoos not the other way around. This is reinforced further when they break out a pot-bellied- Samoan-fire-eating-male dancer who also happens to have tattoos. In the meantime, Andy and Bevin join in the pagan ritual which is followed less than fifteen minutes later with previews back in Amish country of Andy’s parents going, “Bahai, is that some sort of cult?”

In the meantime, we learn that Tessa is now finally ready to open up to Andy. When Tessa and Andy hit the fantasy suite (was that a lousy teaser or what? She didn’t hesitate for a second), I was expecting her best friend Sam to burst out of the closet to ask Andy a bunch more questions. Instead, we got a bunch of shots of makeout bliss. Thankfully, Andy was not shown bringing any sushi to the suite to use as sexual accoutrement. First it was bananas with Danielle. Now it’s raw fish with Tessa. Perhaps we shouldn’t discuss the not so hidden meaning of both scenes?

Even more telling though, Andy had a bit in episode one where he claimed to be looking for a woman who could be both a tomboy and a lady at just the right times. Apparently he discreetly left out the force-feeding fetish. Now in Hawaii, Andy directly applies the description to Tessa. At this point, it’s probably not fair to mention that I got this wedding invite with talking muffins on it.

It was somewhere around this point in the show that Mrs. Chancelucky took me by surprise by saying, “You know, they didn’t exactly get the best looking women for this guy, followed by a disparaging remark aimed at Bevin.”

Totally caught off guard, I said “They don’t look anything like the Smitten Kitten from Travis’s show.”

This was greeted with a full minute of icy silence. Clearly, I shouldn’t have used that Grind TV clip as my screensaver last month. Indulge my segue here, but someone actually did interview Chris Harrison and asked him why the Bachelorettes don't seem to be quite as "hot" as they once were. Instead of the romantic answer, Chris tells the guy that some 25% of Bachelor applicants can't pass the show's combination drug and STD screen, which seemed to imply that better looking people do more drugs and have more STDS, but maybe I'm being too analytical.

This installment of the Bachelor has revived the show's ratings. My very informal measure is that I’m getting about five times the site traffic for Andy and his harem than I did for my Prince Lorenzo recaps. Having been treated to no less than four clips of the same bit where Andy strips off his shirt to go jogging and meditate on his “amazing” women, I’ve had some thoughts on the matter.

It’s women who watch this show. I’d never admit to any of my basketball friends that I’ve ever seen the Bachelor much less watch it every week and write a blog about it. Anyway, they’ve got a Bachelor who likes taking his shirt off for the camera and on top of that he actually is looking for romance and commitment. The genius of this installment is that they didn’t match him with a bunch of swimwear models. The women are certainly attractive enough, but all of the final three are also accessible. Most regular woman have some friend or relative who looks that good or they look that good themselves. This installment of the bachelor actually gets the fantasy right. Lieutenant Beefcake not only proposes, he’s proposing to the girl or divorcee next door instead of some super model. Just to be clear, real women are often actually much more attractive than super models.

Before I get into this, I should say that I whiffed on Lorenzo. I was sure that edit was going to lead to his choosing Sadie, but ignored the fact that they didn’t appear to have much in common. I can also see a kind of scenario where Tessa gets exposed as a kind of Daisy Buchanan, the embodiment of Andy’s notion of success but not necessarily right for him. There could also be this terrific Lifetime TV plot where Bevin comes out as the underdog who fights for and gets her second chance at love. They foreshadowed it with her “I’ve never been lucky in love” line. Even more so, the physical chemistry between Bevin and Andy looks very real. Bevin seemed the only one of the ladies who could be in that Splendor in the Grass scene with Andy at the waterfall, though we need to remember what happened to Warren Beattie and Natalie Wood at the end of that movie. Interestingly, Tessa and Andy apparently get to do From Here to Eternity next week. Still, I’m thinking the Fleiss line will be that Andy the true romantic will triumph over Andy the horn dog. (I suppose we can overlook Tessa's post-modern view that romance makes her like herself better. That wasn't exactly up there with "You complete me" or "You make me a better man" but it is a similar sentiment)) Bevin’s probably got the steepest odds of any finalist since Krisily Kennedy.

From the little girl at the Pearl Harbor memorial (I’ve promised myself not to go into a rant about the Navy recruitment video aspect of this installment. They came this close to “After Saddam bombed Pearl Harbor, this is why I enlisted…) to the shot of Andy and Tessa making it across the gorge on that flimsy suspension bridge, to Tessa finally letting her Andy feelings roam free in the fantasy suite, the case is pretty strong. Even Andy’s “Please accept this rose” bit that he only does with Tessa seems to make it inevitable. That is unless Lakisha Jones makes a surprise appearance on the last installment of the Bachelor and steals Andy’s heart while Simon is forced to watch them kiss. Do you think they send best friend Samantha an invitation to the wedding?

Okay, Okay….let me repeat. I’ve certainly been wrong before about the final rose.

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