Scoopless in Seattle (Bachelor 13 Round of 5)

You know, last night's episode would have been great if they could have maybe just found some way to mention Sleepless in Seattle or point to the Space Needle one more time. Somewhere before the first time Jason tells the camera that Ty is the most important person in his life, I kind of got it. If you remember, the basic plot of Sleepless in Seattle is that the kid helps his single dad find Meg Ryan after kid and then Dad impulsively make a call to a radio talk show. Naturally, they did a segment of the Frasier Crane show with Melissa and Naomi Crespo mysteriously listening to the broadcast so that Jason could make like Tom Hanks. In the meantime, Ty has booked a flight with his new friend Sophia to go to the top of an Empire State Building made entirely of Legos. When Rob Reiner and Rita Wilson show up as Jason's brother and sister in law, I'm pretty sure we'll know how this is going to end. So, there’s my big scoop. Jason’s going to give the final rose to Meg Ryan or whoever happens to be dating Bill Pullman these days.

In the meantime, the rest of the Bachelor Empire is watching reruns of the tv series Heroes as they try to make sense of Reality Steve's teaser about a genuinely dramatic and surprising finale and some business about “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” I've always enjoyed Reality Steve's posts and he's clearly having fun with the scoop. Steve takes all this to a very different level than I do. While I read the boards and comment on them from time to time, I’m strictly a Reality TV civilian and my blog has no intelligence gathering capacity. In the last week, Realty Steve created more excitement about the plot of what I call the “Deanna Pappas trilogy” than the actual airing of the episodes.

It does remind me of junior high. Someone passes a note, “Hey, S knows what J really did with M at Rose's last party.” Suddenly, everyone is paying attention to S and S has this power that lasts until he or someone else spills or until S gets his next big secret. Naturally, I've been as curious as anyone else here at Tristaryan Middle School, so I've been following Steve around just like everyone else.
Prescient or not, Reality Steve's scoop isn't really about how it ends, it's more a reminder that most of us obsessive fans are in some stage of arrested development.

For me, it's simple. I was a nerd. I missed that whole “who likes whom” stage, never dated much, and had it not been for Mrs. Chancelucky I'd be doing Second Life 24/7. Anyway, if you want scoops about this show, I'm the last guy who's going to have one unless it's something like which book of Harry Potter was contestant X quoting on that date to Diagon Alley. Btw Isn't it weird how we got a black President before we got a black Bachelor/ette? Maybe one season, they'll have Tyler Perry guest produce with a special appearance by Oprah instead of Ellen? On the other hand, Jason seems to have had better luck with his stimulus package than the President. (think about it, you have a black president talking about making his package even bigger to stimulate America. What Southern Republican is going to vote for that?)

The title for this episode should have been, “The One Where Jason Kisses Everyone Except Aunt Stephanie.” The only thing unexpected about it for me was the fact that he appeared to have such a hard time with that last rose. Here’s a hint. If you wind up alone (except for the ferry captain and half a dozen camera crew) and he keeps talking about what a great time he had at Lego Land with your daughter Sophia and how special that “was” instead of putting a move on you, I wouldn’t make too many preparations for either the fantasy suite or that home visit.

Stephanie Hogan was also the only one Jason didn’t discuss the “home visit” with though that might just have been edited out. In the meantime, she gets to muse about seeing her husband in heaven some day (yes, if I were either dating her or just broke up with her, I would be creeped out by that ). Fortunately for Sophia, Stephanie is not a traditional Hindu. This is way off topic, but I have this weird image of Stephanie having lifted "I kiss special men all over until they're completely satisfied" from some web pages that mentions time and companionship only. (You know I thought I was weird being a guy who watches and posts about the Bachelor, but it seems like many of the Bachelor bloggers are male. Does it maybe have something to do with bits like the kissing contest with the lingerie talk from Molly and hot tub scenes with Melissa and Naomi?)

They also threw some sort of Lifetime Achievement Awards banquet for Stephanie instead of a rose ceremony. She seemed very nice and was clearly popular with the other women. Jason seemed to like her well enough as well, but I don’t think there was ever a hint of a moment when anyone thought this could happen. Maybe it’s me, but I also don’t see how this made her the “greatest human being they’ve all ever known.” Her husband died, she’s a good mom, she has manners. Well, come to think of it, relative to other Bachelor contestants maybe that does make her a candidate for sainthood. Still doesn’t seem fair to me that they made a big deal of Stephanie phoning Sophia and no one ever saw Megan Parris being a mom.

Currently, Mrs. Chancelucky and I are arguing about Melissa Rycroft. Mrs. Chancelucky thinks she’s a giggly ditz. I keep looking at the bikini photo I posted with last week’s post then disagreeing. I don’t really know if the whole “cancelled” date thing was a setup, but they were definitely building the case for Melissa. She’s clearly not high-maintenance cheerleader, at least while they have two or three cameras trained on her. She did the dishes, picked up the toys, and waited. Jason got to make like a good Dad by saying that he wasn’t going to introduce Ty to any of the ladies just yet and Melissa didn’t question the decision for a second. One could easily imagine Shannon or Megan rushing Ty’s bedroom door and jumping onto that little race car bed. While she waited, Melissa got to pour some of the wine she distributes in her day job and persuaded the crew to buy fifty cases between her stories about being friends with Jeremy Anderson’s Cowboys Cheerleader girlfriend. It sure looked like a winner’s edit to me, but I’m just the nerd on the Bachelor playground who hears Reality Steve stuff from some girl who still brings a Scooby Doo lunch box to school.

Contrast this to Naomi, who spends the first seven minutes of the show complaining that Melissa got a second one on one date while she still hadn’t gotten hers (patience v. entitlement). When Melissa’s date gets cancelled, the producer shows Naomi complaining that Melissa’s now going to get Ty time (we later learn that doesn’t really happen). Finally, Naomi’s date envelope comes and she starts whispering to the camera that Melissa is acting jealous of her. They’re making her out to be a few floats short of a seaplane or should it be blades short of a helicopter? I thought the woman was a flight attendant not a Stewarditz. To top it off, they show Aunt Stephanie, reality tv’s first ever nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, questioning Naomi’s maturity. You’re really going to have the most popular Bachelor yet hook up with Naomi? You might as well have Deanna Pappas, who wanted three kids by age 30, run off with a snowboarder.

Meanwhile, Jason kept checking in with Jillian and Molly in painfully non-descript encounters. Over coffee and pastries with Jillian (which neither consumes) they discuss how she needs to “get in the game”, whatever the heck that means. He walks with Molly near Pike Place Market and she informs him that she had a long term boyfriend whom her parents didn’t like. Naomi’s conversation isn’t exactly scintillating either except for the bit about her mother leaving the family (possibly a reminder that Jason’s first wife allegedly left to “find” herself too). Throughout, Jason does the “good guy” bit. He’s always checking in with the ladies, relates to everything they feel(did he remind anyone that he was on the show once before and in their position himself yet?), and then tells them either how special they are or how glad he was they got to talk. I got the impression that rest of the cast was waiting to find out what was so dramatic about that final rose ceremony too.

The episode didn’t really perk up until they showed previews. We learned that Jillian’s mother suffered from depression (funny, I keep seeing those ads for that drug that helps with depression). It wasn't clear if Jason plays beer pong with Molly’s family then paints his naked body red and runs across campus in the snow. Of course, we also got the real teaser. We learned that Melissa Rycroft was on the show once before as Amber AlChalabi when she pretended to already be a first grade teacher from Houston instead of Dallas. A quick thinking Jason whisks Melissa into the hot tub to compare that tattoo on her lower back to the hot tub scene with Andy Baldwin and Amber.

In the meantime, I see Ty waking up in the morning and finding two half-empty wine glasses on the coffee table next to the controllers for his Nintendo Wii. He dusts them for fingerprints then waits until Tuesday night to send them to the crime lab on Law and Order SVU. In a very special guest appearance, Marissa Hargitay calls to inform Ty that they have a match. They’ve found a secret laborotory where they make Bachelor contestants in upstate New York in the town of Stepford where they erase memories, recycle back stories, etc. Apparently they have enough material for three hundred more installments of the show. Detective Benson sends Ty a video of his dad saying, “Melissa is just so perfect, I’m waiting to see just something a little bit wrong.”

(Damn, her family threatened not to show up for that hometown date. Imagine that?) Ty begins crying. “I don’t want to lose my Dad to some cheerleader robot. It’s embarrassing enough that he got dumped by that idiot woman with the funny accent.”

Detective Benson, soothes him, “Ty don’t worry the FBI has already sent it’s best team up there, two agents named Scully and Mulder. The Truth is out there.”

“You mean it doesn’t matter what Reality Steve knows?”

“In three weeks we’ll all know and then two weeks after that most of us won’t care anyway.”

Anyway, when Melissa’s dog poops on the carpet and Jason’s the only one who notices, just remember you saw it here first. So, I had a big scoop for you after all. :}

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