Operation Soulmate

Hello again, loyal Bachelor fans. First off, I know that you have many blogs to choose from, so I want to thank you for choosing to fly with me.

Folks, say hello to a bona fide catch, Mr. Andy Baldwin. Now we know I'm not exactly into the man-in-uniform thing, but this guy seems to genuinely know what he wants and he actually seems to value personality, intelligence and chemistry over looks!! Radical. Granted, all of these women are fairly attractive -- a true random sampling of the dating pool this is not. But they run the gamut, and he seems determined to genuinely get a sense of who they are before he makes a decision. Those of you who have been watching The Bachelor all these years, know that this is not always the case. Not that our guy isn't susceptible to some distraction here and there....Stephanie comes to mind. She seems to be there purely on a mission to win, rather than fall in love. (How quaint of me to expect anything else from a reality show).

Anyway, let's get down to the show. As promised, psycho-Lindsey made a comeback in the opening reel. And i just want to pause here a moment because I got a little flack for making a comment about her being from Kansas. I meant nothing by it of course and apologized. But what occurred to me later was this: isn't it much more offensive to have someone from your home state behave the way she did? At least way more than my just pointing it out? Send letters to her!! Oh well....going to get some more emails i guess.

So, let's get down to everyone's favorite past-time, the group date. It still never fails to shock me that any women anywhere would ever put themselves in the position where they know they are going to be dating someone who will be openly dating not only one other person, but many other people. God bless America. I guess we will never run out of people looking for love wherever they can find it, and definitely never run out of people looking to be famous for five minutes. We can only hope that the latter motivation is not as ingrained as the former.

Anyway,naturally, the first group date was bull-riding. Huh? So now we're just raiding all 80s movies with Debra Winger? What's next? Some kind of weird Terms of Endearment date? The bull-riding thing is ridiculous because it's basically just an opportunity for guys to watch women straddle a bull and gyrate. I mean, why didn't Andy ever get on the bull? And worse, the bull-riding was actually a contest, and the girl who stayed on the longest won some time alone with Andy. Why exactly? Because she excelled at the all-important thigh-gripping skill? I'm just glad this is not typical dating criteria in the real world.

So after the bar, the ladies got to pick out fancy dresses. There's always this absurd pretense that the Bachelor himself actually found these dresses for them. Now, free clothes would make me a little loopy too, but are the girls so blown away that they've suddenly forgotten that there is an entire production staff whose job it is to decide these things? They actually got to play dress-up a lot on this date. Next was the always-popular bikini parade. I guess the date was really inspired by the Miss America pageant! There was evening-wear, swim-wear, and uh, talent. Andy appropriately stated that this was the greatest first date ever. Hard to argue with him, really.

So now I'd like to discuss a fairly unusual phenomenon which arose on this episode. Remember our friend Erin, the Anna-Nicole lookalike? Well, she has lived up to her first impression. I think all that peroxide may have seeped in at some point. There does not seem to be much going on there. But so dear playmate actually found a playmate. The much cuter and less enhanced blonde, Susan, turned out to be equally shallow and the two became an eerie indistinguishable pair of prissy misses, even dressing alike the last night. They thought it was simply adorable to hold hands and walk daintily through the pool so as not to mess up their hair, when they were supposed to be swimming laps! Really, girls?

So there's a lot of other moments i could focus on, like Stephanie's bizarre reenactment of the Titanic moment (I don't think Leo and Kate were actually flapping their arms like crazed seagulls on the bough of the ship but I could be wrong) and of course the girls played a lovely game of "out the virgin" but I'd like to focus on a moment involving my new favorite girl, Tessa. Now, Tessa made a very rough entrance into our little play, but tonight, she showed one of the most natural human reactions I have seen on a Bachelor yet. Basically, it dawned on her that she might have feelings for this guy, and that not only was he dating 14 other women, but that she was LIVING with all of them!! And naturally, she freaked out! Bless you, Tessa, for your humanity! She is reminiscent of my favorite girl ever to be seen on these shows, dear lovely Meredith, who was so genuine and sweet, I kind of wanted to date her.

That's all for now. See you next week!