Episode 2: The Clone Wars

Welcome back, intrepid viewer.  Before we proceed, I'm going to level with you straightaway.  I, for one, like to read the tea leaves and get some sense of where this magical journey is headed and make some predictions for the season ahead.  

Friends, I sense trouble.

Sadly, it's not the kind of "trouble" that leads to an entertainment bonanza.  Rather, I see a show that is hitting mile 20 of its metaphorical marathon, and things are looking a bit bleak.  The formulaic script, the typecasting, the clichés, the same set, the same car... I'm really at a loss here.  Now I know that ABC/Next Entertainment is clinging to this show's proven model terrified of losing viewership, but for the love of god, can't we get someone with some imagination to mix this sucker up?  Does it have to be set in L.A.?  Do they have to go to Vegas, baby?  Does the driveway have to be pre-wetted for maximum sheen?  See, I say no.  But then again, I'm not top brass in the TV industry.  I'm just some schlep sitting at home knowing that "safe" probably results in better ratings, but maybe not forever.  You see, even the most mouthbreathing viewer, at some point, will be fatigued with this.  You can listen to only so many Backstreet Boys songs.  You can only watch Everybody Loves Raymond so many times.  There are only so many bologna sandwiches you can choke down in a week.  At some point, the public will turn on you, and it will be neither special nor magical.  Then again, I could be underestimating the collective appetite for tripe.  I guess we'll just dig in while the tripe is still hot.

When the revolution happens, it probably won't be televised on ABC, but I think first against the wall would have to be our favorite Division III soccer star Chris Harrison.  Remember, this is Disney we're talking about.  Are we sure he's not an Audio-Animatronic™ bot?  Now, the last time I was at Disney World, circa August 2009, they unveiled the Obama-bot at The Hall of Presidents.  I hadn't seen this classic exhibit in about a decade, and well, I missed it this latest time too.  I think the mini-moral here is that no one really wants to see exactly the same thing over and over again.  Taking it an extreme, getting stuck on It's a Small World could lead to actual violence.  And that's what Harrison has essentially patented.  The only guy that had a better gig was Mr. "Can You Here Me Now?" and even he retired after nine arduous years of testing every square foot of Verizon's cellular network.  Good.

I'm not asking for much.  Actually, part of what makes this show so epic is the ability to rip it to shreds, but sometimes you thirst for a challenge, and I feel like there's a nice little rut taking shape where we all just harp on the same things like the lack of diversity, trips to the same destinations, or even the fact that the florist hasn't varied in eons.  So let's just off-gas this pent up frustration now and move forward.  And should we need to go back to the well, it's always there.  Like herpes.

In the last entry, I slotted the candidates into three tiers. Having seen episode two, I still feel pretty good about those semi-projections.  Matt ("Ma?  I didn't get a rose!  Make me some dinner."), Stephen (farewell, Sasha Vujačić), and Ryan M. ("...and you can take a pic of me with Chris Harrison") were all sent packing.   You'll note that all three were also in my dreaded "Bottom Feeders" tier.  Not that this is any significant feat, but it's good calibration material.  It means the instrumentation is working.  I won't even going into detail about why these dudes were canned; it should be self-evident.

Sasha (top) and Stephen (bottom):  Kinda eerie.

For me, the premiere episode is always kind of a dud as there's just too much jockeying for position and whining to really follow coherent plot arcs.  The second show is where the Jell-O starts to congeal.  The first subject of our treatise is William, or more familiarly "Will."  I made something of a bold-ish prediction that Will would be this season's Weatherman.  You remember Weatherman, right?  Hapless man-child who became the subject of merciless ridicule courtesy never-a-bad-hair-day Craig McKinnon?  After seeing Will's date with Ashley, I'm even more convinced of this comparison.

Briefly, we shift the focus to Ashley here.  She seems to vacillate between the assertive type (e.g., Bentley) and the safer, nice guy (e.g., J.P.). I have a theory that she'll do a bit of oat-sowing with the former and swing toward the latter as time goes on, but that remains to be seen.

Back to Will.  This date featured Ashley and Will going through the motions as an engaged couple:  picking out rings, cake tasting/smashing, and practicing vows.  Throughout all of it, something just seemed off about Will.  This wasn't so much Wills & Kate as much as it was Will & Grace.  He couldn't have been more uncomfortable doing so little as holding Ashley's hand.  And it wasn't in a "babe, I can't be tied down" type of way either.  It was interesting to see the first acknowledgement of contestant celebrity documented by the show as it was being taped.  People were snapping up pictures like they were important.  And boy, Will couldn't have looked less equipped for the role.  He just shrank at every turn.  Girls are scary.

By the time they got to dinner in the famed Bellagio fountain, I wasn't buying this charade, which made it all the more interesting that Ashley was seemingly gushing over how amazing it apparently was for her.  Will threw out the "best date ever" trial balloon, which she gladly validated.  This girl sure finds herself in a lot of "best dates ever."  Last season with Brad, she rode that particular "best date ever" all the way to the final four.  I don't see the same fate for Will.

Smithers: "Would you feel more comfortable if I left, too, sir?"

Burns: "Of course not, Smithers. You're. You're like a doctor."

I think that neatly sums it up.

"I call it the 'Spruce Moose,' and it will carry two hundred passengers from New York's Idlewild Airport to the Belgian Congo in seventeen minutes!"

Will got a rose, but I think this one has some conditions attached to it.  If you look carefully at it, I think it says: "Thanks for being the first guy on a one-on-one date.  Here's a rose for your troubles."  I think we are seeing a trend of Ashley being too nice.  This crap would never have happened with Ali.  She left a guy to guard and protect a glacier once.

Turns out, everybody gets to go to Vegas.  Twelve dudes on a date with one woman, in Vegas, and countless cameras filming it.  That just doesn't sound right, does it.  Ashley confidently asserts "I have a very active date planned."  No, sweetie, you don't have anything planned.  This bugged me with Brad too insisting that he was racking his brain trying to devise all of these elaborate events to entertain everyone and financing the whole thing.

Performing with the JabbaWockeeZ was probably a really cool thing to do in person, as a surprising number of them said, but it just didn't translate into compelling TV.  Of course, I'm definitely not the target demographic here, but I found it very difficult to maintain even a surface level of interest.  Again, we're confronted with this idea that Ashley lives to dance and dances to live.  I must've completely missed this on The Bachelor last season  All I really remember is gravy on fries and loads of self-doubt.  Maybe even a little gravy on that self-doubt.

This "date" was basically a retread of The Lion King date with Ali and the group of guys from Season 6 where Roberto made his move and basically wrapped up the show right there.  It's interesting that these stage productions are so willing to put total amateurs in their shows as if people want to pay $100 to see mediocrity.  Then again, it could have been a closed audience.  Every now and then I slip into believing things on face value.  Sorry, won't happen again.

The other one-on-one time, and thus fodder for our amusement, was Ashley's date with Mickey.  I've dismissed this dude previously as a sometimes bug-eyed also-ran, but he was stunningly normal for his big close-up.  I guess he was Cosmo's vaunted Bachelor of the Year, so that has to count for something I suppose.  I figured that was a title you could buy, like being in Who's Who.  Maybe there's something here. He seems to be displaying a little nice guy-ness with a hit of aggression to keep Ashley off balance.  Sounds a little like "muscle confusion" in P90X.  I'm giving The Mick a slight rating bump here to "long-term accumulate."

Mickey (and most of America) is like "who is that singing?"  Oh.. Colbie Caillat, right.  

Wait.. who?

Ken Callait:  Co-producer of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (1977) and daughter Colbie (1985)

At this point you're probably wondering what I think of Bentley, and I guess this is where we unwind the knot.  Honestly though, I don't think there's a whole lot of mystery here, and the drama appears to be overblown as much as it is brief.

I view Bentley somewhat similarly to Michelle Money from The Bachelor.  Michelle was there to push buttons and shtick it up (read: audition) for the camera, and maybe if she happened to win that would be pretty cool too.  Bentley was selected with something similar in mind.  In fact, his back story is nearly identical to Michelle's:  single parent from Salt Lake City whose daughter is "their world."  A key difference is that Michelle was something of an established actress whereas Bentley seems to run a "family fun center."  His house is pretty nice to be running some shaky startup operation, so you have to think there might be more to that story, especially in the wake of an apparent divorce.

This whole idea that Bentley is wreaking havoc on the set seems a lot overblown to me.  They're pushing it too hard in the promos, and Bentley himself laying it on pretty thick.  He keeps assuring everyone that he doesn't care and is so above this whole process.  If he's on there just to pull the rug out from under Ashley, I think he's more than capable of it, but it's certainly with producer aid and approval.  I find it difficult to get worked up over a scripted plot point.  I also have trouble with a guy wearing that much plaid.  Women:  if you're going to get duped by some jackass, don't let it be by a guy in plaid.  At least give yourself that small dignity.

One thing we learn from Bentley is that Ashley is more gullible than we've seen in a while on this show.  She proudly announces the acuity of her "radar," but this is like the radar guy turning off the thing and heading home.  Please breach our sovereign borders. Come on in... we don't mind.  I haven't decided if Ashley knows this subconsciously and doesn't care, or if she's really this naïve, but either way it's not boding well for "the process."  I honestly believe that she believes that her future husband is in that room, but god help anyone that allows ABC to choose their future spousal pool for them.  "The process" includes a lot of things not conducive to long-term happiness.  Just ask... well, anyone who's been on the show.

It seemed like there was a segment in there were Bentley said he'd be cool with Ashley "servicing" him.  The man might have standards, but he's not made of stone, people.  You know, if it were to happen, he wouldn't stop her or anything.  I have to say that he's running some serious game on Ashley, and it's like she's never met a guy like him in college.. which I find really hard to believe.  Did she just meet a series of guys like Will over and over?  It's not like Bentley is out there running the Tex Winter triangle offense on her.  It's your basic one-on-one schoolyard pickup game.  He can smell weakness, and she's catering to it.  A little embarrassing, Ash.

"When they zig, you zag.  You getting this, Pau?"

Based on previews for next week, it looks like Bentley is the source of her hurt (which I doubted initially), but I don't understand it. She was even warned about it, and really, how attached could she possibly be to this cat?  I think Michelle played this angle this better, but she was a professional and didn't pull the ripcord early.  I'm hoping there's something more interesting at the heart of all of this, but I don't see it.  It'll probably be resolved by the next episode and we'll all say, "fair game, ol' chap," book him on Bachelor Pad 2, and move on to lesser mysteries.

The interesting quotient took a nosedive pretty quickly with the other dudes in the house.  I think some of them may even like Ashley.  I've been trying to figure out if all of the whooping and hollering about how hot she is all the time is legit or just being egged on by the production staff.  A few of them are reacting like they are vying for the affections of Miranda Kerr.  I'd like to think I could keep it together better than they are even if it was Ms. Kerr.

Miranda Kerr:  For no real reason, here is a picture of her.

Some of the individual discussions were uncomfortable to watch.  I think we can safely say that West is not ready for this.  He's this season's Emily with the tragic story, but this is a whole lot different.  In the end, Emily was more like a heaping bowl Lucky Charms.  West is All Bran.  What's worse, Bentley got a rose even after West opened up about his wife drowning in the bathtub.  Ouch.

Mask guy is still masked, and people continue to not care.  They blew this badly.  If only he had two more seconds, he could have revealed the boring guy behind it.  Wow, what are the odds on getting interrupted at that exact moment?  God works in mysterious ways.  Still, I love that Phantom of the Opera shtick.  I gotta be honest.

I said in my previous post that J.P. was my tentative favorite to win it all, and I'm standing by that, even having spent no time with Ashley this go around.  I'm sure you all realize that this anguish is a set up, right?  Keep shaving that head all the way to the finals, guy.

It was great to see Will feeling insecure and going in for more time with Ashley, you know, just to cement it. Uncomfortable rating of 8/10 there.  If you're ahead, sport, don't ruin it.  We've all seen Swingers.  Just leave the message and be done with it.  This provided one of the better opportunities of the evening with Nick coming out of absolutely nowhere to unleash the "Ding Dong" moniker. He totally redeemed himself with that one.  See, Will is totally the new Weatherman.  Easiest call ever.  Good luck with your sexy American girlfriend, Ding Dong.

"Lake.  Big lake."

It sure was weird hearing Ben talk about what a great dancer he is given that they are doing some kind of flash mob thing in the next episode.  My guess is that he's proved to be a huge fraud.  Actually, I don't know that.  I'm just hoping for it. 

Dismissal of Stephen went as follows:

Ashley:  "See ya."
Stephen:  "Peace."

Hairdressers are so bitchy.

Can you believe that we're already down to 15?  Neither can I.  And I think I'm running out of Star Wars titles to cleverly pilfer.  We've invited these fine gentlemen into our homes, and yet we've had to bid a bittersweet adieu to no fewer than ten of them already.  I wonder if Tim is sober yet?  So many questions.

As the field self-selects down to guys that can tie their shoes and chew gum simultaneously, I'll get more serious about rankings, and of course individual commentary.  I'll also share some tidbits of insight from readers.  If you'd like to send me a message, you can do so either in the comments section of this blog or via email at realepicjourney@gmail.com.