Emily, Emily, Emileeeeeeee

Yeah, we're back.  I know: there are even more blogs, vlogs, and posts about this franchise than ever, but you know what?  All of them suck.  This one just sucks slightly less.  Worse, every former cast member has their own take on the obvious, offering nothing remotely pithy or incisive.  That's why you'll always come back home.  Pull up a chair, friend.  We have lots to discuss.

In case you're new here, or just forgot how I run things, I'm avoiding spoilers.  Now, I know that's nearly impossible these days with all of the tabloid coverage, tweets, etc. but really, what fun is there in analyzing something that is a known quantity?  There's no way I could churn out anything remotely captivating if I knew the script beforehand, so we'll just leave that odd bit of obsession to folks like Reality Steve.  You know, that guy does an awful lot of patting himself on the back for someone that is spoon fed information from others.  Why those sources wouldn't just launch their own site is beyond me.  The guy takes all the credit.  You take away the spoilers, and you're left with a sad man dictating startlingly routine observations to his web cam and yelling at his dog for 60 minutes.


So, for as long as I can avoid them, I'll be dealing with the drama as it comes and absent any insider info.  That way I can prognosticate, speculate, ruminate and be fantastically wrong, or maybe even right, but the best part is that it will be from the heart.  <3


Long-time readers will remember my fondness for Miss Emily Maynard.  Of course I'm not alone in that reverence, but she's quite the southern peach.  Yeah, there's a good bit of baggage there with the ghost of Ricky Bobby overshadowing everything, but at least it's Louis Vuitton quality.  We also have our first single mom running the point, and the first show that starts in the lead's hometown and carries the kid in tow the entire series.  Given that conservatively three fourths of these dudes are in this for personal gain, I think this twist has potential.  Li'l Ricki is also a bit older now and is probably more likely to let ol' mom know that she hates some of these guys.  Could be a nice surprise.


Emily does have her flaws.  She stupidly fell for "None of the Above" Brad Womack and stubbornly dated him for a good six months before finally acknowledging that he's a narcissistic man-child who has never had to compromise with anyone on anything.  This isn't a criticism; Womack is a Bachelor principal nonpareil.  I hope to high heaven they bring him back for a third installment.  Real-world Brad is a joke, though, and you'd think mommy Em would have been a tad more hesitant to prance around Austin like an idiot after the lights had dimmed.  For whatever reason Emily has always been framed as being pure as driven snow, but I think that image is thankfully out the window.  Like we're supposed to believe she just goes to bed at 8 after Ricki is tucked in for the night and cries herself to sleep.  She's right in the wheelhouse demographic for trashy E.L. James novels.


There's also the issue of Emily's feigned reticence to be the Bachelorette.  While I don't think anyone really bought that she was above fame-whoring, you have to at least give her credit for negotiating this thing to be filmed in her backyard and parlay a nanny-led world tour for her precious ingénue.  Just think:  it's your big internship with ABC and suddenly you're toting a five year old around London and trying to find Victorious episodes in the hotel room.  Great if you want to be an au pair, but that's not CV-worthy stuff.  I don't know what kind of coin Emily is making off this, but I hope to baby Jesus it's at least double what Ashley Hebert pulled down.


Now that we've put aside the requisite bookkeeping, let's check out the Tool Shed™:  25 of America's Most Eligible Bachelors!  I'll confess to not knowing what "most eligible" means or how you get on such a list.  The way Chris Harrison confidently states it as gospel, I say who's to argue?  One side note, however:  Harrison himself is now an eligible bachelor.  Well, I don't know if the divorce has been inked yet, but I do love the richness of that latest tidbit.  Seems to be a bit of karmic symmetry to it.  Of course we are instinctively required to wonder if ABC has the nards to cast him as the Bachelor at some point, and clearly the answer is "hell no."  Or maybe, I should just quash that concept altogether lest some young media upstart within Next Entertainment think this is a good idea.  He has all of the dynamism of a Ben Flajnik on Ambien.  For that niche 1% swath of the female population that can't get enough Harrison, I think you're in for disappointment.


Okay, yes, the gents...


First we meet Kalon, which sounds like a brand of spray paint or DuPont polymer.  This is a flat out button-pusher pick.  This kid is brash and unapologetic, but is he really all that much of a loose cannon?  Not so far.  There's always some dummy that loses his shit over a guy like this, so that's fun to watch.  Still scratching my head about "Luxury Brand Consultant."  Does that mean he helps to dress celebrities?  Is he a personal shopper?  He claims to have turned off the obnoxiousness, but people like that can't shut it off completely, especially not in a TV frat house.  I think he realized it was bad for business.  I give the tennis forehand a C+.

Ryan Bowers teaches little kids to flip tires.  There's probably not enough trainers out there pushing kids like this.  Ryan played "pro football," but in Europe, which is like being a competitive bobsledder in Saudi Arabia.


Tony is one of a few guys with the "in" of having a rug rat.  I don't know if that helps or hurts in general, but it's a good conversation starter.  He also trades stacks of lumber and whips ropes around in his spare time.  Who has two thumbs and recycles eight year old jokes on national TV?  Tony does.


Did you know there's a class action lawsuit against the Bachelor producers and ABC citing racial discrimination?  I can't imagine what they're talking about.  Meanwhile, there's one black guy on this show in eons, and with a 76% chance of advancing, he was sent packing night one.


The singer/songwriter, David, writes tunes about, get this, finding love.  Hard to imagine.  The one sample we get of his craft amounts to an homage of Woody performing "Kelly Kelly Kelly" on Cheers.  "There is going to be a chemistry there."  Can't wait.


Charlie did everything perfect until he nearly died falling from a faulty balcony.  That wasn't so perfect.  At least he has a good titanium face joke he can use as an ice breaker.


Harry Connick III, or Jef with one F, is a horrible skateboarder who sports a bad 80s era jean jacket, but seems to have some kind of anti-Womackian vibe working for him with his disarming boyish charm.  Emily called him "cool" which may fit given that he's the iconoclastic head of a charitable bottled water company, but I keep getting a Hank Scorpio vibe.  That's right, the CEO of Globex.  God, I really hope he's not gay like Ryan, the solar energy CEO that Ashley canned.  Not a good history of CEOs on this show.


Arie.  Hmm.. well, I love how they dance around (or actually plain avoid) the fact that his dad is a racing legend and the winner of two Indy 500s.  Arie Jr. isn't quite the phenom that Sr. was, but he's held his own.  This seems like gratuitous casting, but something tells me that this guy is going to hang around a while.  It's not really the racing connection per se, but to this point it seems like he might actually be the most down to earth dude they've thrown out there, and that's saying something since he's the only guy on this show with his own Wikipedia entry.


Sean is the token blonde guy.  First out of the limo has a decent track record, so he has that working for him.  The guy was kind of invisible otherwise.


Doug has a kid too.  At least he doesn't have six of them.  The letter from his son was a deft touch.  The only problem with it is that he could be pigeonholed as that guy who won't shut up about being a single dad.


Jackson was just plain weird.  Emily looked confused.  Good riddance.


Kyle had a turquoise tie.  That's all I got.  Well played?


Chris reminded me a bit of "The Brad."  Seemed to be less full of bullshit, though.  There's still time to find out if that's true or not.  Not sure where you get a custom bobblehead.  [googles]  Turns out custombobblehead.com has them.  Who knew.  They could have done a better job with that Emily bobblehead.  She looks a bit like a bobblehead in real life, so it's interesting that the doll doesn't adequately capture that.


Aaron teaches biology by day, and wears awful yet "ironic" horn-rimmed glasses by night.  I bet his favorite movie is Ghost World.


I'm fairly certain Emily thinks the native language of Brazil is Spanish since she offered up a hearty "gracias" to Alessandro.   I'm sure he would have been fine with Mandarin as being close enough.  Something creepy about this dude, I mean aside from him uncomfortably staring at her breasts.  Looks like the facial hair is fake or something.


So here we go with the shticksters:  boombox, check.  I'm sure MC Stevie knows fellow Jersey boy Pauly D.  Bonus points for becoming unglued over Kalon, but that's only good for an episode or so.  We'll have to see some real neuroses to pull for this guy long term.  Some grade A douchbaggery here.


Randy shows up as grandma and exits as the guy with the horrible green shirt, vest, and no game.


Nate does virtually nothing and get's a "so cute."  Stumper.  Ladies, help me out here.  He seems like the kind of guy that could rob a bank and no one could identify because he looks like average Joe everyman.


Brent is 41 with six kids.  Who the hell did he bribe?


Wolf?  Let's just go with John.  Thanks.


Travis is this year's victim of corny ideas from the production staff.  Remember Jeff the Mask?  How about Travis the Eggman?  Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.  Corporation t-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday.  Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.  I really hope they pay him per minute of egg cradling.  At least he seems to be a whole let less weird than the Phantom was during his ill-fated run.  The music might be better too.


Mike is from Austin, which of course conjures up all kinds of terrific memories for Emily, like that time when she thought about moving to Austin permanently but then broke up with Brad.  Regardless, I don't think he really needed to offer a mnemonic for her to remember the guy with the long ass hair.

Is anyone here a marine biologist?  Jean-Paul is, and now he's gone.  Au revoir, mon amie.


Well, at least there won't be any lawsuits waged on behalf of Colombians.  I'd say they've been adequately represented.  I'd like to learn more about mushroom farming, myself.

Phew, glad that's over.  Only a few outright painful intros.  I think there's a good number of these guys that I hate already or will learn to hate in due course.  Usually there's only about five dudes from this show that I can stomach.

Not certain where the drama will come from this time around.  Bentley set a high bar, but I don't sense something like that here.  Hard to say after one episode.  The previews seem to focus on someone calling li'l Ricki "baggage."  Please tell me there's more going on this season.  I did like Emily telling whoever to "get the fuck out."  That was raunchy and hot.  More, please.

Next week I'll throw together some ranked tiers with commentary.  I'm not going to bother with 19 dudes still in this.  I'd probably have a dozen of them on the bottom rung.  If you want my snap reaction of who will win, I'll go with Arie.  (Last time I said J.P. would end up with Ashley and was dead on.)  I think the racing thing is actually a slight net negative, but he seems to have his shit together.  First impression Doug gives me a stage three clinger vibe, so I don't think he'll hold up well over time.  You can tell she likes this Jef guy, even if his mother didn't love him enough to bless him with a real first name.  Charlie exudes sufficient "I won't kill you in your sleep" persona, so I'll throw in with him as a potential finalist.  The rest either give me hives or left no real impression.  Sorry, no more roses tonight.