Everybody’s In Their Feelings

[Scroll down if you want to see who I think the next Bachelorette is.]

The Women Tell All (and its far less interesting associate Men Tell All) follows a familiar pattern:

1. Scenes from Bachelor franchise history (gotta keep building that brand!).
2. Insane free for all where the contestants get to rekindle their bad feelings about each other for our amusement. [cue Carly Simon You’re So Vain]
3. On the couch interviews with Chris Harrison to redeem, reclaim and repackage contestants for the purposes of test marketing their viability in Paradise and Bachelorette roles. [cue John Lennon (Just Like) Starting Over]
4. A little time with the lead (Colton) where the last girl dumped (Caelynn) gets to rekindle her bad feelings about being dumped. [cue Grand Funk Railroad Bad Time (To Be In Love)]
5. Bloopers.
6. And previews of the Finale which kept things very mysterious this time around.
7. (Bonus content) We were also given generous shots of Colton’s abs. I make no apology for enjoying the women screaming at each other more than seeing Colton’s abs. It’s just me.

Herewith are my top observations of the night:

• I literally didn’t remember two-thirds of the women who allegedly appeared this season. I think some of them were random girls brought in just for this show.
• I got a glimpse of My Girl Ali Fedotowsky from her time on The Bachelor during the Bad Breakup segment of the show. She looked so young!
• I was thrilled with all the delicious screen time given to Demi the Devilish Diva. And Chris Harrison answered my prayers by saying we’d be seeing more of her which I’m quite certain means Paradise this summer.
• If I heard somebody say the phrases “my journey”, “our journey”, “your journey”, “the journey” one more time – to include mentions of the band Journey (who I love) – I was going to do something irrational and quite likely painful.
• The repackaging of Hannah B – the “B” is for Bachelorette possibility. The evil genius producers pretty much gave her an entirely different personality than the one we saw during the season. I’ll bet focus groups are already scheduled.

Going back to Monday’s explosive show, former contestant Sharleen Joynt (Season 18, Juan Pablo) had a couple of interesting observations. First – and this came up in several of the girls’ screaming matches – the charge that Cassie wasn’t ready for a proposal turned out to be true! Unless, of course, we’re being fooled (see my previous post).

However, Sharleen followed that with this:

On one hand, her dilemma shines a much-needed light on how unrealistic and even unhealthy the strict rules and timeline of this show are. She’s utterly normal for not being 100% sure about a relationship still in its infancy and with a man who’s had other girlfriends the entire time. It’s messed up that the format of a show (a show that is literally almost as old as she is!) would make her feel like there’s something wrong with her for feeling otherwise.

Wise words. But we’re not here for wisdom. We’re here for the drama. And looking forward to next week’s season ending which Chris Harrison says is like no other so we should believe him, right?

Alas, speaking of which, business-related travel will cause me to be late with my Musings next week. Sigh. But final musings there will be, whenever they’ll be. Que sera, sera.