Let the Bachelor Bashing Begin!

Another calendar year has gone by and after the usual Christmas/NYE bacchanalia it's time to start fresh. Having an additional day off from work I chose to spend yesterday rife with cliche - cleaning the house and working out.

As a reward for all of my clean-slate-ness I indulged in the season premier of The Bachelor (along with a turkey burger with mozzarella on a toasted sesame seed bun and a glass of red wine - it's good for the heart! - for dinner). While I haven't watched this show in several seasons, I was happy to see that it's basically the same. Chris Harrison is still my absolute favorite part of the show - what I wouldn't give to hear his inner monologue! The girls are all bat-shit crazy, their mental conditions only exacerbated by wine and competition. And the gowns they wore for their arrivals ranged from fab (Jennifer's blue sequined floor length number) to fail (blogger Jenna's insecurities were hinted at the minute she stepped out of that limo in that sparkly white sack which also appeared to be missing sections of sequins).

Any of the women who arrived without a gimmick critiqued those who did (while I do see Brittany's move of bringing Grandma Sheryl along as a bit of an easy in, I didn't think it was necessary for the other girls to point out the poor woman's wrinkles - she's a grandmother for crying out loud! And she's obviously got more spunk and personality than most of you crazies). My personal favorite was the girl who just walked past Ben and into the house. Sucker that he is, his only response was, "bold move!"

But gimmick or not they all seemed to have really strange opening pick-up lines that were primarily profession related. Someone obviously suggested they do this, but one has to wonder if it was a clever producer looking for a laugh, an intern looking to earn brownie points or perhaps one of the ladies themselves (who then of course didn't use whatever cray-cray line she posited since she actually just hoping to make the rest of them look stupid).

The episode went on to capture the usual cattiness, that bizarre moment when Monica seemed to be hitting on one of the other female contestants and of course the final melt down of Jenna, which of course lead to her not getting a rose her securing a rose from Ben.

Lesson learned: perhaps Ben is still single because he's a bad judge of character, which conveniently makes for excellent TV.

Image courtesy of flickr.com user DartmoorGiant.