To preface this post, I hadn’t watched The Bachelor all season. But on Monday night, in Olympic withdrawal, I decided to turn on the season finale. And after watching five minutes of The Bachelor in St. Lucia, I almost regurgitated my dinner. See, I never knew I was lactose intolerant until I had to watch all that cheese.
Let’s start with Jake, the sexy Texas pilot who probably set a world record for cheek dimples and lame comments. Some of his ringers last night included originals like, “I just followed my heart” and “There’s heat.” Thank you, Cicero. After his awkward date with Tenley, Jake couldn’t even find the words to describe the “physical” thing that was missing between them. Jake, that “mysterious”, “inexplicable,” feeling is called erectile dysfunction. Check out a Cialis commercial.
Unfortunately for Tenley, she couldn’t shake her saccharine image as the cute, cheery, all-American, limp-noodle girl. There was something about her that made me think she’d be better off selling candy necklaces at a Care Bear Convention and dating the guy from Blue’s Clues. After her disastrous date, she even seemed to acknowledge that herself. By then, she had turned on the tear jets to try and capture some sympathy in a pre-audition for The Bachelorette. Unfortunately, she lost that one too.
Ultimately, Vienna just had too much “spark” for Mr. My-Dimples-Look-Like-Cavernous-Mountains, and she sailed off into the St. Lucia sunset with her ring, her man, and a stirring video montage set to Jeffrey Osborne’s “On The Wings of Love.” During the aftershow, the happy couple reminisced about their wondrous journey, and also deflected any talk surrounding the tabloid fervor that a) they broke up, b) she has a secret boyfriend, or c) she is nutso. Of course, in Bachelor-speak, “nutso” means “misunderstood”. Then the pair started dancing in an on-air display of awkward PDA in front of a serenading Jeffrey Osborne. Nice touch, ABC. That was like adding Cheez Whiz to a pile of Mac and Cheese floating in a fondue pot made of gouda. Excuse me while I shove a rose stem into my eyeballs.
But despite my cynicism of this television show about a six-week instant-gratification romance, filmed with a beautiful St. Lucia backdrop and favorable lighting, I do recognize that last night was truly a joyous occasion. It was the beauty of two people coming together as one, flying through the majestic skies as a unit, bound together by an inexorable feeling that the world was just the two of them, in the moment, living, laughing, loving each other, feeling hope for their shared future, feeling excitement for their vaunted spark, and smiling down on the rest of us as they soared, gleefully, on the wings of love.
[Insert sarcastic comment here to ruin the moment.]
