The Bachelor: Kiss Me Deadly

Ben had a blast sharing Sonoma with "the girls"! Is Sonoma what he calls his lips? I've never seen a Bachelor dive into the world of strange new saliva quite so fast, starting with his one-on-one date with Kacie B. in a very closed-looking downtown Sonoma. For a first date, this was BUDGET, but they both eagerly assured each other and the audience that they were having the time of their lives. Then Kacie pulled out a baton and started twirling it; girl, please just show him your lobotomy scar already. I was grimacing, but then the movie theater with home movies happened.

The group date, in contrast, looked like a circle of hell. Kids (who are waaaay too honest) casting grown women as different animals? It's interesting how around this time on The Bachelorette, the guys were roasting Ashley on a group date and making fun of her to her face, but Ben got to sit there and giggle as a parade of once-dignified women hopped around or brayed or oinked in a staggering show of submission. Gross. And while Blakely was singled out because she wore a push-up romper, how was she supposed to know she needed to dress PG-13? The kids were a curveball. Especially the baby creepster who told Blakely to "jog in slow motion."

The weird overlap between kids n' sexiness culminated when Ben stripped out of his clothes in front of people who are presumably his neighbors and their children at the end of the play.

While this atrocity was wrapping up, Kacie read the next date card aloud, which invited Courtney to 'spin the bottle' with Ben. Courtney asked Kacie (so far the only girl to have gone out with Ben alone), "How did that taste coming out of your mouth?" and when Kacie, stunned, blurted, "What?" Courtney repeated herself calmly. It's hard to say what was more disturbing, that she would say something so aggressive and cruel or that she went out of her way to repeat it. Courtney dated Jesse Metcalfe, so I don't think there's a chance in hell she could honestly be into Ben, but 28 is retirement age for most models, and whether Ben is willing to take her on at the old grape plantation or she makes it up to the final three, this show seems like a cash grab for her.

Their one-on-one date went well. Courtney didn't say anything venomous or funny (her two poles); she was basically in interview mode. Ben said to the cameras, "If this is who we each really are, that's a damn good match!" (Book one, verse one, "Song of Surfaces": The sacred text of all reality TV.) As confusing as Ben's roving lips have been, his tendency to smother a date with praise is worse. During both Kacie and Courtney's individual dates, he practically called the race in each girl's favor. Its hard to gauge whether he's simply overwhelmed by the attention and is letting his emotions flow, or if there's a latent insecurity making him over-promise in order to keep the ladeis around. He did, after all, watch three different contestants throw themselves off the Ashley train on The Bachelorette.

At the Rose Ceremony Kickback, Blakely got waaay slut-shamed, because despite having a rose she still tried to spend private time with Ben. Other contenders described this as having "no morals." Have they seen this show before? This isn't The Moral Imperative, it's The Bachelor. You need to leave morals and dignity at the door and focus on picking up a free trip to Europe, gals. Blakely is at a disadvantage as the oldest person there, so if she's taking an aggressive stance, then more power to her. Miss Palisades, who openly addressed Blakely as "Jugs," and whose scathing remarks were all-the-more hilarious because she had clearly secured her own bosoms with a rigging of lingerie tape in imitation of Blakely, obviously felt threatened.

As cruel as this moppet is, I love a linguist, and the placement of the swears ABC bleeped out was so unusual that it was like profanity jazz. Who but a lyrical genius would use the phrase "She's trying to f-ck herself into his heart"? Can someone make that a single?

Last week's promos for this episode made much of Jenna's "breakdown" at the Rose Ceremony, and let me say in her defense: I had no idea how late these things were filmed. The ABC mansion does not have clocks, but the Sonoma mansion does. Halfway through the Rose Kegger, I noticed this digital display:

Then, when Ben had to wake up a snoozing Jenna because Chris Harrison had finally come around to take out the trash (a.k.a. kick out a few girls), I was shocked to see a clock that read 2:05am.

If you got me drunk, made me wait around in heels and full makeup until past two in the morning with a bunch of edgy strangers, and then kicked me out, I wouldn't even have the decency to break down in the limo. I'd just slug Chris Harrison and throw down a saucy spurt of vomit for emphasis. So no, I don't think twitchy Jenna being twitchy and hugging herself after being voted out was a breakdown. Her conversation with Ben was the breakdown.

Jenna's "I'm a guy" statement was both an unfortunate underlining of her somewhat masculine features and straight-up misogyny. For too long it's been considered a coup for a woman to identify with men, because this means identifying with the more rational and reasonable behaviors that are assigned to male gender roles (but, as any human being knows, are pretty evenly distributed between the sexes). That needs to stop. When you point out your own positive attributes and say that makes you different from women, you're piggy-backing on some of the most deeply ingrained hate our society allows, regressive social gender constructs that have been built specifically to keep you down. The sooner we stop throwing each other under the bus to kiss up to the Bens of the world, the sooner we can all have harems of hot male sex slaves, eat any damn thing we like, and sit around and nod while guys tell us proudly that they "are basically women."