Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Ah, Venice...

As we watch the opening ceremonies, I have three thoughts: 1) Whoaaaa Marcus is in love. 2) Oh snap, so is Nick. 3) I can’t wait to see Josh take the lie detector test.

This commentary is dedicated to Courteney Lynn Leggett. She stage manages like a BOSS, and she had the powers of observation that Cody is a mini-Macklemore. This rose is for you, Courteney.

Per uze: To whom it may concern: I mean no harm. I have no doubt that all these men are delightful, but if you voluntarily subject yourself to the editors of national television, you’re subjecting yourself to Grace’s commentary. And pretty much anything that's funny on here can be credited to a one Lincee Ray, my Bachelor Blogging Idol. (Yes I did just say those three words and no, I will not be taking them back...)


So we’re in Venice this week. If anyone DIDN’T immediately think of THIS…
You may see yourself out... 
We DID get a traipse this week, and after drawing straws, Bachelorette Gopher Jacob (HOW he is STILL at the bottom of the barrel, I know not) got the short one, and had to go out in the little paddle boat in the canal to get the wide shot of Andi leaning out of her hotel window.

Testosterone Josh has weighed the options, you guys. There’s NO way that anyone who’s NOT Cody is getting the one on one date. With Andrew and his statistical analysis gone this week, Josh has stepped up to the plate, in order to tell the American viewers who will be getting the one-on-one. So naturally, after announcing that “I have a surprise for you. The one on one date starts RIGHT NOW,” Andi chose… Nick.

One on One: Nick

If anything, let’s clap it up for some self-awareness, as we open with Nick’s, “I mean, I sucked on the last group date...”

But LISTEN. You can take the reins and make this show your own, Dwarfman (anyone remember how intent DeAnna was, on “setting her own rules?”) but don’t sit there and say that you chose Nick for the first one on one because “the guys need to see that they can trust me.”

Because “trusting you” in this instance means, “watching you make a really, really selfish decision.” Sure, she needed to figure out what was going on with Nick, especially after he (to borrow one of Hare’s favorite terms) “self-admittedly” sucked on the last group date, but this was still totally a move that was looking out for number one, so don’t try and make it sound like it was anything else.
Return of Jafar: most underrated sequel of ALL TIME

Before the announcement of Nick’s one on one, Cody is pretty stoked because he’s certain he’ll get the one on one. He asserts that he hasn’t had a one on one date because Andi is waiting for a “really special spot.”

Riiiiiiiiiight.

Underneath that quote from Magic Cody, I wrote “Cody is the lovechild of Sean Lowe and Macklemore. That is all.”

The Codester had some verbal gems this week, among which was heard, “I feel like I’m the dead dog in the group, just kinda being strung along…” For how ill-articulated some of his phrases were, this one was actually pretty spot-on. In fact, I hope a guy strings me along one day just so I can use this phrase.

Ohhhh Mama Rene is in the Suave booth, today. I put the TV on mute and just waited for the makeover montage. There wasn’t one. The final product was disappointing. (How’s that bracelet collection of Ben’s going, I wonder?)

While I will commend his positive attitude (he seems like a genuinely upbeat guy) Cody “feels like the odd duck out.”

.............................ok.


Ewwww these pigeons at St. Mark’s. Don’t be salty, Nick. And whoaaa Andi pulled away from their street/walking kiss REAL quick. Have they not had the “Nick was salty on the group date” chat, yet? They get into a gondola and I can’t even hear what they are saying to one another because of the Lady and the Tramp accordion in the background, right now.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, I’m loving how much bromance is happening with the guys getting excited for Magic Cody to get a date, when his name isn’t called on the group card. THOUGHT: I wonder if producers knew that Magic Cody was gonna be sent home on his date, so they made Andi take him second so that he and Nick could sit in that faux sauna and try for some drama…

Andi and Nick schlep to a “Masquerade Hall” (Ok, I’m sorry, what exactly constitutes a masquerade hall? Theory: Poor Jacob was still seasick from catching Andi doing the hotel-window-traipse from the paddle boat, but he was fighting to take his job seriously at the promise of a promotion. So as he was tossing his cookies out of the back of the gondola, he mumbled “it’s a masquerade ball” to a mask-bound Andi, carrying out the producers orders to inform her of the next part of the date. Because he was heaving, Andi happened to hear “Masquerade hall,” and neither she nor Nick bothered to stop and consider how odd that one sounds.)

Andi had some questions for Nicholas, including: “Is sweet little Nick not that sweet anymore?” and she hit us with the verbal amethyst: “I find it very attractive of a man who others like.”

Come again, Dwarfman?
Ok now this – THIS is the “deep conversation” that Andi was seeking with Josh, last week. She and Nick are able to discuss an issue not only with clarity but also with specificity. And then she asks him, “Do you think you’re a front runner?” WHOAA SHE WENT THERE.

Because he had time during the entirety of the Masquerade Hall date to sleep off his sickness, wake up, and chug a few beers, Jacob was alive and well to buy a round of shots for Nick, after he convinced him to deliver the “I’ve been wearing a mask” line.

Aaaaand her reply to his “I’m falling in love with you” was “I like to hear that.”
I think we're done, here... 



Group Date: Dylan, Josh, Coach, JJ, Farmer Chris, Marcus
After a quick Venetian traipse, Andi takes them to a medieval torture chamber and starts in with “It’s all about honesty for me, and I think you guys have been really honest and that’s great…” SO NATURALLY THE NEXT STEP IS TO ADMINISTER A LIE DETECTOR TEST.


So Dylan's looking a little queasy (debatably due to the fact that he had to admit, on national television, to sleeping with over twenty people) and he- Wait. Did he just leave? He told Andi he wasn’t feeling great and pointed to his head and his stomach like a six year old and… is he gone? Is he like, gone?



Ok this is officially the WORST date in Bachelor history. Worse than when that girl Trish (who dated Ryan Seacrest in fifth grade, BY THE WAY) interrupted Jesse Palmer’s one-on-one date and offered him a key to her hotel room. Worse than Kasey aka Kermit the frog being left on an iceberg after a two-on-one, with nothing to keep warm save for his “guard and protect” tattoo. WORSE THAN THE #SANTA #ANNA #WINDS ON #KASEY AND #DEZ’S DATE. Did Dylan seriously leave? Who authorized this stupid set up? Why did Andi act like she was surprised that Dylan wouldn’t be feeling so great after taking a lie detector test where he was asked if he had slept with over twenty people?

And with, “That door opening is scary!” Andi has just uttered perhaps the worst line of this date. Or at least: a dead giveaway that SHE too thinks it’s the WORST EVER, if that’s all she can come up with. What do the “results” of the lie detector test even mean? ‘Cause if Ricardo’s just gonna trot out and say “Dylan lied on two questions,” And not bother to mention that a) he HONESTLY answered about with how many people he’d slept, and b) the questions that he “lied about” were “Is your name Dylan?” and “Is Italy your favorite country in the world?” (Is it just me, or is twenty people kind of a lot? Should I ask my LRPG member, Neanderthal Bryan? (By the way: the LRPG this week was limited to Granny, aka: my Mom, who is the pea-nuttiest of peanut galleries – I threatened to tape her mouth shut roughly four times.) But seriously: was Dylan  lying with shame, on that answer, or shamefully telling the truth? Oy, kids these days…)

Ricardo handed the sealed results to the Andi-nator, and then provided the sealed results of Andi’s test, for the gentlemen. Ha, I’m loving that Coach opened it right up, cause he didn’t consider that she was going to make a big dramatic scene of ripping up their results.

WHY IS NO ONE ASKING WHERE DYLAN WENT?!

In addition to Coach’s eager pursuit of the results to Andi’s lie detector test, let’s clap it up for his “IT FEELS GOOD TO STEP UP AND TAKE THE INITIATIVE.” Oh Coach. You can take initiative with me any day of the week.

Can't lose. 
Poor Neanderthal Josh is having a really hard time wrapping his mind around what kind of guy would take a pen to paper and write “secret admirer” notes to the Andi-nator. He would like to think that “when it comes down to the final eight, everyone already ADMIRES her…” Fortunately, Farmer Chris comes from the simpler times of an Iowan farm, and is quite handy with a pen and paper… Later on when they’re talking one on one, Andi is wondering why Josh is taking the lie detector test so personally, when really: poor guy thinks that Andi planned the date. He has no idea that the producers were in charge of it. He thinks that Andi administered a lie detector test because she genuinely didn’t trust the guys. He has no clue that Ricardo was manning a patisserie and minding his own business when good ole Jacob pulled him aside and asked if he’d be willing to grill some guys about farting in the poob-lic. (Once again, J-Cake did this because of the carrot that was a promotion being dangled in front of him, by Hare and Producer Elan Gale, as they chuckled and sipped Venetian bourbon in the corner…)

WHERE IS DYLAN?!?! And if he really just up and left, why didn’t we see footage of the Venetian bellhop retrieving his suitcase??

Ohhhh Marcus says he is in love with Andi. IT GETS SOONER AND SOONER EACH SEASON. Remember when it used to be a big deal for them to say they were falling in love, when it came down to just two of them? REMEMBER WHEN IT USED TO BE A BIG DEAL (circa Jason Mesnick) TO TELL THEM YOU HAD A KID? Oy VEY. Andi then asked Marcus if that’s what he answered on the lie detector test and he said “yes.”

WELL WHAT IF THAT WAS A LIE?! (What if his answer to that question was registered as a lie, but also what if his answer just then was a lie? WHY DID ANDI RIP UP THE RESULTS?!)

Yeah, ok this is a 100% COOL sauna that Magic Cody and Nick are sitting in, right now. They have turned the heat OFF. Producer Elan let Jacob have ONE sip of his rich bourbon, which fueled Jake’s taste of his lingering promotion and gave him the confidence to storm through the double doors of the hotel suite and say “WE’RE GOING TO THE SAUNA, BOOOOOYZ!” Upon realizing how this may have sounded, he quickly backpeddaled with “we’re just going to get some B roll. I’ve already turned off the hot stones. You won’t have to sweat and you won’t have to talk to each other… Just grab a towel and follow me…” 

One on One Date: Magic Cody
Mime on his money and money on his mime...

Let’s get something out of the way: pretty much anything that is ever said about William Shakespeare on ABC… is a joke. Call me a snob, but I will not be educated on the greatest writer of all time by the same people that are responsible for this:


Oh, and by the way: if you’ve seen commercials for “The Quest,” you should know: I auditioned for that show. True story. Read about it: HERE
#ShamelessSelfPromotion #KaseyTaughtMeHow

Poor Andi thinks that Verona is the birthplace of Romeo and Juliet. It is the SETTING of Romeo and Juliet. SHAKESPEARE NEVER WENT TO VERONA. I’m going to assume that Hare and Gale were too far under the spell of that good ole Venetian bourbon to bother informing Andi or Magic Cody that there is absolutely NO basis for the assertion that "these balconies" are what inspired the Bard to write the friggen play.

AND FINALLY: before I dive into the rabbit hole that is dispelling the myth that Romeo and Juliet was the “greatest love story of all time,” I shall hark back to one of my favorite Latin teachers, who once proposed that Romeo and Juliet was a comedy, because what’s funnier than angsty teens who accidentally kill themselves in the name of love?

Anyone who says “Just give me that one chance and I can make her fall in love with me today,” CAN’T MAKE HER FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM TODAY. Magic Cody wants us to know: he’s gonna be pulling all the tricks out of the hat.

It should have been “I’m gonna be pulling out all the stops” or “She doesn’t know the tricks I have up my sleeve.” And in the case of the latter, telling Andi “if you keep me around, YOU’RE GONNA BE IN TROUBLE” was not the best trick to pull out of one's hat.

So they go to the Coalition of People that Believe That Juliet Is Real, and respond to letters like it’s more or less the North Pole. As magic Cody read his reply letter to Andi, Granny said “GIVE ME MY HIP BOOTS!” I asked her what on earth that could mean… she said, “You know, the boots that come up to your hips. It means that this sh*t is DEEP.”

Somehow Cody makes it all the way to dinner, and decides to whip out a letter that he has written Juliet… Noooooooo Magic Cody, put the letter awaaaaaayyyyy

It included, “Since you lived the greatest love story of all time, I hope you can bless ours…”

1) Did Cody go to school past 8th grade? Hey, Shakespeare didn’t, but…
2) Does he think Romeo and Juliet is a story from the Bible?

As she tearfully sends Magic Cody home, we hear Andi give voice to the burning question of all Bachelors and Bachelorettes past: “who am I to judge and say who’s right for me and who’s not?”



Rose Ceremony:

Ohhhh ok so Dylan was just like, actually sick. Thank God.

So this is an extremely articulate bunch, which is great, but it means that their frequent discussions of how they feel about congratulating or not congratulating one another are… kind of exhausting.


I will say this: Andi is very transparent. She is transparent because she chooses to play her cards that way. Dez was “transparent” because she… wasn’t capable of anything else (other than bizarre running metaphors, when it came to gaging how Brooks DIDN’T feel about her…) So when Andi told Hare that the night of the group date was rough for her, we knew exactly what she was talking about, although she seemed to neglect the fact that jetlag MIGHT have something to do with her tears… 

Brussels, next week. There better be chocolate.

Love, Dwarfman

















Oh sure, why not?
THIS could be your future, Andi. Think about it. 

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