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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Confused manchild Jesse Palmer fumbles his final play, leaving one girl swooning and another heaving at the side of the road.
May 21, 2004 | "The best thing that could happen would be that after meeting the women, my family would either say, 'Jesse, we think Tara is unbelievable,' or 'Jesse, we think Jessica is the one for you.' That would be ideal." -- "Bachelor" Jesse Palmer on choosing his future bride
Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that masculinity is indeed in crisis, N.Y. Giants quarterback Jesse Palmer confessed to his diary this week that choosing between finalists Tara and Jessica -- two tall, pretty, camera-conscious blondes whose differences aren't visible to the naked eye -- would be super-duper tough, so tough that he wished that his mommy and daddy would pick for him.
So the fifth season's finale of "The Bachelor" began with Jesse urging his family to tell him which woman they liked better. No help there: Mom preferred Jessica, Dad preferred Tara. Then Jesse begged his friend Nick to tell him which woman he should choose. Appearing shocked and a little bit disgusted, Nick wisely refused, but his wife, Jenny, who served as a spy for Jesse during the course of the show, said that while she liked Tara best, she thought that Jessica would be a better fit for Jesse.
Maybe he should've just flipped a coin. Or maybe his parents should've chosen for him, or the rejected contestants should've selected the right girl, or America should've voted on who should be Jesse's bride. Watching another supposedly sure-footed, square-jawed hero suffer and sweat inelegantly over his final decision really makes you wonder why "The Bachelor" centers on one man's choice at all, particularly when you consider the drippy mouth-breathers ABC has dragged, kicking and screaming, into this damnable charade from the start.
Alex, the first Bachelor, was one of the most confused, oddly ineffectual humans ever to stumble across a reality TV casting director's cross hairs. Unable to express how he felt about what he ate for breakfast each morning, let alone which woman he preferred, Alex resorted to an age-old method of selecting dates: He chose the women who treated him with an appropriate degree of scorn. A sweet-natured but bland girl named Amanda slipped through the cracks nonetheless, and despite being far too easygoing and accepting to make Alex happy, she won his final rose with one well-timed remark about how she just loved to play dress-up. As Alex's eyes glazed over and his mind filled with images of dirty secretaries and naughty nurses vivid enough to incur the FCC's wrath, we discovered that Amanda was far smarter than she looked.
Played like a fiddle on national TV, Alex set the tone for the herd of hapless Bachelors to come. Bachelor No. 2 Aaron ("This one's rich!" the promos practically squealed), who had all the personality of a plate of pinto beans, had little beyond cash money to win over his gaggle of ladies. Luckily, passion was beside the point, since by the second round every current and former beauty queen in the country was angling for inclusion in this latest form of girly competition. Acting on pageant-circuit instincts from the start, the girls spent the season slathering Vaseline on their pearly whites and rehearsing their answers to the toughest interview -- I mean dream date -- questions without regard for whether Aaron was all that much of a prize.
I can't remember Bachelor No. 3, but I think his name was Andrew.
