In one brilliantly edited "Bachelor" sequence, we see one of the four finalists, Shannon, return home to introduce Alex to her parents. First, we witness an awkward, faux-warm greeting in which Shannon begs her mother not to make her cry, purportedly because there's so much love in the air. Meanwhile, the two seem about as anxious to touch each other as homophobic teenage boys. (Note to self: If you hire actors to play your parents, get some who can actually feign warmth and unconditional love for you.) Then Shannon rushes out to greet the family dog with more affection and feeling than we've witnessed in any of the contestants up to this point. Next, Shannon, Alex and the parents sit in the den and attempt to chat casually. Shannon insists on sitting next to the window, so the dog will be able to see her. The conversation is stifled at first, but Alex and the parents start to hit their stride, at which point Shannon leaps up and dashes out to hang out with the dog again. This happens two or three times. Next, Alex waits in the limo as Shannon and her parents discuss him.

"So what do y'all think?" she gushes. Her parents' smiles are strained. "Do you have anything in common with him?" Shannon: "Yeah! A lot! We think a lot alike." Mom: "Like what?" "OK," Shannon says, "I get grilled 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so I don't want it from you guys." "Well, he doesn't have any pets, so I wonder if he really likes pets ... " her mother says. "What else do you have in common with him?" her father asks. Obviously they're not excited that she's on the show, which is understandable. But it's still pretty disturbing to watch parents who care more about looking reasonable and smart for the camera than they do about the fact that they're making their daughter look like a shallow asshole.

Cut to Shannon in the limo. Alex wants to know what her "rules" are, rules about not kissing or having sex that she's vaguely alluded to, that sound a lot like "The Rules," if we're not mistaken. Shannon is livid that Alex has asked. Alex says that he feels bad if he's putting her on the spot. Shannon's response: "I don't think that you feel bad at all. I think that you see how awkward I feel right now, but you don't care." Wait. Is she talking about her parents now, or Alex? Shannon, can you say "projection"?

So Shannon manages to shield her "rules" from Alex, thereby creating even more mystery and frustration. Instead of telling the camera, through tears, "This poor woman needs therapy!" Alex reports that Shannon "feels like my girlfriend" and that "we've had some fights and I want to make it better." Meanwhile, Kim, who isn't self-conscious or mysterious at all when she states that she reads self-help books by Dr. Phil, and who seems to genuinely like Alex, is dismissed at the end of the show. Alex pronounces her "too easygoing for me."

Alex wants to know who really likes him, apparently so he can consistently choose the women who don't. This isn't incredibly surprising when you consider the overall goal of the show, and of the glossy ring-shopping culture reflected in wedding porn: If your goal is to trap the poor animal at all costs, why wouldn't the animal be more attracted to tourists than to trappers? What Alex doesn't recognize yet is that the best trappers of all are the ones who dress up in Hawaiian shirts with cameras around their necks.

But eventually Shannon's neurotic shenanigans are too blatant to disregard. Though we suspect Alex likes being tortured by her better than he likes being sexually catered to by the voluptuous Amanda, he announces with no small amount of regret in his voice that Amanda is probably better for him, since she's sweet, seems to like him, lets him lick chocolate off her naked body, etc., while Shannon pouts and moans endlessly, seeming to blame Alex for everything from her parents' disapproval to the fact that she agreed to be on this cheesy show in the first place.

While in wedding porn the bossy, self-involved girl always finds true love, in reality -- or at least on reality shows -- the truth is a little harder to swallow. With the average age of the bride increasing from 20 in 1964 to 27 according to the latest estimates, women have many more years to escape into the fantasy of being chosen, all the while becoming more neurotic and inflexible in ways that seem to lessen the possibility of fostering the kind of openness that's necessary for falling in love -- falling in love not with a gallant poster boy, but with a real human being. Our uptight, scattered heroine can stomp her feet cutely until someone spineless enough to cater to her every whim wanders up, but in the real world, it takes an ability to drop any preconceptions of "the dream guy" and follow your feelings, not your thoughts, to a person who makes you happy. A lasting relationship isn't indicated merely by the fact that he opens doors and brings home the bacon and accepts an endless stream of demands without complaint. Real love grows from two people accepting each other beyond the confinement of outdated roles and societal notions of what constitutes a desirable mate.

Plenty of women want to get married, and the contestants' ability to state that goal so directly is actually what makes them appealing; in the end they're following their dreams unself-consciously. But "The Bachelor" and the wedding porn genre reflect our culture's tendency to romanticize a courting process that exists in some vapory realm of boudoir tricks, dance cards and expensive rings. When falling in love is painted in such fantastical colors, you can expect marriages that reflect the same limitations -- roles that crush our ability to be honest, that keep us from presenting our true, original, flawed selves to each other, and ultimately, that rob us of our own desire.

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