A Monday Night Well Spent in Front of the Boob Tube

So last night, looking forward to my week off from school and realizing that I could stay up late and watch as much crappy TV as I wanted, I settled right down in front of the boob tube to do exactly that. (Hey, cut me some slack, I had already gone to the gym where I did my strength training class and my aerobics class!).

First up was a show called, "Wife Swap." It appeared that, as luck would have it, this was not a new episode of the show, but rather a 2-hour rehash of past episodes, with a review of what happened when the wives were "swapped" and how the families are faring these days. Seemed mildly amusing, if not interesting.

It is all really predictable, if you ask me. I mean, if you settle in to watch an episode of this show and can't predict that there will be major conflict, tears and confrontation, you're either brain dead or asleep. Maybe both. I mean, gee, let's see if I can remember some of the scenarios. In one swap, a wife from a strictly-regimented, almost military style household, where all the family members are assigned list upon list of daily chores, the children call the parents ma'am and sir, and all meals strictly adhere to a lo-cal, low-fat, low-sodium vegetarian diet, goes to a family where the people are absolutely enormously obese, the kids do nothing but lounge around the house all day long, and eat nothing but high-fat fast foods. In another swap, a germ-phobe goes to a home where the last thorough cleaning took place sometime during the Nixon administration and where 25 pets of all species, including (no joke) a kangaroo have their run of the place. In still another wife swap, a woman who lives in a multi-million dollar Park Avenue pent house goes to live in rural Virginia where she is expected to do her part to help out with wood-splitting chores.

I mean, really. As I said, if you don't see the conflict coming, you must literally be brain dead.

Anyway, onto the real piece de resistance for the evening.

The Bachelor Paris: The women tell all. This episode is a standard in every season of The Bachelor. In the episode just prior to the season finale, in which the bachelor will make his ultimate decision, there is an episode in which all the shunned women from throughout the season convene to criticize each other, talk about what a terrible mistake the bachelor made in letting them go, and "confront" the bachelor. Usually the advertisements for the show build up the event to make it appear much more dramatic than it actually ends up being. This particular episode was no exception.

For example, throughout the evening, they kept running commercials about the certifiably insane Allie G.



Ahhh, yes. I think we all remember good old Allie G. This is a still of her standing through the first rose ceremony. Remember, she had, just moments before, confided in Travis that she was planning on "entering the reproductive phase" of her life. I think we all saw the handwriting on the wall throughout this rose ceremony. Travis was obviously NOT going to give this mental case a rose. I think this picture must have been taken very close to the end of the ceremony, when Travis was down to his last couple of roses and she was becoming increasingly agitated. You can already see that this woman is an emotional force to be reckoned with. Obviously, Travis decided he was not going to be the one doing the reckoning.

We all know the end; Allie went nuts, confronting Travis and accusing him of being a player and not liking her because she was too short or her breasts were too small.

Anyway, back to the pre "Women Tell All" commercials. Numerous references to Allie G were made and in the end, it turns out she wasn't even there. She declined the invitation to appear on the show. Gee, wonder why.

In an ultimate "class act" when the host of the show asked Travis how he reacted to Allie G, Travis refused to deign to criticize Allie. He simply said, "Come on, Man. Let her move on with her life."

What? I expected some serious criticism. Why the hell else would I be watching? Whatever.



The woman pictured above, Jennifer, really surprised me on this "Women Tell All" show. That's for sure. On the season, she always seemed pretty nice, but in this show, she was just a resentful, angry, bitter, scornful, derisive bitch. She spent a significant amount of time attacking "scratchy voice" Sarah, who otherwise drove me nuts. But, when Jennifer turned out to be such a jerk, making faces at every woman who spoke, speaking in a really condescending sarcastic tone to every single person there, and just making herself look like a piece of garbage, all I could think of was how I was glad that Sarah had beat her out on the camping date. Jennifer revealed herself to be a jerk.

In one other moment on the show, when Susan, the most recently rejected bachelorette, was defending herself and saying that she really did want to be on the show for Travis and that she wasn't there to be discovered as an actress (which, by the way, I don't believe), Jennifer kept attacking her. Some other woman, who had been rejected in the very first episode, and whom nobody really had any recollection of, very kindly and articulately stepped in to speak in Susan's defense. She said, "Why can't she want to be an actress AND want to appear on the Bachelor? Why does the fact that she wants to be an actress automatically mean that she is incapable of being sincere?" To this, Jennifer replied, "What? Look, I lived in the house longer with Susan than you did. You were rejected on the first night. Nobody even knows your name, honey, including me!"

I thought this was COMPLETELY uncalled for. It was funny, though, because I just enjoyed sitting back and watching Jennifer self destruct. What a be-otch!



And here is good old Moana pictured above. I think, and I always have thought, that she is the prettiest bachelorette on the show. It was sickening to hear all the rejected women, who spent so much of their time tearing Moana apart and making every attempt to ostracize her, all saying that they loved her and that she had such a soft, loving side.

These women are all such arrogant, self-loving bitches that I'm convinced they spend every single Monday night watching themselves on TV with the rest of us. Don't they see that all they did was knock Moana throughout the entire filming of the show. Now they can sit there, straight-faced, and say that they love her?

They have got to be kidding.

OK, so here's my prediction for next week.

They show Travis, just having sent a woman home in the limo, tearing himself up for having hurt somebody. He wistfully says, "I hope she'll be OK, but the problem is that I'll never be able to find out."

Throughout the show, he's been very concerned by Moana's seemingly fragile emotional state and pretty convinced that Sarah from TN is pretty resilient and fun and stable. I'm thinking that, based on his obvious concern that he may have sent somebody over the deep end, perhaps Moana is the one to go.

Of course, they probably just showed that moment for that very purpose.

I'm usually wrong in my predictions. But I'm picking Sarah from TN as the "keeper'.