Episode 3, The Lie to...Oh, Who Gives a Shit - This Week's Episode Devoted Extensive Time to Grown Men Playing Dodgeball and to Watching Other People Watch a Movie. We All Needed Some Kind of Action (Brian, et al.)

So, I saved this one for last so that I could apply my keen analytical eye in a way that writing on the metro while trying to hide the words "penis" and "tragedy boner" from the middle aged man sitting next to me doesn't usually allow. The confusing Brian's girlfriend event wasn't so much a single lie as it was a complicated web of lies that was populated by only spiders, each prepared to have a lie battle the intensity of which has not been witnessed since Eminem shut down his opponent with "Clarence went to Cranbook. That's a Private School" (which - does anyone else reference 8 Mile on, like, a weekly basis?  I'm constantly surprised by how often that movie comes up!)

Every actor in this ridiculous farce had a dishonest role to play, and each lie that was perpetuated here was far worse than any creepy secret whispered by the likes of Ben. So here, in no particular order, are the players in this little drama and the lies they told for their cherished moment in the sun:

Brian: Brian was by far my favorite player in this little scheme because he was the falsehood role model for every sketchy man everywhere. He clearly told some sort of lie to kick this whole thing off (my guess is the lie was that he just wanted a break from his girlfriend. I'm pretty sure this skeezeball legitimately believed himself to be single), and then he just kept telling lie after lie to try and get himself out of it. I'm betting the minute his scorned lover walked through the doors of the mansion, he knew there was no way that he was sticking around and so he just started lying recreationally to see how much he could get away with on national TV.

And it's never not okay to lie recreationally (also, apparently, to use double negatives). i just wish he had gone bigger and had done better.  Because the "I didn't sleep with you two nights before the show" has a pretty limited shelf life when the victim of your lies can simply invalidate it with the playground testing, 6-year-old approved "Did too!" Instead, he should have seized his last few moments in the public eye (at least until next season's Bachelor Pad) to tell a truly impressive whopper. He could have gone with the Tiger Woods (and a teary confession of sex addiction), or the Bill Clinton (and some acrobatic semantics), or the National Enquirer (and a strong denial of having slept with her due to his abduction by aliens on the night in question). And I, for one, am pretty sad that he settled for a simple reversal of the truth.

Brian's "Girlfriend": I use quotes here because something is not quite right with the lady who came on the show to blow everything up (the lady to whom I will refer as "Birlfriend" because I cannot manage to remember her name). When Birlfriend came on the show, she used a lot of techniques to paint herself in a sympathetic light. She referenced her son. She referenced Brian's infidelity in the past. She said that Brian claimed he'd be back for her on the day they ended filming The Bachelorette. But where she erred was in telling us all that she wanted to break up, and it was Brian who insisted that they just go on a break. I get that maybe Birlfriend was just trying to cling to some sense of power in their relationship and that she just didn't want to seem like a purely pathetic lady-cuckold. But claiming that she wasn't that into their whole relationship thing anyway, makes her look more complicit than worth of Desiree's awkward sympathetic hugs. Also, does Brian really look like a man whose girlfriend just showed up?


Desiree: Desiree had to act like she cared. And like she wasn't annoyed that another woman was there to steal the screen time from her. And like she hadn't already decided to send Brian home the second he told her he was two months out of a relationship.

Chris Harrison: So, basically, it's Chris Harrison's job to lie about the producer's hopes for the intentions of the prospective bachelors and bachelorettes. But that doesn't mean I'm not impressed by the elegance with which he does it every damn time. The fact that he can still say something like "we didn't know" and "Desiree's here to find love and you're not being respectful of that" with a straight face even after all these years is really what makes him a true American hero.