Week 6, The Girls

There's a metaphor trapped somewhere in my brain. I can hear it clamoring for my attention, though it's faint, trapped as it is by the theme song to Fraggle Rock and the names and arguments for legitimacy of all nine of Santa's Reindeer (That's right. I said nine, Clement Clarke Moore. And Santa is not a smoker. Get with the times!). Maybe it's Noah's Arc and I'm doling out limited berths to the rest of the animals (sorry, Dragons. The elephants already claimed the only king-sized room). Or maybe it's an outbreak of some rare, charmingly named but virulently deadly strain of influenza (I'm thinking Chinchilla Pox) and I'm parceling out our fatally under-stocked vaccine.  But whatever it is, the point is, this season has gotten to the point where I want to save these women from the awful fate that stands before them handing out roses, and the prospects of everyone making it out alive are looking mighty grim.

So here, in order of who I would save first, of who's definitely getting a space in the bunker or one of the last remaining bullets in my gun (Woah, sorry guys. This season is clearly making me go to a very dark place. But let's face it. At least there's dignity in death) are this season's remaining women.

Renee:
  How Renee even made it onto this show completely escapes me. Did she get someone super manipulative to pee in a cup for her so that she could fake her urine sample (because clearly, they must use some sort of genetic marker of terrible-ness as part of the audition process)? Because Renee seems like way too nice of a person to even be on this show. at this point, I am really just hoping against all hopes that something happens next week (I wouldn't complain if it resulted in a black eye for Juan Pablo either) to prevent her from making it to hometown dates because I'm pretty sure her poor son Ben will contract mild misogyny just by being in the same room as Juan Pablo.

Chelsie:
  I know. My choice surprised me too. But, is it just me or is Chelsie less the vapid, giggly airhead they tried to bill her has at the beginning of the show and more...rational than the standard Bachelor fare. After last week's episode in which she correctly identified jealousy rather than insisting the collective negative affect they were experiencing was Clare-being-a-bitchface-who's-not-here-for-the-right-reasons, she followed up this week with the insightful recognition of the fact that her connection with Juan Pablo might not be as strong as some of the other girls (although clearly not insightful enough...). We're going to need a woman of her skills in our brave new world lest our citizens interpret a zombie attack as merely people who "didn't come here to make friends."

Clare: 
Clare lives in a fantasy land made all the more complicated by the fact that, in the real world, she and Juan Pablo have been reduced to speaking in code. (These two should never mix. Have you ever seen a Care Bear try to speak in code? Their poor fluffy heads nearly explode and their colorful tummies turn into blotchy, scaly rashes). In Clare's world, she and Juan Pablo have a relationship based on common interests and mutual respect. In Juan Pablo's world, Clare;s that super hot chick who's kind of crazy and spends way too much time talking about her dad, but who he really, really wants to bang (but only in the sanctified hallows of the fantasy suite. He has a daughter for Pete's sake). In Clare's world, Juan Pablo apologized for swimming in the ocean when he should have just said "no" up front. In Juan Pablo's world, he basically claimed that he was too weak to say "no" to Clare's aggressive sexual advances (did I mention Juan Pablo's world is really messed up?). We need to get Clare out of there before she sleeps with this guy again or, worse yet, shows him that video lovingly crafted by her dad.

Cassandra:
So, believe it or not, Cassandra is not "one of my special ones." This is partially because I recognize that calling a woman one of many who are special is paradoxical and likely to make her feel like the reverse. But mostly, it's because I don't have anything to say about Cassandra. I don't have any feelings about her as a person. I don't have any feelings about her early exit (except for the ways in which it likely really sucked for both Sword-of-Damacles-imprisoned Renee and not-respected-enough-to-have-those-two-extra-days Kat). She's basically just a neutral void in my Bachelor-watching life. But hey, at least she wouldn't take up too much room in the bunker.

Andi:
Of the legions of women who are too smart for Juan Pablo (we're getting t-shirts made. Yours are all in the mail), And has to be the only one who doesn't realize it.

Sharleen: 
I want to want to save Sharleen. Out of all these girls, I think she's the one who clearly sees what Juan Pablo is. But let's face it, if I staged a stunning rescue (something appropriately operatic, I think, with camels and maybe some sort of helicopter), she would probably claw my face so that she could get dragged back into his miserable web, and in this fictional hellscape we now live in, Bacitracin is hard to come by.

Kat:
I see you, Kat. I know what's going on here. Look, growing up with an alcoholic parent is undoubtedly tough. I'm not trying to take that away from Kat or to suggest that she's not dealing with very real personal tumult or abandonment issues, but the way in which she doled out her first memory....I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it a bit manipulative. In high school English class whenever I didn't want to put a lot of effort into a poetry assignment, I'd write about something so maudlin and so personal that I'd essentially dare my English teacher to give me anything less than an "A" (my husband just used to rip off song lyrics from a lesser known band. I bet, ultimately, his high school English teacher was considerably happier with his approach). And it worked. Either my teacher had a real love of rhyming couplets that paired "tragic death" with "final breath" or he just repeatedly and unfailingly doled out what was tantamount to a pity grade. Kat tried to use that same strategy this week to snag the final rose, and she did an admirable (by which I mean truly agonizing) job. But she failed to consider who her audience was. My English teacher was a bearded, elbow-patch jacket wearing hippie who allegedly use to offer to get kids pot. Juan Pablo is a shallow, sexist chach who would prefer his sex:talking ratio be very, very high. The upside is, though, that I don't need to save Kat from this terrible season because she's already saved herself.

Nikki:
So, it's probably unfair of me to put Nikki after Kat just because she's touching on one of my biggest pet peeves, but it's my lifeboat (there it is - it took me a whole blog post, but I found the metaphor!) and it you want a seat you better have a life jacket made entirely of cake and/or (screw it. I'm saying and! It's my lifeboat!) avoid those things that I found insufferably annoying. But seriously, Nikki won't stop violating my cardinal rule about bragging.  What we've seen from Nikki is a pretty negative black hole for fun who seems to think she's better than the other girls. What we've heard from Nikki is that she has a good sense of herself and that she has a good heart. Nikki, I can't say this loudly enough (especially since you're all the way back on the capsized S.S. Juan Pablo while the other ladies and I float safely out of the fray): IF YOU HAVE TO SAY IT ABOUT YOURSELF, IT PROBABLY ISN'T TRUE.