Week 6, Burn it to the Ground

I'll leave it up to Chris as to whether he also
chooses to salt the ground after watching it burn

I'm sure I'm not the only one who was pleased with the results of the 2-on-1 date. As crazy as Kelsey appeared to be, Kardashley was equally as unpalatable with her constant entitlement, cattiness, and whining. More controversial, perhaps, is my impending sense that Chris needs to take the same approach to the entire group of women and just send them all home and see if Chris "No Rules" Harrison wouldn't mind whipping up another batch. It's not that I find this year's bunch particularly unpalatable. Sure, it seems that there's been more than the usual allotment of cattiness and in-fighting, but I think that's to be expected in a year when the Bachelor himself feels like a bit more than the increasingly tarnished trophy you're awarded at the end of a pretty messed up game. In fact, there's a number of women still on the show who I find likable and funny and might even want to befriend if our paths ever crossed in the real world (If only there was some sort of red carpet event, something for people who weren't really famous, but still deserved to have fans like me scream their names and fawn over their sparkly, sparkly dresses. If only...). And shockingly, so far, I'm not hating Chris. So it's not like I'm even rooting for him to pick the worst possible remaining contestant so the rest of the eligible dating world is spared 4-6 months of her heinousness. It's just...I think it's gotten to the point where there's not a lot of ways he gets out of this whole thing with a wife.

To validate the need for such an extreme strategy, let's take a look at who Chris has left:

The girls he's not that into: This is the worst part about this show and probably also dating in real both Carly and Megan, but I do think they're both in the same boat. Attraction is relative even in the real world, and in a house with 10 other women, they're each being forced to suffer through having it regularly rubbed in their faces that they're not as desirable to Chris as a number of the other girls. In the real world, I would hope that they would one day wake up and realize that they were entitled to expect something better from the guy who was going to be their husband (minimally, no shushing. My husband could shush me in a movie theater and he would still earn an incredibly dirty look, let alone if he shushed me to make out with someone else), but in Bachelor land, they'll unfortunately probably get sent packing before they ever have that chance.
life. There's a chemical element to it that means that sometimes being funny, smart, kind, and even beautiful isn't enough. I'm not saying that all of those words necessarily apply to

The girls who clearly don't want to live on a farm: We get hints of Britt's shadiness from the gossip of the other girls, but really all we ever needed was her ABC bio. Britt is a waitress. In Hollywood. I don't know if she's angling to be the next Bachelorette or if this is just a means of promoting what has to be an acting career, but it's clear to everyone but Chris that Britt's never going to want to move to Iowa and live on a farm. I'm not necessarily saying she's being fake when she's around him, or that Britt doesn't have some very real feelings for Chris (also some very real hugs, I would imagine), but if not, then she's certainly not dealing with the reality of the situation (which is so weird because she's been given every opportunity to do so whilst whiling away the hours in a lavishly-appointed mansion and using the helicopter as her favored means of conveyance). Kardashley's choice to bring up Britt during her exit tantrum (not to be confused with her hottub tantrum, princess date tantrum, or her off-screen, but epic someone was talking during a favorite hair product commercial tantrum) was ill-conceived and immature, but it was not entirely unjustified.

The girls who aren't going to want to uproot their lives and move to a farm after seeing how Chris treated that one girl who clearly didn't want to live on a farm: Really most of the remainder of the girls fall into this camp. Whitney, Kaitlyn, Jade, and Becca all seem like the kind of girls who I wouldn't mind time-traveling back to the early 90s for to convince my parents to postpone that vasectomy and give conceiving a son one last shot so that I could someday submit an audition video for him to appear on The Bachelorette, council him through the process using the shameful depth of knowledge I've amassed on this show, and then eventually get to meet Zak from Des' seasonBachelorettes), and I'm including Jade's naked photos in my consideration (My husband, who caught the tale end of the preview scenes on the last episode summed it up best with: "Why does it matter if she posed in Playboy? Isn't the assumption when you go on this show that you're basically up for televised sex?"). The problem is, while I imagine each and every one would be happy to accept his proposal, I can't imagine them making it down the aisle with him after watching his weekly love fest with Britt. The icy stares Chris earned himself after this week's extremely poorly thought out concert with Big and Rich was the faintest of preview of things to come when any one of these strong and reasonable ladies watch
back Britt's "nap" date from last week. If the preview scenes are to be believed, Chris's mind is about to be changed, but I think he's going to be hard-pressed to convince his fiance that as of week 6 he hadn't pretty well decided on Britt.
at their inevitable televised wedding (or, you know, something more normal...like introducing them to a friend). From what we know of them now, it seems like any of them would be a perfectly lovely fit for Chris (though 3 out of the 4 of them would make for mind-numbingly boring

The crazy girls...oh wait: I, in no way, want to imply that I'm sad that Chris sent home both Kelsey and Kardashley this week, but, in some ways, these were the girls with whom he had the best chance of making it stick. In different ways, both treated the show like a game and bot might have been more willing to overlook his hormone-fueled Britt-page if it was perceived as being necessary for a "win." Chris just may get a second chance at this as I'm not convinced we've seen the last of Kelsey. Some of you may recall from the season's first preview scenes, Kelsey telling Chris that he gave her a second chance so she would do the same for him (or it might just me that watched them over and over again while drafting up the prospect reports...which might be why it's just me that sometimes just sees images of crying women when I close my eyes at night for the first time...). It's not outside of the realm of possibility that that was b-roll footage that we'll never actually see (they weirdly seem to do that a lot), but if that's not the case, well, we certainly haven't seen it yet!

Episode 5, Zweinacheinstelldichenmitabstobendmensch: "Going on a Two-on-One with a Guy I Find Repulsive"

Like in every country in the world, it is very common in Germany to be forced into a dating scenario with three participants in which you bear very limited affection for either man and will send one packing in a limo of embarrassment by the end of the night, all while reserving that particular torment for the other man in just a few nights hence.  But before we all buy our tickets to Disneyworld and start queuing up to get "It's a Small World" stuck indelibly in our heads, let's take just a few moments to break down a particular Zweinacheinstelldichenmitabsotbendmensch, Desiree's date with Ben and Michael G.

Now, if I'm being honest, I had long come to terms with the fact that this formulaic, predictable show could no longer surprise me, but that's exactly what this date did (also known as schockenschtupen in the German I just made up). I expected Michael G. to take Des aside and whisper in low tones of concern the same faintly damning evidence that we've all been treated to him whining about over the past couple of weeks. I expected Des to thank him for his concern, and to agonize about it in the packaged interview and perhaps for one particularly picturesque prolonged moment against the backdrop of the Rhine River and a waxing gibbous moon (and for the record, I'm too pleased with myself for knowing the name of a river in Germany to look up whether in flows through Munich or what, in fact, a waxing gibbous moon is). I did not expect Michael to go into full Perry Mason mode (you know, if Perry Mason was a whiny Federal prosecutor who fought the good fight again sinister people who dared take reality TV into their own hands and use it for, gasp, fame. Also if Perry Mason was about to lose his very serious job for his series of poor decisions and general buffoonery on national TV). 

On the one hand, I'd like to laud Michael for actually addressing a problem head on rather than running sniveling to Desiree or continuing to spread pernicious gossip behind Ben's back. But on the other hand, well, he was just such an ass. From the hypocrisy of calling Ben out on his politician-like answers and on being a know-it-all, to the smug way in which he would chow down on his food after dropping a shrapnel-laden truth bomb in the middle of the dinner table, Michael attacked Ben for issues that either shouldn't matter or that Michael had no way of knowing the truth behind. He may have saved Desiree from a horrible marriage to a drink-schilling absentee father, but I'm not sure he really convinced the rest of up with anything approaching, you know, proof. And I for one certainly didn't enjoy watching him rest his case while chewing with his mouth open while poor Ben repeatedly sputtering "Good Christian" in the background. 

Similarly, on the one hand, I'd like  to give Desiree for sending home the guy that everyone in the house hated. Even if I don't quite believe the "Ben is evil" hype, at the very least it saves us from four more weeks of manufactured tension. But on the other hand, I can't believe Des would have sent Ben packing if she had been in any way into him personally (so selfish of her not to make her decisions with the television audience in mind. But then again, I guess Chris Harrison needs something to do besides press his suits and wistfully draw new variations on paisley), and I can't stomach that fact that she let Michael, the dick, go virtually unchecked (I thought the words "Just because you go to church doesn't mean you're close with God" sounded like a particularly pointed death knell for him, but apparently she was just quoting something she read on a bumper sticker one time). And ultimately, most importantly, I just can't give her any credit after her heinously awkward fake polar bear plunge. I'm sorry, Desiree, but we've seen you take a crack at a couple of them now, and pranks just aren't really your thing.  It's okay, you have autograph signing in malls across the country to look forward to. You don't need any other special skills.