The Bachelorette – Dez: At Long Last…The Grand Finale

Reviews, Shows

Albeit, better late than never, I’ve come to a conclusion about this season:  I’m just not that into you.

I don’t know if it’s because I just so happened to have missed blogging about a few episodes.  Or because I had to stay up super-late many-a-time this season writing into the night and waking up wearing my cranky-pants.  Or maybe because even my PVR seemed bored and refused to tape it on several occasions.    Do people still say ‘tape’?

Maybe it was the guys – like, oh I don’t know, an unattractive douche-bag with a girlfriend, or a condescending, pajina-sporting lawyer, or a non-villainesque villain, fabricated to add drama to a boring season.  As this season draws to a close and we are left with Dez and Chris, happily ever after, I just have to say that quite frankly, I’m exhausted.

I spent a painful few hours last week at my cottage streaming the first part of the ‘finale event’ and bawling when Brooks left Dez heartbroken.  Do you know what it’s like to watch a two hour episode of something that buffers every other minute, restarts itself every time you pause it and actually forces you to watch commercials like some chump in the medieval times???   Do you?  No.  You don’t.  Because you’re not a loser like me hooked up to 14 laptops trying desperately to stay emotionally invested and you wouldn’t put up with that shit when the summer breeze is beckoning from the lake.

But I committed to it.  I embraced Dez’s boho-chic, fringe-laden belly tops that made me want to weep for the stomach of my youth (sidebar; that is a total lie.  I never had that stomach.  Ass, maybe.  Legs, totes.  But not the abs.)

I painfully relived the lengthy recaps of every previous moment of the season that just had to be shown to fill the two hour timeslot – well, almost all of it was painful – any scenes involving Drew making out were freakin’ hot.

I cringed with every one of Chris’s rhyming, run-on, romantic clichés ever put from pen to paper and the misuse of the term ‘adjectives’ to describe Dez and Brooks’ ‘journey’, from stepping, to skipping, to running and the inevitable unmentioned crash and burn.

I feigned interest as Dez and Drew went on their fantasy date last week, with him (or any man for that matter), finally behind the wheel, cruising through the street fest, buying touristy maracas, no doubt made in China from a street vendor, and I strolled down memory lane, thinking about how I totally used to kick ass in Limbo.  Seriously.  I rocked.

I took notes on things like the random lesion on Dez’s chest that I’d never noticed before, or the creepy banana-leaf sculpture maker who seemed a little too into their kiss like he was directing a scene from a soft core porn as he instructed she and Drew very, very specifically on what to do. And I swallowed vomit as the acoustics captured every kissing noise between the two of them in the fantasy suite before they kicked the cameras out.

I prayed that we could get through Chris’s one on one date without a poem (obviously we couldn’t) and rolled my eyes to the heavens when he suggested they go back to the fantasy suite ‘just to watch the stars’.  Golly.  That sounds nice.  Kill me.

I felt for Brooks and every soul-searching moment he went through.  I winced at the crack in his voice as he neared breakdown while Chris Harrison seamlessly put words in his mouth, even dragging his parents’ divorce in, all the while appearing to be a source of comfort, a sensation I can only imagine is like being raped by a puppy.  Sort of nice and sweet and cute (I mean it’s a puppy, right?)  but painful and uncomfortable  all the same.

I hoped, half-heartedly, that Brooks would decide to take it slow and just not propose (a novel thought, I know!) instead of just breaking up with her if he wasn’t 100% sure.  I know I would have responded quite well to seeing a couple at the end who were like’ you know what?  I totally like you more than a friend, but I’m just not ready to get married, so… wanna be my girlfriend?’  I would have respected that and been satisfied.  You?

And then the break-up.  I puked, when she donned that teeny tiny turquoise bikini and even when hunched over on the bench, bawling her eyes out, nary a roll could be found.

I openly cried, wishing I could reach out and drag Brooks to me, holding him super-awkwardly like a baby, despite me being being 5’3″ (and a half!) and rocking him until he found peace.    And my heart just BROKE for her, when she was so excited to see him and then in one moment, she knew it was done and started crying right away.  To hear her come out and say she loved him – I certainly wasn’t expecting that contractual no-no.  No-siree.  The scene was raw, by Bachelor standards, anyways.

And that was just last week.  He, bawling in a forest.  She, bawling on a dock and me, bawling at my computer.  Sigh.

Yet on finale night, I had a glimmer of hope.  Since Brooks said at the end of the previous episode that he didn’t expect it to be as hard to leave her as he thought, I spent the ENTIRE episode waiting for him to come back.  The Whole Thing.  Because honestly, any other outcome would have been ridiculous.

Almost as ridiculous as that ensemble from the girl in the studio audience who was wearing those red and white pants, with the black bustier (for lack of a better term to describe that top) and high-waisted belt.  Guess someone didn’t get the memo that large patterns don’t translate well on TV.  The poor thing probably had that outfit planned for weeks!  Shame.

Right from the start, it wasn’t meant to be.  First, AGAIN, my PVR didn’t work, so thanks to my Facebook fairies, I was able to piece together what I missed (surprise – 20 minutes of nothing but Dez crying and telling Drew and Chris that Brooks had gone, making it painfully evident and awkward by acknowledging that he was the one that got away).

Then, seeing Dez attempting to move on, even though the concealer under her eyes could barely contain the swollen bags from crying and she didn’t so much as get off her horse to greet Drew on their one-on-one.

For the record, it was completely unfair that Dez went on her final date with Drew the day after Brooks left, but had a week of distance between her final date with Chris.  If it were reversed, and Chris’s date had been a day later, instead of a week later when she had finally pulled herself together she’d probably be engaged to Drew right now, no?  Yes.  Because it’s that ridiculous.

The only upside to watching her painful breakup with Drew was witnessing his sexy jawline clench and unclench, like face buttocks, if you will.  Good God he is beautiful.  And let’s not forget Dez’s upside to sheer depression and misery that we all know well; Depression = lack of appetite.  Lack of appetite = skinny.  Skinny = yay!

So she has her week off to prepare for Chris’s date, and yes, you can tell she is much more comfortable and happy with him than she was with Drew.  And yes, you can see her wheels turning in the hotel room as they come to the realization that their relationship has progressed normally and of course, the journal gets her (every time, right Zak?  The guy should sue.)  And of course, I ached for her that she has been made to feel so unappreciated in her past relationships that she doesn’t even know how to allow herself to be loved, and was happy for the comfort and security Chris brings her, but really???

Besides a brief break from the ridiculousness thanks to a visit from Sean and Catherine (who, for the record, I still think are super-gross together) and some sage wisdom from Dez’s Bachelor Besties, overall, I finished this episode pretty pissed off.

Am I happy for her that she is engaged to Chris?  Sure.  He is the nicest guy and will no doubt love her like no other.  They may even live happily ever after, adjusting each other’s noses, reciting brutal poems and leaving messages in bottles in every rain puddle they come across in Seattle.  But…I still don’t buy it and I still think she settled for the only option left (even if that option was a great one).

You wanna talk ridiculous?  How about her one-on-one time with her big bro Nate?  He’s all ‘as of now, is he the one you see yourself with?’ And she’s all ‘yes’.  Um…yes…because he’s the only one here?!?  Or how about his wise advice not to rush into anything (you mean like getting engaged to a guy when you were madly in love and broken-hearted over being dumped one week prior by a different guy?  That kind of rushing into things???).  And she’s all like, ‘oh no, I’d never!’

Once Nate says he approves and the extra security guards they hired to keep him in check are sent home, he asks her if she was disappointed that Brooks left and she informs him that it took her a ‘long time’ to get over him (which in Bachelorville is apparently less than a week) but she’s ready to move on.  Right…

Even as they were getting ready for the final rose ceremony, him with his freshly picked Neal Lane-sponsored ungapatchka ring, and her with yet another mother-of-the-bride finale dress, I was still waiting for a limo scene, with Brooks’ hair and mysterious feet approaching.  STILL WAITING.

And even when they had said all their kind words to each other, including her lie that she was blind-sighted by Brooks and torn between them the whole time (interesting that never came up in any footage whatsoever all season long), and she has accepted his proposal while quickly muttering ‘I’ll tell you everything’, so he doesn’t get too caught up in that fact that , you know, she loves Brooks and all, once he watches the show, I was literally, still waiting for Brooks to pop out from behind a palm tree.  STILL WAITING.

But then it was done.  Over.  And I just sat there stunned, feeling empty inside.  Of course, I was moved by their whole proposal and I’m happy for her – I’m not dead inside, people.  But still.  Stunned.

To be honest, After the Final Rose for me was a blur.  I took note of basically nothing (because at this point I am really beyond caring) and in fact once again, missed the first ten minutes – damn PVR!!! – only to pop in when Brooks was struggling not to embarrass himself and then have to feign excitement when Dez awkwardly reveals the outcome of the show to him.  Sounds almost as brutal as the Bachelor Pad finale where Holly and Blake gleefully crushed Michael Stagliano’s hopes and dreams on live TV by telling him they were in fact, living together and engaged.

Though I missed this initially, I’ve had several sources reveal to me, that the look on Dez’s face when Chris Harrison told her that Brooks was going to be coming out without knowledge of the ending said it all, and that you could see her wheels turning, potentially hoping he would come out to profess his love to her.  Sure woulda liked to see that one.

Poor Drew – a few pounds heavier, no? – must have scanned a job interview follow-up questions tips sheet as we had to sit through him asking Dez if there were any areas he could have improved upon.  Does it really matter, dude?  There is probably literally a giant snail-trail made up of thousands of women from the studio to your doorstep as I type this.

And of course, right after the happy couple gets to watch the same proposal that the whole audience had to watch like six minutes earlier (yet another time suck), the big news comes out that Juan Pablo is the new Bachelor.

Hmm…yay?  Would I bend over for good ol’ JP?  Sure.  Would I let him bounce me on his knee like a freshly inflated soccer ball?  Hell yeah.  Would I let him make me his little enchilada, or jalapeno or plantain or whatever he damn well pleases?  Si.  But do I need to watch a whole season hearing girls say his name and listening to him try to articulate himself?  Not so much.

I am in desperate need of a recharge.  This season took a lot out of me, and with Bachelor Pad a distant memory, it’s going to take a lot more than a hot Venezuelan to make me a believer again.  So it’s on you, JP.  It’s all on you.

As for Dez and Chris, I’m sure you’ll find a way to torture us all with a literary account of every aspect of your relationship all packaged up neatly for the Twitterverse, so I guess at this point…

Rhyme on, you crazy kids.  Rhyme on.

And…OUT.

I'm a busy, working mom who loves nothing more than settling onto the couch with a glass of wine to harshly critique the unfortunate romantic relationships of happily-ever-after wanna-be's. Check out Reality Bytes