The Conical Glass: My (no longer) secret obsession!

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

My (no longer) secret obsession!

DeAnna Pappas is an extremely pretty 26-year-old who is allegedly a real estate agent, although her true profession is searching for a husband -- on TV. After she was dumped (on TV) by a past "Bachelor" contestant, Brad Womack, she decided to try her luck again and become "The Bachelorette."

After watching a couple rounds of "The Bachelor," I gave up on it years ago because the show has a perfect 0% track record in actually creating lasting relationships. The reason seems simple -- after a guy has gotten used to 25 women throwing themselves at him, why would he ever want to pick one and make himself off-limits? Even though the Bachelors are supposed to be searching for love & marriage, very few of them have ever gotten married, even years after their seasons aired.

"The Bachelorette," however, did produce a successful relationship: the very first "Bachelorette," Trista Rehn, married her pick, Ryan Sutter, and they are still together and have a child. The show's second and third season failed to create enduring love matches (one Bachelorette, Jen Schefft, rejected all 25 of her suitors and went on to write a book titled Better Single Than Sorry). But still -- Trista!

So I had to watch DeAnna's season, even though I hadn't witnessed her heartbreaking rejection by Brad Womack -- luckily, ABC has replayed the scene about a zillion times to get everyone up to speed. And I'm ashamed to say that not only am I interested in DeAnna's quest for love, I've gotten kind of obsessed by it. The only consolation is that I'm not alone. There are message boards on the Internet with thousands of posts; people are scrutinizing every frame of "The Bachelorette" as if it were the Zapruder film and sharing their analyses and speculation with other fans.

The first couple episodes were kind of blah and the ratings reflected it, but lately it's been catapulted into the top 20. Why? It's obvious: Graham Bunn. Graham was identified on the show as a "professional basketball player" from North Carolina, which was about as phony as everything else on "The Bachelorette"; he did play pro ball in Europe a few years ago until an injury ended his sports career, and he is currently living in New York and working as a bartender and model. I found Graham kind of ferrety-looking, but DeAnna thought he was hot, hot, hot. Unfortunately, Graham thought DeAnna wasn't all that, which turned the entire concept of the show on its head. The idea is that all 25 contestants are desperate for the Bachelor(ette)'s attention and devastated when they are cut. However, the more DeAnna lusted after Graham, the more aloof he became. She obviously thought she could change his mind (or she was too clueless to realize that he was Just Not That Into Her) so she kept him week after week, getting rid of friendly and appealing guys like Chicago lawyer Fred Greif and science teacher Richard Mathy along the way.

Everything finally came to a head during DeAnna's "hometown date" with Graham, in which his mom warned her that her son's attention span for girlfriends tends not to last beyond 4 weeks. After their chat, DeAnna and Graham spent some awkward time together on a park bench in which it was patently obvious that Graham would rather be anywhere else -- he'd have looked more comfortable undergoing a tax audit or sitting in the middle seat of a crowded airplane. At that point even DeAnna finally got a clue and released him.

Of course, there were plenty of viewers who felt that Graham was simply shy and the only reason their love affair hadn't blossomed was because he was put off by the cameras and the presence of 24 other guys fighting for DeAnna's attention. He pretty much put that to rest in a post-show interview in which he was asked, "If there were no cameras, no other guys, and you had met her and had the relationship that you had without all of that, do you think you could have fallen in love with DeAnna?" Graham's answer: "No. I don't think I could have fallen in love with DeAnna."

So next week we will finally find out who DeAnna will select -- gnarly snowboarder Jesse Csincsak or affable single dad Jason Mesnick. The helpful promo people at ABC have already spilled the beans that the show will end in an engagement. My personal suspicion is that Jesse is a producer plant; he seems a little too scripted sometimes and he's appeared on reality TV before (MTV's "Made"). The article says that Jesse "is looking to change his focus from snowboarding to television in order to take it a little easier on his body." Is he really there for DeAnna, or is he playing a part in order to get a career boost?

Then again, does DeAnna feel ready to become instant stepmom to a 3-year-old? And could the Southern gal move far, far from her family and relocate to Seattle? (DeAnna, not exactly the smartest girl in the world, didn't recognize the landmark Space Needle during her hometown date with Jason.)

Monday night. Three hours. (Thank goodness for TiVo.) I'll be there. And afterwards, I'll be on the message boards, ready to talk about it.

posted by 125records @ 12:27 PM

1 Comments:

At 12:38 AM, neal said…

It's kind of funny that I find these shows completely unwatchable and even insulting, but I always enjoy reading your write-up's of them!