Bachelorettes, Bevin, and the Buts and Shouldacouldwouldas

Bachelorettes, Bevin, and the Buts and Shouldacouldwouldas by Roxanne McDonald

How pitiful was the mood on the “After the Final Rose” reunion show? As if we didn’t cry enough or see enough sobbing and sadness in the final episode.

Damn, we fans take the show “The Bachelor…” seriously, as it is, but when Bevin had to return for a command performance, still raw of wound but dignified in her dejection, I was sure I was going to lose it all over again.

There’s still something not quite right. Sure, the set up for the reunion show gave us a happy and glowing Charlie and his girl Sarah and a happy and glowing Trista (pregnant with her man Ryan’s babe), and we should have been just as delighted for the happy and glowing Tessa and Andy. But there was something off, some emotion two degrees left of center that seemed, well, postured for the cameras.

Maybe it was me, having residual resentment over Andy going the more conventional route and proposing to a woman who would likely fit in better with his family and naval doctor/officer world. Maybe it was how that whole Officer and a Gentleman lift the damsel in arms thing was feeling overplayed.

Or maybe it was how Bevin was visibly still hurt, how Chris perfunctorily milked the hell out of that hurt, and how Andy reiterated the chase factor. Okay, so you have all the tailoring of a triathlete. You have the class and

come-uppance and etiquette befitting a gentleman. But do you have to rub in the biological imperative of having to go with the one who was harder to read, harder to court, harder to handle, really?

And do you think that reticence is not going to show up in later years, and drive you bonkers—making you wish you had gone with the one who consistently and confidently electrified you? The very essence luring him will likely be that which drives him mad later on.

(Interesting how a group of naval nurses/corpsmen [women] who knew Andy when he was interning watch the show each week and root for Tessa, saying how Bevin couldn’t handle his being gone so much. Hmmm. Was I watching the same show?)

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The Fine Line between Somebody He Loves and Somebody He Loves

The Fine Line between Somebody He Loves and Somebody He Loves by Roxanne McDonald

Was the finale of “The Bachelor: Officer and a Gentleman” ever painful to watch.

Maybe it was because I wanted Andy to choose Bevin. Maybe it was because when a man cries (and if it’s real), I instantly respond in kind. But Jeez, Louise, that Andy and his double valance decision-making torture was painnnnnful to witness.

Taking the two final contenders for the title of Mrs. Lieutenant Andrew Baldwin to his childhood home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Andy runs Bevin Powers and Tessa Horst through the family wringers. Mom and Dad have been married 36 years, now, and Grandma and Grandpa have been together for a whopping 60—and Andy is hoping to model the “forever” thing.

Tessa wins points here, then, when she is asked where she sees herself in five years and answers by putting family, settled, and very, very happy in the blanks.

Mom describes Tessa as bright, poised, natural, and real,

while sister Suzie expresses to Andy how much she likes her and Grandpa says at Andy’s age, he would have chosen to ask out someone like Tessa. Grandpa is concerned with religion and deeper stuff, so his religion question seems to get a satisfying response when Tessa says she was raised Catholic—though she isn’t really practicing these days.Bevin doesn’t score so well in the religion column, having been raised by both parents in the Baha’I faith, about which the family is clueless. Also troubling Bevin is her liberal way, what with being a future sexologist who will study impotence or waning libido in Alzheimer’s patients and/or menopausal women.

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Navy Life, Navy Wife: Tessa or Bevin?

Navy Life, Navy Wife: Tessa or Bevin? by Roxanne McDonald

Down to three beautiful women, Lieutenant Andy stresses over his choices and tears up over his decision. But next week will be even harder on the guy.

The invitation to Tessa, Danielle, and Bevin to visit his home base in Hawaii was about living the type of life he leads, Andy says, and about her role as navy wife.

On the USS Arizona Cemetery/Memorial in Pearl Harbor, where 177 lost their lives and where more than 900 still serve the ship (I think these were the stats he gave), he says every cell of his body is impacted.

Also impacting his body is Bevin, the one with whom Andy feels the electric current run through him (which he has described more than once this season). Bevin apparently agrees with Andy’s overall naval life philosophy, as she tells us that the woman he chooses has to accept it and back him on it.

Danielle says “Oh, my God” a lot, as Andy explains the symbolism behind the design of the memorial. And Tessa is pretty quiet. During Tessa’s time on the memorial, Andy is throwing the memorial flowers into the sea with her, and offers a little girl one of the pieces of the lei to toss, telling us he right then had that sweet image: wife, husband, and child.

With Tessa it has been “a roller coaster ride,” so it seems apropos they do something bordering on giving them vertigo: they do zip-lining. Tessa loves how he brings out the fun side of her, and she is laughing and having fun.

Andy loves the “rough and tumble side of Tessa…how she’s up for anything.” Yeah, anything adventure-wise, but not necessarily anything when it comes to revealing her feelings, Andy. Woop. Wait. Here she is at dinner (after a happy hour on the beach at sunset, enjoying Hauhana [sp.], “end of the day”), agreeing to the Fantasy Suite experience. She says, “…There is nothing in the world that would make me happier….”

Andy is still chasing the opening up he feels Tessa needs to do “100%”; and is delighted when she finally confesses to how much fun she has with him, how she is always smiling and more and more “aglow”.

Tessa tells us she is falling in love with Andy.

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Andy Furrows His McDreamy Brow over Final Four

Andy Furrows His McDreamy Brow over Final Four by Roxanne McDonald

The bachelor finds something in each that the other three don’t have, making his choosing daunting and difficult, despite how delightful each woman is.

I haven’t been writing much on “The Bachelor: Officer and a Gentleman,” but I have watched each week and followed the blogs of the best re-cappers around cyberspace.

But while I defer to the comic stylings of writers like Carrie Grosvenor at Reality Shack, RosesKid at Fans of Reality TV, or the more sober and thorough ranking writings of Phillip Brown at Reality TV Calendar, I have to do a tribute to the final four women, for they are a remarkable group of women for Andy to choose from to find is true love. It is clear why the one they called (and likely still call) McDreamy is perplexed over his having to choose.

One more note, though, before we get started on the individuals. Have you who watch every season of “The Bachelor” noticed how there are typically at this stage four “types” remaining? Is it me or is there usually a teacher (who takes the bachelor to her classroom and/or to meet her

kids); a reticent and withholding one the bachelor feels enough intrigue over that he has to keep trying to pull her out; one with a secret dark side she reveals way late in the game; and the daddy’s girl—the one with a father who gets a little bit intense about being his daughter’s protector (remember last season with the shotgun-weilding drama king)?

Tessa Horst-

What Andy Tells Us: From the first meeting with her, he found her to be dynamic, mature, experienced, sophisticated. In addition, “Tessa is such a goofball, and so am I,” he says. However, he is having to work pretty hard to get her to open up, trust, and connect. In fact, because of all the women left Tessa has not exposed enough of her emotions to him, he is concerned whether there is a “disconnect”.

What Andy Tells Her: “You are so incredible. I feel strongly about you. I feel so much potential with you. The more you open up the more I can open up and the more wonderful this can be.”

[Say goodbye, girlfriend. Once you get all the way to the trusting stage, chances are the intrigue and mystery and challenge will be over.]

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Operation Soulmate, or The Attack of the Bachelorettes

Operation Soulmate, or The Attack of the Bachelorettes by Roxanne McDonald

Aggressive Barbies converge on the cautious Ken.

He’s an officer, a tri-athlete, a humanitarian says the narrator of “The Bachelor: Officer and a Gentleman.” He is also a bachelor searching for his soulmate, interested in a girl “who can get sporty and dirty and then who can get cleaned up and come out looking ravishing.”

Ravishing these girls are. Did you see the entrance they make in bathing suits? All of them are gorgeous, fit, clear-eyed…. (And did you catch how each of the two groups on the group dates was headed by a petite brunette, surrounded by the blondes? Looked like the show had made arrangements for some aesthetic balance, or something.)

Exciting these girls are: especially when they ride the

mechanical bull, which really turns Andy on, or when they kiss him underwater (Bevin), willingly compete in a mini-triathlon and come in strong (Amber wins and Danielle is right behind her), and dance in special one-on-one time with him (Nicole).
Not so excited is he when the girls invade his one-on-one time, come in pairs (Erin and Susan always together and holding hands prompts to call them the two Barbies), or are too conservative, evidently. (Andy says he appreciates how Alexis is old-fashioned, traditional, conservative—but he doesn’t appreciate these characteristics enough to give her a rose, though.)

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Lieutenant McDreamy’s Nightmares

Lieutenant McDreamy’s Nightmares Have Just Begun by Roxanne McDonald

He is dignified, debonair, and de rigeur. They are catty, and caterwauling already. Will the new bachelor be able to send off the right ones?

So far he has made at least one good move.
It’s hard to watch the new “Bachelor: Officer and a Gentleman” after getting wrapped up in one of its wilder, crasser spin-off types—“I Love New York.” The contrasts are great, and the tenor is typically so much tamer that I forget to look up from whatever else I am doing while the show is on.

Then again….

It’s Andy Baldwin’s birthday.

In thirty years, he has worked his way to valedictorian in high school; a naval scholarship; a goal of becoming a Navy Seal; and a position as [doctor of medicine]. He is devoted to his practice as a Naval doctor, now, as much as he is to the men and women who offer their lives to “protect our sovereign rights,” he says. He has been decorated as an officer, too, and most recently was named Humanitarian of the Year.
The women—some of them, anyway—appear to be less honorable. One group of incoming bachelorettes is discussing the First Impression Rose as if it were the last loaf of bread on Exile Island. Another couple of strangers to each other is already starting the bullshit high school gang spatting—one saying, “If you have something to say [about me], come over here and say it;” the target asking for a repeat: “Excuse me?” and the original speaker getting slightly paranoid and saying how “Honey, I have ears like a fukkin’ hawk.”

Oh, Lt. Baldwin will be so proud. (read more…)