This week, Jake and his three remaining coconuts are vacationing on St. Lucia.  My brother lived on the island when he was in the Peace Corps and told me that you just can’t go jogging there or else people will think you’re running from a crime.  All three women jog up to Jake, running toward the crime instead.

We get recapped: Jake thought Gia was out of his league, but he hasn’t seen her old nose.  Also, Gia reminds us that an ex-boyfriend cheated on her with “all [her] friends,” so you just hope she’s the kind of girl who keeps a tight-knit circle.   Jake’s worried that Tenley’s still hung up on her ex-husband, who hangs like a virginity-thieving ghost over everything they do.  Vienna is “one of the happiest people you’ll ever meet” and well-practiced in the Kim Kardashian baby voice, so she’s golden. 

What’s last week’s deserter up to?  Oh, Ali’s just in a hotel looking at publicity 8x10s of Jake from Tiger Beat: Bachelor Edition.  But the thing is, we see she’s finally managed to brush herself a clean pony and she’s got the flyaways down to a minimum.  And she looks like she’s been conditioning.  So with this turnaround in personal grooming, I’m completely not buying the heartbreak.

Gia’s got the first date.  She sneaks up on Jake and I wistfully hope she’ll push him over the low-lying cliff wall.  He asks if she “sees the dock”— which is right in front of her face— in the same way she pointed out the Empire State Building to him last week, which makes me think they’re possibly a good match.  Together they nervous- white-people laugh around the “natives”— sic Gia.  Jake dances exactly how you always imagined he dances and buys Gia a necklace so tacky, even for a girl from Staten Island, that she wraps it around her wrist where she can hide it from native eye-level.

Then it’s time for dinner.  Jake doesn’t know what a sundress is, obviously, when he describes Gia’s mini-kimono thusly.   He comments that she’s “deep,” but from what I can tell, he means “well-accessorized” because he’s just really impressed with her headband.  Gia toasts to “seeing a side of [Jake] that she didn’t know was there,” and I still have no cue what’s there, so I’m left perplexed.  In the fantasy suite when they take a bath together, Jake comes up with a line that I hope will take root in our cultural lexicon.  Because Gia has gotten “hold of his heart SO HARD,” emphasis his, and how will that not make its way into wedding vows this June?

It’s Tenley’s turn the next day.  Admittedly, she murders me.  If the divorce gave her a dark side, my stomach curdles trying to imagine what she was like before.  Jake’s thrilled that Tenley responds positively to this idea that if they were together, she might get some free travel.  But hey you two do-dos— there is no one who does not like this.  You are not allowed to believe this is actually a common denominator.  The sugar mill they’re sitting in front of is like a visual metaphor for Tenley’s brain.

At dinner, Tenley is wearing a sundress, but Jake fails to correctly identify it for us as such.  They dance in front of a pool.  Jake’s so stiff I wonder if she’s grabbed hold of his spine SO HARD.   In the fantasy suite, a PA has recycled the rose petals from last night with Gia, and Jake’s impressed with them all over again.  I’m able to do the same thing with my dog and her toys.  He’s also sure that Tenley would be an amazing wife…but at this point he hasn’t been on the Internet reading about how she withheld sex in her first marriage as a control and punishment mechanism.

And now for Vienna: party’s here!  They go sailing on a ship used in The Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, and “Wings of Love (instrumental)” kicks in instead of “Yo Ho, Yo Hooters Ho,” which is a weird decision on the part of the music supervisor.  Vienna licks Jake, and I’m putting money down that he tastes like vanilla.  A canon goes off.  Smoke clears.  They’re both still alive.  They walk the plank, and it’s completely amazing that ABC couldn’t find a voice-over clip of someone saying, “I’m ready to walk off the plank…OF LOVE.”  Vienna’s got a tattoo near her hip, and at first I think it’s of a piece of KFC’s new grilled chicken, but a message board reports that it’s actually a butterfly.  Guess what?  These two lovebirds have dinner.  Outdoors.  Jake tries to find out if Vienna’s ready to carry his offspring.  She seems hesitant, but I want to tell her, “Don’t worry, kid, if your baby’s personality is anything like daddy’s, you won’t even know it’s there.”  Out comes the envelope, and in it are their VD test results.  Or the “fantasy suite” invite.  The rose petals are in the room again— and only in a mild state of decay.  Vienna slips into a nightgown and shuts the bedroom doors to explain to Jake about erections.

Annnnnd it’s Ali on the phone, and she wants to come back because it turns out that working at Facebook is equally as boring as dating Jake.  He rejects her by saying he’s “further along” with the other contestants, bizarrely using the terminology of a pregnant woman.  Babies on the brain, this guy!  He interviews that it was “hard” to hear Ali’s voice on the phone.  But I guess it wasn’t “SO HARD.”

At last, the rose ceremony.  Tenley’s wearing black because her marriage died.  Gia’s wearing something Johnny Weir could modify into something better.  Vienna’s in the satin dress that strippers wear when they do evening in the “Miss Wet Spot” competition.

The first rose goes to Tenley.  Vienna gets the second.  Gia, who blames herself instead of calling Jake out for the empty vessel he is, goes home and presumably back to sleeping with professional athletes.

Then the remaining threesome hugs and it looks a lot like a shot that might be in the opening credits of Big Love next season.  All you need to take away from the past month of your life?

Jake likes blondes.

Andrea Seigel is a novelist.  You can find her on Twitter as @andreaseigel

Tags: The Bachelor, TV

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 11:50 am and is filed under art&music, celebrity&lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.