The Bachelor, Week 2

Tonight I had the pleasure of watching The Bachelor with some new friends, after I ate two helpings of lasagna and garlic bread. And a cupcake. Good food, good friends, and a trashy TV show... all on a Monday night. Does it get any better than that?

Tonight's episode was juicy as ever, and it was SO AWESOME watching it with other fellow female cynics. All throughout the episode we'd shout out exclamations like, "Yeah, right!" or "He's soooo not into you," or "You're goin' home, girl!" It was trash-talking at its best. We sounded just like the very catty contestants we were making fun of—only we were wearing jeans and sweatshirts instead of bikinis and evening gowns.

The super-duper clean-cut bachelor Jason had to juggle his time between 15 bachelorettes tonight, and he made out with about 13 of them. He went on two one-on-one dates, and a big group date with about six or seven others. I honestly felt bad for the bachelorettes who didn't get selected for either of those scenarios. You could see the dejection on their faces, and throughout the rest of the episode they desperately clamored to win Jason's affection. One woman ("The Brazilian," we call her) even snuck into his limo as he was leaving, and I think she scared the crap out of him because he sent her home at the end of the episode. He also sent home a very quiet girl who is cute but not nearly as glamorous as the others, and that made me sad. You know she was going home because she wasn't pretty enough.

Ugh, can you imagine the scrutiny?

Moving on...

I want to talk a bit about how the women are handling the fact that Jason is a single dad. There are a couple of single moms on the show, and even though it's obvious they're not quite right for Jason, you can tell his heart goes out to them a little, because they have this huge thing in common. I'm curious to see how long he leads them on—er, I mean continues to get to know them better.

Most of the girls, however, seem to think that what Jason wants to hear (awkwardly placed in the middle of a random convo about shoes or something) is this: "I LOVE kids. I want to be a teacher. And during my summers off, I want to play with the kids that I teach during the school year! I have a niece and a nephew, and they think that I'm the greatest aunt EVER. Blah blah blah. Blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah."

I don't know about Jason, but I can speak from my single-parenthood experience that this kind of talk—thought it may seem like an obvious way to win points—is in fact a huge turn-off. When a guy says these kinds of things to me, here's what I'm shouting in my head: "I don't want to hear about YOU. If you're trying to prove that you're ready to be in a relationship with a single mom, then the best thing you can do is ask me questions about my daughter. Ask me every question you can think of. Show interest in HER, don't brag about YOU. If you're so good with kids, I'll know it when you meet my child. You aren't going to prove it to me by telling me you take your nephew to the zoo once a month. Parenting is pretty much the most unselfish thing you're going to do. So if you're trying to tell me that you would make a good parent, don't be selfish by making it about you!"

I don't mean to come across so cynical, but this truly has been an honest indicator of which guys have been worth my time and which haven't. It makes sense, does it not?

Okay, I'm off my soapbox now.

It's still too early to tell what will happen on this goofy show, but I'm already hooked (these shows are like drugs), so I'll keep watching. Send me your thoughts if you saw tonight's episode!