The Players

It was like watching an episode of Survivor: The Bachelor! Talk about manufacturing a strategy to either pry info out of the bachelor or worm your way into contention for the top prize. The phony tears, the phony forced choice, the phony "I am falling in love with four women" excuse to keep his options open. Ali is one of the lucky ones if (1) the crisis is real (2) she's not the phony she seems to be (3) Jake actually gives a shit one way or the other and (4) those tears were not brought on by onion juice or a light layer of menthol under her eyes. She left the set in a limo to return to real reality, not a TV game show, and that's a real win!

Yes, it's true: when Ali had to leave the show or lose her job, she tried every feminine wile she possesses to get a commitment from Jake that made it worth chucking the job for the chance to wear the rock. Jake could not come out and say yes, I'm going to ask YOU to marry me, but he did admit that he would be "devastated" if she left the show, thus taking herself out of the running. Well, let's be honest, she's gone for now: she may simply be setting herself up for the big ah-ha moment when she quits her job and comes running back to Jake's waiting crotch, uh, arms. These shows are dying on the vine (rightly so) and have to generate drama to get through the whole "I'm looking for the woman of my dreams, the one woman who is right for me and with whom I will live happily ever after ... the cameras are off, the free dates are history, and the reality sets in that I WENT ON A FRIGGIN' TV REALITY SHOW TO PICK A WIFE!"

Reality shows are the phoniest TV of the decade. How boring in reality it would be to see "plain Janes" show up to win the hand of what is a total "catch" in today's marriage market. Instead, they are all pencil thin with HUGE BOOBS that are, if nothing else, certainly eye-catching for cameras that follow them into the hot tubs and revealing close-ups. I doubt that there is a natural hair color in the 2 dozen women who began the show! What makes one girl stand out from the others? Of course it's her inner beauty, her inner qualities, her personality: after all, Jake had all of a week to winnow the pack from 2 dozen to the top ten, so he really got to "know" the contestants, the real women inside the plastic bodies, right? We all know that Jake would have known all of them better if he had met the girls in a bar and spent 5 hours doing shots with them. That's when the barriers fall; that's when the booze loosens the tongue and reveals the "real woman" wearing the hootchy mama mini-dress and the "do me" spiked heels.

The couples, if that's what it's called when one guy takes four different women home to four different families to meet the mom, had the ultimate test: can Jake pass the probing into his motives by the parents and siblings and best friends? Well, yeah, that's a no-brainer: your daughter auditioned for the reality show and you know that if you don't like Jake, it's your loss because she's in it to win it and you best be doing YOUR part to see that happens. Even Tenley, who all too recently broke off an engagement, gets the parental thumbs-up, accompanied with the caveat to Jake: don't you hurt her, adding that she's already been hurt enough. She's getting over her heartbreak on a TV reality show???

The saddest part of the whole "meet the 'rents" episode (yes, I watched some of it) is that Jake read each family the same script: I am falling in love with your daughter. His delivery was sincere, but his motives? I'm thinking sex: he swapped enough oral fluids just in this one episode to think about preventive penicillin. The real test of falling in love is doing so without sex: that's when the inner person is revealed, the person with whom the spouse can make it through a hectic morning, or a death in the family, or the sudden loss of a job, or a devastating illness, or the birth of a disabled child. Sex is all too often right for right now, but a marriage needs the forever kind of sex, which is "love."

So, Jake needs help finding a potential wife ... why? Does he have a social disease from not practicing safe sex? Is he a closet sex addict? alcoholic? gambler? druggie? Has he repeatedly filed for bankruptcy because he has no clue how to handle finances? Is he unfaithful to the people with whom he enters into relationships? Have anger management issues? Judging the book by the cover, it appears that Jake would have an easy time of picking up any woman he wants, sharing sex with her, and walking away a very happy man. If he wanted a wife, chances are he'd already have one, so I'm thinking there is another agenda at work here, one that will not culminate in the happily-ever-after hyped by the show.

Maybe it's that he really doesn't want a wife because he's having too much fun picking daisies out of the vast field filled with flowers. On another reality show, Rock of Love, Bret Michaels went looking for a wife four, yes, four seasons ago -- and he's still looking! This is only Jake's second time looking for love in all the wrong places, so maybe he'll be back next season, still waiting for Ali to come to her senses and return to the set so he can ... . Wow, people really watch this crap.

PS: I filled in the backstory at cbs.com as watching part of this episode was just too much reality show for this pragmatist! However, I did decide that of the 4 potential mates still on the set, I'd pick Tenley because, in our short reality acquaintance, she seems the most "real" of the make-believe reality show contestants. For whatever it's worth.