The Best (and Worst) of "The Women Tell All"

Howdy Bachelor fans! I thought that I would change things up a bit for this update. Instead of the play-by-play action that I usually do, I thought it might be more fun to turn this into a “Best and Worst Of” list about last night’s The Women Tell All. And wasn’t there a lot they told? So without further ado, I present…

“The Best (and Not So Best) of The Women Tell All”

Worst Repeat of a Line that We Would Have Been OK Never Hearing Again:

Elizabeth asking Jake if he wants to make out with her forehead. Why did we need to see THAT so many times? It creeped us out the first time it aired, but this time just caused dry heaves. And NO ONE likes those.

Worst Idea for A Volunteer Opportunity Ever:

Having has-been Bachelors and Bachelorettes paint things with fifth graders. What elementary school parent in their right mind would actually invite these curvy-swervy women and dumb-as-a-stump men who are totally inappropriately dressed into their child’s school? What’s the benefit here? I know that it’s to make the coastside prettier, but really…lifeguard mural painting with Deanna? There was no better opportunity these parents could have signed their kids up for? I guess the show is recruiting even at the younger ages. Who knows? Somewhere in the midst of those little artists could be a budding Jillian or Jake. That little kid at the end who darted out and gave Deanna the rose, then sped off sure had the right idea, huh?

Best Cameo Appearance by a Former Contestant:

Seeing Juan (the guy they all hated on Jill’s season) doling out food to the needy in LA. How out of place did he look? And I noticed he was the only guy in that group too. He tried to butch it up a bit by telling us, “Giving back to the community is absolutely part of Man Code. I gotta live up to it,” but it just came off as sounding kinda sad and pathetic. He is destined to always be “one of the ladies” (which, by the way Juan, was my problem too until I cracked open that closet door and saw the bright, beautiful, gay world outside. Just sayin’…)

Best Cameo Appearance by a Current Contestant:

Channy! ‘Nuff said…

Worst “WTF?” Moment:

The montage of “Bachelor Gives Back” segments where they showed Chris Harrison giving Ellen a $10,000 check for Haiti and giving a school in St. Lucia lots of swag for their classrooms. What was THAT all about? I mean, I’m all for helping out others, but this is The Bachelor, people. It’s not like they fund-raised or anything. I think they saw what happens over on American Idol and decided that they had to make themselves more legitimate by giving back something too. But it left me scratching my head. Why do the producers want us to know they are doing all of this? They just showed all of these swingin’ singles taking a sex cruise together, doing body shots off each others’ nipples, and sneaking into each others’ rooms with no birth control. Why would school children in St. Lucia or refugees in Haiti want any part of that at all? Blatant opportunism for no real reason. I call bullsh*t.

Best Recap of the Show:

All of the girls describing Tenley. This could have been the highlight of the season for me so far. Some choice quotes:

“She almost fell out of a Disney movie!”
“She might dream in cartoons!”
and the one that cemented my love for Vienna for all time: “She sh*ts rainbows!” Classic.

Most Overused Editing Device of the Night:

Shrinking everyone down to teensy-sized boxes in the lower left hand corner of the screen so we could watch them suck on their lips and cover their eyes while they watched their happinesses and heartbreaks from the show replay around them.

Biggest Out Loud Laugh from the Audience:

Crazy Michelle saying, “I’m stable!” and Valishia asking back, “Maybe you’re a little emotionally unstable?”

Most Distracting Audience Member:

The heavy-set woman who was always in the background right in between Chris Harrison and whomever he was interviewing. I’m pretty sure she must have been a plant with her knowing nods, her looks of righteous indignation, and her muffled whispers to the woman sitting next to her. At times I watched her more than the person being interviewed. She was far too “on” to be an actual person.

Worst Looking Bachelorette:

TIE:

Elizabeth…What did she do to the color in her hair? She was much prettier with it darker before. She probably hated everyone comparing her to Courtney Cox.

AND

Ali…Someone needed to get that girl some conditioner and a brush. Her hair literally looked like strings falling everywhere. Not a good look for her, especially as she started welling up.

Person Who Was Probably the Happiest by the End of The Show:

Vienna. Even though she wasn’t even there, she had three or four ladies all tell us that she’s really not that bad after all. Ali told us that, “She’s getting trashed in the tabloids. She’s a person!” and Gia echoed that by saying, “She is a good person…”, and what she did on the show, “…doesn’t make her not worthy of love with a good man.” Ashleigh H./Kyra Sedgwick said, “I wish I’d never said that,” after being shown calling Vienna, “…a f***ing white trash trailer whore.” Um, that’s kind of a tough thing to take back after it’s aired on national TV, dontcha think, Ashleigh H./Kyra Sedgwick?

Best “OK We Like You Again…You Are SO the Next Bachelorette” Person:

Duh…Ali. Despite her bad makeover, she was contrite, apologetic, and back to her sweet-as-sugar self. We liked her in the end, but it may get really boring with her in charge next season. We shall see.

Best Cameo by a Fat Bald Guy:

The guy shown escorting Rozlyn to her mark backstage as she says, “I bet that cheering’s not for me!” At first I thought that it was the same guy who watched over Rozlyn packing in that too-funny scene where she was asked to leave the house. But during the credits of the show we found out that the guy doing the watching is actually different (and single, ladies!)

Most Overused Body Language Gesture of the Night:

The oh-so-cliché crossing one shaved, gleaming leg over the other and then bobbing that leg up and down in either nervousness or defensiveness. Which emotion it was depended on whether your name was Rozlyn or if you were any of the other women on the show. Which leads us to…

Best He Said/She Said of The Night:

Chris and Rozlyn’s interview. No brainer here, right? It was juicy and bitter and silly and back and forth the whole time.

First we thought Chris was winning as he smartly primed the other Bachelorettes for info about what they saw Rozlyn doing before she even came out onstage. They railed off a laundry list of indiscretions: – gone at 4AM and Valishia couldn’t find her, making out on the stairs, on all fours and ass in the air in skimpy clothes asking for the producer in question to come find her…really incriminating stuff.

Then the pendulum swung back in Rozlyn’s favor as she calls out the show for not letting them talk to her son. But then we hear Ella and Valishia both tell us that they got to talk plenty with their kids. Ooo…Strike One, Rozlyn.

Then Rozlyn swears on her kid’s life that nothing went on after all the girls have totally called her out on details of what they saw. Wow. Her son’s LIFE? She must be serious here, huh? Unless she’s like that lady Twila on Survivor who also swore on her son’s life, but was really lying. Real “Parent of the Year” material they find for these shows, huh?

Then Ella, Miss “I start to speak hillbilly when I get fired up!” lays into Rozlyn and yells at her, “Do not lie!” Ella’s fixin’ to get all riled up and Rozlyn looks like a deer in the headlights. Chris tells her to get past all of the “unicorns and magicians and stuff” and just tell the simple truth.

My favorite part of this exchange comes next when Rozlyn goes all Batman on Chris and says, “Riddle me this Chris…” and then proceeds to ask him the question I’ve been wondering all night too: If there were all of these naughty trysts occurring in the house between Rozlyn and this “producer” (And by the way…why is HE never named or interviewed? It takes two to pillage Rozlyn on the staircase, right?) how is it that not one camera or microphone couldn’t pick up at least one teensy little sound bite of any of it? I am squarely in Rozlyn’s camp at this point.

Gia calls out Rozlyn when she tells her that she should have, “…just (said) ‘I’m in love with this man’ and give up the show!” Cue indignant audience applause.

Next Chris waxes poetic about the poor, lost soul who is the producer in question. “He was a very dear friend to many,” he tells us all sadly. The lady in the audience in the background nods knowingly in a sympathetic (pathetic?) way.

But Rozlyn has saved the best for last. She’s totally defeated, been called out as a liar with a trashy attitude, and bobbed her slinky, shiny leg up and down long enough. It’s time for the big guns. She sits quietly for a second after Chris finishes his speech about the dearly departed producer and then fires back with:

Best “Oh Snap! Did She Just Say That?!” Line of the Night:

“He says that’s news to him…especially when you were hitting on his wife in New Zealand!”

You gotta give the producers credit for leaving this line in. There are gasps from the audience. Everyone is uncomfortable. Chris finishes off the interview by saying that he won’t dignify that comment with a response and then tells Rozlyn, “I hope truly in my heart (as opposed to his elbow) that you have learned a life lesson. I wish you the best.”

And fade out on Rozlyn, who I know will be appearing soon in a Playboy or soft porn near you. She’s probably totally lying through her teeth, but I somehow like and respect her more now for standing up to Chris. Maybe we’ll see her and her “producer” on the Amazing Race one of these seasons.

Best “Awwww…I Actually Feel Kinda Sorry for You!” Moment:

Gia finally being able to talk to Jake live for the first time since he dumped her. She’s all weepy and emotional and Jake tells her, “You’ll always have a friend, no matter what,” which pretty much cements that he’s not going to pull a Mesnick and come running back to ol’ Gia. She’s done, but it’s all kind of pathetic and we feel sorry for her. She still needs to get the hair off the side of her face though.

Worst “What Were You Thinking?” Moment:

Jake’s new hair color. Why is he going so dark? And he even tinted the eyebrows to match. Anyone want to take odds on whether the curtains match the carpet?

Best “She Would Have Preferred Not Knowing That” Moment:

Christina, when she finds out that she is the one that Jake wishes he got to know better. He also wishes she hadn’t been a sloshy drunk at the swimming pool spouting nonsense and coming on too strong, but that’s all in the past now as Christina wells up at this scintilla of attention that Jake shows her.

Funniest Montage of the Show:

The outtake/blooper reel. How can I pick a favorite moment? There are too many.

We get Jake saying, “self-defecating” instead of “self-deprecating” and asking the interviewer what it means. We get Ali saying, “Super fart” instead of “Super smart”.

Jake hits his head against Ashleigh H’s on their date at the Madonna Inn. He and Ali fall back through pillows in a couch during an intimate moment. Tenley hides in the costume box of designer clothes in San Francisco and scares the roots off of Vienna.

Corrie, the prim and proper virgin, rips a fart with a bunch of girls sitting right next to her and then just laughs it off. We see Christina crying from her exit interview assuring the interviewer that a mouse or rat has just run by. We see a carload of San Francisco lesbians pulling up alongside Jake and Ali on their date and yelling, “The Bachelor! Hell yeah!” in drunk, husky voices.

My favorite moment here, though, is Ella and Jake’s dinner at Sea World, when an entire flock of flamingoes suddenly starts going bonkers and honking and rushing around in the background. Jake and Ella give it the old college try and soldier on with the inane date conversation, but the hubbub behind them becomes too much and they both crack up. They both have to break character and laugh at what’s going on behind them. Ella’s hatred of awkward-looking pink birds is cemented for life.

Worst Continuity Error of the Night:

DJ picked up on this one, and it’s a real doozy. During the outtake reel, we see Chris and Jake waiting out in front of the mansion just before the girls pull up in the limos. Jake is clearly wearing a leather bomber jacket zipped up high with a tie. Then Chris Harrison starts belting out “On the Wings of Love” loudly and in the reaction shot we get of Jake, he’s wearing a regular blazer and a different tie – not the leather bomber jacket. Then when they cut back to the two-shot of them both, Jake is again in the leather jacket. So the moments of that scene were pieced together from lots of different moments. Nothing really happened like that.

Best “Ooo…This TOTALLY Makes Me Want to See Next Week’s Show!” Moment:

Jake’s mom, during the previews for next week’s finale, interrupting the conversation at the dinner table, pointing at Vienna, and shouting at Jake, “Wait! Is this the girl everyone hates?” Slam dunk. Can’t wait to see how he answers that one.

I can’t believe the finale is next week. You all obviously saw that I screwed up last week and they didn’t announce the cast of Dancing with the Stars during this episode. It will be during next week’s show. It looks like Melissa Rycroft is the new co-host, but she may just be the co-host for the announcement of the cast, not for the whole season. We shall see.

So what were YOUR best and worst moments from this week’s “The Women Tell All?” Leave some comments and let us know, and don’t forget to join After the Rose on Facebook. Catch you next week!

Rail Leaning and Bad Edits...Oh My!

It’s getting down to it. Only two more episodes left for this season. Those of you who haven’t been reading the spoiler sites were probably a bit shocked about last night’s outcome, but love is weird, no?

This episode definitely had two main themes – leaning on railings and bad editing/continuity cuts. Let’s get to it all.

We start off the episode and Jake is in beautiful St. Lucia. He’s leaning on the railing outside his hotel room and taking us through the “journey” so far with each of the remaining three girls. We get recap shots of all three of them when they first got out of the limo, their dates with Jake, all their “special moments”. Basically, it’s a way for the producers to fill up two hours tonight. At the end of this big montage, Jake wonders how Ali is doing and if it was all worth it for her.

We conveniently cut to shots of San Francisco. Ali is in bed forlorn, looking horribly sad. She is “still heartbroken without Jake,” she tells us. “My life is without love.” So dramatic. Basically she screwed up. She wants another shot at ol’ Jake the Snake. Her life is in ruins.

Then she really creeps us out as we see that she has an 8 x 10 glossy of Jake on her bedside table and our mind reels with why it could be there. Does she fall asleep every night looking at it and crying? Does she think nasty thoughts? Is it part of some voodoo ritual? Does she wonder what agency took it so she can get a good shot too when she becomes the Bachelorette next season?

Then we get an interview of Ali where the Bay Bridge is directly behind her. Where is she for this? Is this her home? I thought she lived on Russian Hill? Who on Russian Hill has a view like this?

Next we cut to her sitting out on the rocks at The Marina and that weird orange neon light is lighting up the side of her face. She’s decided that she’s going to tell him how she really feels and hopes that he feels the same.

Next we go back to St. Lucia, and more specifically Pigeon Island – which conjures up images of mounds and mounds of bird poop for me. I’m sure it smells great there.

Jake is walking down some rocks and it’s blowing a gale. For the second time tonight he leans against a railing that looks out over a beautiful vista. While he ponders his time with Gia, lo and behold here she comes down another path. She sneaks up behind him, tickles his ribs, makes him jump, but, sadly, does not jump on him and wrap his legs around him like Monkey Girl.

Jake is happy to see her. So happy, in fact, that we see him take off his sunglasses and hang them on the back of his shirt collar. You know…so he can have maximum breast squeezage between him and Gia’s chest. Don’t want those pesky shades gettin’ in the way, right?

Jake and Gia ride a boat to a local market. Jake thinks traveling together is a good way to get to know each other, and I laugh that a 15-minute boat ride is hardly traveling together.

They hit the market and drink out of coconuts and dance to steel drummers. Gia goes semi-racist on us as she proclaims that she’s really getting into the reggae and the “natives”. Jake buys her a necklace as a souvenir and she makes us barf by saying, “I wear my heart on my sleeve for him.”

Our first distracting continuity error occurs during this montage. In some scenes, the lower parts of Jake’s shorts are wet and dripping. In others they just look damp. In others they are bone dry. It’s all out of order. Dry, sopping, wet, dry, sopping, wet. I had to rewind a few times because I found myself staring at his shorts instead of watching the plotline.

For his part, Jake totally calls Gia out on being a Park Avenue princess by telling us, “It’s really nice to see that Gia from New York that has a thousand dollar pair of shoes is very empathetic with people that lay their heart on the line trying to make an honest living out there. That’s endearing.” Ouch. Jake, how do you know her shoes cost $1000? If you know yourself, then you are as materialistic as she is. If she told you, then what are you doing with a woman who brags that her shoes cost $1000?

Jake does weird fist bumps and “Yo bro, what up?” hand shakes with all the local guys, and it’s all vaguely uncomfortable.

Before we cut to commercial we get the two of them jumping off of a dock into the water, but not until after Jake says, “I’m ready to take a leap of faith.” Get it? Because they leapt of the dock. We close this scene with a slow pan of Gia’s bikini bod, which is still smokin’ hot.

Now it’s nighttime and the graphic tells us that we are at Smuggler’s Cove. Jake is waiting down on the beach as Gia winds her way down a pathway. There seems to be a lot of this so far – Jake waiting and Gia walking towards him in a way that takes too long. She even slips off her shoes at one point to go faster.

Jake grosses us all out by calling her “doll face”. She does, however, look really pretty tonight with her hair pulled back and held together with a beautiful diamond-y tiara/headband thingy.

Jake takes her along the beach and there they find a beautiful beach dinner table set for them. There are tiki torches, waves breaking, and, yes…votive candles set up all around.

They sit at the table and I am amused to see that the decorations consist of a big, ugly, white conch shell and two dead, dried-out starfish husks.

Gia asks Jake to talk more about himself and Jake tells her that she’s very deep and that that’s the part that really gets him. THAT’S deep?! He rests his face on his arm and props his elbow on the table looking more bored than interested and tells Gia he puts others before himself too much. He tells her that he’s looking for someone that “will make my dreams theirs and their dreams mine” which is just so sappy it’s got maple syrup all over it.

Gia tells us that she’s waiting for the right moment to tell him that she loves him. They cheers and kiss. Then they walk over to a hammock that’s been conveniently strung nearby and lie in it. I giggle as I see that Gia has stolen one of the dead starfish carcasses off of the dining table and brought it with her. What possible reason could she have for keeping it? Souvenir? Sex aid? I’m confused.

Jake gives her the card from Chris Harrison that invites them both to the Fantasy Suite, and of course she says yes. “I think we’re gonna use the key!” she yells. “I’m ready to go all the way!” and her parents burst with pride as they watch their little girl put out for a guy who will be sleeping with two other women soon and who thinks her shoes are too expensive.

They get to the Fantasy Suite and I am overjoyed to see it graced with tons of votive candles everywhere. None of this lame blue and orange neon lighting on St. Lucia. We’re going primitive now. Rose petals are strewn everywhere too.

We get a lame shot of articles of clothing strewn down a hallway in a too-perfect beeline to the hot tub and then watch as Jake and Gia make out and hide engorged body parts under the water. We cut to a shot of a partial crescent of moon and wonder what the symbolism is.

The next day (presumably – I always wonder if they shoot these dates in the order we see them), we see Jake waiting in a lush, green field and talking about Tenley and how much they agree on “family values and family and marriage”.

An official-looking SUV pulls up with tinted windows and crushes all the native grasses and other assorted flora in its path. Did anyone else notice there was no road or path? How do they let an SUV anywhere near there?

Jake is taking Tenley flying in a helicopter and she jumps up and down all giddy and shouts, “Oh! Cool!” I make no bones about REALLY disliking Tenley. I’m sure she’s a nice person in real life, but she’s done up so shallow, vapid, and airhead-y on this show. I can’t stand her.

They take the helicopter around the island and we get a shot of Jake stroking her knee with his thumb. Because Jake’s got to get some where he can. Last night with Gia in the hot tub wasn’t enough. Did anyone else gross out knowing where that thumb had been with Gia the night before and now it’s rubbing on Tenley? Shudder…

They land on an old plantation with lots of rusted out gears and wheels, and my first thought is that it looks exactly like when you walk off of Tarzan’s Treehouse in Disneyland. How perfect that Tenley used to be a princess, huh?

They come upon a brightly-colored picnic blanket and Tenley tells us that she hasn’t had a picnic in years – especially with a boy – and I can see part of what her issues with guys are. Tenley…they are “men”. Don’t date boys. Date men.

She makes that way-too-close-way-too-intense-crazy eye contact that she does while they chat and she even finishes one of Jake’s sentences for him. Ahh…it’s meant to be.

They make out on the picnic cloth and I notice that Jake has on a bright orange watch today. Some watch company has set this show up. Jake’s timepieces change with each date.

They go down to a private beach that is all black sand and they both remark that they have never been on a black sand beach before. It’s all so fascinating.

Then we see a shot of their clothes hanging from parts of the cliffs and we see them making out in the water and the waves. Tenley calls Jake a “naughty boy” at one point. Ugh.

Tenley tells us that the Fantasy Suite is in the back of her mind since she’s never been with a man since her ex and I can feel my hackles getting raised that they are going to bludgeon us over the head yet again with Tenley’s sad romantic past. We get it already. She got cheated on. Poor, dear, sweet Tenley.

Now it’s nighttime and Jake is escorting Tenley out to the pool at the Le Sport Hotel. Ooo…sporty! Jake is rubbing her hands and arms while they chat at a table set up next to the pool. One can only hope that one of them is going to fall in and provide some comic relief.

But, alas, it is not meant to be as they discuss AGAIN Tenley’s sad past. It’s time for them both to move on. If I were Tenley, I would take it as a bad sign that Jake keeps bringing this subject up over and over again.

Then they make out and Tenley has the huevos that Gia didn’t have and tells Jake, “I’m really falling in love with you!” in her chirpy Ariel voice that grates like steel nails down my spine.

Jake takes her up a small staircase and they dance up there. I notice that their wine glasses and water goblets have been untouched during all of this. Does Tenley get dinner? For that matter, I don’t remember Gia getting anything to eat except conch and starfish. Are they feeding these people?

There are more votive candles and Tenley tells Jake, “You can dip me forever,” which is a nice segue to the Fantasy Suite card that Jake gives her. In case we didn’t already know, Tenley tells us that, “I’ve only been with one man,” and we gasp with surprise (not).

She reads the card, sees the key, and accepts the request. Tenley’s about to spend the night with her second guy! “I absolutely can not wait to watch our first sunrise and to see your boobs for real,” Jake says. OK, he does say the part about the sunrise. I made up the other part about the boobs. But you know he was thinking that, right?

They get to their suite and there are more candles everywhere (yay!) and rose petals all over. They get their own private swimming pool and Tenley chirps, “This is fun!” Then she waxes philosophical and tells us, “This isn’t something I just do. Spending an evening alone with a guy. So this is very special. I wouldn’t just let anybody bring me to a room like this.” And I’m sure that her parents, too, are so proud that she decided to give it up on national TV.

They make out in the pool and say lots of sappy things like, “You can just feel the passion behind the kiss,” and “No doubt she would be an amazing wife,” but they are boring me so let’s move on.

Vienna’s date is next, and like the others for some reason the producers have her run down a dock to meet Jake. No one can just be there. They all have to do a run-to-them-and-embrace shot.

Jake tells her that for their date they get to ride on a real-seeming pirate ship that was actually used in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. They board and Vienna puts a patch on Jake’s eye. Then he shows us the depths of his intellect by closing the eye that is uncovered to do his best blind-in-both-eyes-not-understanding-how-an-eye-patch-works imitation. Truly sad.

They shuck off their clothes faster than you can say “bottle blonde” and for some reason Vienna tries to lick him. Klassy with a “K”, Vienna.

They make out on the deck of the ship with Vienna lying on her back and Jake coming at her from above. It’s all backlit and very artsy and not at all like soft porn.

They fire a cannon that’s on board and Vienna shrieks and holds her ears. Then Jake has the dumb idea to climb all the way up the mast. Then we understand why he suggested that as he sends Vienna up first. Either he wants her to fall and kill her off so he won’t have to actually dump her, or he gets the best crotch shot of all time looking up while she begins her climb. Sadly, it’s the crotch shot and we get it too.

They both climb all the way up and it reminds them of their bungee date. He now has lost the eye patch and has donned a stupid-looking pirate bandanna-y thing.

They get down and go over to a plank and he tells her she has to walk it. He hits her butt with a fake sword and Vienna all of a sudden looks really humiliated and asks no one in particular, “Oh my god…are we really doing this?” If even Vienna’s embarrassed by all of this, you know it’s gonna get bad, right?

We get a shot of them “walking the plank” and jumping off, then we see them swimming in the water. And for our viewing convenience the producers have installed an underwater camera so we can look up their crotches too. “I want to please Vienna and Vienna wants to please me,” Jake tells us. You know, they have Fantasy Suites for that Jake, right?

Jake holds Vienna on the beach as the waves crash around them a la From Here to Eternity. We get some interview shots of Vienna filmed somewhere else and it’s funny to see that what looks like the same conch on the table during Gia’s date is now sitting behind Vienna while she’s being interviewed. The producers spare no expense, I tell ya.

Another bad continuity segment happens as we get lots of shots of them kissing, rolling around in the water and sand, and lying on the beach, but the lighting is different every time. It’s sunset, then it’s daylight, then it’s twilight, then it’s daylight again. It seems as if the producers don’t even think we will notice this stuff. But I’m calling it out right here right now.

Now it’s time for the nighttime portion of their date. Vienna is walking towards him in a long, flowy dress that looks like it has a zebra pattern on it. There are twinkly lights wrapped around trees in the background.

Jake walks her out to a gazebo all lit up with candles and a dinner table. This time, they actually get to eat something as we see Vienna has a big hunk of something on her fork at one point. Bad continuity during this scene too. If you check out their plates and glasses throughout, they magically shift levels and locations.

Jake tells us that “I’ve got to make sure that my passion for Vienna is not just sexual,” so we all know what he’s got on his mind as they near the Fantasy Suite hour. Vienna tells us that she wants a life partner. We can hear the sounds of the rainforest in the background. Man, I always forget how loud insects are in tropical places!

Jake comes out of left field and asks Vienna what kind of ring style she likes. Why did he ask her this? Why didn’t we see him ask the other girls this too?

She lights up talking about metals and princess cuts (of course it had to be the princess cut for the princess, right?), and how she has skinny fingers. Then Jake dashes her dreams as he tells her that he’s fallen for both of the other women too. Now Vienna’s bumming hard and welling up. I laugh when I see that same conch shell on the dinner table again.

Then Vienna tells him that she’s fallen in love with him and Jake acts surprised for some reason. Poor Vienna. I guess it’s tough to be sending out those “I love you on a romantic island” signals when all you’ve done in the past is send out those “I love you and all your frat buddies on Daytona Beach during Spring Break” signals. It’s easy to get those mixed up.

They make out and the music (among other things) swells and we get fake, edited-in kissing sounds. Jake gives her the card from Chris. Vienna reads it and I almost fall out of my seat when I realize that Vienna can actually read sentences. Maybe I should give this girl more credit than I do?

She of course accepts, they make out some more, and we get another shot of the crescent moon.

We see their Fantasy Suite and it too is covered in rose petals and votive candles. Vienna leaves the room and says she has a surprise for Jake and tells us that “I can be elegant. I can be a woman.” Then she loses all credibility when she comes back in a short negligee. This girl is all elegance, huh? Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly…and Vienna from the Florida swamps.

They move right to the bed and Vienna sits down on all the rose petals. I worry that they are going to leave an embarrassing stain on the butt of her white negligee, but then I remember that the thing is so short the worst she has to worry about is petal imprints on her ass.

Vienna gets up and closes the door on the cameras. Cut to another shot of the moon.

The next morning we get our obligatory montage of Jake bathing and dressing himself. We seem to see him grooming himself every episode. He puts on aftershave and hears the phone ring. Here comes the worst continuity error of the night. When he hears the phone ring in the bathroom, he has no watch on. When he comes around the corner to answer it, magically he’s wearing a watch. Did they even film these scenes on the same day? So bad. Check it out for yourself.

Of course it’s Ali on the phone. They go back and forth and it’s all pretty boring. But the gyst of it is that Ali wants to come back. She thinks she made a huge mistake. Jake tells her “You drove away with a piece of my heart,” and that starts her moaning and crying.

Finally, though, Jake tells her that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for her to come back. He’s moved farther ahead with the other women and his feelings have already changed. “I’m so sorry to hurt your feelings,” he says.

Ali is sitting on the floor of a kitchen and crying into her cell phone. This whole conversation seems so staged and fake. At times, Jake doesn’t even have the receiver up to his ear as if he’s just pretending to be on the phone.

Jake hangs up and opens the door to his balcony and symbolically lets in the fresh air. Ali’s time is done on this show, but you can bet good money that we will see her as the next Bachelorette. Ali breaks down and puts her head in her hands and knows she royally screwed up. “I’m completely heartbroken. I know with 100% certainty I made the wrong choice.” Which I’m sure makes the folks at Facebook who hired her real happy to hear that she thinks she should have dumped her job for a shot at Jake. I bet she had a tough time explaining that one at the morning meeting today, huh?

Next Jake gets ready to meet with Chris Harrison and we watch as he has to make the tough decision about whether to leave his top two buttons unbuttoned or just leave the first one unbuttoned. It’s hard out there for a pimp.

Chris recaps Jake’s time with the three girls on St. Lucia and we see repeats of the dates complete with native grasses being crushed and skimpy swimwear all around. Chris knows that Tenley told Jake she loves him, but he doesn’t seem to know if Vienna said it or not. Bad editing again.

We find out that each of the ladies has recorded her own private video message for Jake before he makes his decision. All three videos are sappy and full of the word journey. We hear Tenley say she wants to have babies with Jake and then we get a shot of her getting out of a car for the Rose Ceremony looking a LOT like Jennifer Aniston.

Next, Gia gets out of the car looking beautiful as always and we see her in her video doing her best Dr. Seuss imitation when she says, “Here we are. We’ve come so far.” In a car. Or a bar. With Jamie Farr.

Lastly, Vienna gets out and is escorted to the ceremony while we hear her say, “Hi sweetheart! I want to flirt with you for the next 80 years!” to Jake on the video message. Vienna’s hair looks wavy and pretty tonight. It’s less stringy-looking.

Now we get a shot of the two roses lying on a tree stump. Chris stands what looks like 100 feet away from the girls and tells them what’s going to happen. How can they hear him from that far away? Then Jake comes out and stands the same distance away! Why are they doing that? How awkward. Does Jake have to yell? Is he miked? I don’t get it at all.

The first rose goes to Tenley. Gia moves her head from side to side and looks nervous. Vienna plays with her hair and parts her bangs. Then we get a shot of Gia looking in Vienna’s direction like she’s got it in the bag.

But in a shocker of events, Jake next chooses Vienna, thus sending Gia home. Gia moves her shoulders side to side uncomfortably.

Jake walks Gia out and she’s actually a really good sport about it. He tells her his feelings for the other two are stronger, and she tells him she understands and that she’s had more of a wall up. She doesn’t think he made wrong decision tonight, but she’s crying nonetheless. Jake tells us, “I never saw her cry and tonight I made her cry and it just broke my heart.”

We get Gia’s back seat interview and she says, “I’m really disappointed. This is a really big shock. I really got close to him. I was starting to see a future together. I feel crushed right now. I don’t understand. I actually did fall in love with him. I actually tried so hard so I could be open. This is what always happens. I keep having these heartbreaks. It takes me so long to get over it. It takes me so long to move on.” Then she twirls her hair and is whisked off to who-knows-where.

So now Jake’s down to the Final Two. He tells Tenley and Vienna that they are going to be going to the south side of the island where they are going to meet his family. Then they cheers and we fade out (literally and figuratively. Can you imagine what kind of people spawned Jake? Prepare for a snooze-fest next week, folks…)

We get a preview of next week and it’s the awesome “Women Tell All” episode! We see that Crazy Michelle will be coming back for an interview, and so will sad, heartbroken, “I am SO the next Bachelorette!” Ali.

Somehow the producers wrangled Roslyn back on the show too, so we’ll get to see a highly-edited, one-sided version of what really happened during “the biggest scandal in Bachelor history.”

Then we get another shot of Jake leaning over yet another railing. He is SO swiping Jason’s moves this season! I call foul.

For our bonus scene during the credits, we are back with Jake and Vienna on the pirate ship. Jake is aiming the cannon and Vienna is jumping around and covering her ears. It goes off and Vienna yells, “That scared me! I can’t hear!” to which Jake of course answers, “What? What did you say?” to pretend that he can’t hear either. Ain’t it just a hoot?

I’m looking forward to the “Women Tell All” episode next week, and hope you are too. For all of you fans of Dancing with the Stars, Tom Bergeron will be announcing the cast for the new season throughout next week’s Bachelor episode. I know Pamela Anderson is one of the new contestants. Can’t wait to see who else is puttin’ on their heels!

Leave some comments here or on the After the Rose Facebook page. Is anyone even reading these any more? Is this thing on?

Until next week…

Intuition Gone Wrong

There’s that one episode each season of the Bachelor/Bachelorette that just fizzles for me. I can’t keep focus and don’t really get into it. This was definitely that episode for me. Booooo…rrrriinnng! Usually these hometown date episodes are chock full of weird family members and awkward encounters. And although the producers wanted us to think that the families were going to be weird, they weren’t really, and so I lost interest pretty quickly. Tonight’s version of the blog will be shorter since there’s a heck of a lot less to say!

We start the episode off still at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco. Jake is packing his bags and waxing existential about meeting the ladies’ families during the hometown dates. “You really get to know a person when you interact with their families,” he says, stating the obvious.

Next we cut to a shot of a plane landing and we see that Jake is now in New York City. We get lots of shots that really hit the point home that we are in The Big Apple – lots of taxis going by, a shot that’s held too long on a water tower, and lots of general hustle and bustle.

We see Gia walking down the street swinging her arms and with her hair covering most of her face. My first thought is that she gets hotter and hotter each episode. I can see why she’s a Maxim model, among other things.

Jake pulls up in an SUV that looks like it’s being driven by the Secret Service, and Gia runs up to him, tackles him, jumps on him, and makes him carry her just like back in the vineyards where they shared their hide-and-seek moment. What is it with Gia needing to be carried around like this all the time? Her legs are locked tightly around Jake while they talk for a bit.

He finally gets to put her down and she tells him that the best way to show him the city is by boat. “Awesome!” Jake answers in his limited vocabulary way.

We get shots of the two of them on the very front of the bow of the boat just like Leo and Kate in Titanic. At one point Gia points to the skyline and wows us all with her knowledge of architecture by stating, “That’s the Empire State Building with the long pointy thing at the top!” Ooo Gia…you’re so specific-y.

Gia has a camera and they both pose in random shots while some unknown person takes pictures of them. At one point Jake wants Gia to “model sexy” and she all of a sudden is seen in a tight-fitting white tank top that’s exactly the same as the one Ali wore on her one-one-one date a few episodes back. Jake poses like the Statue of Liberty and they share a laugh. Then he hugs Gia close so he can feel her big boobs press against him and we see them all smashed in there just like he likes.

“When I kiss Gia, I just kinda get lost in it,” Jake tells us. “I just have such a burning desire to get to know her heart,” and I feel happy for Jake that he is pretty much pressed as close to her heart as he can be without doing surgery.

They finish their tour and Jake tells her that he doesn’t know much about her past relationships. She tells him that she had one terrible relationship where the guy “wasn’t a good guy, (was) into bad things, (and) cheated on me with all my friends...” Nice friends, Gia. I guess this explains why she was Vienna’s only buddy back in the mansion, huh?

Gia touches her face and hair a lot, which is distracting. It’s also distracting how much her hair keeps covering her face for a lot of their conversation. What is she hiding?

Jake tells us that Gia has a wall up, but that he now gets why it’s there. “She’s doing everything she can not to be hurt.”

Next we get shots of New York City at night, so we know the hour is approaching to finally meet Gia’s family. Jake and Gia walk into a Manhattan restaurant and waiting there for them are her mom Donna, her stepdad Tony, her stepbrother Eric, and her half brother Tony (who is a little kid already bored out of his skull – a good symbol for how the rest of us feel about this episode already). At least Gia’s mom has a classic New York accent, so it makes for some fun listening even though the conversation is dull.

Jake meets the family over dinner and they say all the predictable things that families always say on this show: we are protective of her (then why did you let her go on national TV to do this show?), we don’t want to see her get her heart broken (then why approve of her dating Jake when the odds are stacked against her?), and the clincher…”I’m very intuitive.” Gia’s mom said that a bunch of times.

At one point Gia’s mom asks Jake: “You’re dating four girls. You love all of them? What makes her so special?” to which Jake answers: “The one thing I can honestly look you in the eye and tell you is she just has a way about her,” and then he STOPS LOOKING AT HER IN THE EYES! Did anyone else notice that Jake’s eyes went to the side in the middle of saying this? What gives, Jake? Did I just call you out lying to Gia’s mom on national television?

Gia gets some time alone with her stepbrother who kinda looks like the geeky scientist guy from The Simpsons, but with dark hair. He also looks like he would be a guy who tried out for Jersey Shore, but didn’t make the final callbacks because his hair wasn’t thick enough and his muscles were too small. “Snookers!”

Mom and Gia talk outside while the producers pixilate out the faces of the belligerent New Yorkers walking by in the background who wouldn’t sign a consent form to have their faces used for such a trashy show.

Mom says that she thinks she sees love in Jake’s eyes for Gia. Gia is realistic and says he looks that way at all of the girls. “He can’t possibly love me right now!” she answers back.

But mom feels intuition in her heart anyway, which makes Gia cry, which makes Mom cry, which makes me puke. They hug amidst strains of “Oh god…I love you!”

Back inside the restaurant, there’s a funny scene where Jake and the stepbrother are chatting. The stepbrother asks Jake if he’s ever been cheated on and Jake jokes back that maybe he has but just didn’t know it. Jake has a stupid grin on his face like he just said something really funny. The grin is wiped off completely, though, when the stepbrother gets all serious and responds with, “There’s a difference when you DO know about it,” in reference to his sister’s ex-boyfriend. Dang, Jake. You just got taken down by a Simpsons character!

We cut back to a shot of the half-brother, still bored beyond belief, holding his head up with his arms, rubbing his eyes, putting his head down on the table. He’s gonna love watching this footage back when he’s old enough to realize that he looks like a boring twerp this whole time. He shoulda spiced things up and put Ex-Lax in Jake’s Coke or dumped cayenne pepper down Gia’s dress. ANYTHING to liven up this dreary date.

As they near the end of the date, Gia’s stepbrother borders on extremely awkward when he warns Jake that he may have to “break some legs” if Jake mistreats Gia. I’m all for family honor, but this was just downright stupid and staged.

They say goodbye to the family and walk to a random stoop to sit down. She tells us it’s one of her favorite things to do – just sit on a New York City stoop and watch the taxis go by. I’m seriously doubting that this is true. Whose stoop was that?

She makes me laugh as she swings her legs up on to Jake (Remember? That’s “their” thing she likes to do with him, even though we keep seeing all of the other girls doing it too.) Jake asks her, “Have you ever kissed on a stoop?” and I am struggling to find some joke or double-entendre I can make with the word schtupp, but I’ll just leave it at that. They make out, we see a shot of a subway exit, and their date is over.

Back from commercial, we get a shot of a bird on a tree with no leaves. Then we get a wide shot of tons of beautiful leaves everywhere, and we see that we have arrived with Jake in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Ali’s outside in what appears to be a park, Jake walks up, she runs over to him, and she jumps on him and wraps her legs around him just like Gia did. What is it with women needing to be picked up and carried? Is this something I didn’t learn about when the boys and girls got separated during health class in 6th grade?

Jake shows us his wussie-ness by wearing heavy gloves while Ali has on none. He jokes that he’s actually had two hometowns with Ali – one here and one back in San Francisco.

They sit on a bench and chat and I am trying like mad to figure out where exactly they are. There are birds chirping and beautiful leaves falling everywhere, but the distinct sounds of trucks and heavy machinery are in the background. Are they in a real park? Or on an island of greenery in the middle of the interstate? It’s tough to tell, but there are definitely diesel sounds happening in the background.

We get a sappy set of clips where Jake shakes leaves off of a tree, they each catch one, and then they each make a wish on their leaf. Then they kiss. “Everything about our relationship is fun,” Ali tells us, “But we want to kiss each other too.” So I guess the kissing ain’t fun?

We get another shot of a random bird on a dead-looking tree, then a shot of the downtown area of Ali’s city which looks quaint, and has that “small town” feel. We cut back to a creepy shot of the bench they had just been sitting on, now abandoned and empty. Not sure what’s up with that.

Next we get a creepy montage of Ali bringing Jake to her dead grandmother’s house. Those of us die-hards remember when Meredith brought Bob to her grandmother’s grave at the cemetery for their hometown date, and we all know that she got dumped right after that. We also know, though, that she became the next Bachelorette. So as stupid as I think Ali is for taking Jake to Dead Grandma’s house, she may be playing her cards right if things don’t work out.

Ali tells us all the heartwarming story of her Dead Grandma and how she was like a mom to Ali, how Ali was like her nursemaid the last few years, how Dead Grandma would stay up waiting for Ali each night.

Then she creeps us out by telling Jake that she’s happy Jake got to meet Dead Grandma. Wait a minute…meet her? Jake plays along and answers back, “I’m glad you brought me here.” This whole thing is just too morbid and weird. Who knew Ali was so goth?

Next we get a shot of Dead Grandma’s photo on the mantle. I know this won’t be PC to say, but her pose in that shot made me laugh. It looked exactly like the way they pose the ladies for the bachelor shots that Jake looks at before each Rose Ceremony. I almost don’t believe she’s really dead seeing that shot.

Ali’s story is kinda sad, though, and I do feel sorry for her loss. We get interview shots with Ali saying things like, “It kinda made me think about life and love and death, and “It was kinda sad but in a way it was kinda intimate,” and “I know her spirit lives there. I know my grandmother accepted Jake in our family at that moment,” and I am SO EXCITED to see little votive candles lit up behind her the whole time. It’s about time candles made their return to this show. It’s been way too long.

Then they REALLY ratchet up the creepiness factor and go out into the backyard to make out in Dead Grandma’s backyard. Shudder. Cut to a shot of Dead Grandma’s house from the ground looking up to where Dead Grandma is supposedly watching over them making out. Then cut to a picture of some silvery clouds that are a lame metaphor for heaven. Then cut to commercial with tinkly music.

We come back and it is nighttime. Jake and Ali go into Ali’s family’s house and we meet Ali’s mom Elizabeth (who gets called Beth later on), her older sister Ryah (not sure of the spelling on that), and her little brother Mikey.

It’s immediately apparent that Ali looks exactly like her mother, so Jake is stoked to get a preview of what Ali will look like in 20-30 years so he can make that decision now about whether or not he’ll be able to live with that face for all eternity.

Ali’s mom tells Jake she went online a couple of days ago to check him out and was impressed with the sound bites she found there – especially one about what’s inside one’s heart being very important. She liked that. She makes Ali cry when she says, “You couldn’t ask for a more wonderful girl.”

Then Mom invites Jake outside and we see more twinkly lights wrapped around an arbor outside and one sad little votive candle on the table stirring in the wind. Mom says this whole thing is scary. Jake says family is the most important to him and Mom agrees. He asks for Mom’s blessing should he decide to propose marriage to Ali, and Mom of course says yes. They hug. Yawn.

Next it’s Ali’s turn for some alone time with Mom under the twinkly lights, but this time I notice that the producers have now lined the table with candles. I wonder why they got more than before?

Mom talks about her intuition that Jake’s good for Ali (Gee…sound familiar Gia’s mom? Someone’s intuition is going to need a checkup, cuz he ain’t pickin’ both of them!) Ali’s mom says that she knows that soon she’ll be planning a wedding because “my gut doesn’t fail me.” Except his time, I guess, since Ali is about to quit the show and dump Jake. But that’s for later.

Jake and Ali now head outside for some alone time and to rehash the date. As they leave the house and say goodbye, it occurs to me that the little brother Mikey got no airtime at all. That must suck. His big national debut, and he ends up on the editing room floor. His little stint on that show could have gotten him some big time play back at Williamstown High. I hear the freshmen girls put out for anyone who’s been on TV. Tough break, little Mikey.

Ali tells Jake, “My family is just smitten with you. You are everything that I’ve ever dreamt that I would find in somebody. I am so in this. My heart…everything. I want to be there in the end. I want it. I want you. If you asked me today, I would say yes. You know I would.” Strong words from someone who’s about to choose working at Facebook over a dumb guy from Texas.

Jake tells us, “I am right where I need to be with Ali. This could absolutely be the girl,” and Ali cries as she hugs Jake goodbye. We like her a bit more than in past episodes, but she’s still not “That Girl” from the season premiere.

Next, we get to the most boring date of all…Tenley’s home town in Newberg, Oregon. I’m not going to spend much time on this date because, frankly, Tenley bores the crap out of me. She is all gushy giggles and pretend deep thoughts and chirpy princess voice and there is zero substance underneath it all.

In a nutshell, Tenley takes Jake to a dance studio she’s gone to for years, dances a special dance she’s choreographed for him that is one of the most excruciating/awkward moments so far this season, and tells us that her ex never appreciated her dancing.

For his part, Jake does his best to pretend to be into watching her when what he really was hoping was that she meant lap dancing or pole dancing. He checks out her boobs as she glides around. I literally have my finger on the remote ready to fast forward if this scene gets any more pathetic.

Then they dance awkwardly together and Tenley goes over the top with how happy she is that Jake watched her. “It made me feel adored!” she gleams. “I gave him a gift – an insight to my soul. And he wanted to hold on to it.” Puke puke puke. I can’t stand this girl. She’s all sugar and spice and everything nice. Cut a fart or tell a racist joke, Tenley. Sheesh.

Tenley finishes this scene by telling us, “I just think it would be so fun to have somebody to dance with forever!” and I want to smack her with Sleeping Beauty’s glass slipper. Really hard.

Tenley takes Jake back to meet her family, who seem nice enough. We meet her mom Beth, her dad Rob, and her sister Carly. Unlike Gia’s family, these guys watched Jake during Jillian’s season, so they feel they know all about his integrity and overall studliness.

During Jake’s time at Tenley’s place, we find out several pertinent facts: Her family also uses gigantoid wineglasses, Tenley’s dad uses the word “cool” and it’s uncomfortable because he’s too old to pull that off, the family has a disgusting-looking swimming pool visible in the background of several shots (someone needs to call the poolboy…stat…), and at the end Jake and Tenley sit on a couch festooned with a giant throw that has some biblical saying woven into it (all I can make out is the word “lord”). Oh…and Tenley’s mom’s hairdo is just a hop skip and a dye job away from being just like that Kate chick from John and Kate Plus 8. Serious unevenness and layers going on there with the hair.

Tenley’s dad gives his permission for Jake to propose marriage if it gets to that point, and Jake manages to make every family member cry at some point – because, well, they’re Tenley’s family.

Jake and Tenley leave, make out, and both tell us they are falling for the other one. If these two end up together, there may be a swirling vortex of vapid, plastic perfection that sucks us all in.

After the ad it’s Vienna’s turn for the hometown date. We know right off the bat that this date is going to be a bit “rougher” than the others because we see Jake walking along a wooden boardwalk over a swamp. Vienna runs up to him and lets most of her ass hang out of her too-skimpy dress when she hugs him. Nice.

They get into a boat for a ride down the river. “I’m a Florida girl…born and raised. This is me…nature…the river…I grew up on the river,” Vienna tells us, which explains so much about her, right? You can take the girl out of Florida, but you can’t….well you know the rest, right?

They cruise the river and see a turtle and an alligator. We find out Vienna was married before, but then wasn’t and went back to school (check the Internet for photos of her college Spring Break exploits…)

So Jake and Vienna drive up to Vienna’s house and we meet her dad Benny, her dad’s wife (so I’m assuming stepmom) Lisa, Kayla (How was she related? They never told us!), and the little toy dog Chloe that Vienna dresses up and apparently brings to all the cool cafes in the swamps where she’s from.

Benny takes Jake out to where his cycle is parked, and even though he seems like a tough talkin’ guy from Florida we see that he has sparkly little Christmas lights wound all through the rafter of his garage, which means that either ol’ Benny has a soft side, or the gayer-than-gay set decorator for the show got there first, gasped at all the gloom and grease, and set things straight (so to speak…)

Dad reinforces the whole “She’s a princess!” storyline with Jake, asks Jake what qualities he likes best in Vienna (Jake answers that he likes her honesty and I do a spit take with my seltzer water), and says (like all the other parents have before him) that he has a gut feeling about this all being a good thing.

We cut back to the stepmom who kinda looks like Wynonna Judd with black hair if you close your eyes part way. Then we cut to Jake and Vienna making out upstairs and a really silly scene where her dad “accidentally” walks in on them. So staged, didn’t you think? “Oh…whoops! Sorry kids! I want twelve inches between you. I’ll be right outside the door.” 12 inches…head exploding with too many things to say to that. Leaving it now.

We leave the happy couple with Vienna telling us, “I have this aura about me cuz I’m with Jake.” It’s either that or your aura is a by-product of Spring Break a few years ago. You know, there are antibiotics for that, Vienna…

So the hometown dates are over, but there’s still a good 45 minutes left in the show. We come back to Jake, and he’s back in Los Angeles now. We know because we see the Beverly Hills sign and fancy cars going by palm trees.

He’s talking to us about how tough his decision is going to be tonight when all of a sudden there’s a knock on his door. Dun dun dun..it’s Ali. She’s there looking all sad and downcast. She comes in and drops the bomb on Jakey – her job is making her choose between staying on the show or coming back to work. She can’t do both. If she stays on the show, she will be fired. But if she goes back to work, she will lose Jake. The horror.

We get a long, drawn out scene of them trying to figure out what to do. Finally Ali tells Jake that she will decide later and tell him at the Rose Ceremony. He lets her out the door, closes it behind her, and we get what’s supposed to be a heart-wrenching scene of Ali walking down the hallway and then collapsing on the floor wracked with sobs. And in typical Bachelor fashion, the cameras just roll. No one checks on Ali’s mental state or runs over to make sure she isn’t passing out. They just let her have a full-on meltdown for the cameras, because it makes great TV, right?

OK…I’ve said it before on this blog, but I am calling total BS on this whole Ali storyline. It’s been known for some time that Ali works for Facebook. They had to have approved her leaving to do the show in the first place. The producers know how long the show will go – even if a girl makes it all the way to the end – so they must have informed Ali about the time constraints if she lasted a long while and she must have told these constraints to Facebook. Why then is Facebook threatening her job over all of this? Why are they only having a problem now that she’s the odds-on favorite to win and close to the end?

And didn’t they pull this whole thing with Ed back in Jillian’s season? Why do it all over again? It’s tired. This whole thing stinks like Vienna’s aura and has the producers manipulating us all over it. Even the bad acting job Ali did when she broke the news to Jake seemed totally scripted.

We come back from commercial and see that the creepy neon lights have found their way to this hotel too. Blue and orange ring the windows and doorways when we see the exterior shot.

Chris is interviewing Jake and the whole place is swarming in candles! Hooray! They are in the fireplace, on the bookshelves, even on the floor. Phew. All is right with the world now.

Chris asks questions about the Ali situation in a way that seems way too over-eager and scripted. Jake says he’s all broken up with Ali’s big dilemma. “I thought the drama was over. Now when I’m least expecting it I get the biggest bombshell of all dropped on me.”

Chris goes out and escorts the girls in to the hotel one by one while we hear Jake’s voiceover about each one. Here’s a quick one-off about each girl:

Ali: “If (she) does leave, it’s going to break my heart.”
Vienna: “I had a lot of concerns about Vienna early on.”
Gia: “(There’s) just something about her that I’m so attracted to. It’s not her beauty.” (Yeah, Jake, it’s her Internet soft porn photo spread where she’s tied up with electrical tape.)

I don’t pay attention to what he says about Tenley because one, I can’t stand her, and two her weirdly-proportioned green dress looks like it is slowly devouring her from the top down.

The girls stand in the room waiting for the ceremony to start. Gia pulls up her shoulder pads a bit. Ali still has that “I’m so pretend pained to have to be making this pretend decision tonight!” look on her face.

It hits the fan after the next commercial when Ali finally announces, “Chris, could I talk with you for a second?” For her part, Tenley says under her breath, “This is crazy!” and we even get to have the subtitles so we all can know what she just said.

We cut back to Jake and more weird neon blue is gushing through the window of the room he’s in trying to make his decision. Chris brings Ali back there and they sit and chat. And they chat. And they chat. And they cut to a commercial and when they come back Jake and Ali are still sitting on that stupid couch and Ali is still going back and forth.

Of course, she finally decides to call it quits and to choose her job over Jake. “I have to go. I’m so so sorry,” she sobs through the tears.

“I feel like you’re slipping through my fingers and I don’t know how to stop you, “ Jake replies. This stuff is SO scripted!

Jake escorts Ali down to a waiting limo and puts her inside. Something weird happens with the door and he has to slam it shut a few times. His last shot of Ali is her doing a little girl goodbye wave and her saying, “I’m so sorry,” again.

Jake goes back to the room where the other three girls have been left wondering what the hell is going on and tells them that Ali has just left. The reaction shots they show us are awesome (Sorry, Jake, had to steal your go-to line). All three girls are all smiles and pearly whites upon hearing the news, which shows that their loyalty to Ali went about as deep as Tenley’s personality.

They have a group hug and then we get a hilarious shot of Jake announcing that they will all be going to the romantic, beautiful, Caribbean island of St. Lucia and all three girls at the same time do a “Huh? Where the hell is that?” look but then recover quickly since they don’t want to seem dumb.

We cut back to Ali for what I think will be her goodbye speech, but we only hear her say, “How could I have left him?” and then we’re done with Ali (for tonight…)

In the previews for next week we see more helicopter flights, beautiful, lush, green scenery, the requisite sunset shots, the requisite too-teeny bikinis, and a phone call from…who else? Ali! So maybe we shouldn’t write her off so quickly, huh?

For tonight’s funny credits scene we go back to New York City and Gia’s mom is asking Jake if he wants her to read his tarot. He says yes, puts his hands on the cards to send his “energy” into them, and thinks of a question he wants the answer to. Then Gia’s mom shuffles up the cards.

Apparently his cards show that he is at a crossroads with love. He’s confused and wondering what he wants. He doesn’t have his feet planted on the ground yet. All of which we could have told him already without the cards.

Then we get a Top Ten Bachelor Moment when she stops and asks him, “The question you asked…did it pertain to what I was telling you?” and without skipping a beat Jake answers back, “No.” Fade to black.

All in all a pretty ho hum episode. Lots of fake-feeling parts and made-up drama, but that’s par for the course with this show, right? Hopefully the girls will get their atlases out and figure out where St. Lucia is and stir up some drama among the beautiful scenery there next week. Catch you then! And don't forget to join us in the group "After the Rose" on Facebook.

San Francisco...Open Your Golden Gate!

So this week we got to do San Francisco Bachelor-style. I can’t tell you how bummed I am that they filmed all this stuff around the City and I had no idea. How cool would it have been to bump into Jake on one of his dates? Although there were some gorgeous aerial shots of the City, this episode was one where I also found myself laughing at the inaccuracies about San Francisco that came up. And there were even more grammatical errors this week than last. Let’s get to it…

We start off with the ladies back on the RV. Now it’s only one RV since four girls got dumped last time and I guess the producers want us to think they are a green production even though it’s still an RV that probably gets about 2 miles to the gallon.

The girls are whooping it up and excited to see Jake again. Ali pounds the table and shouts, “Are we gonna see our man?”

For her part, Tenley sits in front of what appears to be someone’s dry cleaning hanging from the window in a plastic bag and tells us, “He said goodbye to four girls showing us that he’s very serious about what he’s here for and that he’s looking for a wife.” Oh really? The fact that he agreed to do this show in the first place wasn’t a tip-off that maybe he was inclined toward marriage? Tenley is a dim bulb for sure.

Ali tells us for the first of about a jillion times that she’s excited that Jake gets to see “her” city, and then we get a shot behind her of that big white hospital you see up on the hill as you drive into the City on 280. Isn’t it cool to be a local during this whole episode and knowing exactly where they are at any given time? The producers commit the first of many geographical faux pas (how do you make that plural? French is too hard…), however, as they cut from 280 to the Golden Gate Bridge, making people think that the bridge is how the girls get into the City. Not if they came in through Daly City they didn’t.

The girls pull into the Mark Hopkins Hotel and I’m a little jealous. They are getting put up in some swanky digs! I notice, though, that the hotel name plaque is blurred out behind them as they get out of the RV. Because even the Mark Hopkins has some sense of decorum and doesn’t want its name associated with a cheeseball show like The Bachelor. Either that or they refused to pay the show as a sponsor and so to slap their hands about it the show on purpose blurred out the name.

Either way, Jake meets the girls and brings them up to their new suite. It truly looks amazing and larger than most peoples’ houses that I know. The girls get sweeping views, luxurious beds, common rooms with flowers and artwork everywhere. RV livin’ this ain’t. Ella’s lucky she got out when she did! Her hairspray fumes alone would have melted some of the acrylics off of those paintings.

“It’s nice to get treated like a princess!” Vienna tells us, and gives us flashbacks to the first night we met her when she was talking all “I’m a spoiled brat and my daddy thinks I am the princess of everything” comments.

In a rare turn of events, Chris Harrison is not there to inform the girls about this week’s dates like he usually does. Because, you know, his job is like really, really demanding and it’s just TOO tough for him to get out of L.A. for a few days to actually do his job in San Francisco. It was really hard keeping up with those two RVs. We can’t expect him to know how to get to San Francisco too, right? When I grow up I want his job for sure.

It’s up to Jake to tell the girls personally that there will be no roses handed out on this week’s dates. There will be three one-on-one dates and one two-on-one date. Vienna looks surprised at this news. Jake leaves the date card and tells them not to open it until he’s gone.

Ali thinks that she should definitely get one of the one-on-one dates since San Francisco is “her city” and she would be the ideal person to show Jake around in it. “I think he’d be crazy not to let me!” she says.

In a separate interview, we get to hear Vienna say, “If Ali gets the one-on-one date today, I’m going to be pretty pissed.” We get it. Ali and Vienna still hate each other for no real reason.

Tenley opens the date card, and it’s for her. “Let’s get our love on track in San Francisco” Jake has written her and she clenches her fists in excitement and jumps up and down like a little schoolgirl. Then she makes the locals roll their eyes when she guesses that Jake is going to take her on a “trolley” ride. Please, folks, they’re cable cars, m’k?

“How much time do I have?” Tenley wants to know. She means how much time to get herself ready for the date, but I think her time in the City will be short if she can’t pick up the local lingo more quickly than she has.

Tenley is excited to “see how it feels to be a couple.” Why do so many people on this show want to see another one of their senses? People want to see what something sounds like or see what something smells like. Tenley just adds to our sensory overload, I think.

Suddenly, though, the giddy music shifts and becomes more serious. Tenley starts fanning herself and welling up dramatically. “I’m a little bit nervous,” she admits to us. “There’s been so much anticipation for this date. I feel like I just need some time to be reassured that we have something. If Jake sends me home, I’d be very devastated.” All the while, I can totally picture her doing Snow White’s voice at Disneyland. She’s totally ruined for me since I know she used to be a Disney princess.

After the commercial, Jake and Tenley leave on their date. Jake remarks that Tenley is always so positive, but has to again bring up her sad past by telling us that he’s not sure he’s scratched the surface yet with this whole “I was married to a cop and he cheated” story that they keep dragging on and on.

We locals actually laugh out loud as we see the “trolley” that Jake and Tenley will be sharing today is in fact not one that goes on tracks and uses a cable to move. It’s one with four wheels that tourists think is the same thing as a real cable car. We get some funny shots of it wheeling away. Ooo…muy autentico, Jake! (not sure why this week’s posting is turning out so multi-lingual. Stream of consciousness, folks. Stream of consciousness…)

They end up in Chinatown (“That’ll be fun!” Tenley chirps, which she would have said even if Jake told her they were going to The Tenderloin to score some smack…) and we get scenes of them strolling through shops and saying stupid things like, “You feel like you’re in a foreign country!” and “I feel like we’re a couple!”

They border on racist and don Asian hats and make faces at each other while Jake swings his pretend pigtail around a bit. In one particularly embarrassing scene that evidences their lack of culture, a woman in a shop describes in detail the food she is serving them, and Jake responds with, “Awesome!” Way to cross that multicultural barrier Jake. You do Texas proud, my man.

They visit a fortune cookie factory and discover that they can write their own fortunes for each other. They decide to save the personalized cookies for later, and we inwardly groan since we know there’s going to be some dumb scene later when the cookies are opened and one or both of them will have written something stupid. More on that later…

Jake and Tenley sit down and start talking about things. She tells him that she thinks he made a good decision last week in terms of who he let go. Ouch! The four ladies who left I’m sure aren’t feeling much love for Tenley after that. She spent all that time in the “We Hate Vienna Fan Club” and now she’s saying it was a good idea not to have let her go? That doesn’t make sense.

All during this talk I notice that Tenley is one of those people who tries too hard to maintain eye contact. It’s uncomfortable for me to watch her try to pierce Jake’s gaze as they talk about kinda lame, unimportant stuff. Jake tells her she’s been really patient and then they kiss for a bit.

Then, for added effect I guess, someone on the show has the brilliant idea to have the two of them walk down an alleyway to watch some street performer playing there. This whole scene has STAGED written all over it. I’ve been to Chinatown plenty and no one sits on an abandoned side street full of graffiti (was some of it even blurred out behind the happy couple?) I think that guy was definitely hired by the show. The music was nice, but a little too hit-you-over-the-head with “Look at them! They really are in Chinatown right now!”

The alleyway also makes me think of that Will Smith movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” where he sees “happyness” misspelled in almost the exact same alleyway. No graffiti blurred out in THAT movie, though.

Jake demonstrates his supreme lack of understanding as it relates to adverbs and provides us with the first grammatical error of the evening when he tells us that he “wants to talk more serious” with Tenley tonight (SeriousLY, folks, what’s his issue here?)

We go back to the suite at the Mark Hopkins and are sadly disappointed to hear a quick knocking at the door. Apparently the sad doorbell sound is gone for the season. RIP.

Corrie goes out to get the next date card. We find out that it will be the dreaded two-on-one date where two girls will go out with Jake at the same time. We all know how that ended for Ella and Kathryn last week, so the girls are happy there are no dumpings happening this week until the actual Rose Ceremony.

We get lots of short interview clips that basically let us know that tensions are still building between Ali and Vienna and other clips of Ali and Vienna hoping that they don’t have to go on the same date together.

So Corrie reads the cards and sure enough she reads: “Ali and Vienna…come be the queens in my castle.” And we puke at how schmaltzy the card is, but do a secret “Hooray!” that we are finally going to get a showdown between these two. It’s been a long time coming, and this should be good TV.

“I feel sick right now!” Ali blurts. The music gets tense.

Cut to a shot of Corrie with a big grin on her face. She’s kidding! It’s not Ali and Vienna on the same date after all. It’s Vienna and Gia.

“You suck at life!” Ali tells her. “My pulse just went through the roof!” she exclaims, then realizes that she has just totally dissed Vienna in front of the other girls (which is something she accuses Vienna of doing all the time), gives Vienna a sidelong glance, and says, “Not because of you, Vienna, but because it’s my town.”

I call BS. Ali totally meant that she was upset about having to share a date with Vienna. She should just come out and say it.

Of course Vienna gets up to leave and go to her room, which is where she seems to default to every time any drama comes up. She almost never stays for a confrontation, which is disappointing. The girls tell her she should stay and then for some reason Ali asks her if Vienna wants her to leave.

“Sure,” Vienna answers. Ooo! This is as good as if they HAD gone on the double date together.

Ali asks her what’s wrong and if it’s something that has to do with her, and of course it has to do with her since she was the one who made the big scene last week at the Rose Ceremony after Jake kept Vienna over Ashleigh and Jessie.

“You flipped out last night crying!” Vienna accuses Ali.

“And how do you know that was because of you?” sly Ali counters. So lame. Dude, just tell her you don’t like her and move on. Why lie about it in front of all of us when we saw it all too?

Vienna tells Ali that she and all the other girls could hear Ali going on and on about Vienna last night in front of everybody. Isn’t that proof enough to Ali that it truly is about Vienna? What else could she have been that upset about?

“I just don’t understand why you think I’m such a bad person,” Vienna says, to which Ali answers that Vienna keeps talking bad about other people in the house (even though they aren’t living in a house anymore…)

Then Vienna provides the fatal blow to Ali: “I have never talked bad about anybody. Everything I’ve said has been the truth!” Not much ol’ Ali can say to that, huh?

Ali gets all contrite now that she realizes she’s been wrong about Vienna and says, “Everyone makes mistakes and has faults. I have a lot of them and it’s a very hard situation.” Aw, c’mon Ali. You give up too easily! You just totally caved in to Vienna. Now I like Vienna even more.

Vienna tells us that “Ali just pisses me off. She does. I don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing, but it’s not going to break up Jake and I,” and I do a little happy dance at the second grammatical error of the evening. How do you break I, Vienna?

Vienna wants to say something to Jake about all of this, so she does what any self-respecting girl would do in this situation and gets up to go choose what outfit she’s going to wear tomorrow.

We cut back to Jake and Tenley’s date, and it’s nighttime now. We see them walking up to Coit Tower and I laugh that the producers have chosen the most phallic symbol in all of San Francisco for their dinner date. I mean seriously, it’s fashioned after a fire hose nozzle, right? Gotta love the symbolism on this show.

They walk up to the top and we notice that those creepy blue, purple, and orange neon lights are back again lighting their way. Why are these lights everywhere this season? It makes me miss all the romantic candles.

We see that they have a table set up on the roof and I think that the producers truly lucked out that all the foofy napkins and silverware aren’t blowing away in the fog and wind as it would have been on any other night. Maybe they have a way of paying off Mother Nature like the Mark Hopkins so everything goes smoothly. The few times I’ve ever been to Coit Tower, it’s been blowing a gale.

They start to talk, and of course Jake has to bring up her divorce yet again. He wonders what things she would do differently the next time around, and Tenley answers that she wouldn’t take so many things for granted, like jumping up from the couch when her ex walked in smelling like the secretary he just hooked up with and running over to greet him and pretending not to smell the other woman’s perfume on his collar. Don’t take life for granted, ladies. Look what you’ll miss out on.

Tenley asks him what his expectations are of marriage, which is just a truly bizarre question. How can anyone answer that? I kinda hope he answers with a Disney joke like, “I kiss her, she wakes up, and we live happily ever after.”

But Jake misses the moment and goes on too long about how his wife should always have his back no matter what and that she should always trust him even if he hurts her feelings. All this makes me think that Jake is already making excuses for cheating on poor Tenley if they end up together. Did you get that feeling too?

To all of this deep thinking, Tenley answers, “That’s good.” Then asks him a question about pilots being faithful. Way to call him out, Tenley! Jake reassures her by answering that “cheating is a choice” and that “the woman I marry will be the last woman I look at” which is just such a big, fat lie in so many ways that I don’t have time to go into them all here.

At this point I realize that Jake is wearing a black turtleneck sweater, which for some reason looks weird on him. Maybe it’s because it’s black? He’s so “white” in every other regard that the black seems harsh and sinister on him. Or maybe he’s reminding me of the Old Spice sailor from those commercials back in the 70s? I dunno.

They kiss for a bit and then my stomach sinks as I realize they have yet to open their personalized fortune cookies from earlier in the show. She opens hers and the fortune Jake has written says, “Kiss me!” which she giggles at. We find out the reason for the giggles as Jake opens his cookie only to read the fortune Tenley wrote for him: “Kiss me!” Ain’t that just a coinky-dink? They both wrote the same fortunes…for each other…with no prompting from producers or others. They are truly destined for each other. Truly.

They check out the view some more, make out some more, and Jake cups his hand behind Tenley’s head. “I could just let go of my heart and let it fall in love with Jake,” Tenley tells us, which for some reason grosses me out since it brings up images of her letting go of her real heart on Jake.

And with that, we leave Jake and Tenley on their phallic symbol of love and go back to the hotel suite where there is another knock on the door. It is magically daytime again in the background even though Jake and Tenley were just smooching at night, but the producers pretend like we won’t notice that small detail and power on.

The girls find a giant trunk in front of their door. “Is Jake gonna pop outta that?” Gia wants to know.

The trunk ends up being full of beautiful clothes for Vienna and Gia to wear on their double date with Jake. I think how lame it is that the producers have basically thrown all these designer clothes into what amounts to a costume box. Way back when the girls were doing that fashion shoot at the hotel and Rozlyn accepted the rose that had been down Jake’s butt they had racks of clothes and accessories that they could choose. Apparently the RVs set the producers back a pretty penny, because Gia and Vienna get a bargain basement version where they have to scrounge around for their own wrinkled, smooshed designer outfits on their own. I guess we do things more casually in San Francisco than in L.A., huh?

We can always count on Tenley to pipe in her stupid comment, and she doesn’t disappoint when she takes one look at the giant chest of clothes and effuses, “This is a giant chest of clothes to choose from!” And Tenley, you’re technically not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, so I’m calling out the Grammar Police yet again tonight.

Next we get a shot of Gia and Vienna piling into the back of a stretch limo. And I actually feel sorry for them. We find out they are going to Napa on their date, and I know that to drive from the Mark Hopkins to the vineyards of Napa that Gia and Vienna are in for a loooong, awkward car ride. I would have loved to know what they talked about all that time. Or did they just not talk at all and watched Oprah on the TV instead?

For the umpteenth time we hear Vienna say how tough it will be to share Jake and watch him with another woman, and then we get Gia’s lament that will recur all night: “I’m going to be the third wheel!” She’s worried that Vienna has such a strong personality that she will be too much in the background, which is totally true since Gia doesn’t seem to have much personality beyond, “Jake! Come play hide and seek with me in the vines!”

I laugh as I put it together that Gia is on yet another winery-related date. Some of you may remember her treacherous foray into the wilds of the South Coast winery region last week. I’m not sure why she keeps getting invited to the wineries by Jake, but at least it looks like this winery will have many more amenities than a campfire and marshmallows.

“It’s a castle!” she exclaims as they drive up to it, and it is indeed a really large-looking castle. Then it dawns on me. I know the family that owns this castle! A woman who used to substitute teach at my school has a cousin who brought the castle over stone by stone from Europe. I know the whole story about this place. It’s cool to have even a tenuous connection to all of this. You take what you can get, right?

We again get Vienna coming off as spoiled and over-pampered when she takes one look at the castle and says, “I’m my dad’s princess and I’m Jake’s queen and he’s my Prince Charming!” How bummed are we that Tenley didn’t get to go on this date? The opportunity for Disney princess jokes would have been endless!

Jake walks out onto an exterior staircase to greet the two ladies. Gia gets the first hug, and then Jake summons the Grammar Police by asking Vienna, “Are you doing good?” I’m sure he meant if she was doing good deeds out in the world, but just in case he wasn’t I’m going to call him out on this one.

Jake tells us that he’s worried about being on a date with two women at the same time. “It’s almost awkward,” he says. Almost? Narrowly avoiding your ex while you’re out with your current girlfriend…that’s ALMOST awkward. Jake, you are into full-fledged awkwardness right now, my friend, and you three haven’t even made it off the greeting stairs yet.

Jake makes it a point of holding both their hands as they walk to their first destination. “The most important thing is to try to find a way to balance the time between them. I don’t want one to feel more important than the other.” He so gentlemanly like that, isn’t he? I think it’s great that every time Jake finds himself on a date with two women at the same time he holds both their hands. I’ll bet he holds the door open for them both and pulls out both their chairs too.

The three of them toast over wine and cheese on the patio and all of a sudden I get this pit in my stomach. Is Vienna wearing a…a…a…sparkle halter top?! She’s at the most gorgeous castle in the Napa Valley sipping wine at sunset and THAT’S what she chose out of Jake’s costume box of tricks? She creeps up a few notches on my trashy meter.

Yet again, Gia laments how close Jake and Vienna are. “Already I feel like a third wheel because I see him giving her attention!” Oy…again with the third wheel! She touches her face after she says this, and I notice that she still has that Band-Aid from last week on her pointer finger. Geez…Jake really must have skewered her on that toasty marshmallow date, huh?

Back at the hotel suite, Tenley wants to know what things Ali thinks the threesome are discussing on their date. Ali voices concern that they are probably talking about her. Um, Ali, y’think? I’m guessing Vienna can’t wait to talk to Jake and right the wrong you created at the last Rose Ceremony with all of your needless drama.

Ali sounds almost contrite when she admits she may have gone too far: “I want to be able to show him that yes, I’m human and make mistakes, but I know when to own up to them and to admit I was wrong.”

Tenley wonders if maybe Jake is trying to decide between Gia or Vienna and is taking them both on the date so he can make his final decision. Ali hasn’t even considered that.

Cut back to Gia at the castle saying, “I’m glad I brought my toothbrush!” Poor Gia. Having to suffer through these long ordeals out in nature and the harsh tundras of the Napa Valley. What would one do if one had left their toothbrush accidentally at a suite at the Mark Hopkins? I’m sure there isn’t a toothbrush for sale within MILES of that castle, right? (I’m kidding. I’ll bet they sell them at the castle gift shop!)

Jake, Gia, and Vienna sit down for dinner and we get a repeat of the Ella/Kathryn double date fiasco as Gia proceeds to start playing with her hair while Vienna wants to talk about the last Rose Ceremony. She totally outs Ali’s drama: “She couldn’t believe how you could like her if you like a girl like me,” to which Jake gives a great “Oh my god why are these girls always so much about the damned DRAMA?!” looks.

Jake spends a lot of time reassuring Vienna that he has specific reasons for keeping who’s left. All of this “makes me feel bad for Vienna” Jake says, but all of this actually has me feeling bad for Gia who continues to look down forlornly at her plate and fuss with her hair nervously.

It gets awkward once Jake realizes he has been totally ignoring Gia. They start talking about eating food, and Gia comes up with a great one-liner to get Vienna to finally shut up: “You can eat MY salmon!” she quips, which has so many double-entendres attached to it I think my Sarcasmo-Meter might overload if I attempt any of them.

In response, Vienna tells us privately, “I’ve never really talked bad about Gia, but I think the times they really show each other attention are when they are completely alone, and he shows me attention no matter what.” Vienna is very astute, because this is basically true as far as we can see on the show.

So Jake asks Gia if she wants some one-on-one time and all of a sudden we cut to another shot of him carrying a little mini lantern and leading Gia through what look like Medieval torture chambers or something from the Pirates of the Caribbean. There are dark, stone hallways dimly lit with weird shadows everywhere.

Gia AGAIN tells us she feels like the third wheel, and now I officially want to throw the fourth wheel at her face. “I may not act or seem insecure, but I am probably the most insecure here.” Yeah, make sure you say all of that to Jake, sweetie. Dudes LOVE that stuff. I am so over hot people bemoaning their insecurities. Next.

Gia and Jake start chatting in the creepy underground cellar/murder victim hiding spot where he has apparently decided would be as good a spot as any for some alone time. I fully expect Scooby, Shaggy, and Velma to appear out of the shadows chasing Mr. Withers dressed like a monster. It’s got that total Scooby Doo vibe in there.

I notice that Gia has started wiping her face and lips a lot as they talk, which is kinda gross. I wonder if it’s because she’s trying to signal to Jake that she wants him to kiss her, or because she allergic to the mold that is apparently growing all over this cellar.

She says that the other girls are messing with her head by telling stories about things they did with Jake that she also did with Jake. “(I) don’t feel special anymore,” she complains. As an example, Gia mentions that one girl said that Jake liked it when she put her legs up on his lap and GIA likes to do that TOO! “I thought that was our ‘thing’ and that hurt me. That really hurt me.”

Um, really, Gia? It hurts you that he lets other girls put their legs up on him but it doesn’t hurt you that he has made out with every woman on this show so far? Let’s get some perspective, girl.

They say a lot of barfy, gushy things like “I’m really, really into you…” and “Are you falling for me? Cuz I’m falling for you.” Gia asks him, “Is it OK to fall? And he answers back, “It’s OK to fall.” Puke puke puke.

Next we get a hilarious montage of Vienna trying to storm in on the date with Gia so she can break it up and have HER alone time with Jake. Trouble is, she can’t find where they have hidden themselves amidst the vast catacombs of the castle. So we see Vienna and her sad, little lantern wandering lost among the abandoned wine casks. Every once in a while we hear a sad, “Jake? Jake? Where ARE they?” from her. Cut to commercial, but not before we get an exterior shot of the castle. And damned if those same creepy, blue, neon lights aren’t illuminating the walls of this place TOO! Who woulda thunk?

We come back, and Vienna is still lost and wandering. We hear Gia talk about being a third wheel AGAIN and then get interrupted by Vienna’s shriek as she finally comes upon them and scares the pants off of them. “It’s not even funny! I’m friggin’ freakin’ out right now!” Vienna yells. Because it’s really scary being lost in the cellars of a castle when you have at least two cameramen, a guy on the mike, and a producer following you around. Total terror, guys.

So Vienna swoops in and now it’s her chance for some quality time with Jake. Cut to a scene of Vienna and Jake in a chair, and it is obvious that the producers HATE Gia because I see that not only does Jake take Vienna out to a beautiful outdoor patio for their date instead of the Spanish Inquisition re-enactment room, but they also make sure to show us that Vienna’s legs are lying all over Jake any which way they can for this entire scene. Sucks to be Gia right now.

Jake asks her what she thinks married life would be like with her, and although we all know the true answer is “crazy drama, lots of wrecked cars, dogs dressed like people, and embarrassing photos surfaced on the Internet of Spring Breaks of yore” Vienna answers that she wants to wake up every day excited to kiss the person waking up next to her. She wants kids and travel and wants that passionate feeling to continue on and on. Spoken like someone who’s never been married. Can I get an amen, married folks?

Vienna tells Jake she’s really falling for him, but Jake seems a bit cold and distant at this point. They cuddle some more on an outdoor couch while sparks fly up from an outdoor fireplace. Ahhh…reality TV love…

Back at the Mark Hopkins there is a knock on the girls’ door and Ali comes back with a date card. She says she’s scared since she’s never opened one before, and something tells me that if THAT’S scary for Ali, then she’s REAL glad she didn’t go on the dungeon date with ol’ Jakey.

The next date is for Corrie: “Love is a walk in the park,” the card says. Corrie’s happy to finally get some alone time with Jake and is excited to show Jake her fun side. Because that lame “Let’s roll awkwardly down the sand dune!” thing just really didn’t work out for her last week in Pismo. She’s got some catching up to do.

Back at the castle, Jake has escorted the two ladies to their room and says goodnight to them both. We see the girls tucked into their own beds and get to hear Vienna say again that she wants to be the last girl Jake thinks of before he goes to bed. She’s worried that Jake seemed different tonight and just wants to make sure that they are still OK.

She hatches a plan to sneak out of her room and down to where Jake is shirtless and throwing a giant animal skin repeatedly over and over onto his bed for no reason since we can clearly see mounds and piles of comforters, sheets, and pillows. We watch with trepidation as Vienna winds her way downstairs to Jake’s room trying to balance two big glasses of wine. We know this ain’t gonna go well at all.

She surprises Jake in his room and flops onto his bed with the wine. “Cheers to finding love and not having to go back to my room tonight!” Vienna offers. Jake seems very uncomfortable.

Jake says, “I was laying (Grammar Error!) in bed, not quite nekkid. I assure you I was having dirty thoughts, but I was really worried that Gia would think something was going on. It was rated G all the way,” which shows us in one small sound bite that our boy Jake is a horndog and a gentleman at the same time.

Vienna asks if Jake wants her to go and he says she probably should and that it was “really, really, really awkward”.

For her part, Vienna tells us, “Leaving Jake just now is making me feel very unsure. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I am afraid. I really want to fall in love with Jake. If that’s not what happens, I’m gonna be crushed.”

Now we’re back in the City again and we see that Jake and Corrie have begun their date. They leave the hotel and Corrie provides us her first grammar error when she says, “I take things slow (SlowLY, Corrie. Adverbs tell HOW…) I want a guy who will pursue me.”

They wind up in Golden Gate Park. It’s another crystal-clear day, and I wonder how the producers managed to score such perfect San Francisco weather for all of these outdoor dates. Jake is sitting on a bench perched like the quintessential gay guy looking for park sex in an argyle sweater. But he’s actually waiting for Corrie,.

Once they’ve said their hellos we get shots of them walking along some shaded park trails, and it occurs to me that Jake and Corrie are looking for love on the same trails that countless gay men have cruised for decades looking for love of a different kind (if y’know what I mean…)

We get a shot of them out in the middle of a huge, beautiful field and I wonder how the producers got all the homeless people to leave. The last time I tried to picnic on that same field I got yelled at by a homeless guy who said I looked at him strangely and had a stray pit bull try to pee on the sandwiches. Somehow, Jake and Corrie get the more sanitized San Francisco experience.

They end up rowing out on Stowe Lake, and Corrie provides some unintentional comedic moments when she looks out onto the water and wonders aloud if there are any “gators” in California. The shores look suspicious to her. Poor thing. Poor virginal, reptile-misplacing thing.

They row around and talk about their philosophies of dating. At one point they are so close to the first kiss that you can feel the tension radiating out of the TV screen, but then the music changes a bit and they both blow it and it turns into a Top Ten Seriously Awkward Moment as they both realize the opportunity has passed. They look down at the boards of the boat instead.

Corrie tells us that when it comes to kissing, the man is 90% responsible for taking the initiative, and the lady is responsible for 10%. Cut to Jake telling us the same thing, but changing HIS percentages to 80/20. Uh oh. This doesn’t seem like a match made in heaven, huh?

Jake makes two more grammatical errors by saying “slow” instead of “slowly” and then they decide to head into dinner.

Back at the girls’ suite, the final date card is delivered, and of course it is for Ali. “I want to leave my heart in San Francisco. Show me your city,” it says, and Ali is thrilled that she gets to plan the date that she and Jake will share. She wants to show him everything about her life – where she lives, eats, does her laundry, craps – you know, the whole ten-cent tour.

We see some funny shots of Vienna feigning interest in it all and putting her thumb in her mouth a few times.

Jake and Corrie walk into the newly-renovated Academy of Sciences and again we see that the creepy neon gnomes have illuminated this venue too. They have the whole place to themselves, which is pretty cool.

Corrie tells us there’s a cloud over the date now since that almost-kiss in the rowboat turned out to be more humiliating than titillating. They start talking about what the other is looking for. Corrie says she’d be willing to move to Dallas to be with Jake, but we get an interesting turn of events when she says that she would get her own apartment, not share Jake’s place. And with that, we have our first bona-fide virgin of the season.

They eat dinner in a sorta-creepy, sorta-cool aquarium with sharks and fish swimming all around them. Corrie says she won’t live with someone before marriage and that she is saving herself (you know…ahem…SEXually…) until she’s married.

Jake tells a bold-faced lie when he says, “I completely respect where you’re coming from, and that’s not an issue for me,” which I believe about as much as I believe that Vienna doesn’t dye her hair blonde.

Corrie tells us she feels relieved that she talked to Jake about all of this. “I feel like we got over that mountain,” she says, although she’s one of those people who pronounces it “moun-ehn”. Why do people do that?

They finally share a “Kissimee” (inside joke from the first episode), and Corrie now feels so much better about where she stands with Jake. “I can see myself engaged to Jake at the end of this!” she says excitedly, but I’m not thinking that’s going to happen. Corrie is a bit too cold and detached for Jake, I think. Sure she has the virgin thing working against her (nothing against the virgins, folks!), but she just doesn’t seem to have much to share with Jake that allows him to get to know her. For all of you Grease fans, “She’s too pure to be pink!” She’s my pick so far for who’s outta there at the next Rose Ceremony.

Next we see Ali primping for her date and over-enthusing about how excited she is to be showing Jake “her town”. I call BS here too. According to her bio, Ali has only lived in San Francisco for just over three years. She’s a transplant from Williamstown, Massachusetts. San Francisco is hardly “her” town.

Ali comes out looking all cute and prepped and the girls all ooo and ahh about her. Vienna answers Jake’s knock on their door and tells us that Ali is a threat to her. She thinks that this date with Jake might “show Jake who she really is and he might not like who he sees.”

Jake takes Ali up to the roof of the Mark Hopkins and asks her to point out where she lives. She points out the tall, white highrise where Gavin Newsome used to own the penthouse, and says, “I live over there!” and we know that Ali is not hurting at all for cash. Girl lives in freakin’ Russian Hill and rents are not cheap there.

They go walking along Union Street and Ali shows him her favorite flower shop. We find out that her favorite flowers are daisies, but they don’t have any there. She saves face by telling Jake, “I want you! YOU’RE my big flower!” Ick. This is getting painful already.

It’s amazing how much Ali’s edit on this show has changed. At that first date with the creepy guys from Chicago watching, her energy and enthusiasm came off as endearing. Now her energy borders on manic. It’s almost like she is determined that Jake will see a good time. She’s too gushy about it all.

Back at the suite, Vienna is worried that Jake won’t be thinking much about her today since he’s out with Ali. She reminds them all that Ali is the only girl who has had two one-on-one dates with Jake, which she calls a “bad situation”. Oh yeah, and she says her stomach hurts.

Ali takes Jake into her fave little bistro aptly named Ottimista. They order espresso drinks, and Jake hams it up by dipping his lips and nose into the foam on his drink and asking Ali if he can ask her a very serious question. Har har har. That’s the best they could do to show us that this guy has some semblance of a sense of humor?

Jake asks Ali to take him through a typical Sunday for her. I’m not sure why he chose that day out of all of them, but Sunday it is. Ali reveals her true workaholic self by admitting she would check email first. No mention of a good-morning kiss or a little roll in the Sunday morning hay. Nope. Not Ali. She gets right to work. “I want to be the best I can be at my job,” she says. Woo hoo. Nothing says marriage material like a girl who equates Sunday morning with work.

We get some ominous stirrings that all is not right in Ali’s world, though, as she tells Jake that he would meet her mom, her sister, and her brother if he went back to her hometown for a date next week. We get no mention of Dad at all, and then she tells Jake that she “doesn’t come from a picture-perfect family.” Ooo…can’t wait to hear the dirt on this one!

They make out a bit at their table and Jake tells us he still has questions for Ali about the whole Vienna thing, but that can wait until later. But he also says, “There’s a comfort level with Ali. It’s just natural. I don’t have to try.”

We go to commercial and I see a preview for the new Alice in Wonderland movie, which makes me really excited until I hear that the voice Johnny Depp is doing for the Mad Hatter sounds almost identical to his voice for Willy Wonka. Fail.

Next we see Jake and Ali strolling along the Marina on yet another perfect day. There isn’t even any fog rolling in under the Golden Gate!

For some reason, at this point Jake points out a skanky-looking seagull with a large, writhing crab in its beak. Is this supposed to be symbolic of their relationship? Symbolic of the City? Of something else? Why show it?

They play some barefoot soccer on the Marina and then spread out a picnic blanket. Ali immediately makes me roll my eyes by pouncing on Jake under the guise of giving him a back rub. She straddles him while he lies flat on his belly. Jake tells us he wants to “make sure she’s OK with where we are” which I’m sure he meant relationship-wise, but I KNOW Ali’s just fine right where she is perched on Jake’s butt massaging his shoulders.

Jake turns over and Ali starts kneading on his pecs. Smooth move, girl. I would have done the exact same thing in your place. We get a lot of shots of them rolling around on the grass making out, and something about the way it’s all lit reminds me of a 60’s Summer of Love-esque montage. It’s all dappled light and green grass and free love.

Next we see them sitting somewhere on a low wall of some sort. Ali has a long chain necklace I haven’t noticed before, and it’s dangling down almost to her hoo-haw. Jake takes this opportunity to pop the cork on a champagne bottle and Ali squeals that that’s her favorite part.

Thus begins their serious discussion about what went on at the last Rose Ceremony. Jake tells Ali it seemed like there was something she wanted to talk to him about at the last Ceremony and she answers that she just wants him to be happy. “Sometimes other people see things that you may not see,” she says, and we know she really means that Vienna is all wrong for Jake. “Sometimes I don’t understand the decisions you make.”

We think we’re in for another moment of Vienna-bashing when suddenly Ali surprises us and tells Jake, “I don’t need you to really answer anything for me. If you pick me, then I’m yours. If you don’t, that’s OK too. I gotta leave it up to what’s meant to be. I don’t have questions about why certain people are here anymore.”

But Jake wants to chat about Vienna. He tells Ali, “I hear what people are saying. When I’m with her she’s honest and goes out of her way to let me know she’s here for me,” thus implying that Ali and the other girls DON’T do that.

“I want you to do what you feel 100%,” Ali replies. “I need to let go of that. I’m ready to let go of it.” Then they make out with tightly-clenched mouths. Methinks a bit of tension has entered into the Ali/Jake love story, no?

Later, Ali tells us, “I don’t understand it (keeping Vienna around), but it’s not my business to understand it. Because I’m really falling for him and that means I need to trust him through and through no matter what. I’m happy!” OK, Ali…we like you a bit more now, but only a bit.

They finish their date with them both running into the water at Chrissy Field and sharing a splash, a hug, and a kiss. How many of you ladies blanched when you saw Ali tromping through the brackish bay waters in her fancy leather boots? I don’t even wear fancy leather boots and I have to admit it made ME cringe.

“I could have stayed out there forever!” Ali gushes. “I will remember it forever. I am so smitten with that boy.” Awww…the smitten kitten.

We’re back at the hotel now, and it’s time for the schmoozing before the Rose Ceremony. Tenley tells us her heart is “beating like crazy” (she should know crazy, right guys?) and Vienna says, “I don’t think any of us know (grammar!) what Jake is thinking or feeling right now. It’s a really important Rose Ceremony tonight, so it’s important to get a rose tonight.” Ah, Vienna. Such a way with words, my lady. Nice to see you have taken a page from the Tenley-Points-Out-The-Obvious rulebook.

Jake pulls Tenley aside for the first alone time. It’s been a few days since their date on the phallic symbol, and Tenley is nervous that Jake has forgotten what a wonderful time she had. “I really want to believe that my connection is real,” she says. She seems nervous and unsure tonight, and Jake senses it. “This is the first night I heard Tenley kinda start to fall apart, “ he tells us.

Then for some random reason Tenley asks Jake when she gets to dance with him, and he sweeps her up and begins a very stilted box step around the room. I’m not sure why this needed to happen at this particular time, but Tenley seems happy. “I feel like I’ve never used my feet before!” she exclaims in an overly-giddy way, and they kiss a bit.

Back in the living room, Ali wonders if she’ll get to talk to Jake tonight at all, and Vienna quickly answers her with, “No. You just spent the day with him,” which literally cuts Ali right down to size it just a few words. She’s speechless now.

Next Jake comes to “steal” Corrie. Why do the bachelors and bachelorettes on this show always have to “steal” or “borrow” someone? It’s kind of creepy-sounding and verges vaguely on kidnapping.

Jake takes Corrie to a room with candles (Yay! Not enough of those so far this season…) and Corrie tells us that “it’s important” to get this time with Jake, except she pronounces it “impor-ent”, and drops the middle “T” sound again for some reason. Where was this woman raised?

The subject of her virginity comes up again, and Corrie creeps us all out by announcing, “Just because I’m a virgin doesn’t mean that I’m not in touch with my sensual side.” Virgin…touch…sensual…too many graphic images to deal with. Shutting down brain now.

Jake answers her that “it’s not about sex appeal, it’s about heart appeal” which is another total lie since no ugly woman has ever been allowed anywhere near this show. We all know Jake’s there to score a babe.

Back in the living room, Vienna tells Tenley she’s nervous about her decision to sneak into Jake’s bed back at the castle. I’m sure that won’t be the last thing Vienna regrets in her life if those pictures of her circulating around the Internet this week are any indication. Looks like our Vi enjoys the company of several young studlies when she parties it up at Daytona Beach over Spring Break.

Jake selects Gia next for some alone time, and Vienna casts a somber look down on the ground. Gia says she was worried about the double date, but compliments Jake on how he didn’t make either one of them feel like…wait for it…here it comes…oh no it’s….a THIRD WHEEL!

Gia tells him she has respect for him kicking Vienna out of bed. “You passed a little test,” she tells him, and we see that Gia may be deeper than we at first believed. She actually gives little tests to the guys she dates!

She wants to stand out, he says she does, and then he attacks her in a great big bear hug that results in no kissie-kissie for Gia.

Meanwhile, back in the living room, Tenley is playing with her boobs in her dress and saying she wants to cry since Jake told her he is falling for all of the remaining women. Ali tells her that she thinks Corrie or Gia is going tonight, which makes Tenley turn her thoughts to more holy beings and ask the ceiling, “Why not Vienna?” That’s an easy question to answer, Tenley: because Vienna’s most definitely not a virgin and because she doesn’t use the term third wheel ad nauseum. Hope that explains it for ya…

Vienna gets the next alone time with Jake, and she’s annoyingly impatient about it. Jake tell us he wants to do something special for Vienna to let her know that he’s glad she’s there, so he cues the dramatic music and walks her down an abandoned flight of stairs back to his room. They walk out onto an amazing balcony that overlooks everything and Vienna quips, “This is my first time I’ve been outside in the City!” which is funny and true.

They moon over the gorgeous views and Vienna tells us, “It was worth the wait! I needed my Jake fix, and I got it.”

The music swells as they both start telling us sappy things about the other like, “I need someone that I can lean on” and “I’m just going to let my heart go and see where it lands.” They make out a bunch and Jake even cups his hand behind her head to really mash his face into hers. I think the dude is really feelin’ it for Vienna, as much as that rubs everyone the wrong way.

We cut back to the living room upstairs and lo and behold, Chris Harrison has finally deigned to grace us all with his presence. He takes Jake aside for some interviews in a separate room. As they walk in and sit down, we see the five portraits of the remaining women behind Jake on a bookshelf. There are more candles here too! Hooray!

Chris goes girl by girl and asks Jake his impressions of each of them and their time together. It’s interesting to note here that Chris calls the girls in the order Jake dated them in San Francisco, but for some reason movies Vienna’s name to the end of the list even though her double date came in the middle of the episode. What’s up with that?

About Tenley, Jake says that she “just kinda has a way about her that she can look at me and make me relax,” and about Gia (Third Wheel! Third Wheel!) he says, “She might be the most insecure. I relate to her,” which is hilarious that Jake outs himself as totally insecure. When asked about Corrie, Jake answers that she is “pretty good being a sweet girl” and that their values “line up”, which I don’t believe for a second. Jake is no virgin. With Ali, Jake says, “Everything is so natural. Everything feels so right…”

Lastly we get to his impressions of Vienna and he says that, “She’s exciting. You never know what she’s gonna say next!” Chris presses Jake about the drama with the other girls over Vienna and even calls Vienna a “lightning rod for criticism and controversy in the house”, and Jake stands firm and says it doesn’t faze him at all (even though they are not living in a house anymore).

We flash back to that fateful night when Jillian broke Jake’s heart and let him go when Jake tells Chris: “I know that I am going to make one woman tonight feel the same way I did when Jillian let me go.” And we all remember THAT wasn’t pretty, right? There was much tearing up and leaning over hotel railings and stomping back in to tell on Wes after Jill dumped Jake.

Now we finally arrive at the Rose Ceremony. Corrie is standing there with her legs crossed, which makes me giggle since she’s the virgin. Could her body language BE any more obvious? Ali and Tenley take the defensive stance and have their arms behind their backs.

The music swells and the first rose goes to…Tenley! She beams. Gia looks down, then up. Corrie has a look on her face that incorporates a weird pouty-lip thing. Ali just looks dazed and confused.

Ali gets the next rose, and we cut to shot of Gia moving her lips around. Will she be the first lip sucker of the night? We shall see… Corrie is still pouty-lippy.

Gia gets the next rose and she clocks Jake a big one as she bangs her too-big bangly bracelet on his neck when she hugs him. She’s safe this week.

Chris steps in and informs us all, “This is the final rose tonight, when you’re ready,” and Jake does what we all knew he would do and picks Vienna. In a turn of events that shocks no one, Corrie the virgin is out.

Jake wells up and escorts her down to the waiting limo. “I’m so attracted to her, but I can’t really ignore the fact that there was just something missing. It just didn’t feel right,” which is double-speak for “Jakey’s not down with the virgins.”

Corrie whispers, “Good luck!” to Jake from her limo, and then gives us a tearful interview segment: “I don’t get it. Clearly I’m not the girl for him because I’m in this limo right now. Sometimes two people can, you know, be a good match and be attracted to each other, but just not be there and I feel like that was the case with Jake. Or I just put a wall up. I don’t do good (grammar!) dating a guy who’s dating other girls at the same time. I think that if me and Jake (you were smart to let go of her Jake…Grammar! Grammar! Grammar!) had been dating just each other and he hadn’t have been dating four other women, that things would have been different.” Uh…y’think?

Then we get a shot of her blowing her nose into a Kleenex complete with wet snot sounds. “I came here to get to know Jake and to see if he could be the person I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with and he wasn’t. I am really sad.”

She cries some more and then we’re done with poor Corrie. Happy trails to this season’s resident virgin.

We come back to the living room and Jake tells the remaining girls that he is excited to meet their families on the hometown dates next week. Then we cut to previews for next week and we get a smattering of just how crazy some of these parents are going to be.

We wish Jake good luck with Vienna’s dad who appears to be talking to him in a mechanic’s shop and telling him how he expects his daughter to be treated like a princess. We see Gia’s mom who has one of those tough New York accents and asks Jake point blank if he loves all four of the remaining women.

Then the music gets serious and we cut to a shot of Jake saying, “I thought all of the drama was overwith and now when I least expect it I’m getting the biggest bombshell of all dropped on me. I didn’t expect to get my heart broken again.” So now we know something juicy is up next week. The spoiler sites have been talking about it for a few weeks now, and I’d give it an 8 out 10 roses on the “OMFG…Really?!” Meter.

As the credits roll, we get yet another hilarious off-the-cuff scene of the girls. This time the focus is Tenley pretending to sing opera. She has this fake aria-sounding voice and keeps saying “hoo” and “hah” in weird ways. Corrie is singing along too while Gia covers her face. Tenley invites the other girls to “Join in any time! Please pick a hoo or a ha and hum in!”

No one else takes her up on it, but Corrie starts making those same sounds into a glass she’s holding. Gia stands up and rubs her tummy and tells them all they are weird. They are.

And there you go, sports fans. Another detailed look at that show we all love. Hope you found some interesting tidbits this week. Leave me some comments and let me know what YOU thought of the show. And don’t forget to join us on Facebook. Search “After the Rose” and join the group. Catch you next week for the hometown dates!