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.