Sir RaiderDuck OMS

Chris Soules was an unusual example, methinks: He made a big, big deal out of being a simple Iowa farmer who had no interest in big-city glitz, and stated more than once that he would return to that life after the show was over. So he picks the one girl who seemed to be cool with that, goes on DWTS, decides he wants to be a Hollywood famewhore after all and dumps Whitney in favor of his DWTS partner (who was also named Whitney). Maybe he's doing this to help his real estate business along with increased name recognition. I can tell you for a fact that he is definitely NOT a celebrity here in Scottsdale: at the risk of sounding arrogant, a lot of famous people spend all or part of the year here, so the son of a racecar driver (Arie's primary racing claim to fame is his dad winning the Indy 500) is kind of "meh." I had no idea he even lived in Scottsdale until my wife told me, and she only knew because she remembered it being mentioned during Emily's season. Imagine being cooped up in your car for hours at a time. Imagine not being able to scratch your nose, or change how you're sitting, or go to the bathroom, or even stretch out your arms except during a pit stop. If your attention wanders for even a split-second, you will likely die. If your hands cramp and you take them off the wheel for a split-second, you will likely die. If you try to adjust your cramping legs and your feet come off the pedals when they're not supposed to, you probably won't die, but you will lose valuable position in a sport where split-seconds can mean the difference between winning and losing. It's stressful and dangerous as hell. WOW! Where the hell is that Arie this season? No wonder my wife liked the guy: that clip was genuinely witty and funny. Speak for yourself. Some of us like women who are a little larger. During Kaitlyn's season, the first episode was a competition between her and Britt to determine who would be the Bachelorette and who would go home. Right after the guys voted in Kaitlyn, one of the Britt voters came up to Kaitlyn and respectfully said he liked her but had really come on the show for Britt. She thanked him for his honesty, let him leave and he ended up dating Britt for awhile.

That's what I kept thinking of. Really dampened my enjoyment of the show, but it's not this Benoit's fault that he shares the name. Other observations: I'm fine with never hearing that awful song again. Nice use of low camera angles to disguise the fact that maybe 10 spectators showed up. Would've enjoyed more clips of the international versions. Love the one version where the guy pulled a Peter and said (paraphrasing) "Maybe I could fall in love with you at some point, but I'm not there right now because we barely know each other," followed by the Bachelorette flatly ordering him off the show. Guess excessive entitlement is a worldwide emotion (and that applies to both Bachelors and Bachelorettes). Ben should totally have picked JoJo. Dean says he's grown up a lot. We'll find out the first time he's in an awkward situation: Does he actually address things and deal with them now, or does he fall back on that stupid half-giggle, followed by his getting up and leaving? So Luke is back in Bachelorland again. Guess this means either he or Peter could be the next Bachelor if nobody from the upcoming Bachelorette season excites. Chad would've been a natural for this show. Bet he's regretting his little "Fuck you, Chris Harrison!" tantrum on BiP.

So those cheapskates shut down half the property and fumigated the other half? What happens when the bugs migrate back over? Anthony should have just called the Health Department on them, not that it matters: sooner or later, someone's going to get tetanus or sepsis or some other nasty disease from walking on those horrid metal stairs with their bare feet, and the resulting lawsuit will drive the owners right into bankruptcy. Didn't Nick or whoever say that multiple guests had ended up with pieces of metal embedded in their skin?

Wouldn't Manda's Celiac disease make Chef a poor career choice? Not being able to taste anything containing gluten would seem a considerable handicap...

Moving to 9AM Mondays means one of two things: 1: They're about to cancel the show and are burning off the remaining episodes, and/or 2: They've determined that most of the show's viewership is using On-Demand services like Hulu and whatnot to watch it, making the actual time slot kind of irrelevant.

According to my Hulu Live TV guide, there are new episodes scheduled to air on 10/30 and 11/6. On this last one, Hoda was awful: blaming the guests for everything and saying she's too good to sit in on staff meetings. And who in the blue hell thought it a good idea to hand out master keys to the guests???

Early in the season when we're being asked to keep track of a lot of people, Boys vs Girls is an easy-to-remember team dynamic.

My guess is that a lot of the "100 homes a year" are bought at a discount from distressed sellers and then listed at full price with little or no renovations aside from cleanup. Having said that, I like the show. None of T&C's hysterics and none of Desert Flipper's endless emphasis on "Outdoor/Indoor Lifestyle" (DF's Lindsey must get paid to say that phrase at least once per episode).

A friend of mine is from Germany and in his mid-to-late 30s. A few weeks ago, I mentioned "Hogan's Heroes" in passing; he had literally no idea what I was talking about and couldn't conceive of the idea of a sitcom based on a Nazi POW camp. I finally had him fire up Wikipedia on his phone and look it up, and his response was something like "Oh my GOD."

As far as I can tell, Rachel literally picked Bryan over Peter because the later wouldn't promise to propose to her. She didn't want to be first Bachelorette to leave the show empty-handed. I don't think Arie will reach those levels of desperation. For one thing, he has a career separate from the franchise. For another thing, he's not under the pressure (some of it self-induced) that Rachel was as the first black Bachelorette.

Dean drove me nuts with his whole "I hate myself right now" shtick. No, Dean, you don't. Why do I know this? Because if you were really sorry about this kind of behavior, YOU WOULDN'T KEEP DOING IT. There would be no way to show the ring purchasing without giving away the Big Surprise. I've known women like Christen: they only want the guys they can't have. As soon as the guy actually become available, they lose interest. It's a way of being wanted and desired without having to follow through on the responsibilities of a relationship. And don't even get me started on someone who flaunts her virginity whilst going on a hookup show. I would probably boycott an Amanda season: Her stupid baby voice whining about how much she misses her daughters when she leaves them for weeks on end to go on trashy reality shows.

I loved how Kristina was totally over Dean in the studio segment. There's nothing wrong per se with Dean playing the field, but he needs to handle it a HELL of a lot better than this. For starters, if all he's looking for is a temporary FWB situation, then he needs to SAY THAT from the start and not act like it's anything more. Case in point: Back in the 1970s, a friend of a friend was exactly like Dean: playing the field but being dishonest about it. He'd string women along and tell them "I just want someone to love" or whatever until he got bored with them and moved on. Cut to ten years later and this guy was now wanting to get married and settle down. He'd built up such a reputation in the Eugene area that he was having drive two hours each way to Portland to hit the singles' bars there: literally every decent singles bar in Eugene had someone he'd been with or at least someone who knew him and would scare potential dates off with "I know this guy. He's going to sweet-talk talk you into bed and dump you a week later." This could well be Dean in a few years.

I'm assuming they're going for an Orange is the New Black situation where the supporting cast rises up to the level of the main protagonists. This is the time to start fleshing them out bit by bit.

I may have made some hasty assumptions regarding the upbringing and attitudes of Rachel's parents. However, I STILL say Rachel's mom would not want her to end up with Eric, and that was the source of the mostly well-masked hostility towards him. As for my fiancee's friends: Their not wanting to return to the projects they grew up in, even to visit, is rooted in two things: A hatred for the projects themselves, and the fact that most of their family and friends still in the projects accused them of "acting white" when they enrolled at Columbia.

We're seeing a well-known dynamic at work here. Some people who come from less-than-successful backgrounds but then achieve success (as Rachel's family obviously has) hate where they grew up and people who act "too White Trash" (or "too Mexican" or "too Asian" or "too Black" or whatever). Eric is obviously a smart and well-spoken man who has made great strides to improve his life; however, his speech and mannerisms are still very "hood," for lack of a better term. Rachel's parents, who have spent their lives integrating themselves into upper-class white society, would totally see Rachel choosing Eric as a step in the wrong direction. They seem snobby and uptight because that's how the people they work and socialize with carry themselves, so they're mirroring that behavior as a way to be accepted. (FYI: My fiancee is from Chicago and knows a couple of African-American classmates at Columbia College who came up out of the projects, got scholarships and today are very successful. Not only do they never, ever go back to the projects they grew up in, they refuse to even drive through those neighborhoods or associate with the people who still live there.)

TVTropes.org (one of the best time wasters on the Interwebs) has a wonderful name for that kind of behavior: My Beloved Smother.

I only started watching during Chris Soules' season (my fiancee dragged me into this stupid show and I now I can't stop watching), but I understand the Fantasy Suite was handled at least somewhat discreetly before two big things blew it open: Nick's "Why did you sleep with me if you were gonna pick someone else?" whining during Andi's finale, and Kaitlyn being very upfront to the media about the fact that she'd slept with all three guys in her Final 3 and had used their performance as part of her final decision. Now the show doesn't even pretend to hide what happens.

Rachel may be getting into Panic Mode here: She's 31 years old and if she wants to settle down and have a family, realistically only has about a decade left to bear children (after 40, the risk of miscarriages and birth defects skyrocket, and the pregnancy becomes even harder physically). She either has had unsuccessful relationships or may not have had time to pursue relationships the way she'd like with her busy attorney schedule (I have a friend who's an attorney and while she's quite successful professionally, her personal life is a trainwreck: her one and only marriage was over within weeks). Or maybe everything's fine, Rachel's already picked Bryan, and the producers are just having their fun with us.

I stand corrected. I thought I read somewhere that Luke and Chase had both turned the show down. Later, of course, the show's media people said they'd picked Nick over Luke and Chase, but I assumed that was the usual TV spin. So maybe one of them IS the next Bachelor if Rachel picks Peter. The only guy from JoJo's season we can definitively rule out IMHO is Chad: no way anyone says 'Fuck you, Chris Harrison!" without being frozen out of the franchise forever.

Peter's playing this just right to become the next Bachelor: being charming and witty and appealing enough to make the F3 whilst sending enough "I don't know if I want to get married" signals to Rachel to scare her off. I still say Bryan's the pick, Peter's the next Bachelor, and all three finalists get a Fantasy Suite roll in the hay. If I'm wrong and Peter's the pick, then I don't know who the next Bachelor will be: No way TPTB pick Eric, and Bryan comes off like Juan Pablo 2.0. Luke and Chase from JoJo's season supposedly already turned the producers down a year ago (Nick Viall was their fallback option), so maybe....Arie?

Regarding grammar and accent: Part of the reason (IMHO) people are taken aback by Eric's grammar and speech patterns is because the other African-Americans on the show (DeMario, Josiah, Diggy, Kenny, etc) all spoke well and had very good diction. Eric's speech patterns are no surprise to anyone who's ever known minorities from the inner city (or watched Boyz n the Hood, Menace 2 Society, etc) but they are different than what you normally hear on American television. As for the dates: Bryan is currently head and shoulders ahead of the rest, as proven by Rachel buying those matching expensive-ass watches. Unless his Hometown Date is a disaster, he's her pick and Peter is the next Bachelor. I'd also expect Rachel, who is obviously very comfortable with her body and her sexuality, to make full use of the Fantasy Suite with Bryan, Peter and probably Dean.

TMZ is reporting that Corinne may have been too drunk to legally consent, which opens the door to sexual assault allegations.

There is precedent for that. Go back and read some Perry Mason novels both before and after the beginning of the TV series. Once Raymond Burr was selected as Mason by series author Erle Stanley Gardner, he clearly altered Mason's physical description and speech patterns in the latter novels to match Burr. As for Season 3, which I binge-watched yesterday (**SPOILERS**): The entire KTK subplot seemed to go nowhere, but they're presumably setting it up for next season. Got a kick out of watching the last two Blackwater guys turn on each other when things went to shit. Took me half the season to realize that was Paul Calderón playing Robertson. Ditto with Arnold Vosloo playing Gomez. Also, I gotta love Gomez mocking Bosch's life choices when he (Gomez) had become a de facto hitman for that scuzzy director. Bosch is lucky nobody caught his little camera setup on Gunn until they knew he'd been framed for the murder. Speaking of which, I didn't really buy his high-and-mighty act with Edgar when he found out everyone had been checking him. He (Bosch) had been going WAY outside both the law and accepted police procedure in putting hidden cameras in Gunn's apartment, particularly when nothing he gleaned from that would have been admissible. So now Bosch wants to bring down a key city official for his mother's four-decade-old murder based on an innkeeper's fuzzy memory of that official using a friend's CI name to check into the same motel where the murder happened? Good luck with that.

Weighing in late here: It can be very tiring to be constantly told "How dare you not help me more?" and otherwise guilt-tripped by a family member. Erica's childish ultimatum to her brother was the worst: he sensibly asks why he should lose his business and have his family go destitute to be her wetnurse in far-away Houston, and her response is basically "If you don't, I'll die and it'll be your fault." I'd have ordered her the fuck out of my house for pulling that kind of emotional blackmail. As for Molly: Yes, she was a queen bitch. On the other hand, she obviously felt manipulated into doing something she hated for a sibling who carried around this dark cloud of negativity and was endlessly demanding. She couldn't reasonably lash out at her husband, so Erica took the brunt. Of course, none of this helps Erica's endless sense of victimhood. It's just a bad situation all the way around.

And let's not forget Penny and her oxygen mask....