Multiple Tygasms (Bachelorette 4 round of 3)

Suppose they get a marriage out of this one, maybe they can go on the new Newlywed Game and Bob Eubanks can ask the couple about the most unusual place they've made love.

If ever there was a Bachelor moment, it came when Jeremy Anderson asked to stop after they drove him off in the limo of shame. He gets out, starts to walk around the walls of Deanna's fortress of roseitude then does kind of a myspace.com-age take on Scarlett O’hara’s speech from Gone with the Wind. “As Fleiss will be my witness, I swear that I won’t lose anyone close to me again!”

It was such a breathtakingly good setup for making the guy the next Bachelor, I didn’t get much of a chance to think about all of its implications until well after the whole Jeremy beat down of the Men Tell All. First, the guys accused the Dallas attorney of not being a “team player”. I’d always wondered why gays sometimes talk about “playing for the other team”. If I understood this one, “it was that Jeremy couldn’t be on their team” because he was so busy chasing the one woman on the show instead of making nice with them in the outhouse. I have to say there was more gay subtext to that one than that whole bit in Top Gun where Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise banter about who gets to ride the other one’s tail the next time they fly into combat.

In the next bit, Jeremy got his chance to ask Deanna when she knew that she wasn’t going to give her a rose. “After all, we just spent the night in the fantasy suite together,” he reminds her. Deanna bluntly informs Mr. Sensitivity that she realized on her overnight dates with Jason Mesnick and Jesse Csinksak that she was more in love with them than she was with Jeremy. I’m pretty sure they edited out the bit where she confessed “You know for such a short guy that Jesse sure had big hands and feet. Wow! Talk about being shredded!”

It reminded me of that exchange in When Harry Met Sally where Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan are talking about bad first dates and Harry says “Of course I slept with her, why not?” The big switch though is that the gender roles were completely reversed. Throughout his time on the show, Jeremy came off as a “Sally”. Once he opened up, he talked relentlessly about his dead parents and how much he needed Deanna in his life now that he’d made this place in his heart. Deanna kept proclaiming Jeremy “perfect”, but they missed one major problem. At heart, Jeremy Anderson’s courtship style was completely female. He was the one who would give her all those little kisses who wanted to check in with her on her feelings. His brothers even give Deanna the speech a Dad might give his daughter’s suitor, “We want to make sure you don’t hurt him.”

Yes, there were a few nods to masculinity. He hit baseballs better than the rest of the guys and he rode motorcycles, but did you get a load of the guy’s condo? This guy didn’t want to get Deanna in bed, he wanted to be her best girlfriend. Jeremy and Deanna was all about “Tell me your secrets”, “I’m your special one”, “We’ve got this bond no one else has.”

One of the fascinating things about this installment is that Deanna Pappas is a “Guy” at heart. Notice how unromantic she was about the fantasy suite thing. Where I criticized Matt Grant and Brad “that bastard” Womack, for pretty much pillaging and plundering throughout their fantasy date segments, Deanna was surprisingly and unapologetically not that different. Even early on, she gets to leer at Graham Bunn’s chest and how she wants him to walk around shirtless for the rest of the show. Where women are supposed to be the romantic butterflies flitting in different directions yet wanting to be caught, Deanna was “Dammit, open up to me now and be spontaneously fun so we can start this *($*$ relationship. I’ll tell you just what I want. Who needs foreplay?”

And what is Deanna Pappas’s idea of a good time? She likes driving around in various contraptions really really fast and pushing physical limits. She even tends bar. Sexually, Deanna’s no Sadie Murray. After all her talk about not wanting to be cheated on, she was perfectly comfortable inviting three guys to the fantasy suite and making out with them (Who knows what else may or may not have happened?) By contrast, Jeremy Anderson was “We had that special night together, how could you dump me after I shared my most precious gift with you?”

Anyway, Jeremy Anderson wasn’t a guy’s guy, but at some level Deanna Pappas is a guy who happens to be female. I definitely believed her when she told the guy “Hey we had a very special connection, but you didn’t get out of the friend zone.” It’s what a guy might tell his female best friend when the possibility of “something more” comes up.

All that said, I’ve now thought about Jeremy’s oath that he wasn’t ever going to lose anyone in his life again and I need to say this, “Get over it guy. People die unexpectedly. They let you down. They leave. Unlike your condo, life’s messy. Learn to enjoy it and stop wandering around like you’re Haley Joe Osment in the Sixth Sense and seeing dead people all the time.”

My wife and daughter however thought that Jeremy was just the greatest guy. You know what? That scares the heck out of me.

In the meantime, the show was clearly trying to sell us on the possibility of Jesse without ever being all that convincing. Yes, he does talk about wanting to marry right way and have kids, but the guy was notably evasive about the where and the how? He talked about maybe spending winters in “Breck” with his pal “Dee” where she could work as an abbreviator while he teaches snowboarding. When asked what he’ll do instead of snowboard, he says “Maybe I’ll be an agent or a manager or something.” When it came to the “how”, he got awful fuzzy awful fast.

Jesse makes sense of Deanna’s “guy” nature by treating her like one of the guys. Instead of being her “girlfriend”, Jesse makes Deanna his “buddy”. They hang out, they kid around with one another, and it works surprisingly well because Deanna discovers that she’s really comfortable being one of the guys with her pal Jesse. He does wheelies on his quad, they fall off horses, and he always has her back.

So, how does the whole Jason thing work if Jeremy is the “girlfriend” and Jess is the “buddy”? I think we’re being shown that while Jeremy has everything Deanna says she wants in a guy and while Graham might be what her hormones tell her to want, Jason is the guy who brings out the Deanna, she’s never allowed herself to know. It’s one of the oldest movie romance plots. Jason’s the guy who manages to bring out Deanna’s tender side, her need to be a mother, a part of a family that’s bigger than “What Deanna wants and needs”. He takes Deanna, the control freak, and gets her to let her guard down which in turn allows her to claim her own femininity. The symbolic moment n the story arc is the kayak thing. In the kayak together, Deanna and Jason are just a bit out of control and she’s actually has fun, real fun.

Personally, I’m a little turned off by some of Jason’s salesmanish lines like “Thankyou for helping to learn that I can fall in love again….” or choosing just the right moment to say “right now Ty and you are the things that I think about all the time, but let’s not talk about Ty tonight this is our night.” It comes off a bit like he’s done this close a few dozen times before, but you can see that it’s definitely turning Deanna to mush. This is the place she’s never been and with Jason, she’s not the bossy-direct Deanna that turns so many fans off. She cries spontaneously, turns into a verbal gusher, and seems touched at some deep little girl level. If it’s an act, it’s the best Fleiss has ever done at simulating actual romance. Jason’s the guy who’s giving Deanna multiple Tygasms.

Of course, one of the hot topics appears to be the very real heat between Graham and Deanna that still came across on the Men Tell All. I’m glad that Graham shaved. He also came across as much wittier and way more fun than he ever did on the show itself. The still heavy duty flirting and teasing between Graham and Deanna does suggest that she couldn’t possibly be that hot with anyone else. If you think that, you don’t watch enough romance movies. Yes, there does appear to be chemistry between Deanna and yet another guy who works in a bar. Some chemistry, however, is about explosions and some is all about the slow boil. There are any number of plots that start with the shyer nerdier guy who gets overlooked then wins out in the end. Graham may still be the guy who knows how to press Deanna Pappas’s buttons, but my guess is that they’ll find a way to make Jason the guy who knows how to open them.

Other bits:

1) I was irritated that Fred didn’t get to talk, then they had that cool bit with the attractive dark-haired woman giving Fred his rose.

2) Whatever I’ve said about Jeremy being too feminine. His exit was also pretty classy which suggests that he might make a good Bachelor.

3) Are they going to explain that blue golf ball thing with Ty?

4) If I were casting the Bachelorette movie. I’d do Bob Eubanks (the Newlywed Game host) for Jason Mesnick. A young Robin Williams for Jesse Csinksak, Dermot Mulroney or Dylan MacDermott (I’m pretty sure they’re actually the same actor) for Jeremy Anderson, Brad Womack for Graham Bunn….okay that’s not fair- how about Jesse Metcalfe (no physical resemblance, but they play the same role), and Tiffany Amber Thiessen (when she had dark hair) for Deanna Pappas.

5) I loved the bit with Paul sneaking a bubble bath. Jeremy going into her bedroom to kiss her was a little creepy. It was interesting that Graham would go talk to her and hug and makeup during the filming.

6) I don’t get why Ryan Hoag is so confrontational. Aren’t Christians supposed to turn the other cheek? I thought Deanna was perfectly appropriate with him. She was also right to tell Graham that meeting someone's parents is just part of the show.

7) The mullet chat about Sean was really funny.

8) She said she was engaged, but she didn’t say it was to anyone she met on the show. Maybe Brad comes back and proposes :}

Anyway, I still think this ends with Jason and Deanna with maybe Jason asking Deanna's dad for her hand and Ty popping up in some way. If it doesn't? Then well Frankly My Dear, I don't give a damn.



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