Maryann Castronovo: My best friend and ‘The Bachelorette’

Maryann Castronovo is an SDNN columnist.

I just made my best friend sit through an episode of “The Bachelorette” with me. With three kids running around, she doesn’t watch much TV, so I forced her to experience some of my bad habit. She resisted, told me I was the reason there is less scripted television, but finally succumbed.

By the end, she was hooked. She relished her little TV-cation from life and quite enjoyed the vicarious visit to Hawaii, all of the adventure and the awkward intimate moments shared with the 3 remaining hunks.

If you haven’t been watching (I would be surprised, because there’s absolutely nothing on TV in the summer), the show is about finding love. Our Bachelorette, Jillian Harris, gets to date 25 men (that’s right, 25!) in exotic places all around the world, until she narrows it down to 2. Then, at the end, she chooses one of them and hopefully he proposes an engagement or a promise to her, thus ending her existence as a lonely “bachelorette.”

The statistics for the survival of the relationships on this show have been dismal. In 13 seasons of “The Bachelor” (the show that “The Bachelorette” was spun from) not one Bachelor ended up married to the girl he gave the final rose to. Ho-hum. In five seasons of “The Bachelorette,” only one got married. Trista wed Ryan Sutter and they now have two children. One marriage in 18 seasons is not bad. I still have hope.

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Most seasons, the host boasts it is the “most dramatic season ever” and I truly believe this one finally lived up to that recurring phrase. This season has had a few sweet moments, but the awful, uncomfortable, dramatic moments have definitely outweighed the sweet.

For instance, one guy, Wes, had a girlfriend the whole time and bragged about it on camera to the other guys. This same guy brought his guitar everywhere he went, pretended he just wrote a song for her (one that was well rehearsed) and played it every time the cameras were rolling. Our Bachelorette didn’t catch on. Hello? Anyone in there? In the end, he slipped up and talked about his girlfriend, er-uh, I mean ex-girlfriend and it finally clicked for Jillian and we, the viewers got justice. Thank you.

We also had a guy with a foot fetish. Seriously. Once he saw her toes, he fell in love and openly admitted he wanted to “suck ‘um and eat ‘um” throughout eternity. Seriously! There was also a guy with anger management issues (David), an adorable breakdancer from New York (Michael), and an airline pilot from Dallas (Jake) who once rejected by Jillian, flew back to the show to inform her of Wes’s betrayal. Now that’s drama people!

Jillian Harris is The Bachelorette. (ABC Images)

This season the show went from Los Angeles, to the Canadian countryside, to Spain, and now they’re in Hawaii. If you can’t get into the spirit of the show, you can at least get into the cinematography. It’s been breathtaking, even when you have to look past the various make-out sessions that obstruct the view.

Have I mentioned that a lot of these guys cry when they aren’t given a rose to continue on the show? That’s right, real tears stream down the faces of grown men who’ve just lost the bachelorette to the others. Who says men are insensitive? Not on this show!

Last night, Jillian had three strapping bachelors Ed, Kiptyn, and Reid left. They all were given a romantic day and night in Hawaii to seal-the-deal and profess their love for her before she was to let one go. There were great dates, a man-kini (very small bathing suit), heaving petting, a bubbly bubble bath, an awkward intimate oil rubbing scene (a visual assault we didn’t really need to witness) and a lot of tonsil hockey. The cameras were so far in there for a second I worried if I’d need a mint.

In the end, she let Reid, my favorite go, and I was disappointed. I don’t know what was worse for him though, not getting a rose or the drive around in the limo afterwards. The limo ride was so long we could see the sun setting behind Reid’s head. They were going to stay in that limo asking him questions until he cried, even if it took all night. But he didn’t. I wanted to, though.

So, my bad habit will be ending in two weeks. My Bachelorette adventure will be over. Jillian is going to choose her man, hoping she found the one she can have a future with and I will have to move on.

No more hypnotizing friends so they will watch reality television with me. No more searching the internet for more information. No more placing bets. No more tv-cations.

It’s time to get back to reality.

Maryann Castronovo is an SDNN columnist. Email her at raisingmommy (at) aol.com.

Tags: bachelorette, maryann castronovo, SDNN

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 10:56 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.