Grantland Reality Fantasy League: The Tale of One Lonely Guy, 25 Eager Women, and 18 Egg Whites
ABC
After it’s all said and done, when you become a truly self-actualized person, you realize that there’s nothing more important than love. I know this because I watch reality TV.
This week, the GRTFL showcased the variety of the different loving relationships that are part of this shared human experience. The Bachelor featured AshLee, who spent her time with Sean discussing the ratio of biological-to-adopted children they would have. (It was their first date.) On The Real Housewives (No One Can Remotely Relate To) of Beverly Hills we got to know Marisa, whose love for her husband is a different brand of love — specifically she loves to disrespect and humiliate him in public. And Buckwild? Buckwild featured love in its twilight. Shain Gandee bid adieu to OTP, his pickup truck, with an emotional farewell, “Well Ranger, you have been fun, few threesomes, DUI, few mud holes, snorkel … you did good.”
While Buckwild failed to deliver a single GRTFL point his week, The Bachelor more than made up for it with dozens of women crying, forcing Sean to kiss them, and faking head trauma to get their butts rubbed. Allow me to explain.
Lesley M. (The Bachelor, House), 15 points: The Guinness Book of World Records is associated with the beer? Let me Google it … HOLY SHIT IT IS! AND IT WAS FIRST PUBLISHED TO SETTLE BARGUMENTS?!? That’s exactly the answer I hoping for.
I ask because on The Bachelor this week, Sean the Boring Blonde took Lesley M. on a date to the Guinness museum on the most nauseating block in Los Angeles. There, we learned that Sean’s dad holds the world record for driving through each of the contiguous United States — a feat he apparently accomplished in 97 hours and seven minutes. As if the family hadn’t reached their super-lame record quota already, Sean and Lesley were awarded the record for “longest onscreen kiss” (3 x 5 = 15 points). Normally, I pretty much loathe everyone on this show, but during that kiss I felt an odd emotional response to Lesley. I wanted to kidnap her, but, like, nice kidnap her.
You see, Lesley is as normal as women get on this show. She’s from the south, but not in a clichéd Buckwildy kind of way. She’s hot, but more sneaky-attainable hot than Courtney the Bill Belichick of Bachelorettes hot. And she has an actual, ya know, job. She really shouldn’t be on a makeshift stage at the corner of Hollywood and Highland kissing some super-square blonde bro on national television while being closely monitored by a creepy dude holding a stopwatch. She should be on the Washington, D.C. happy-hour circuit bagging type A politicians-in-training until she finds the one that’s right for her.
Instead, she’s forced to wait in line to spend five minutes with a dude who is so scared to lean in for a kiss that the first time she had to do it herself, the second time it was part of this over-produced record attempt, and the third time he straight up … well … this is how he approached it:
Sean: “I took control back, now I am waiting for you to take it back.”
Lesley: “I can do that. (kisses him) How’s that for taking control?”
Oh yeah, did I mention this kiss went down on the roof of a hotel? But not, like, a finished hotel roof where you go for a swim in the pool, but a hotel roof where a plumber goes when he needs to fix the water tower. One more thing, when they kissed … this happened:
Confetti explosion? Seriously? They just kissed, producers. They didn’t win the fucking NBA championship.
Kim (Housewives, Jacoby), 10 points: How is it possible that Kim has kicked her drug and alcohol problem? When she was telling her psychic/scam artist about the people she “feels” in her house and all the hearts that she sees “flying out of the fireplace,” THEY HAD TO SUBTITLE HER (10 points). Yep, the incoherent lady slurring about all the hearts and ghosts that she sees around the house is sober. Cocaine should use sober Kim as a marketing tool.
AshLee (The Bachelor, Simmons), 10 points: Have you ever had that feeling where you’re 99.99 percent sure that someone isn’t being honest, but you have to give him the benefit of the doubt or you look like a jerk? Like the whole Manti Te’o thing? That was basically how the producers felt when Tierra fell down the stairs. Right before Sean arrived to pick up AshLee for her one-on-one date, Tierra “fell” down the stairs and acted all concussy. Now the producers know damn well that she’s just faking it to get a little attention from Sean, but they have to take her word for it and call the medics. Obviously, once the medics showed up and tried to take her to the hospital, she miraculously recovered and got a little private time and a butt rub from Sean. AshLee was not pleased.
Their date was supposed to be the two of them with an amusement park all to themselves, but the vibe quickly changed from “let’s have some fun on a roller coaster” to “let’s talk about my childhood” (“I was abused”), how many children I want to have (“as many as my husband and I decide on”), and adopting babies (“something that has always been on my heart”). AshLee The Personal Organizer seemed to take this simple heart-to-heart conversation as some sort of creepy bonding ritual, declaring, “Now my heart is in his hands to hold and nurture and take care of, and for me to place that in his hands willingly, I never thought that would happen. And to completely immerse myself into the possibility of loving this man for the rest of my life, it’s scary. I really want this. I never thought I would believe in this.”
EXACTLY what a guy wants to hear on the first date. In AshLee’s defense, the romantic mood was in the air because they were being serenaded by the soft jams of the Fat Seth MacFarlane Band:
Dez (The Bachelor, Connor), 10 points: Who made out with Sean twice this week? Dez did (no relation to Bryant). Who did a little online research for this week’s GRTFL Top Five? GRTFL Super Scorer Caitlin Mangum. This week’ s GTRFL Top Five is The Top Five Strangest Things That the Google Machine Taught Us About Sean the Boring Blonde Bachelor listed from “OK, that’s a little odd” to “please save some of his DNA; it might come in handy as science advances:”
5. He frequently sees movies by himself. (I co-sign this behavior.)
4. He designs furniture for a living. (Didn’t expect that one.)
3.2 He brushes his teeth four times a day. (Never trust a man who brushes at midday.)
2. He used to unload trucks of adult diapers for a living. (Unload them from where and into what?)
1. He eats 18 egg whites a day. (Wait wait wait … what? This last one needs a paragraph.)
OK, 18 egg whites a day is a lot of egg whites. Let’s imagine Sean goes to the grocery store once a week. If he’s really eating 18 egg whites a day, that means he’s buying 11 cartons of eggs every time he goes to the grocery store. Also, anyone who has ever made egg whites knows what a bitch it is to separate the whites from the yolk. What does he do with the yolk? How much time does he take for breakfast every morning? This can’t be true. There must be some serious medical repercussions to eating that many egg whites. Did the egg whites turn him blonde? Can anyone prove otherwise? I hope he prepares them with veggies in an omelet or something. Do the women know this about him? I feel like that would change things. I’m not sure AshLee would have “immersed herself into the possibility of loving this man for the rest of her life” if she knew that he routinely ate 18 egg-white omelets.
Kacie B (The Bachelor, House), 10 points: Kacie B. cried twice (10 points) and made two critical errors this week. This first error was snitching on her volleyball teammates for infighting. When she brought it to Sean’s attention that some of the girls were throwing shade at each other, Sean’s responses were, “Um, why are you saying something to me?” “Why are you involving yourself?” and “I want you to act like Kacie, not this crazy person that I’m seeing.” Trust me, the second error was even worse.
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS DRESS THAT SHE WORE TO THE ROSE CEREMONY?
Is she going scuba diving? Is that from the Body Glove couture line? Lady Gaga would look at that dress and say, “Sorry, too much.” Who designed that dress and said to themselves, you know what this needs? A HUGE NEON YELLOW ZIPPER DOWN THE BACK? She looks like a backup dancer in the Living Colour “Cult of Personality” video. (The seven of you who got that laughed. Maybe.)
Lindsay (The Bachelor, Kang), 5 points: Lindsay’s stock has been rising, I would pick her to win, but I don’t think that Sean wants to spend the rest of his life telling the story of how they met with, “She arrived to our first date in a wedding dress, got super slammered, and then forced me to kiss her (5 points).” Just a hunch.
Kristy and Leslie H. (The Bachelor, House), 5 points: New GRTFL weekly gag! I’m calling it “Questionable Moment of the Week.” It works like this: I ask a ton of questions about some shit that happened that week that doesn’t make sense to me, kind of like I did with Kacie B’s wetsuit/prom dress/hazmat thing. This week’s Questionable Moment of the Week — the volleyball game.
How can 12 girls all be so bad at volleyball? Why are they all wearing the same bikini? Can’t they bring their own bikinis? Where did that scoreboard come from? Did they really practice with pros? Why was Sean in the game sometimes and out of it sometimes? Kristy and Leslie didn’t really cry because they lost, right (5 points)? Not one return went over the net the whole time? Couldn’t they have just cheated a couple shots? Why did they go through the trouble of raking the sand for this game? Who was in charge of those weird barrier things? What function did they serve? Most importantly, after the game, WHY DO THEY ALL HAVE TO SIT ON THE SAME COUCH? WHY?
That is too many people on one couch.
Brandi (Housewives, Simmons), 5 points: While Brandi was arguing with Mauricio (5 points), Yolanda told Taylor to stay out of it or something and Taylor (who’s husband recently hanged himself) remarked, “I don’t want to hear Yolanda’s opinion when she is sitting in a multimillion-dollar house in Malibu. Find David (Yolanda’s husband) hanging … and then be bankrupt … and then have a $1.5 million lawsuit … and public companies suing you … and not been a supermodel … and then let me know how you feel.”
Shots. Fired. I’m just going to leave that alone and share a fun fact about the new Real Housewife No One Can Remotely Relate To of Beverly Hills, Marisa: She makes a sport of disrespecting her husband in public. This week’s second GRTFL Top Five is the Top Five Most Disrespectful Things Marisa Said About Her Husband This Week listed from “I don’t see this marriage lasting long” to “There should probably be police and divorce lawyers outside of their house 24/7:”
5. “He is so handsome, but I ended up marrying like exactly the opposite of what I am interested in.”
4. “My husband really enjoys working on independent films. I wish that he would do a studio film, make lots of money, and everything that comes with that.”
3. “It’s funny because, it is like, because I will look at him across the room and my sister always says, ‘He’s cute, I don’t know why you think other guys are cuter.’ I don’t even think he is that sexy.”
2. “He is so in love with me, and I am so lucky, but we met so young. I wish I would have married him in my 30s.
1. “I just have been looking at him for so long.”
All of this talk prompted Brandi to suggest that while Marisa’s husband is making an independent film in Romania, he’s going to sleep with tons of gorgeous Romanian prostitutes. Marisa didn’t seem too worried; I’m sure she thinks that even prostitutes won’t sleep with him.
Taryn (The Bachelor, Jacoby), 5 points: Right now, if you showed Sean a picture of this Taryn chick who cried over him (5 points), he would have no idea what her name was.
Check back next week because Buckwild promises to feature lesbians and The Bachelor girls get after each other at the roller-derby rink. Shouldn’t The Bachelor and roller derby just have a TV show child called Roller Bachelor? I have to work on that for the Grantland YouTube channel.
Filed Under: ABC, Bravo, Buckwild, Mtv, Real Housewives, Reality TV, Reality TV Fantasy League, The Bachelor
More from David Jacoby
-
Lowbrow Highlights: Bromance Blossoms on ‘The Bachelorette’
-
Lowbrow Highlights: Hook-up Theories and Concussion Drama on ‘The Bachelorette’
-
Lowbrow Highlights: Analyzing the Greatest ‘This Season On’ Promo Ever on ‘The Bachelorette’
-
Lowbrow Highlights: The 2015 ‘Bachelorette’ Bro Bio Breakdown
-
Lowbrow Highlights: GG From ‘Shahs of Sunset’ Gets Weird on the First Date
More ABC
-
I Loathe the ’80s: ‘Wicked City’ Is an Empty Journey Into the Dark Heart of the Sunset Strip
-
2015 Fall TV Preview: Burn It All Down
-
‘Bachelor in Paradise’: The Epic Season Finale That Will Change Everything (or Nothing)
-
‘Bachelor in Paradise’: Samantha Turns on Joe and Ashley I. Books a Night in the Fantasy Suite
-
‘Bachelor in Paradise’: Juelia Gets Her Revenge, and Suggestions on How to Fix ‘After Paradise’
More Hollywood Prospectus
-
Brand Echh: Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton Can’t Save the Lame ‘Our Brand Is Crisis’
-
50 Scenes That Do Not Appear in the Fox ‘X-Files’ Revival
-
In Praise of Beach Slang, 2015’s Best, Most Sincere Rock Band
-
Who Was Missing From Taylor Swift’s Miami Squad?
-
Happy ‘Halloween’: The Best Horror-Movie Monsters