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‘The Bachelor’: Episode No. 7 recap
From the previews, it appears that type of life has less to do with dealing with odd hours, understanding that the Navy comes first and being a good mom, and more to do with jumping off of waterfalls and eating sushi. Sounds like a pretty easy gig.
Andy takes all three ladies (separately, of course, this is the final three) to the site of the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor to start the weekend of frivolity. Apparently, producers felt it was important to show some solemnity before we got to all the booze and breasts. Each is dutifully touched by the sentiment, and this is the only scene we get that has anything to do with the U.S. Navy. So much for Andy’s proclamation that it is “all about being a U.S. Naval officer.” That stuff doesn’t play on TV, pal, sorry.
In an interesting development, Winnie makes it quite clear that she wants to be “here at the end.” Apparently, the change from frigid D.C. to the sunny confines of the Aloha State has brought about a change in our young front-runner. The couple while away the sunset drinking champagne and talking about how much they make each other laugh. Apparently, the laughter and authentic enjoyment these two feel while in each other’s company is being saved for the director’s cut DVD.
Back at the resort, Andy marvels at Winnie’s beauty, admitting that he loved her tomboy side, but to see her at dinner all dressed up, he feels like he’s a king and she’s his queen. There seems to be a very patriarchal and antiquated theme in the way Andy thinks about the male-female relationship, a feeling of ownership. Overwhelmed by Winnie’s beauty and candor regarding her growing feelings, Lt. Love Boat does his best Mr. Roarke and offers Winnie a key to the Fantasy Suite. She accepts, and the couple retreats to the Jacuzzi bath tub for the night. In their bathing suits.
Next up on the love merry-go-round is Danielle (“Crude Attempts”). General Goofball and Crude Attempts take a boat trip in which we learn that dolphins may be Crude Attempt’s favorite animal. Fascinating. She professes that the experience is a dream come true for her. Really? Ever since childhood, or even as a woman in your 20s, the dream you’ve always had is of being in the final three on a reality dating program? Surrounded by cameras? With your imminent expulsion from Fantasy Island casting a pall over everything you do? Dream big, ladies. Shame on you, ABC.
Apparently, Andy still has his skepticism, too, as he has reserved a third seat at their beachside dinner for, you guessed it: a psychic. A woman then shows up with a deck of regular playing cards. Yikes. Crude Attempts tries to act excited by the mystery of it all, but you’ve got to feel for the girl. How would you like to have your life’s fate decided by a woman who looks like she just popped over from her smoke break as a $5-table blackjack dealer at Harrah’s Kauai? This second in a long line of soothsayers in Crude Attempts’ life sees that she has a little sadness in her past and that she could be feeling apprehension. Yet another pearl of uncanny wisdom from a fortune teller. You mean to tell me that she could see that a woman who has gone on TV to find a husband and is almost 30 might have had enough life experience to endure sadness and be feeling just a tad apprehensive? What with the cameras and strangers (including Andy) staring at her? Oh, and the two other women. Shocking.
After they part ways with Miss Cleo, Hervé Villechaize comes out and escorts the couple to the Fantasy Suite. It’s classic watching Andy feign amazement at the suite after spending the previous night in an almost identical room with a different woman. Once inside, Crude Attempts engages Andy in small talk about how many kids he would like, which brings out the sex tiger in Andy. Nothing like children talk to get ol’ Andy’s motor running.
The final overnight date belongs to Bevin (“Salty Dog”). The couple hikes through a rainforest, wherein they are amazed to find it raining, and Andy asks Salty Dog if she would love to live there with him. Wow. As the kids say, I guess I won’t hate the player, but Salty Dog had the look in her eyes as if she thought Ed McMahon was gonna walk out of the forest with a big prop check and balloons would fall from the trees. No, Salty Dog, you have not yet won; Andy just wanted to keep you on your toes. He also wants to get you in a bikini, so the couple goes diving off of a miniature cliff into a pool of water. What transpires next is a bit of groping that resembles something you might see on a soft-core porn channel produced by Hallmark. Salty Dog admits that she is ready to take her life to the next level and get married (again) and have kids (for the first time, as far as we know).
With all of the dates having gone as well as Lt. Love Sick could have hoped, he is terribly conflicted. With a run along the beach not doing the trick to clear his mind, Andy calls in his friend Karch Kiraly to play sounding board. Actually, dude’s name is “Gatsby.” As any good consigliere would, Gatsby asks Andy which woman he’d like to see welcoming him at the finish line of an Ironman triathlon. Andy is perplexed, but he feels his friend has honed in on what this search is all about and admits that he wants a woman who will be there with his kids at the finish line and revel in his glory. The whole thing is like some “Father Knows Best” for the LiveStrong generation dream sequence. Gatsby seems confident Andy will make the right choice but is adamant in insisting that he pick “Daisy.”
All good things must come to an end, unfortunately, and Andy lines up the women on the beach for the penultimate rose ceremony. After he offers a rose to Salty Dog and Winnie Cooper, it is curtains for Crude Attempts, who was last seen on the Wikki Wikki shuttle at the Honolulu airport mumbling something about psychics and dead people.
Next week’s big finale promises a bit of intrigue as Lt. Love Shark takes the final two contestants back to his home of Lancaster, Pa., where it seems his conservative family is entranced by Winnie Cooper’s beauty and completely nonplussed by Salty Dog having grown up practicing the B’Hai faith. Oh, Salty Dog, will your delicious and confounding secrets never end?
“Miss” any of the previous episodes? Check out my recaps here: Episode #6 | Episode #5 | Episode #4 | Episode #3 | Episode #2
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By Dian Darby
May 17, 2007 2:40 PM | Link to this
I really have enjoyed your Randy Andy series. Where do you get all the inside scoop?