Oops!

So, I don't watch The Bachelor, or The Bachelorette, or whatever, any longer than it takes to channel surf though. I don't like the idea that they trivialize love for ratings; that they downplay finding true romance to a span of eight weeks and twenty-five bride-testants....or groom-testants. ABC, or CBSNBCMSDNBCFOXCNN, cannot find you love; cannot get you engaged; cannot help you get married.

Why not do it the old-fashioned way like I did........................................on the Internet.

But I digress.

Last night I was channel surfing and I came upon something called After The Final Rose and realized it was a Bachelor recap show, because, you know, they want to drag it out as long as possible to squeeze every last dime out of someone's life.

So I stopped. For a moment. Then I stayed. Big mistake. Huge.

To recap, The Bachelor has been on since the mid-fifties, I think. I believed it first premiered on CBS one Sunday night after I Love Lucy; you know, the one where Lucy wanted to be in the show, and Ricky tried to stop her, Ethel hid in a barrel and Lucy wore big shoes? Yeah, that one.

But in the forty-plus years that The Bachelor has been on, they have managed only one wedding; of course, that was The Bachelorette, and she soaked the media dry, getting engaged, married and birthing on TV. But hey, she got married, and I think she might still be married.

But she's the only one.

Which should tell you that The Bachelor/ette does not work.

Does anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together think you can actually find the "love of your life," your "life partner," the "man/woman of your dreams," on a TV show? Seriously? In eight weeks, you can whittle down twenty-five bride/groom-testants and find two that you want to marry. Then take those two that you love and want to spend the rest of your life with, and dump one and ask the other to be your televisonally wedded spouse?

That's what Jason Mesnick did last week, I guess. The single Dad, who says he was looking for his one true love and a mother for his son, got down to two, told one to pack her knives and go, that she has been eliminated from the race, the tribe had spoken, you're fired, and then professed his undying love to the other one.

Then After The Final Rose comes on and Jason--who strikes me as a little too family--comes out to say that Melissa, his TV bride-to-be, and he, had spent all the holidays together and spent time with his son, and all that, but...........................................now he couldn't stop thinking about the other girl, Holly, Dolly, Lolly.....Molly!. The one who packed her knives and.....anyway.

So, Melissa the bride-testant comes out and he dumps her on TV; why not, he proposed to her on TV, dated her on TV and would have had sex with her on TV if the damned show was on cable, and he liked women. She calls him a bastard and that's that.

Then the other girl comes out and he tells her he can't stop thinking about her, that he'd like to go for coffee and talk about what they want to do. Stay together. Tell him to $%&# off. No, they start mackin' on each other like teenagers in heat.

He just dumped his fiance and now he speaking with his tongue to the other one.

Nice example you set for you son, Jason,

Go on TV to find love.

Date twenty-five women in eight weeks.

Have hot tub foreplay on TV with ten to twelve women.

Overnight dates with four women on TV.

Tell two they are the loves of your life and would make great mothers to your son.

Dump one.

Propose to the other.

Then dump her.

Ask bride-testant number two for a second chance.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself Jason. You've shown your son that a good man treats women like tissues; he uses them up and then tosses them into a trash can next to the bed, and moves on. Dump one. Pick one. Dump again. Re-pick.

Father of the year?

Bastard of a Lifetime sounds more like it.

They won't let gay folks marry, but this is good television?

Pffffffft.