WHY do I Watch?

So Brad, the Shoe Bachelor, as my big extended family likes to call him around the hacienda because he has the personality of a shoe, chose Emily.  You guys remember Brad, right?  He was on a couple of years ago and didn't pick anyone?  I didn't think there was anything wrong with that, but this time, he was so determined to convince us that he'd changed and was ready for love, that he said that he'd changed and was ready for love no less than five hundred bazillion trillion nonoople times.  It should have been a drinking game.

Anyway, I went to Wikipedia to see when that was and discovered, much to my astonishment and great shame, that I have seen fourteen seasons of the Bachelor and probably most of the Bachelorettes.

I do not know why I watch this show.  I feel slightly dirty after Monday nights.    My only solace is that I am not alone.  The Bachelor averaged something like ten million viewers each week.  That means ten million people, like me, with nothing better to do than to sit through that awful music and close-up kisses and the stilted conversations!  Oh, the conversation, the scores of mind-numbing platitudes and tired cliches!  "This is awesome!"  "I'm starting to fall in love!"  "This is the hardest decision I will ever make in my life!" Yet I always watch and I thought it would be fun to remind you of some of the bachelors in the last ten years.

Remember Andrew Firestone?  He was one of the early ones had a REAL name and a REAL fortune.  He picked some girl, I forget who, and it didn't last. 

What about Jason?  He's the one who asked a girl to marry him, and then, on After the Rose, when we get to rehash every excruciating moment, he took the ring back and gave it to the first runner-up!  Ooooh, bad move, ex-lax. But he married the second one and they seem pretty happy.  There are four couples out of fifteen still together, as a matter of fact.

What about the year Bachelor went international?   They picked up an international playboy, Lorenzo Borghese, who apparently thinks he's a prince.  He was not in it to win it.  He was in it for some major TV exposure.

Jake.  Jake, Jake, Jake.  He chose Vienna, who EVERYONE  knew was bad news, and I do mean all ten million of us.  But Jake thought she was great for some reason.  And then they had that horrible melt down on national TV when Vienna told everyone that old Jakie-boy was not "intimate" with her, fueling the rumors of our first closeted gay  bachelor.

One of my faves was Byron, the fisherman.  He picked Mary, and for the next five years, they had some knock-down, drag-outs.  We know this because Byron called the police to complain that Mary was beating him up.  Priceless!

Do you watch The Bachelor?  What did you think of Brad's choice?  Who is your favorite Bachelor or Bacherlorette?