Elbowing the usual “Bachelor Pad” out of its summer slot, like a rollerskater on Venice Beach with cutoffs, is a new edition of “The Bachelorette.” It’s as if Desiree Hartsock couldn’t wait until fall to find someone to fill the void of Sean Lowe, who dumped her after hometown visits last season.
The girl with the background of poverty certainly seemed the best candidate for that dolt, and he might have been making a big mistake, as she insisted at the time. But now she’s the object of desire for 25 guys crammed into limos as if they were clown cars.
By now it’s time to question the producers and casting agents for the show for bringing in potential suitors who are only good for a laugh or a sight gag.
So, yeah, here comes the guy clanking in with a literal suit of armor. Here’s another who likes to do magic tricks. There’s a third who thinks himself a suave dancer and dips Desiree in a hold, only to rip her gown (with an enhanced sound effect in case you didn’t get it).
And by the end of the first night, all three of those clowns are gone. One who looked like he’d be out was the dude who is first introduced naked at his house, and emerges from the limo shirtless. “Will you accept these abs?” he asked her, creepily.
His name is Zack W., because amazingly there are two Zacks on the show. There are also two Nicks and a Michael, a Mike, a Micah and a Mikey.
And in a way that toothy, hunky guys all look alike, it must be a tough task to winnow down the field of potential husbands from 25 to 19 on the basis of one bad cocktail with dozens of interrupted conversations.
But there seemed to be a few early standouts.
Ben seems to warm her heart instantly by bringing along his young son, who hands out his own rose to her. In return, Ben wins the first rose from Desiree at the cocktail party.
Juan Pablo, a soccer player from Venezuela, won her over with his accent, showing Des to be a little more shallow than she lets on. But he has to wait until the rose ceremony to advance.
Getting an early rose was Bryden, a shy soldier from Montana, whom she wanted to encourage. But a more surprising early rose was for the shirtless guy, who tried to top his entrance by jumping in the pool. Nobody follows him in and he’s embarrassed, possibly for the first time in his life. So he gets a rose for effort.
One guy that didn’t make it to the initial rose ceremony – in what may be a Bachelorette first — was a lout from Hickory, N.C., who off the bat asks her to the fantasy suite, and just keeps repeating his boorish invitation even as he gets more drunk. Des makes her mark early by showing him the door.
There are other obvious duds on the show, to viewers, if not Desiree. A guy named Kasey fancies himself a social media expert and expresses himself in imagined TwitterSpeak: “Hashtag: I want a rose!” among them. He’s no winner, but he’ll be immensely amusing to keep around for a while.
Robert, a guy who claims to have invented sign spinning (the world thanks you), seems rather full of himself. Long haired Brooks seems like a potential villain. And a guy named Will who high fives strangers in the street may be in over his head too soon. “I love this woman,” he says before he even meets her (also a possible show first).
Many others are too dull to distinguish from one another.
Desiree does a good job culling the group in her initial rose ceremony, but there’s an awful lot of culling left to do.
“The Bachelor” franchise already foreshadows too much of what’s to happen in its promos and in its pre-commercial teases. But its “Upcoming this Season” extended teaser Monday manages not just to hint at upcoming locales (Madeira? The Swiss Alps?) but to spill the beans on too much of the upcoming conflicts.
There is a fistfight, extra competition among the dudes and the framing of early favorite Ben as a cad. The teaser has his supposed current girlfriend show up and cuss him out. Let’s not get way ahead of ourselves here.
Then there’s another hinted scandal about a suitor with an even bigger secret (will this be the closeted candidate we’ve waited so long for?).