Bachelor Pad - Season Two

7:24: For his part, Michael, who is of course going to to be in the house, allows that if Holly is there to, it'll be "awkward."

7:27: Finally, the contestants begin to arrive, one by one, at the house, where they are greeted by Chris Harrison before being permitted to go inside to towel off the smarm. First to show up is the fetching and assured Michelle, who manages to say, "Things are about to get interesting" as if she'd been rehearsing it all week.

7:29: Holly arrives, asks about whether Michael is on the premises, and heads inside, saying, "Things are gonna get interesting."

7:30: The tiny group assembled inside makes small talk. Somebody says, "So far it's a good vibe. No crazies."

7:31: The golden era when the people inside the house could say "No crazies" comes to an end with the arrival of Justin. "The rated R reality star is here!" he bellows. "Love's a waste of time. I'm here for the money." He looks as if he'd like to  grab the woman of his choice and try to scale the Empire State Building with her in his paw. He doesn't, but maybe that's just because they're on the West Coast.

7:32: Talk turns to the whole Jake-and-Vienna drama. Erica, who hasn't met Vienna yet, offers us a quick interpretation of her character, based on some stuff she's heard. Vienna, she says, "can be bitchy and untrustworthy," and "doesn't even have her own apartment, like she just moves from one guy's apartment to the next, and is kind of like a gold digger."

7:33: Vienna arrives. Someone actually cries out, "Speak of the devil!"

7:34: Gia arrives. I thought she was wearing a nightie, but the voice from the other end of the couch assured me that she was wearing a proper dress that was simply "lingerie-inspired."

7:41: Kasey arrives, wearing a Magic Eye pattern necktie and Rand Paul hair. Justin, who the producers cannot restrain themselves from identifying as "The Wrestler" every time they flash his name on the screen, is not impressed. "You got Kasey," he says, "who sounds like Kermit the Frog, and Kermit the Frog went out with…uh… Miss Piggy." Okay, nobody said he beat his wrestling opponents using his mouth.

7:47: Michael, looking like a somewhat prettier Walton Goggins, appears in the doorway, much to Holly's confusion and dismay. "It's weird to see Michael," she says. "I don't think it's normal for a couple to break up and then have to move in together."

7:50: And, finally, Jake is here. He tells Harrison that he thinks he has "an opportunity to get some closure with Vienna." Kasey has been holding forth about how he's just waiting for Jake to show up and start some mess, so he can pound some manners into the louche heartbreaker. Now that the two of them are in the same place, they embark upon an edge-of-your-seat conversation about the weather. Jake argues that it sure is cold around these parts after dark, even though it sure can get hot during the day. Not to be outdone, Kasey takes the bold position that it sucks when it rains. Stepping away from the red hot center, Kasey gives himself a gold star for how he's handled himself: "I can't physically punch the guy, because I'd go home, but mentally beating the crap out of him feels good."

8:04: Man, that commercial where the guy is late getting the text message about how his flash mob has been rescheduled never gets old.

8:10: Harrison announces that the contestants are to pair off, boy-girl, boy-girl, for a physical challenge; the winners will have immunity for the week, and also get to have a "date" outside the house, and even those who most desperately wanted to get inside this house must be thinking by now that a night spent away from it sounds pretty good. Of course, Kasey and Vienna team up, with the specific intention of denying Jake immunity so they can drive him from the house. Jake, who feels a strong bond with Gia, explains that he's teaming up with Jackie, because if he teams up with the woman he likes the best, then they'll be identified as a "power couple" and earmarked by the others for destruction. I can sort of see a logic to it, but it still reminds me of when, during the first season of Survivor, Sean decided to avoid hurting anyone's feelings by voting for people in alphabetical order.

8:12: For the challenge, each of the women grabs hold of their teammate as hard as they can, wrapping their arms and bare legs around his body, while he is attached to a harness and lifted ten feet off the ground. The team that can hang there together in mid-air the longest is the winner. It soon becomes clear that Jake/Jackie and Vienna/Kasey will be the last couples standing, so powerful are Jake's alpha-male strength of will and Vienna's desire to rub his face in hot coals. As the minutes tick by and the physical strain becomes greater and greater, Jake tells us, "I'm trying to find a place where, if I have to vomit, I'm not gonna hit this beautiful girl" beneath him. That's the closest you'll come to hearing anyone on this show rewriting the book on chivalry.

8:25: Jake and Jackie triumph, and Vienna, with Kasey hot on her heels, stalks off. She tells him she expected more of him. She complains that he promised to protect her at all costs, and he broke his word. He mildly replies that Jake and Jackie performed honorably and deserved to win. She expresses outrage that he's fighting with her on-camera. "You're such an [bleep!] sometimes!" she says. "I couldn't feel my pelvic area," he pouts.

8:35: With Jake and Jackie out for their date, Kasey starts trying to pull together some kind of alliance. He decides that Justin "The Wrestler" would be a key swing vote and a good man to have on the team: "He's sneaky." Okay, sure. "He's obviously very schematic." "Okay, so… wait, what!?  "He likes to scheme things."

8:37: Justin quickly overplays his hand, stirring up shit just because he sees it as part of his mandate to "be the rebel I was born to be." Catching wind of this, Kasey says that he's like to "put his ass on a glacier, because that would be ironic, and karma's a bitch." Okay, now he's just randomly stringing cliches together.

8:45: Wow, Desperate Housewives has been on the air for seven years, huh? I never guessed it would outlive Boston Legal by that kind of margin.

8:47: Jake and Jackie head out along Hollywood Boulevard for their date. First, though, they run into a third-grade girl who, upon recognizing Jake's realty-TV-level famous mug, breaks down crying ecstatic tears, as if she'd just seen Jesus's face in a croissant or something. The kid tells them that it's her "dream to be on TV", and now, by having a meltdown at the sight of someone who achieved meaningless fame by being on TV for no good reason, her dream has come true.

8:52: Back at the house, Vienna is turning out variations on the theme of Jake's bottomless perfidy. "The only way to really see the real Jake is to put a fly in the house alone with him and glue a little tiny camera to the mouse, I mean the fly." No doubt the producers looked into what the technology would cost before deciding that they didn't really want to see the real Jake that much.

8:54: Jake and Jackie have been given a third rose that will confer immunity from eviction on whoever they choose to give it to. Now Jake has started thinking that he should give it to Vienna, so that she'll realize that he's actually a sweetheart and a nice guy; it will help them both achieve the "closure" he's so keen on. Jackie thinks he's probably nuts but decides to let him do what he wants, the better to keep herself out of the crossfire. Jake, noticing that she's letting him drive, tells us how touched he is by her show of faith in him.

9:00: Someone refers to the third rose as "a game changer." This is certainly true, in the sense that they're playing a game, and the rose will change things. There is something deeply annoying about hearing people use cliches that are meant to be metaphorical and use them in situations where they apply literally. And when is somebody going to say that they've been "thrown under the bus" on this show? At this point, it's the other shoe I'm waiting to hear drop.

9:03: Jake seeks out Gia and reveals his ingenious plan to give the rose to Vienna. She asks him if he's really stupid enough to do such a thing. He argues that it's a good strategic move to gibe your enemy a gift: after all, "How did the Trojans beat the Greeks?" Rather than correct his history, she tells him that what he's proposing would be like playing chess without the queen. "Lots of people win without the queen," he says. I'm starting to wonder just how dumb you can be and still get a pilot's license. I hope I'm not on the ground beneath this dude when he's up in the clouds and realizes, too late, that he forgot to refuel.

9:10: Jake gathers everyone together, gives Vienna the rose, and, leaving Gia to cry her eyes out, asks for a private audience with Vienna and Kasey. At some length, the poor stupid bastard apologizes for having been terse with her on TV during their "breakup special", salutes her and Kasey's love for each other, and says that he wishes her nothing but happiness. "I am happy," she snaps, and she and Kasey stalk out.  Then, while Jake is congratulating himself for having mended his bridges and brought peace of mind to all involved, Vienna tells the camera about how it was "torture" to have to listen to him, but that it was also "very funny", even though it "literally made me sick." Brought back together by their shared triumph over the monster, she and Kasey fall into each other's arms, as she begina whispering that she loves him and wants to marry him and have his babies. Then, for some reason, there's an insert from what appeared to be grainy, black and white security camera footage of Marilyn Monroe frolicking in bed with JFK.

9:24: As people begin to deliberate over who to vote off, it quickly becomes clear that the prime candidates are Justin, because of his general skeevy two-facedness, and Alli because—I'm not really sure, I don't think I noticed her before everyone was agreeing to get rid of her. Someone said that they needed to get rid of Justin because of "his wishy-washy behavior", which I'm betting is not an adjective he ever imagined being applied to his "rebelliousness".

9:44: Justin laments that he didn't even get the use the pool, and calls Alli "a drunken moron who threw me under the bus, which basically put this target on my back." Ding-ding-ding, we have a twofer! Voted off, along with Alli, Justin snarls at his rivals and refuses to shake anyone's hand as he dives into his limo. "Keep it classy," says a voice.

9:59: After the preview of coming attractions, there's a brief skit showing a masked Justin breaking into the house so he can… well, for a minute, I thought he was going to use the pool, which I admit I thought would have been kind of cute, but instead, he's shown reading a fan magazine while sitting on the toilet. Keep it classy!

[update: It has been brought to my attention, in the nicest way possible, that the fellow who I thought looked like Justin in a mask was in fact some other dude from "Bachelor/Bachelorette" history who was notorious for wearing a mask, going to the bathroom, breaking and entering, or some combination thereof. My only defense is that one man can only carry around so much pop culture detritus in his head; it goes along with my assurances that a mistake like this makes me feel stupid as hell. Apologies to "Bachelor/Bachelorette" fans everywhere.]