''The Bachelor'': A loss for the beautiful people

”The Bachelor”: A loss for the beautiful people

Good villains make for good drama, and so let’s give a big ”huzzah!” to Sarah W. now that she’s made a tearful exit from this season of The Bachelor.

With her carefully arranged blond bangs, permanent pout, and swollen ego, Sarah W. embodied everything that’s messed up about this season of ABC’s reality dating series, and maybe even what’s so frightening about our current fame-at-any-cost culture overall: the steely-eyed awareness of the camera; the breathtaking lack of embarrassment; the barely masked insecurity. Sarah W. exhibited them all, and yet, infuriating as she was, when Charlie burst her bubble at the rose ceremony, he may have let all the air out of the show, too.

Admit it: You’re going to miss watching a woman so extraordinarily deluded, she actually thinks there should be an equal rights movement for attractive blond folks. ”It’s a curse as much as it is a blessing to be pretty,” Sarah W. sobbed during her post-ouster tirade. ”I mean, like, no matter what, there is, like, a huge prejudice and racist [sic] when it comes down to it. That’s why it didn’t work out. If I had just been a little uglier and a little less noticeable…”

Awww. Finally someone with the courage to speak the truth! Let’s organize a sit-in for pretty people, with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as our poster children!

Offensive as she may be, though, without Sarah W. to kick around, what’s left to get excited about? Surely, there isn’t a single Bachelor addict who’s pinning their hopes on a romantic trip down the aisle for Charlie and either Sarah B. or Krisily — not after hearing him repeatedly trumpet his goal of finding a girl ”to have fun with.” I’d bet good money I’d have a harder time swapping out an old toothbrush — goodbye, cavity-fighting friend! — than Charlie will have disposing of his two remaining prospects.

Not to worry about the ladies. For someone participating in a reality dating series, Sarah B. seems almost freakishly normal. She has an actual job — we even got to see her wearing scrubs, so she’s probably telling the truth about being a labor nurse, or at least working at a hospital. She’s got enough self-respect to turn down an invite for an overnight stay with a man she barely knows — at least when there are TV cameras rolling. And she doesn’t even seem all that insecure about facing her competition.

I’m not sure Krisily scores points in all the above categories, but no matter the outcome, I think her heart will survive this experience too. If anything, the simple Rhode Island gal seemed more impressed by the five-star accommodations the show scored in Aruba than in anything Charlie actually had to say, and who can blame her?

As for Sarah W., oh man… she was in a show all her own. As she mounted an all-terrain vehicle in her army-green bikini, chin up and stomach sucked in, she looked like she’d stumbled off the set of some bizarre military-set porn flick, and ABC treated her accordingly, with a charming close-up of her bum before she zoomed off down a dirt path.

I thought for a while that Sarah W. was a shoo-in for a rose — especially when Charlie tried to swallow her entire head whole, Anaconda-style, as they made out during their nighttime dip in the ocean. But I should’ve known something fishy was going on when the embrace faded into commercial, and the show returned with — huh? what? — Sarah B.’s date? You could practically cue the clichéd sound of a needle scraping across a vinyl record, the smooth-jazz music screeching to a halt.

Wait a minute now. Surely, The Bachelor‘s producers couldn’t have left on the editing-room floor a smidge of footage of a door meaningfully shutting as Sarah W. and Charlie entered the ”fantasy suite” for an overnight date. Or could they?

Maybe we’ll get some answers on next week’s ”Women Tell All” episode, but I’m guessing that either Charlie or Sarah W. got cold feet about the overnight stay (or maybe Sarah W. got grossed out by the dirty soles of Charlie’s feet during their bus ride), and ABC didn’t want to kill the rose-ceremony suspense by showing us that rejection. Or maybe Sarah W. did spend the night with Charlie, but the producers realized how skeevy Mr. O’Connell might look if he dumped the woman he’d presumably bedded three nights prior. Either way, with Sarah W., Sarah B., and Krisily all in Aruba, we should just be thankful Charlie didn’t attempt to invite more than one of the women to his room at the same time.

With only Charlie’s hometown dates remaining, I was left wishing the show had focused more on Charlie’s interactions with Sarah B. (instead of those contrived moments where the women kept ”bumping into each other” toting full camera crews behind them). Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to believe the impish blonde when she said she was falling in love with Charlie, and even the hapless Bachelor said that he wasn’t sure at date’s end if Sarah B. was ”into” him. Is there a chance she’ll get smart and just walk away?

On the other hand, I’m not sure if Charlie’s all that ”into” Krisily, especially given the expression of grim resignation he sported throughout most of their date. Sure, they caught some makeout action, but until they have a sparkling conversation, or he unhinges his jawbone and tries to digest her in one terrifying bite, I can’t bet with certainty that the guy is 100 percent serious.

What do you think? Will you miss Sarah W.? Do you buy the ”connection” between Sarah B. and Charlie? Who’ll get the final rose?