Who would want to be the Bachelorette? Yikes!

So, there was snaky Wes last night in his blue shirt and pinched expression, saying “I’m clean,” when the guys were asked to ‘fess up about which one of them had a girlfriend back home.

(And the audience knew that it was Wes, the 32-year-old  musician from Austin, Texas, because in earlier, private interviews, some of the guys had expressed concern that he wasn’t here for the right reasons. In other words, he was here for the publicity about his music. In an earlier episode of The Bachelorette, he had sung a song, “They Say That Love Don’t Come Easy,” which seemed to woo poor Jillian.)

I say poor, because if that girl thinks that one of these dudes is the real thing, lord, save her soul. How could she possibly be expected to “pick” from this group of hunks, when all she gets are brief one-on-one “dates” in which they all seem to have stiff conversation.

I mean, please. Tanner P with the weird foot fetish?

And then, last night, when she took Kiptynite (okay, it’s Kiptyn) on a kayaking shopping trip to Granville Island so they could buy groceries to make dinner back home? They briefly discussed their desire to do charitable work while they threw food at the disgusting pigeons. Next thing you know, they will be confessing the vulnerability of their hearts.

Oh wait, I think they did that in the next sentence of conversation!

It felt as badly scripted as an episode of The Young and The Restless.

Sweet Jillian, who does seem as genuine and fresh as the snow-capped mountains in the tourism-happy sweeping shots of the city in last night’s show, is clearly drawn to the less flashy types.

How else to explain why she gave Mark, the pizza entrepreneur, a rose on the two-on-one date that she went on with him and Mike, a rugged type who looked like he had walked off the set of The Godfather. His dark hair greased back, his conversation well oiled, too, he took the lead in that date – running to greet Jillian, and then snuggling up with her in the helicopter, as hapless Mike – have I told you he is a pizza entrepreneur, whatever the hell that means (He makes boxes, perhaps???) – lagged behind. At the dinner at the top of Grouse mountain, Mike barely said a word. But then, in their brief one-on-one chat, he let it be known that he was shy (Gee, never would have guessed) and that he has had his heart broken a few times, so he is reluctant to make himself vulnerable. But hey, that’s what he is here for, he says to her. And she understands.

Our Jilly. Canadians are so sweet and understanding – in between being polite, of course.

Then, to the surprise of Mr. Mafia, Jilly gives Mark the rose. And off goes our oily stud in the gondola, back to Earth.

That was a moment of alpine drama, but the best part of the show last night was when David, aka Rage-oholic Caveman, made the moves on Jillian, telling her he liked her ass – on full view in the spandex at the curling match, earlier in the show – and then he leaned in for a kiss. She rejected him, turning her cheek to his lips. And he was startled. He had never been turned down for a kiss before. He even tried to pull at her shirt a bit, remarking that she was so comfortable, her boobs were hanging out. (Well, he might have said boobs. The producers had to bleep his words several times in that exchange.)

Walking away, he later remarked that she was obvisouly really hot for him and was just trying to play the game.

Talk about a guy who can’t pick up a signal, even if it’s flashing bright orange right in front of his beady eyes.

Thankfully, she got rid of him in the rose ceremony. He even took his rejection hard, saying that he thought she had made the wrong decision.

No grace there.

But really, I think the overall message was just how ridiculous this show is – not for entertainment value – that was fun – but for the assumption that this gal is going to fuind lasting love with one of these guys.

She was visibly upset when it was revealed to her by two of the guys that she should be careful, because not all the men had her best interests at heart. She felt cheated on, when she heard that one of them had a girlfriend back home. She canceled the cocktail party. She consulted with the show’s host. She thought she was a good judge of character, she said in her little on-camera confession.

Wes, Mr. Girlfriend-Back-Home, remains in the running. He was given a rose. (Jillian wasn’t told who the “bad guy” was. And she decided to give a rose to the two guys who told her of the revelations in the guy-world that she never gets to see. So, I guess her thinking was that she trusted them enough to have told her the truth, rather than as some ploy to get rid of someone they considered a rival. In the next episode, to air next Monday, she will likely pump one of these “snitches” to tell her the name of the offending suitor.)

My favorite guy, if that’s possible? Jake, the 31-year-old commercial pilot. She went on a Western date with him in one of the early episodes. And he seems to really care about her, wincing at the rose ceremony last night as she chose to give Wes a rose.

He knows, you see. He knows.

And he also told her that he is not perfect, which was kind of sweet. A hunk worried that he isn’t perfect.

Sounds too good to be true.