'The Bachelor' Puts Last Season's Really Big Cheeseball In The Line Of Fire

The Bachelor is one of the goofiest shows on television, it really must be said. Unlike shows that could be goofy or interesting depending on the execution — Project Runway, for instance — this show will always be goofy. It has goofiness embedded in its creative (well, "creative") DNA, and oddly, it has actually grown in popularity again recently.

It returns tonight, in what could be its most uncomfortable season ever.

The new Bachelor is Jake Pavelka, better known as "Jake The Pilot" from the most recent season of The Bachelorette. Jake — in addition to being a one-time actor who has managed to play a young Chuck Norris twice — is one of the corniest cornballs the show has ever husked.

Despite having the flat good looks of a guy you might find in any good collection of stock photography, and despite having a good job (pilot!) and a defiantly unobjectionable personality, Jake was dumped last season by Bachelorette Jillian Harris, who had been dumped in the previous season by Jason Mesnick, who had been dumped in the previous season by DeAnna Pappas, who had been dumped in the previous season by Brad Womack, who wound up on this show for unknown reasons that he almost surely curses daily. It's the ciiiiiiiircle of liiiife!

Jake gets a turn, after the jump.

 

Anyway, now Jake gets his chance, and while he seems like a perfectly nice guy (albeit one with an eerily calm affect that could, in theory, conceal seething rage), the problem with making Jake The Bachelor is that Jake really, really really believes in this as a way of finding a wife. Jake is humming wedding music all the time. Jake is probably already choreographing the YouTube dance.

The actual "I firmly intend to marry one of these people" model has faded a bit in recent seasons, as the focus has often been more on finding someone and less on marriage per se, which is probably wise. The show, after all, has managed to successfully marry one couple, Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter, according to its formula. (Jillian is still with the guy she picked, for now, and one other couple is still together; we won't say their names out loud in case we jinx them.)

But Jake? Jake is a firm believer in "this process." (People on The Bachelor love the word "process." Also "journey" and "connection." Viewers prefer "ay yi yi.") Jake honestly believes that he is guaranteed to find a suitable wife this way, despite the fact that he has a pool of 25 people to choose from, which is fewer women than you could meet in an average bar on a Wednesday. Not only that, but they were chosen by a television show. It's about as reliable as taking the weathermen from the top 25 local newscasts in the country and assuming that surely, one of them is qualified to perform oral surgery on you.

There could theoretically be some prurient appeal in watching between your fingers as the guy undoubtedly gets his heart stomped all over by 25 women whose entire goal is to get him to dump them so they can be the next Bachelorette, which could one day lead to Dancing With The Stars or something. But my guess is that mostly, this is just going to be Jake being happier than the situation merits, followed by Jake being unhappier than the situation merits, because Jake has drunk deep from the cup of I'm 31 And I Look Like This, So If I Don't Get Married Soon, People Will Assume Something Is Wrong With Me, which has introduced an unfortunate sense of urgency.

I have seen the first part of tonight's premiere; I couldn't make it through the entire thing, partly because far too many of the women feel obligated to make terrible airplane-related puns as their opening lines when they meet him. One of them uses terrible airplane-related pantomime. Another hands him a pair of aviator glasses, saying, "I'm giving you this pair of aviators, because we are a pair of aviators." She seems to be implying that she also knows something about flying, but Jake doesn't notice, because the glasses are shiny and he is distracted by thinking about whether, based on the ten seconds that have passed so far, they should get married.

But based on what I saw, Jake remains the well-intentioned goober he was when, after Jillian dumped him, he famously returned to tell her that one of the other guys still on the show was a jerk who had a girlfriend back at home and was only on the show to promote his band. She didn't really care. Later, Jake cried.

Clearly, Jake is way too fragile for this. Jake is 35 percent Care Bear. He has a heart made of soft cream cheese. Every time he discovers one of the women is not there for the "right reasons," it is going to crush him. Jake is going to wind up proposing to one of these women, and then it's all going to go wrong, and then there will be more crying.