By, Shannon Oliver Robinson (That’s right, I’m Mrs. Robinson now!  Check out Hitched in Houston under Bridal to read all about my fairy-tale ending!)

OMG.  I’m sorry, but there is really nothing else I can verbalize after watching the first episode of The Bachelor, On the Wings of Love.  I have never seen more cheese, or pectoral muscles for that matter, than I just witnessed on the season premiere of the show we are all drawn to like rubber-necker’s to a five car pileup.  And that my friends, is exactly what we have here… one HUGE train wreck (that we will all tune into for the next few weeks of our lives, even when we all know better!).

Why do we do it?  Well, one can guess that we are all hopeless romantics always rooting for an engagement that ends in Happily Ever After.  But perhaps we are just scared of missing the next ridiculous thing that comes from dropping one buff pilot into a mansion with 25 single ladies.  Whatever the reason, this season is sure to entertain, disappoint, make us groan in disbelief, and of course, provide plenty of the world’s most dramatic rose ceremonies EVER!

There was so much to take in/make fun of that I decided to watch the episode again on abc.com… this shows how much I truly care for you all that I would put myself through this again!  ABC is trying to spice things up and they have added a written commentary from Jillian and Ed throughout the episode.  This should be good… let’s dive in!

Well, as the previews previewed… there is Jake… without his shirt… for about 30 minutes.  I think he talks about how he had to heal his broken spirit after Jillian dumped him, how he’s ready to move on, and I’m pretty sure he mentioned that he’s going to get married from this experience but honestly, I was too distracted by how often they were able to find situations to get his shirt off to really pay attention.  (Jillian comments, ‘Wow, I forgot how buff he is!’).  They also manage to recreate a scene straight from Top Gun and I wonder if I’ll be able to make it through a whole season of cheesy pilot jokes and pick-up lines.  (Ah, at last, Ed starts in on the commentary, ‘Now that looks like a scene from Top Gun! Talk to me, Goose!’  At least I have the Jillian and Ed commentaries to break up the cheese that is oozing from the screen.) 

Now we get to meet the women and boy did they go all out this season.  We have a girl who just got cheated on, a self-professed adrenaline junky (Ed comments, ‘Is that Jake on the bike? Ooops! Guess not!’  LOL, their comments are a breath of fresh air in all this cheese!)… we also meet a divorced Disney character, a captain for the Air National Guard, a model, a bitchy ‘guys-girl’ (whatever that means), a jobless daddy’s girl who has mommy days with her dog (Ed- ‘If she kisses Jake like she kisses that dog, Jake is in for a real treat!’), a teacher who’s mom is still shopping for her, a nanny who would NEVER get hired in my house (WAY too pretty!), a mom who has already decided Jake is her son’s new daddy, an NBA dancer, and then I guess the rest of the girls get cut the first night b/c they just parade them by with no more than their name at the bottom of the screen.

Jake shows up at the house (via his Top Gun motorcycle) and chats with Chris before all the women arrive.  He mentions about 10 times that he is very nervous and ‘haunted by a little bit of loneliness’… oh Jake!  I wish we could man him up a little bit.  My thoughts of sending Jake through a ‘Man-Boot-Camp’ are interrupted as the girls arrive and I quickly see that the producers MUST have made every single girl come up with some sort of line to deliver to Jake.  OMG.  OMG!  They don’t stop and they keep getting worse!  From pilot comments, to peacock feather, then to Jessie’s comment of ‘do you have a registry for these guns’, Jake is left speechless as I’m sure he begins to regret his decision to come back on the show if all the girls are like this. 

Oh, and they are.  A double sided coin, Alexa with her weird leather gloves, soil from Texas smeared into Jake’s hand, deep breathing exercises, ‘Ching, Chang, Chow’ from Channy, a homemade ‘Jake and Ashley Picker machine’, parting gifts for all the girls who get set home (and Christina doesn’t make any friends when she takes them inside and passes them out while saying that she’s banking on them all going home.  Ouch!).  The girls continue in and so does the cheese; a girl fake-falls into his arms, Shelia gifts him with some new aviator glasses, Michelle pretends to be an airplane as she ‘flies’ into meet him and pummels him with pilot, co-pilot, and passenger references but the good news is… she’s the last one!  Oh, thank goodness!  I was starting to glaze over and stare at the dog hair on my floorboards.   I need to vacuum!

Ali seems like a nice, normal girl (despite the peacock feather).  Corrie is a cutie and also seems normal and down to earth.  The normal seems to end there as Channy finally deciphers what she said to him earlier and it is terrible!  She apparently said ‘Jake, you can land on my landing strip anytime!’  Maybe she wasn’t aware of what that can translate to in English… or maybe she was!  Ella tells Jake that she has a son and gifts him an old plane of her son’s.  She seems nice, but she keeps saying things like, ‘I want to tell you about your future wife’ and you can see Jake just stare blankly back.  Ashley puts on a flight attendant outfit that I’m sure her mother picked up from the slutty Halloween costume isle.  Elizabeth gets Jake to throw the football which leads to a blondes vs. brunettes football match.  The brunettes dominate and everyone chases Jake inside to wrap up the first hour of torture.

The first impression rose comes out and so do the claws.  Michelle says ‘it will kill ‘her’ if she does not get that first impression rose,’ and I believe her.  She goes off into la la la land when Roslyn asks her what she thinks of Jake.  Roslyn looks completely uncomfortable with the thought of sharing couch space with her and manages to reply ‘Oh that's nice, I'm glad you like him.’  Michelle can’t take it anymore… she bursts into tears and decides she must talk to Jake.  As she leads him away from the crowd, with tears still streaming, she continues the pilot references and Jake does not seem even a little turned off (which makes me question his mental stability).

Chris interrupts the party and announces that Jillian and Ed have come to Jake’s rescue.  They are going to divide and concur to help Jake make some decisions.  Normally, I would think this was a good idea, but on this night, it looks like Jillian is either smashed or maybe Ed slipped her something in her drink.  Oh well, it is what it is and Jake trusts them (why, I’m not sure), but they interview the girls and sum them up pretty accurately.

Tenley gets some time alone with Jake and you can tell this girl not only plays a Disney character, but pretty much is one.  She goes over 10 things about her and ends with asking Jake for a kiss.  I’m thinking that she might just be his match… until she goes inside and starts crying to the other girls that she just made a mistake by kissing him.  First they are shocked that Jake already kissed someone, and then I think they are equally shocked that Tenley is disappointed in herself about it.  Man!  Just when I thought we had a good one.

Jillian and Ed go over their picks with Jake and he decides to give Tenley the first impression rose.  Ah, she is so relieved and admits her tears over their first kiss where all for nothing and she’s so genuinely happy now.  Okay, maybe she really is just that sweet.  Stanger things have happened.  Chris takes Jake in the back to go over all the girls before Jake passes out the roses.  14 roses left and 24 girls to choose from.  Jakes says he’s going to let his heart lead and gives roses to Ella, Elizabeth, Vienna, Christina, Ashley E., Kathryn, Jessie, Ali, Gia, Rozlyn, Corrie, Valisha, Ashleigh H., and last but certainly not least, Michelle.  That’s right, crazy Michelle will be around for at least one more week of memorable quotes and emotional breakdowns.  The previews for next week are always my favorite part and these are almost too hot to handle!  Tears, a sexual affair, throwing a rose into the fire?!?!  Oh, I cannot wait!

Until then!