Jef sweet-talks his way to victory

The most dramatic TV event of the summer is being blogged from far, far away. I'm in a time zone that doesn't even exist in the United States of America, that's how far away it is. I'm here surrounded by in-laws galore so I hope you appreciate me excusing myself and secluding myself in the bedroom to watch this MDTVEOTS.

It would be even ruder of me to do it two nights in a row so maybe I'll have to pass on Bachelor Pad tomorrow night. And if it seems compelling enough, I may weigh in later.

Tonight's final episode of The Bachelorette was live. Chris Harrison couldn't stress this enough. He even stooped so low as to bring real reality into it by taking a moment to reflect on the victims of the shooting in Colorado. Obviously, that was a horrible, horrible situation. But I watch reality TV to escape the horrors of real life. And it just seemed so out-of-context. I mean, there are sickening stories all the time in the news and Chris Harrison doesn't address them. I just thought he could have let this go and leave us safe in the cocoon of the make-believe.

But back to the fake reality.

That rock has Jef's lip prints all over it

Tonight was Miss Emily and One-F Jef's night. I've known for most of my life I don't always agree with the masses in popular taste, but I've never felt more alienated than tonight. The live studio audience seemed all smitten with the petite rockabilly teen. Everyone's eating up his line of crapola. I've teased Jef from the get-go, but tonight – before everything was revealed to us – I scribbled down that I don't think I've ever had as bad a reaction about a finalist before. He just strikes me as incredibly insincere. But maybe I'm just jealous of his silver tongue. The boy has definitely kissed the Blarney Stone at some point in his life. And I'm always suspicious of great talkers. Everything they say all seems too perfect.

One-F met Miss Emily's family first, bringing the ladies flowers. I know, right?! Who does that? Smooth-talking BS'ers, that's who. Em's mom asked him what his family thought about the whole process. Now, when a parent asks such a question to a son, "family" really means "parents", am I right? And that slick little dude didn't even mention that his folks never actually met Emily.

Let's harken back to a past season, when the parents of that adorable cutie-pie cheerleader (the name escapes me) didn't want to be a part of the hometown charade, and the wine-maker guy (again, not so good with names) wondered if he could carry on without having met her mother and father. Now here we have Emily ready and willing to get in the missionary position with One-F without ever having met his missionary parents.

Oh. Spoiler alert, I guess. Sorry about that.

Ernie shows some true grit

Diff'rent strokes, I guess. Anyway, her family loved Jef. They were, of course, taken with his eloquence. He had the exact same conversation with the mother, father and brother. One interesting tidbit that slipped out came from Emily's brother, Ernie, who looked like a young Glen Campbell. He said the last guy Miss Emily brought home was Ricky. Was that a slap in Brad's face or was the relationship less than what it appeared to be on the tee-vee?

When Jef got dad's blessing should he ask Emily to marry him, he acted like he just made a sale. (I realize I may be driving this point home about him being a smooth talker, but I just had a gross feeling about the guy.)

Next up was Arie's turn to meet the parents. Unlike Jef who entered with flowers and who immediately fake-hugged Emily's mom and future sister-in-law, Arie arrived bearing no gifts and offered mere handshakes to the womenfolk. And when talking to mom and bro, he brought up having dated a single mother before. The subtext was that he's also broken up with a single mother before. So maybe that didn't ingratiate him to them. But they all seemed to like him enough that in the end they couldn't recommend one fella over the other.

Funny to hear Ernie think Arie was "smooth and rehearsed" when he completely bought that load of hooey Jef was serving up.

The next day, Miss Emily met One-F Jef on a beach in Curaçao. As she approached, looking stunning as always, he said, "You look great." To which she replied to the guy wearing a grey T-shirt and shorts, "So do you." I guess it was a jarring change to the white T-shirt and shorts he wore to meet her family.

Emily told Jef how stressed she was. But he wasn't at all. Maybe that misplaced confidence won her over. Where does a guy like that get all that confidence from? It boggles the mind.

They talked about the Little Ricki situation. Miss Emily wasn't sure about introducing her daughter to any of the guys (although I was sure sleazy Ryan met her already, but you know how my memory is). She said, "The last time I got engaged I had a really guilty conscious" [sic] about introducing her to Brad.

I know the reasoning behind not wanting her child to meet these guys, but is it really going to affect her? She's young enough that she wouldn't really know what was happening. And when she finally caved and introduced Ricki to Jef, she called him "my friend." So that's how you handle it. Mommy's allowed to have friends, isn't she? And friends are allowed to have sleepovers, right?

But what was going to go wrong? Jef got along great with Ricki, as to be expected, and as just about any normal person would, including Arie. As I said before, Jef is closer in mental age to Ricki than Emily anyway. He just splashed around in the pool and was silly. Home run. Smooth talkers know how to charm kids, too.

Akira Curaçao

I gotta admit with all the distractions here far, far away from home, I couldn't pay as close attention to the details. My ears perked up when I heard Jef give Emily a book about the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. I couldn't believe it. I thought he was going to reveal some deep film hipster cred until I looked up and saw it was actually a book on Curaçao, not Kurosawa. My bad.

In the book, that hilarious Jef drew some stick figures of himself and Emily on the beaches of Curaçao. Only stick-figure Emily was wearing a itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bikini and stick-figure Jef had a way better physique than the real-life version.

When they parted for the last time before the fateful day of decision, One-F told her, "Don't do too much thinking." He knew he stood no chance if she let her brains get in the way of her heart. Because no rational Bachelorette chooses Jef over Arie.

The following morning, Emily woke up with a sense of peace. It was supposed to be her final date with Arie, but she knew what she had to do. She called in the expert on other people's relationships, the recently-divorced Chris Harrison, for advice. The two of them agree that she'll dump the season-long frontrunner today instead of letting him do a Ben (the name just came to me) at the altar.

So of course the producers call off the date so Emily can talk to him before he heads out for the day. Right? Wrong. They send him on his merrily ignorant way to meet a local who teaches him how to make a love potion. When Emily arrives, she lets him apply it to her arms (and maybe legs, I missed that). "Thank you very much!" she feigned.

You know by now that love potion didn't work. Miss Emily started blubbering and Arie's face soon clued into what was happening. He didn't pull a Doug and kiss her. In fact, he acted perfectly appropriate: Shocked, saddened, and a bit pissed off. But not too much. I'm sure it didn't help when Emily said, "I never thought I'd have to make a choice between you and anybody. I always thought it would be me and you." Obviously she took Jef's advice not to think too much.

Arie didn't say much. He kissed her on the cheek and said, "I'll go." And up he went. She chased after him. His reaction was Ben-worthy when he was dumped by Ashley. Arie said, "I don't know what to say. Thank you for sparing me the embarrassment tomorrow. I appreciate that." Only he said it kind of sarcastically. And when she asked if she could walk him out, he said, "Yeah, sure," but didn't hold her hand or anything. That's how you do it, people!

The best part of the night was the reaction shots from the gob-smacked studio audience. Priceless! Chris Harrison got some reactions from Ashley and J.P., who are still apparently a couple. At least in public, anyway. DeAnna was also there, dressed down in jeans among all the designer dresses. And Michael Stagliano, who is incapable of saying no to anything involving cameras and/or the Bachelor franchise. And finally someone named Ashley S., from Brad's season, we were told in case we didn't remember. And we didn't. And all of them had nothing of value to add.

Would he or wouldn't he?!

So with Arie out of the way, the big drama was whether Jef would propose to Emily, and if so, would Emily say yes. Ooh, nail-biting stuff!

Guess what? He proposed. And she said yes. And the dude kept at it with the non-stop grandiloquence. "If you let me into your life – and Ricki's life – you'll never feel lonely again." And, "What I'm about to ask you is a forever thing." Blech.

Usually, I give these things a few months. Even though I can't see these two being together long-term, I think it might last a bit longer. A year maybe? Probably not more, but it's hard to say.

The only good to come out of this decision is that we no longer face the faint prospect of One-F Jef being the next Bachelor.

At the After the Final Rose portion of the show, Arie revealed that when he was sent home he couldn't go out with his friends because he wears his emotions on his sleeve. So he flew to Charlotte with the intention of meeting Emily and maybe sweeping her off her feet. But when he got there, his own feet got cold, so he just called her and asked if he could drop off his journal. She said yes, then proceeded to not read it. She stamped Return To Sender on it, and gave it back to him in front of the studio audience. Double-rejection! She didn't read it, she said, out of respect for both Arie and Jef.

Arie got her back with a possibly intentional slip that sounded warm until you ran it back in your head what exactly he said: "I do have anything but love for you and Jef." Oh, I hope that was intentional. It's just about perfect.

Then Jef came out to be reunited with his love. And I lost interest. I heard him say it doesn't feel like they met on a show; it seems real. I also heard him say that "every day I wished I could meet" Ricki. Odd, but okay, whatever.

And even Harrison picked up on the guy's gift of the gab, saying, "He's quite the eloquent speaker." And Miss Emily replied dreamily, "The best."

So there you go, fellas. Go sign up with your local Toastmasters to land the girl of your dreams. They fall for bombast every time.

May they live happily ever after... or until their contract expires