"The moment has finally arrived! Let's meet our Bachelor, Jesse Palmer!" Well, that's an anticlimax on the scale of "...and the best picture goes to...." Jesse's limo pulls up to the house and we meet him. Again. He shakes wee Chris Harrison's tiny boy hand, and the two of them banter like men. Chris asks, "You ready?" Jesse volleys, "Born ready." America counters, "Dick."

Inside the house they go, where they sit down on two chairs in the living room and generally chill. Y'know, like dudes would. Man, the whole place must smell of Funyons. Chris gets right to the tangentially-linked talking point I still don't grasp: "What do you think is gonna be tougher? Starting in an NFL football game or meeting twenty-five women here tonight?" Is it because football is supposed to be so hard? Or is it because it's a difficult task drinking champagne near pretty ladies and also one spy? Because this comparison has already been stretched way thin. Maybe I would understand it better if people started phrasing my own love life in terms of the job function that I perform. Here, let's try now: "Hey, Dan. What's harder: writing approximately 6000 words a week about some crazy bitches who start to look exactly the same season after excruciating season, or getting laid when you tell people what you do for a living?" The answer is: Dick.

Chris tells Jesse, "I gotta ask you the first question." What was the previous question? A scrimmage? Intramural confessionalizing? What's going on? The next first question, then, is, "Why are you doing this?" Jesse responds that it's been difficult meeting genuine people who don't judge him based on his job description. The fact that he now has a chance to meet twenty-five women who didn't know who he was when they signed up is, according to Jesse, "comforting." It must be nice to align yourself with a group of women who don't care if you're rich and famous, as long as they know you're going to be rich and telegenic. Jesse: "There's so much more to me than just football." Uh-oh. You don't also make wine, do you?

Chris is grilling -- GRILLING -- Jesse. And I'll bet poor, unsuspecting Jesse had no idea these hardball questions were even coming! The next Bachelor? Richard Clarke. Tell me it's not the best idea ever. Is he married? If he's not, it's because the Bush administration told him he wasn't adequately prepared for marriage in the days and months leading up to his wedding. Chris asks Jesse what he's looking for in a woman, and Jesse responds that he wants someone with her own life. Not someone clingy. Chris laments that it's difficult being married to a professional athlete. And he'd clearly know, due to the famed Harrison/Joyner-Kersee nuptials that were all over the tabloids a few months back. At least they didn't air it on ABC. What a circus that would have been. Chris reminds us that there will be a spy in the house. Because there will be. A spy. In the house. Oh, and Jesse thinks he would be ready to propose to someone at the end, "if someone moved" him. Also? Spy in the house.