Bachelor exclusive: Whose eyes glaze over best when listening to women trifle? Jesse or Grant?

Ahead of ABC’s “The Bachelor” season 29 finale, the Intergalactic Business Report poses the most important questions ever posed about a television program called The Bachelor. After watching host Jesse “I hardly know her” Palmer and Bachelor Grant Ellis for a full season of temporary harem-building mayhem, many viewers* are comparing the two men’s styles in dealing with plaintive women who alternate between displaying breathless devotion and airing their endless childhood traumas. 

Our office is regularly flooded with questions from readers about how it’s possible for straight men to listen so intently to hours of backstories about how important family is, testimonials about “being here for you,” and digs about other women who may not be there for the right reasons. Add in full-on crying sessions and demands to be comforted for begging to be on a show where a man dates 25 different women in which he actually dates 25 women, and most assume CGI must be involved or at least that false “puppet heads” of Grant and Jesse must take their places and realistically nod in agreement and sympathy to the ladies of the show. 

Fake skulls or not, the Intergalactic Business Report delves deep into a comparison of the two men’s styles and naming a winner in three categories we created to judge them for their very specific skills. Do you have trouble pretend listening to women? Read below and maybe you’ll up your game.
 
Playing styles:

JESSE: A consummate professional with only an outside chance of actually getting laid, Jesse plays the avuncular best friend to Grant’s youngblood who’s learning the ropes. Jesse has a distinct advantage because his interactions with the women are usually limited to him bounding into the foyer to give them bad news about Grant “forgoing tonight’s rose ceremony” or popping up inexplicably to announce the “final rose.” But Grant must also host “the women tell all” as well as inexplicably pop up to say “I’m sorry ladies” when they are brutally dismissed from the show. It is in these moments that Jesse displays an expert, non-comital blank stare that is misinterpreted as empathy by women who are pushed out of the mansion faster than their mascara can run. 
 
GRANT: The young buck whose basketball skills made him a financier has perfected a three-pronged style of looking confused, angry, and then smiling, which leaves women helpless to him. It also requires little of his face because it has clearly memorized this progression to the point at which it is muscle memory. When women begin to talk so much that Grant’s facial antics may be in doubt, he simply leans in and kisses to shut them up. 

WINNER: This one goes to Grant, mostly because he’s able to kiss the women on camera. We highly recommend that Jesse start doing this. 
 
Eyes glazing over:
 
JESSE: If a face could say, “Why am I listening to this woman blather on when I have zero chance of getting laid? Oh yeah, the money,” that would be Jesse Palmer. Jesse has the unmatched ability to both convey what every man in the universe is thinking and also maintain eye contact that makes women believe he is their gay best friend. 

GRANT: Also accomplished at the “Imma stare at you till you stop speaking” look that puts women at ease as they go on and on about being teased as a teenager for not being beautiful, Grant excels in letting his eyes glaze over to the point of blinking and almost having to look away but holding steady nonetheless. Men remark that during many of Grant’s opposite sex stare downs they fully expected him to pull out his phone and start scrolling. But he didn’t. Unreal discipline. 

WINNER: Although we have ultimate respect for Grant’s eye game, Jesse wins this one on the sheer desperation of his face, which seems to beg for relief from the endless din of female discontentment. We may be awarding this out of pity. 
 
Shit they say:

JESSE: Jesse keeps his talk game tight. We gather this is mostly because if he were to express himself honestly it would probably be by making a long, extended fart noise followed by hitting himself in the face—so hard he goes dark. It is this seething energy that makes Jesse so sympathetic to our readers. One of them writes** to us: “If Jesse babysat my cat, I feel it would end badly. Like I’d come home and they’d both be gone and living in the wild somewhere.”

GRANT: We love that Grant will sometimes just start singing. This is an element of his game that brings him to a new level of confusing and thus disarms the women of the show. When women cry, Grant just tells them that their unstable behavior is a sign that they are “opening up” to him, and not presenting an image of what life will be like with them every waking moment of their married life until he “opens up” a door and walks out. 

WINNER: Jesse wins this on the basis that we had already decided that Jesse would win and this therefore makes sense.
 
Overall winner:
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Jesse Palmer. This former Florida football star/sensitive Canadian is the perfect dichotomy for appearing to authentically communicate with needy women in a controlled environment within time limits. No one does it better. 
 


*We view The Bachelor, so we are viewers. “Many” is a subjective term that we feel ranges between 1 and 57,000. 

**We read our own writing. Technically, that makes us “one of our readers.”

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