Travis Season FINALE: And the Winner Is....

Well, it's the moment that we have all been waiting for! The Season Finale starts off with a little photo montage of Moana and Sarah as kids. This does nothing except dispell all reassuring belief, passed down from mother to daughter, that every swan goes through an ugly duckling phase. We look at gorgeous Moana age 13 and put our own junior high yearbook picture (side ponytail, yellow shirt, red suspenders, massive adam's apple) at an undisclosed location.

After we recover from that shame, we are off to meet Dr. S's family, who has flown all the way to France to meet the remaining women. First we have Donna, Dr. S's mom. She is very nice and we are impressed with her ability to don a peter-pan collar and wear her blonde hair in the shape of a milk dud. We wonder if said hair was meant rounder but got flattened en route, and tell her that it could happen to anyone. Donna is married to Roger, who really likes his cream colored sweater, as that's all he wears for his entire visit to France.

Last, we have Travis's sister Andrea, who okay looks like Michelle Pfiefer, and her husband Mike, who resembles a muskrat. And their kids Whitney (age 5?) and Delaney (age 3?), both of whom thankfully look like their mother. But here is my thing: Why name your child Crack-Is-Whack Whitney? I don't care if you are from the South. And why make your children wear massive bows in their hair? It isn't cute, it's alarming. Particularly when coupled with really frilly little dresses.

We devise ways to get the children into a mudpuddle as the first family date--with Sarah from TN--begins. Sarah meets Trav, along with Andrea and her family unit at some sort of kids' indoor playground, where she is making a big "paris" sign in flowery handwriting and coloring a butterfly in the corner. Gag. This date goes very well, and Sarah even teaches the girls how to do the "A-tootie-ta-ta" dance that she does with her kindergartners...but Whitney still draws a picture of Sarah that emphasizes the mole on her face and says she likes them both but that Travis should pick Moana. Rough.

Dinner with the entire family goes fabulously. Sarah is charming, everyone is really really blonde, Travis drinks soda while everyone else is having wine, and Donna starts to cry for some absolutely unknown reason in response to Travis' droning, unemotional speech about how difficult his decision is. Sarah is "pure, true, and genuine," and Roger says that they may never see her again. Roger, roger. We get the impression that Roger is one step behind the rest of them.

Next date is Moana at the zoo. She is wearing that Emancipation of Mimi fur-lined coat again, and the bear is none too happy about it. It keeps giving her the evil eye, but we are too distracted by the culots she is wearing. WTF. We realize that the culot is popular among the leggy set these days, but we still hope this look is something that eventually makes all culot wearing grown women everywhere burn in shame as we did when forced to wear our burgundy corduroy culots 20 years ago.

Andrea pulls Moana away to talk on a bench, and the Downward Slide begins. Moana can't keep it together as she talks about introducing her parents to Travis. She is "such a deep, deep person." At dinner that night, Moana says it's not her "character to say what makes her a great couple with Travis." She's "never experienced what it was to look at another person and have them _know_ her." Apparently, "At no other time in her life has she ever met someone and seen herself shining back in them." Oh, and she's a "pretty solid person."

In other words, her feelings are to the left of what is "right." You know, and "right" is something deep inside, something she and Travis feel. And something she sees in travis. you know?

Exactly. W.T.F. Or in the words of Roger when Andrea says they didn't connect with Moana, "HELLO, I'm with you."

But thankfully, we have Kathy Bates and Janis Dickenson to distract us. The moms come to visit their daughters is Paris!! We are horrified that Virginia, which is apparently the name of Moana's Pure Evil stepmom, is the relative to visit Moana, and even more horrified to admit that she looks really really cute with her new shorter haircut. Meanwhile, Rhota surprises Sarah, who we can't help but notice is writing in a pink journal with an eiffel tower on it. After the girly "paris" sign, we feel our identification with Sarah continue to weaken by her ongoing introduction of lifetime "themes" in the form of this journal. Both moms take their daughters shopping to look at rings and dresses, all of the dresses Moana tries look gorgeous, all of the dresses Sarah tries look like a bag of craft beads threw up on her.

Finally, we are off to the final date. Sarah and Travis play tennis, which she is really terrible at, and then have takeout at a little cottage she found. In his words, "There were pillows all over the floor and I thought that this is the best way to spend my last evening with her." We hope that is a nonsequitor. We don't see much of this date, except for Sarah trying to get Trav to stay and Trav being all, "I have to go."

For Travvy's last date with Moana, she cooks for him. We are extremely impressed with the food she is cooking, which makes us feel very hungry as it is now late at night, but our annoyance with her personal depth is getting in the way. She is very passionate about cooking. She is very content and at peace with who she thinks Travis is. She "wants....him..." she doesn't need, but she wants and would like him in her life. She's never in her life felt the way she does about another human being as she does about this man.

Our only solace through this is the awful racket of traffic going on outside her window. We suddenly realize that these Deep Thoughts with Moana are the true cheese that Susan was pretending to feel and fortunately could not convey convincingly with her bad acting skills.

At last, it's the day of the last rose ceremony! Sarah is writing in her journal, "THIS IS IT" with a bubble for the "i" dot. Distance between us + Sarah = wider. But we still decide to root for her because Moana has just gotten too intense even for us. We also feel a little understanding for Sarah, as we see that other people were doing the women's makeup for this event, although we canNOT believe she let someone put that green crap on her eyes.

First one to greet Travis is....Moana, who totally popped out of her dress coming out of the limo. We forgive her, as her dress is fabulous. But we are really annoyed at Travis, who feels that he needs to give this big speech about how Moana and he have this amazing connection, beautiful connection, it's so perfect...BUT (gasp), if he listens to his heart, he can't choose her. Oh, and Moana won't hug him at first. She says she's shocked. He says the equivalent of "what happens in paris, stays in paris." And THEN he says he'll miss her. And she gets creepy and says that her only hope in circumstances "such as these" is that no one ever knows.

Okay, so Moana was completely wrong for him, but we like her in the end. We feel horrible for her as she cries in the limo and realize that we could never ever be on the Bachelor because it's true that the good girl always wins, and we are so not that person.

Then, here comes Sarah. Sarah has worn a lot of very pretty dresses, but we really hate this one on her. When one is flat bosomed with round hips, one should not wear a tight, floorlength, sleeveless dress cut down to one's navel, particularly with sequins in little lines right in front of one's fancy. Oh, the horror. But we forgive her because Travis has no fashion sense anyway.

Travis gives a speech. She's the one for him, blah blah. And then he gives her the ring she picked out!!!! On a necklace. He looks forward to a future with her.

You know, bachelor fans, this is really the right result. We were not convinced until we saw the frilly clothing Dr. S's nieces were wearing, the pink journal Sarah was writing in, and the A Tootie Ta Ta dance one last time. We hope they make it last at least a few months.

It's been a joy, babies. See you next season.