Okay. I’m watching The Bachelorette. You have permission to disown me as a friend, or to stop visiting this site immediately if you are not my friend and merely an admirer or hata’ from afar.

I never watched this crap until I started working at EW. I’m pretty sure the people there don’t love it either, but someone has to be up on all the drama. You never know if, at a crucial point in a meeting, an editor will pound his fist on the table and shout “Who got the third rose last night? WHO?” and Annie Barrett, Intern Extraordinaire will need to valiantly swoop in with a booming “A.W.! It was A.W.! Booyah!” It hasn’t happened yet, but I need to keep watching in case it does. Seriously. We’re talking instant promotion if I could come through in the clutch like that.

(What kind of name is A.W.?)

The point of this post, though, is to point out how offended I am as a Manhattan resident at how much friggin’ space these idiots (the 15 bachelors) get to occupy. This is PRIME New York City space. The men get to live together in this huge building (looked like SoHo, which pisses me off even MORE) with rooftop suites, patios, hot tub lofts, etc. There were even these ridiculously oversized cushions just lying around. Huh? Guys don’t want those. I want those. Unfortunately, I don’t think even one of them would fit in my apartment, unless it got to replace my bed.

Just to prove a point, here is visual proof of how much space Jen is taking up in Manhattan. I mean, come on.

I know this fancy-living-arrangements thing happens all the time with TV shows. The Real World is an obvious example. But these shows rarely take place in Manhattan, and it’s not like anyone’s going to be pissed off if the “seven strangers picked to live in a house” actually end up living in a building that used to be a bank at the edge of Philadelphia or a converted train station in New Orleans. It’s not like people are banging down the walls to live there.

It’s pretty immature, but it makes me kind of pissed to look at that huge, pretty, SoHo building and know that ABC producers are renting it out for bajillions of dollars because they feel they need six floors and 20-foot-high ceilings to catch just the right angle of the Staten Island firefighter’s giant protruding jaw as he witnesses All-American Sweetheart Jen ascend the stairs.

I can just picture the thousands of cramped apartmentites like me wanting to throw objects at the screen when we see these huge gaping spaces. Hmm. Actually, there’s no room to throw. But we could potentially reach out and tap the screen, smack dab in the middle of a 400-sq-ft hardwood floor slip n’ slide course that they’ll probably set up “for fun.” That’d show them.

(There is no slip n’ slide course in the show… I made that up… but HOW FUN WOULD IT BE to have one of those in your apartment? Think Tom Hanks’ loft in Big. I always wanted those giant rubber balls that he and his girlfriend were about to bounce with on the trampoline. The balls were just sitting there, accessories to the tramp but completely worthy in their own right, you know? They looked like so much fun, and then Tom Hanks just carelessly swept them off the tramp as if they were in the way or something. :( … $100 of money I don’t have says that I am the only one in the world who felt sorry for those big, fun, colorful balls that only got used for three seconds of footage with the creepy redhead kid.)

Don’t get me wrong; I still love NYC. (Kind of.) I just don’t like how it’s portrayed on reality television. Thank you. Now please refrain from leaving the comment, “Then Annie, you psycho, quit watching reality television.” I can’t. Besides, it’s for my job.