BIZARRO BACHELOR Krisily comes out a winner in the end BY IAN DONNIS

Who would have thought that dignity, one of the more ephemeral qualities in the hothouse environment of so-called reality TV, would emerge when Charlie O’Connell, the title character on ABC’s mating show The Bachelor, inexplicably spurned Warwick’s own Krisily Kennedy in favor of a seemingly bland Texas nurse? Krisily nonetheless exhibited impressive poise and class when she was passed over during the overextended three-hour melodrama on Monday, May 16.

Kennedy, who had emerged with Sarah Brice as one of the two finalists vying for O’Connell’s affection, seemed the better — and more likely — match. Although the banal stuff passing for dialogue made it difficult to discern whether many of The Bachelor babes offered more than a shred of inchoate personality, Kennedy and O’Connell had chemistry, a budding emotional connection, and a shared profile as maturing fun-seekers with more than a bit of sensitivity. By comparison, Brice, a short blonde with a reserved Southern bearing, barely seemed to register.

Familiar with Kennedy from her stint on NESN in offering brightly smiling pre-game cheesecake before Red Sox home games last year, we were pulling for her from the start, even when she initially came across as something of a tough bitch. As The Bachelor, a guilty pleasure, progressed and the field of 25 young women was steadily narrowed, we saw Krisily, 25, grow before our eyes — exhibiting poignant vulnerability even while some of the show’s jet-set destinations left her briefly star-struck. Our hopes rose when she edged out the evil Sarah W., an egotistical and plainly manipulative West Coast blonde, in the closing stretch. How could likeable knucklehead Charlie, the brother of actor Jerry O’Connell, not go for the easygoing, fetching, and smitten Warwick homegirl? As she explained on the show’s Web site, she had yet to meet the right guy because, "I live in Rhode Island, and it’s a very small state."

We inevitably get disappointed, though, in getting suckered into watching these week-to-week voyeuristic soap-dramas. A year or two back, it was crushing when Larissa, the sexy swimsuit model on NBC’s Average Joe, bypassed an amiable and soulful average Joe from Massachusetts — who went to the extent of introducing her to Tim Wakefield on the infield at Fenway Park — to pick some vapid male model type. Served her right. In a surreal post-script, the would-be dream lover ditched Larissa with startling alacrity when she felt the need to confess that she had once dated Fabio. You can’t make this stuff up.

Well, score one for Rhode Island. When the button-pushing host Chris Harrison tried to goad Krisily into telling ABC’s national audience how wretched and self-pitying she felt after being scorned by Charlie, she held her head high, fending off tears, citing how the show had proved a growing experience, and she wished O’Connell and Brice her best. (Despite a patina of mild tackiness, her family, including Kennedy’s grandma — who had charmingly encouraged her to bed Jerry — was similarly classy.) Whether the bachelor and his new love will make it past six months remains to be seen. For our part, we hope that Krisily is the one, when the next reality dating-death match rolls around, who gets to pare the field of aspirants.