Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Who Do You Trust?
By Cate | Season 4 | Episode 13 | Aired on 01.30.2000
Back in the Bachelor Den, John is making lasagna while Dopey dances a jig. Aw, I'm just kidding. He's moping, of course. John asks him to put on a clean shirt, but the Dopey One refuses, since he's "not trying to impress anybody." John says, "I don't want the smell of your shirt to interfere with the smell of my dinner." Um, John? I think you've just "interfered" with my food intake for the entire day, all right? Dopey grudgingly agrees to put on a new shirt, though he doesn't change the T-shirt underneath, and that would be the part that smelled the worst, wouldn't it? Maybe the writers figure that hunky Lance Bass has enough testosterone to go around for this episode, and that adding a shirtless Dopey would throw us all into a tizzy. John says, "Now, how about putting on a fresh attitude to match that spiffy shirt?" Does anyone under sixty actually say stuff like that? John invokes the "best friend" argument and says he'll be extremely pissed at Dopey if he wrecks the evening. Dopey says he doesn't care, which is about what I would expect from a loser-y selfish creep loser like him. Loser.
After dinner, RevCam is helping SuperMom clean up while he fishes for compliments on his technique for trapping Simon and Nigel. Annie says, "Oh, you mean telling them that confession is good for the soul and then asking them pointed questions about smoking?" Then she busts on him for scaring the boys so much that they left the table without even finishing their dinner. I can see from the secret RevCaptions that RevCam is thinking, "Nobody gives the RevGenius his due, damn it, nobody! But they will pay. Oh, yes, they will pay." But that's just because I can tell what he's thinking; onscreen, he just sighs and turns away. Ruthie comes in and says, "Okay, I can't take it! I feel so guilty." Okay, because I can't take it, and because I'll bet you can't either, I'll gloss a little here. Ruthie confesses to breaking something of Annie's; the CamRents didn't know about this; Ruthie claims she confessed for nothing. Everyone is overly cutesy, and fun is had by none.
The doorbell rings. It's Robbie and -- omigawd, it's him! It's really him! Laaaaaance! The guys are sitting on the couch to wait for their dates. They look as comfortable as anyone would under the eagle eye of RevCam, who is staring at them intently. The long silence is broken by this exciting conversational gambit from RevCam: "So I hear you're a National Merit Finalist." Lance responds in the affirmative. Robbie praises his brother as the brains of the family, and Rick returns the compliment with, "That's not true. Robbie always made good grades until . . ." Rick trails off, and RevCam supplies the rest of the sentence: "He was arrested?" That seems to put everyone back at square one, conversation-wise. Fortunately, Mary, Lucy, and SuperMom arrive. Rick and Robbie jump to their feet eagerly. Mary introduces Rick to her mom and Lucy. Rick greets SuperMom politely and then just looks at Lucy and says, "Wow." It's definitely Rick's lucky night, because his date is decked out like a ho. Lucy is sporting a tight, black, cleavage-popping mini-dress and a slinky leopard-print blazer. She's not showing too much leg, though, thanks to her thigh-high black leather dominatrix boots. The effect is slightly marred by the fact that she forgot to take the curlers out of the top of her hair. Or at least that's what it looks like. I kind of like her outfit, actually, but there's no way in hell my mom would have ever let me out of the house in that while I was in high school. Strangely, the CamRents see nothing wrong with it. Heck, I'm not even receiving any special secret messages from RevCam about it. Annie asks if anyone wants a drink, and Robbie says, "Oh, no thanks. We don't drink." Snerk! Man, that Robbie bugs. Mary rushes them all out of there. When they're gone, Annie admonishes Eric to be a little nicer to Robbie. He just asks, "Why?" He pauses and then asks her if she needs anything from the store. SuperMom is savvy enough to know that we're about to embark on another rehash of the "Eric stalks his children" plot line that's managed to remain so fresh even after being done every episode. She asks, "How are you gonna follow Mary, Lucy, Simon, and Nigel on the same night?" He claims he can do it; she asks, "Why would you want to?" He leaves on his creepy mission, and SuperMom uses up her last brain cell to smile benevolently at him.