Episode Report Card Djb: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Lanny, Get Your Gun
By Djb | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 02.03.2004
Group date! Group date! Group date! Now sponsored by the men who wear visors! Brad and Ian are similarly decked out in those fashion staples of Floridian grandparents, while Sean wears no visor because he's muuuuuch farther along in his packing than some of these other guys, as well he should be. A glass of champagne is handed Meredith's way, and it seems as if the whole day might be just another fantastic paean to sloth, luxury, and the complacent trappings of a tabloid nation gone woefully astray, but no! For Ryan wants some alone time with Meredith, and he wants to talk about ugly issues. They walk from the front of their bus to a loud, clanging cargo-hold area, where Ryan tells her that he doesn't feel like he's getting a rose, which is a total turnaround from how he felt at the last Rose Ceremony. "I was really, like, tensed out and, like, angry," Ryan filibusters. "Not angry. Sad, angry, confused." Meredith says she didn't meant to make him feel that way (WHAT WAY, you driveling FREAK?), and Ryan shoots back the self-sabotaging, rose-wilting, just plain silly, "I really, really, really, really, really want to believe you, but I kind of don't." She takes us to a confessional, where she says that her alone time with Ryan was "intense," and that she couldn't a word in edgewise. Check out the number of times you see the two of them together at any point on this date. Many few than the glasses of champagne they continue to enjoy, this I can plainly tell you.
Golf montage! Which, after the writing montage, is more than my delicate constitution can handle. Ian is not taking the group date well, and is concerned that Meredith has something else going on with someone in the house. Sean, meanwhile, tells Meredith that she's such a dynamic character that he woke up thinking he wouldn't accept a rose if one were offered to him, but now he's changed his mind. I'm sure she'll be thrilled.
Lanny finds the final date box, and pops it in to find Meredith telling him, "Tonight, you and I are going to have a romantic dinner for two, prepared entirely by hand. Your hands." Ouch. No sushi pod in the sea for you, Tex.
More golf, more golf, more golf! Meredith pulls Brad aside, and they retire to a blanket under a tree. "I'm really glad you're here," she says with utter sincerity, I think because he's a really good barometer of an easy pick to eliminate. He's wearing his visor like an even bigger idiot now. Didn't think there were gradients of how dumb you could look in a visor? Well, then you didn't see this scene. Wow. He looks like the worst kisser ever.