Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Tampa, Florida, location of The South Florida Human Genome Lab For Reality Television Contestant Breeding. I love that we always manage to end up in South Florida. Tampa must have used a private contractor to pull in tourists via a lucrative product-placement deal with . I'm not kidding. Corporations and, I'm sure, even cities, do that all the time. And it would surprise me not at all for there to be a "Producers Wild Card" bachelorette planted in this city, whom Bob is contractually obligated to keep on the show until the client (in this case, "Tampa") gets its investment back. It's all rigged, Mary. Read the writing on the wall. It's too far away, you say? Well, squint a little harder and maybe move your glasses further down your nose a little? Gooooood.
Whoosh! The Stock Footage Film Festival shows its classic "Plane We're Supposed To Think They're On" retrospective as a plane takes off into the blue L.A. sky. Montage-y moments later, we're in a black Suburban, simultaneously wasting the limited natural resources of gas, electricity, energy, class, good taste, civility, and ethics, all the while driving underneath a big green road sign trumpeting, "I-275 North / Tampa." Meh. Florida. Do you guys know I was somewhere last night that someone actually made a "hanging chads" joke? Isn't that amazing? How dare he, right? I thought the very same thing. If you've ever done that, don't. If you're doing it right now, stop. Or it'll make me wonder aloud if your brain hadn't been upgraded correctly for Y2K. See how annoying that is? Yuck. I hate Florida.
Though himself at an age at which my own mother already had three children of her own, Bob wants us to know, "[Mary] certainly wants immediately to have a family, and I don't know that I'm at that same stage in my life at this point." Yeah, but you still can't bail until you use the word "Tampa" in a sentence five more times, so make with the local-color chat already. "But, at the same time, if things are right, you've got to move forward with them, too." Holding a bouquet of store-bought, wilting, it's-not-the-heat- it's-the-humidity flowers in hand, Bob arrives at Mary's door. She bounds for the door with the full extent of nutritional supplementation as the Centrum Silver will allow, and then pulls open the door with a hearty creeeeeeeeeeeak (oops, bones, sorry), hugging Bob and hoping that the kids somehow get her hair texture instead.
“ Bob greets Mary's admittedly short family with the shockingly patronizing 'You're so cute!' Like they're tiny little puppies or that blond boy from Elephant. Is this really how we're supposed to greet people of other, shorter cultures? ”
The lovahs lounge on a Florida-patterned (you know what I mean) couch in Mary's house, Bob reading something asking him to "Describe [his] perfect Saturday." What is this, love by the light of a Cosmo quiz? Either way, Bob rephrases the question, "You know what? Better than that, describe the perfect Sunday." What? It's been a long time since I've had a proper career that allowed for two days weekly of fun and frolic, but from what I remember, the two days were virtually indistinguishable from one another: in my case, volunteering at the soup kitchen from 9-7 both days. But I guess Bob is only half as virtuous as I am, so it's his free, God-ignoring Sundays he'll bear in mind as he remembers his favorite day of the week while standing in line at the pits of Hell. And just remember that, some time in the very recent past, Mary told us all that her perfect Sunday was spending the whole day watching football. Which sounds almost exactly like how she remains true to herself now: "Waking up in the morning and looking at you, making breakfast together, and then taking our two boys and a girl to go to the park or the beach." Bob interrupts with a defensive rat-tat-tat-tat, machine-gun- from-Dick-Tracy laugh, and the primary-colored gangster's houses all have big, perfectly-round holes in them when the rats and tats die down. Interesting time to become a commitmentphobe, buddy. Especially in light of such a confessional as this, compliments of Mary, Queen Of Desperate Codependence: "I don't need any more time to figure out what my feelings are for Bob, because I already know what they are. I'm in love with him, and I want him to be my husband and I want us to have children together. Many children." In some ways, this is all very charming, in a childhood wish fulfillment kind of way: Mary saw someone on TV she thought was dreamy, so she constructed an elaborate fantasy where he comes to rescue her, marry her, and they have a million babies together and live happily ever after. ["Just like I have done with Trey Parker. Wait, did I just say that out loud?" -- Wing Chun] It's just too bad that stupid, actual Bob has to make it literal and make our dreams all creepy and literal. Oh, and Mary wants the two of them to "grow old together." Fish in a barrel, people. Y'all don't even need me. Mary asks if there's anything Bob wants out of life, and he makes the necessary facial maneuvers necessary to condition a response, but it's the unfortunate reality that his tongue just happens to be in her mouth at the time.
We're at Mary's sister Carmen's house, where we learn that we'll be having dinner with Mary's mother, father, brother, and sisters. Oh, and Bob and Mary besides. Bob enters the house and greets Mary's admittedly short family with the shockingly patronizing "You're so cute!" Like they're tiny little puppies or that blond boy from Elephant. Is this really how we're supposed to greet people of other, shorter cultures? By immediately calling attention to our differences? If the cultural divide were the same but the actual cultures were different, would he hazard introductory lines such as, "You're so cute! Now sing and dance for me! Sing and dance! Sing and dance!" or "You're so cute! Now here are some measles-infested blankets you can warm yourself with while I go and co-opt your land." Anyway. A little sensitivity wouldn't kill him. A small, cute bit of sensitivity, perhaps. Secretly, though, why is Mary so tall, then? Nah, never mind.
“ Another voice yells into the ensuing melee, 'How old are you?' And yet, it remains so difficult to figure out where Mary's old maid complex comes from. Air out the spice rack, Tampa; dinner's gonna be tinged with that usual whiff of desperation that seems to waft like wavy stink lines onto everything Mary passes. ”
Mary's parents are from Cuba, she tells us, and "can't really speak English." She tells us that Bob is going to have to "work the hardest" with them, because of the language barrier. "Work the hardest"? What does that mean? That he should fly backwards around the world really fast and make time return to when we were all united by the commonalities of one world under Esperanto? There's no "trying really hard" with language; there's understanding it or not understanding it. And Bob...he does not understand it. Cut to a shot I liked a lot better when Bob was being played by Bill Murray and Mary's parents were being played by a small (sorry) Asian man in a hospital and The Bachelor was called Lost in Translation. Still, it's kind of amazing, watching how the cameras just rolled on as Bob sits on a couch across from Mary's dad and brother, the father muttering on in a kind of mumbled Spanish I'm not even sure I'd understand if I were fluent in the language, and Bob nods his head like it's about to twist off its axis and responds "Uh-huh" over and over again and barely restrains himself from screaming at the top of his lungs, "HOW ARE YOU ENJOYING OUR COUNTRY SO FAR?" Don't do it, Bob.
Most! Shocking! Confessional! Ever! "Any time you meet a woman's father, you definitely want to make sure that you let them know, look, I've got the best intentions. The hardest part is when you meet them and you don't necessarily speak the exact same language. That makes things even tougher." "Necessarily"? "Exact same"? Brutha doesn't speak Spanish; there ain't no gradients of "exactly." It's not like, "I didn't exactly share her father's viewpoints on the subversive uses of the Christ iconography in the lesser works of Virgil, but I let him know I had his daughter's best interest in mind." Ain't no "exactly"!
We Estefan over to the kitchen (see, now I'm just being a reactionary jerk) to find a klatch of four women, some of whom are Mary, discussing getting what she really wants: a wedding. A portly women (once she was fat and now she is...whoops, she's still fat) joyously exclaims, "Finally!" Gales of laughter follow, another voice yelling into the ensuing melee, "How old are you?" And yet, it remains so difficult to figure out where Mary's old maid complex comes from. Air out the spice rack, Tampa; dinner's gonna be tinged with that usual whiff of desperation that seems to waft like wavy stink lines onto everything Mary passes.
And now, a Bachelor math equation to help visualize the following scene, for those of you who gave up watching this show four episodes ago because you think it's someone else's place to do the heavy lifting around here:
Imelda Marcos + every pair of glasses ever owned by Yoko Ono = Mary's mom. "Cute," huh?
“ They hug and laugh like sisters, Mary announcing, 'Mary Guiney!' They hug and SWB proclaims, 'It sounds good!' It sounds like a racist Dr. Seuss poem. ”
Wine glasses clinked and toasts exchanged, one of Mary's every-extending family kicks things off with the typical "Bob, do you know where your heart is right now?" Bob tells them that he's in a "tough spot," adding that his feelings for some people are stronger than his feelings for others. But the patriarch of the house is soon to throw in his two pesos (aw, see, I did it again), talking in Spanish so that the Bachelor Subtitle Maker Dos Miles kicks into overdrive and freaks out a little, translating Mary's father's speech entirely in lower-case letters. Y'know, , just because your editing technology doesn't include the keycaps command of the upside-down exclamation point that's supposed to begin the sentence doesn't mean you have to throw away all of the grammar rules willy-nilly. Anyway, here's what he says: "if he can't do something good for you, he should do you no harm." More Bachelor fortune-cookie logic. Also, lucky lotto numbers 1, 2, 10, 12, 25, 26. Also, "cat" in Chinese is "mao." Why is it everyone speaks in platitudes, no matter what language they're speaking in? The whole table, sin Bob, tears up as Mr. Mary explains the importance of his family in a language the one person who doesn't know about the importance of Mary's family can't understand. Mary cries and translates the subtitles incorrectly, opportunistically editorializing, "He said that he wants all of us -- and me -- to be happy." Her father didn't say that. But Bob takes the bait, showing the dramatic importance of his own words by saying them in English: "I think that's beautiful. And I think that's right." He explains that his intentions are good, and one of Mary's sisters translates it for Papi. Bob confessionalizes that it's getting "a whole lot more real." Mary steals a sister with bangs to the bathroom (ew, wine in the bathroom), and tells her, "I know what my heart feels. I'm thirty-five years old." So it feels...on the verge of stopping? What? I'm missing context here. Sister With Bangs responds sympathetically, "I just hope things turn out. Just don't get hurt." They hug and laugh like sisters, Mary announcing, "Mary Guiney!" They hug and SWB proclaims, "It sounds good!" It sounds like a racist Dr. Seuss poem.
And, just like that, dinner's over. Bob tells the family that they're "amazing," which is hyperbole in any language. Except in Wolof, in which the word pronounced "amazing" actually means "short." Nah, I'm fuckin' with you. I have no idea. Bob tells us that they went back to Mary's house to "recap" the evening, though I have repeatedly implored him in the past to please, for the love of all things holy, leave the recapping to the professionals. Please. This is what I'm trained in. You don't see me leaving my mortgage company in the hands of my poor, put-upon partner while I frolic off to Southern California for some open-mouthed kissing and karaoke, do you? WELL, DO YOU? Separate corners. That's all I'm saying.
Mary kind of straddles Bob on her couch, sitting above him in a most unfeminine position. They talk of the future they will never have together, Mary confessionalizing, "Bob may not be able to tell me in words, but when we kiss, I feel it, and I know that he does, too." She waits for the moment that Bob can tell her that he loves her, adding, "I wait for that moment. I know it's gonna come." But Bob dun-dun-DUNS to us, "She's certainly at a different stage than a lot of these women might be. She's looking for something a little more firm, a little more solid. And that's something I have to make sure is right for me." Yup. Deciding that you're committed for life when you put an engagement ring on someone's finger is one of the most important decisions you can make.