By Djb
Beachfront scenes and white-capped waves abound as we location-scout our way to a sign announcing, "Welcome To Huntington Beach." Generically surf-sounding music kicks up on the soundtrack as Brian Wilson waits expectantly for the ringing of his phone in hopes that his band will once again be called upon to reunite. Call him up, Fleiss. Throw the man a bone. In the past twelve years alone, he's already thought of six more tropical locales that vaguely rhyme with "Key Largo." Glaring dully out of the window of a moving car and believing (with a lack of knowledge that's nearly pre-natal in its cognitive reasoning ability) as a result of the passing palm trees that his first hometown date exists entirely inside the pages of The Lorax, Jesse "In My NFL, The 'F' Stands For 'Formerly Of'" Palmer breathes heavily out of his mouth and doesn't think at all about math. "This week, I'm going on hometown dates to meet the women and their families," he chalkboard-and-pointers, pleased that he'll be able to spend some time near the water, particularly considering the monster's innate fear of fire, flaming torches and otherwise. "My hometown date today is with Jessica B." -- as opposed to bachelorette Jessica Tandy, I suppose -- "I'm gonna meet up with her on the beach and then we're gonna head back to Jessica's parents' place, where I'll meet her family." We'll montage there fast and then we'll speak really slow. That's where we wanna go. Way down to Koko-NO.
Down on the beach, we discover Jessica B. frolicking on an empty beach under threatening skies, and the lord thy god Himself is unceremoniously let go from The Bachelor's production staff for failing to show sunshine on the day the camera crew was dispatched to shoot b-roll. Fleiss: one. Yahweh: still at the gate. Jesse continues sounding out past seasons' transcripts, compliments of the fine folks at Burrelle's Transcripts, speechifying in the most well-thought-out, animated way he knows how (parse that clause and you will grow to learn that it is not, in fact, a compliment), "Jessica's got so many things about her that I absolutely love" -- and we're looking at the top two of them right now in that tight-ass scoop neck -- "and that's why I get along with her so well." And also because of your mutual appreciation of the early works of Virgil. No, sorry. I actually meant "early works of Garfield, the hilariously fat cartoon cat." Don't you guys, like, always get them confused, too?
"The thing I need to figure out now is whether I can spend the rest of my life with her." Electric word, "life." It means forever and that's a mighty long time. So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills. You know the one. Dr. Everything'll be all right. Sorry. I was once so taken aback by the sheer ludicrousness of the two of these adolescent-minded Neanderthals contemplating the notion of "the rest of my life" that I defaulted to my happy place where everything that happens can be sung as a Prince song. Except for the songs recorded between 1990 and 2003. And the time he tried to convince us he was a "slave." And anything having to do with anything having to do with a Batman movie. Or anything that isn't "Pop Life," the best song ever.
Jesse interrupts Jessica in the arduous process of trying to rip a Frisbee out of the mouth of a small dog. Jesse walks past the dog and grunts the canine equivalent of "lovely weather we aren't having," because he can talk to the animals because he is a hulking member of their inglorious lesser kingdom. He gives Jessica a hug that closely resembles the direction given to Ted Cassidy in a favorite episode of The Addams Family intuitively entitled "Lurch Learns to Dance," and hands her a bouquet of flowers tied in a pink bow that's really nothing more than a random collection of sticks he picked out of his hide on his way down to the water. What a chintzy-looking mess. Also, the flowers don't look that good, either, waka waka waka. Jesse complains, "Your dog gave the surprise away!" which Jessica responds to with an apology, "Yeah, he's sneaky." I think they really believe that he is, people. Jesse proudly notes that he also brought a present for the dog, unearthing a small, bear-shaped chew toy, which the dog drops the Frisbee in order to devour. The most likely scenario here is that, when Jesse tried to eat it himself and spent an hour holding it between his teeth and shaking his head violently back and forth while snarling, "Not food. Jesse like food," it suddenly became a gift for the dog. Who at least knows what to do with it. Making the dog, by default, just that much brainier than his new temporary master-in-law.
Jesse and Jessica retire to a nearby picnic blanket as Jessica confessionalizes, "The main thing that I want to accomplish is to let Jesse know how interested I am and how serious I am, and I also kinda want to know where he's coming from." He's coming from the primordial ooze. That's why he's so damn shiny all the time. On the blanket now, they sip Inhibitions Begone, the official liquor of judgment-impaired strangers everywhere, and Jessica asks, "What are you expecting at the end of this whole process?" A pony! Well, that's what I'm expecting, anyway, but then the end of every season comes and again and again I'm still just walking to the subway like a damn commoner. Maybe I should put one on my Wish List. Jesse, on the other hand, wants to find someone he can fall in love with. Jessica sounds like she might be a leeeetle skeptical when she asks if she can see that happening from this "process," but Jesse is such a poet that he learns us real good with his talk of love: "I think, at first, I was hoping a lot. But I'm starting to feel." Spoken like a guy who grew up in a house with a lot of Air Supply. He tells Jessica how much he missed her in advance of this date, and in response she inadvertently goes into that self-protective crouch of raising the shoulders and scrunching the nose, the international body language for "I tacitly feel the exact opposite about you. But don't be hurt, okay?" He adds that he's really excited to meet her family, and she tells him how "invested" she feels in him, promising that she never would have brought him to her family "if I didn't feel like you and I could definitely have a future together outside of this experience." That's enough of a cue line for him to lean in for the kiss, as Jessica tries in vain to keep a sharp look in all directions for the presence of a sub-aquatic marching band that could just come charging up from the ocean floor at one horrible moment's notice. Jesse puts no kind of point on it at all when he confirms, "I'm already having a ton of fun," because if you're going to meet the family of a woman you could propose to in two weeks, it's always better to couch the visit in the language of a third-grader visiting Six Flags. Jessica reminds us that she's "taking this huge leap of faith," insisting that Jesse has been "perfect" so far, as we cut back to a totally camera-ignoring (yeah. RIGHT) shot of Jesse picking Jessica up and spinning her around on the beach. Oh, great. I'll bet they're even sharper when they're dizzy.
A rural-esque, turbine-looking machine that turns corn into gold or hay into America spins lazily in a Texas cornfield while God is all, "Pardon the expression, but I didn't know I had a country," and then tightens His shiny new Bible Belt all over Andrews, Texas. An enormous sign in the middle of a field reads, "Andrews loves God, country, and supports free enterprise." Translation: "I'll see you in Hell, Commies, war protesters, and Jews." Ah, save your hate mail. I'm sure I'd just print it out and swap it for vodka anyway.
Mandy Jaye stands in the middle of a parking lot wearing the pinkest coat this side of the color wheel, meekly whining into her cell phone, "Hey, um, everybody's been trying to get a hold of you to see if you were gonna be able to come out and meet with us today." It's her father. Here to teach us that Divorce Is Hard. You know who agrees with that? God. And the country. And the free enterprise of shyster attorneys who can cite Bible passages from memory that prove the words "fidelity forever" are, apparently, open to interpretation. "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." According to God. Not to grandstand or anything, but...sigh.
Mandy Jaye's father, hated by god, whispers on his phone in a way that requires subtitles, telling her daughter, "Tell Jesse what the circumstances is [sic], I ain't [sic] gonna [sic] be able to come." And yet, oddly, the patron saint of grammar does not smile upon Andrews, Texas. Jesse approaches a blue awning containing the letters "Andrews Country Club," which has to be sarcastically named. Mandy Jaye hangs up with the phone with her father as she explains in a confessional, "When my parents split up, it was definitely a difficult...it was a hard separation. And they don't talk." Don't you mean they can't talk?
Jesse and Mandy Jaye toast with champagne glasses inside the -- ahem -- country club, as they toast to not grammar. Mandy Jaye toasts to "a fun day," while Jesse sees her toast and raises her one confusing temporal loophole when he -- TWICE -- notes, "Here's to meeting your family." Okay, at which point Mandy Jaye notes, "Speaking of meeting the family, I'm sure you noticed that my dad did not...he was not able to join us."
Jesse: "He's not coming?"
Mandy Jaye: "He's, um, not going to be able to."
???
Okay. Even if you want to argue that she just misspoke and said that he won't be able to join us rather than he wasn't able to join us, it's pretty hard to argue with the nonsensical nature of the phrase "I'm sure you noticed" in a linear narrative world that's asking us to believe that Jesse has not yet met Mandy Jaye's family at all. I know Andrews exists in a different world from the rest of the planet, but this scene exists on an almost sci-fi plane of reality. And until I hear a perfectly reasonable explanation for any of what just happened, I'm going to believe that this is the moment they finally crossed the line and that entire sequence was faked. I'm here if anyone has the time to convince me otherwise.
We drive at 88 miles an hour through that scene to the actual future, where we find Jesse confessionalizing that it was nice to see Mandy Jaye "let her guard down," adding that it was "a huge relief" for him to watch her cry over her shattered, god-forsaken family. Because he's an IDIOT.
Do they live on a plantation? Mandy Jaye and Jesse jaunt over from the -- ahem -- country club to Mandy Jaye's house on a golf cart, where the meet Mandy Jaye's mother, stepfather, and brother. Within seconds, Mandy Jaye leads Jesse into an entire room dedicated to photos, trophies, and, yes, the odd sash commemorating her days as a pageant queen. She laughs offhandedly like she feels just SO silly about even showing this stuff to him, but clearly she was gunning for a visit to that room sometime around her father's fiftieth utterance of the words "A-yuh, a-storm's a-comin'" when casting around for reasons he wasn't coming over for dinner. Jesse laments in a confessional that he feels like he had "just broken through her pageant persona" to see her crying, vulnerable, y'know, feminine side. Is that any way to talk about Miss Texas Teen USA?
At the dinner table now, highly untelegenic chicken wings abound as the family steers the conversation to...pageants. And, okay, pageants are scary, and they might affirm the wrong value systems for little girls, and JonBenet's dad is totally the real killer, but still. Point of order. Jesse's main complaint here is that Mandy Jaye's family spends the entirety of the meal talking about their daughter and not enough time asking Jesse about himself to see if he might be right for their daughter. And sure, the families are I'm sure coached to within an inch of their real family sensibilities and encouraged to ask the Bachelor if he thinks it's possible to find true love on television AGAIN. But isn't this such a better way to get to know a family? If I brought someone home to meet my family (anyone interested? Seriously? I've just taken to begging, now), it would be about fourteen minutes before my mother would have them plopped down in front of the television watching my tenth-grade production of Fiddler on the Roof, because I was the greatest Motel the Tailor high school has ever seen. And really, I was quite good. So all I'm saying is that one girl's scary pageant room is another boy's Bar Mitzvah video, and if you're coming over, you're probably also watching that. And you will watch it. And wish you'd been there. And not judge my grandfather's Hebrew when he blesses the bread. And compliment my brother on his poem. You will do all of those things, as I was coronated Mr. Bar Mitzvah Teen USA and my family wants you to know about it. So choke down another chicken wing, quarterback. You're on my home turf now.
"There was definitely a lot of pageant talk at the dinner table," Jesse moans on. "I was a little taken back [sic] by the fact that they didn't have a lot of questions for me...the man who might marry their daughter." Maybe he could have made that comment directly to them, so they could at least have formulated the question "Who died and made you social arbiter of my living room, dink?" in a pinch. "Taken aback." "Aback." It's a mistake. "Aback." I'm not mad. It's just wrong.
After dinner, Mandy Jaye's very, very little stepdad takes Jesse downstairs to, it sounds like, "look at motorcycles." There, they speak a bit more about pageants. Jesse notes that "Mandy Jaye's step dad is obsessed with pageants." Meanwhile, upstairs, Mandy Jaye listens as her mom calls him "cute cute cute" (dialects make things mean different things in the South, right?), and Maydy Jaye tells her, "We'd have some good-lookin' kids." In a confessional, Mandy Jaye's mother notes, "I think Mandy Jaye would make a great NFL wife." I think she'd make a great Lanny's wife. They bid a quick farewell, and Mandy Jaye tells Jesse that she's glad he came to Texas. In a confessional, he tells us that he thinks Mandy Jaye is groovy and all that, but that he doesn't feel like he got to know her better at all. Because her family didn't sit around asking him questions? Maybe if they'd played that sequence in order I wouldn't be quite so taken back.
Even Mapquest is all, "Screw you!" when it comes to locating Tara's gun-totin', foot-stompin', cud-chewin', yee-haw-shoutin' pa in a town the subtitle wants us to believe is called "Paul's Valley, Oklahoma." But I did find a website that said you could buy a three-hundred-acre farm with a house on it for $425,000, which is pretty much my rent for a year. But then again...Oklahoma. We're on "Tara's Family Farm," which we were once, I believe, told was in Norman. It's near Oklahoma City. And a mere two hundred miles, as the carrion no longer flies, from the world's largest McDonald's, in Vinita. I have that on a plastic travel mug somewhere. Actually, I bought it for someone as a gift, because that's the kind of guy I am. Jesse tells us that he hopes Tara will be able to "open up more" now that she's in a comfortable surrounding. Tara, meanwhile, tells us that she hasn't seen Jesse in a while and that she totally, totally missed him and whatever. She foreshadows her father, calling him "an outgoing guy." Sitting down at a table with Jesse, they talk about how they both had trouble sleeping. Tara offers that her father will give Jesse a "hard time" about everything, and that he always -- and this is a direct quote -- "looks everybody up. He always gets people's records off the internet." Oh, well. So much for meeting Tara's dad under congenial circumstances, what with him knowing that I, um, have a relationship with the theeeee-ah-tah. And that I repeatedly call him a hick. Jesse says that he's never nervous meeting parents, but that he's a little on edge now. A big, black SUV pulls up in the open field, and out steps...oh, yay! Tara's dad is being played by Ricky Gervais! Fun! Man, his Southern accent is impeccable. He's brandishing a big, giant long gun, a big smile, and a love of the second amendment.
More guns. Jesse tells us that he's not comfortable around guns. Tara's father announces, "A rule about guns...never pull 'em out unless you're gonna use them." Ladies and gentlemen, I will have you meet a man more conscious of the fact that he's on television than even Bob Guiney. Congratulations, sir. You can pick up your sash and your new television series on Spike whenever you're done shootin'.
"Tara shooting guns is like Charlie's Angels," Jesse tells us, as Tara shows some cans in a field who's boss. That's right! Get 'em! Clay pigeons are fuckers! Tara's father then hands Jesse a gun, which he takes as a direct challenge to his masculinity, of course: "I think Tara's father really wanted to see if I was a man and I could shoot a gun." What great proof of valiance it would be! And, taking a single shot (or so the editing would have us believe), Jesse takes a shot and takes that can right down, damn the ten-cent Oklahoma can deposit! ["Please. That never happened. He's Canadian!" -- Wing Chun] "They don't call me Jesse James for nothing," Jesse reports with a self-satisfied sneer. Tara tells her father that "that's his middle name." Jesse Jesse James Palmer? That's a stupid name. And I don't think Jesse James was known for being such a good shot to begin with. True to form, Tara's father doesn't seem to have much of an idea as to who Jesse James is. True to form, I now have a Cher song stuck in my head for the rest of the weekend.
Following the Tuesday Night Shoot-Out at Paul's Scorched Earth Valley, the three guys (eh, whatever) sit down for a beer. Tara's father (let's call him "Tex") begins illuminating the happy couple as to his so-called "theory on love." And here it is: "I just think it's something they made up to do movies with and write books about." Man. He stole Tara right out of her crib like Nathan Arizona and told her never to ask about her mama.
Atlanta, Georgia! An actual city! An urban Mecca of 416,474 where there are museums built for soft drinks and underperforming sports franchises and wanton women who cheat and thieve and wear their deviant intentions on the kitschy novelty t-shirts! God, it's nice to be back. Hmmm...is it always so hot, though?
Jesse wants us to know, in his charming, broken English, "I've had second thoughts about Trish...I really like Trish, I really do. But I need to find out if Trish is just being misunderstood and the other women are jealous or if Trish really is as bad as everybody else makes her out to be." Whatever we learn from the emotional journey that lies ahead, this is the one thing I know for sure: that nose job is one dynamite nose job. Go, Trish!
The snappy couple (he in a ratty brown sportsjacket with shoulder pads from the Woody Allen In Drag Collection and she in pink chiffon everything) strides into a hotel room somewhere in Atlanta and immediate gets to the process of growing. As people. Jesse will go first, thanks: "Something kinda freaked me out at the Rose Ceremony." Was it something shiny? Because if so, it might have been...everything about you. He adds that he was met with "bewilderment" from all of the other women when he gave Trish her rose, and reminds us of Karen's comment that anyone who gives a rose to Trish has, like, the major, major cooties. Trish sits livid and erupts again that this is why she's not friends with girls, noting, "I've been dealing with stuff like this for pretty much my whole life." And while I like to give Trish the benefit of the doubt just because I hope it'll get me invited to speak on a panel about depictions of women in reality television, I have to say once she cops to the fact that this has been going on her entire life, well, fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong, if you know what I'm saying. Jesse continues that he doesn't "want to be played," which causes Trish to charge from the room and leave Jesse to check out his reflection in the sterling silverware and still not think that turtleneck is a bad idea. Shocking. Trish stands in the hallway among the discarded scraps of room service for a minute, confessionalizing, "This is worth it to fight for," and returns to the room with a steady new resolve. "I can't be fighting an uphill battle," she tells him. "I can't keep doing this." Then she cries. "Either you want to be with me or you don't," she says, not crying again. She worries that she can't redeem herself, and that she can't make it better with the other girls and that she doesn't know why it's like this. Jesse promises that he won't "drop-kick" her, but it's probably only because he'll miss. "In the end, my wife doesn't have to be somebody that the world likes. The important thing is that I'm in love with her, and that she loves me." Which doesn't sound lonely at all.
Laura Ashley wuz here. We pull up to the front of Trish's exceedingly well-appointed home in the Atlanta suburb of Eeeeeevil (it's like the Paul's Valley of Buckhead), where we meet her mother, her father, and her sister Susan. Susan is shorter, blonder, and more adopted than the rest of the siblings. We're immediately at dinner, Trish and Jesse seemingly complaining about the structure of the show they're still on, and Jesse noting that they had to throw themselves into a deep conversation fourteen seconds after they met each other, basically following up "nice to meet you" with "do you want to have kids?" Susan, not getting the point, busts in to note, "I think that's a great way. Why waste a year?" Jesse, the master orator, keeps the conversation on point by dismissing any opinion that doesn't dovetail conveniently with his own, bulldozing, "The point is, I mean, that is awkward." Not as awkward as watching the fictions families tell themselves to continue mattering as a family, including Trish's father's retelling of a story we've never heard him tell before, but knowing all the while he tells it with a frequency of "on the 1's," or something: "When I met her mom, I knew right away I was going to marry her...I knew it within one week." Which is why it wasn't until five years in that you discovered she was a man. Sorry. Cheap shot. But seriously...look at him.
Trish retires to some anterior sitting room with her sister to "decompress." Trish tests the censor's limits three times in telling her sister that, pretty much, she's bleeping had it with this bleeping bleep, "because of women and being catty and being mean." She credits herself with being such a strong person, and Susan confirms that she's not surprised at Trish's troubles in the house, seeing as "women have a tendency to be threatened by her...this has been going on for a decade. With everyone she runs into." Well. Yeah. Fifty Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong, Vol. 2. From the safety of a nearby confessional, Jesse again notes that he has some reservations about Trish, because of the "hurdles" that they keep facing. He's glad he got to see her "sweet side" in front of her parents, and notes that he's glad he doesn't have to make a decision tonight because, well, "I've got a lot of thinking to do." And that can take a while. And it smells like burning.
Back at the A.J. Feely Halfway House For Wayward Third-String Quarterbacks, Jesse Palmer rewelcomes the final four to his home for...a night of random milling. He enters the living room and leaves first with Tara, who tells him that she missed him. In a confessional, she defends her opinion of him against future airings of this show, defending against an as-yet-unseen offense, "He really is a wonderful guy." Mandy Jaye, meanwhile, tells him from a strangely omniscient perch that she knows he has concerns about her authenticity. "I've had ten years of interview coaches," she notes, and Jesse says he wants to be with someone who doesn't think of what they want to say before she says it. It is a basic rule of life he abides by every single day. In her confessional, Mandy Jaye frets, "He misunderstands me as a person. That's painful." She tears up, and she hasn't even been booted. Yet. Nice interview coaching, entire state of Texas. Trish, meanwhile, sneers that "little girls are gonna be little girls," and we cut strangely to Jessica telling Jesse that she's ready to settle down. And Trish, meanwhile, is too high-maintenance to win. And she has "a lot of love to give." And, also, "I adore you." Jesse appreciates this compliment in silence, causing Trish to put her hand over her mouth like she's just realized how in love she is because that's exactly how it happens. "My god!" she screams. "What do you do to me!" Makes her pimp herself to save face.
Back in the living room, Tara whispers that Trish "dug her own hole," just as Jesse escorts Trish back into the room. "I feel like I'm always walking in on the middle of jokes," Jesse notes. "You are," responds Jessica. And the punchline, as it has been for the past three segments now, remains a steady, "Your blazer, asshole" with little cause to think that might change.
"I loved meeting all of your families," Jesse says. "It's going to be very difficult to say goodbye to one of you tonight." Nevertheless:
Jessica, will you accept this rose? Anything that doesn't look like a law school diploma is good enough for her.
Tara, will you accept this rose? Awwww, shoot! Geddit? GEDDIT
Shut up, Chris.
Mandy Jaye, will you accept this rose? Wow. Add a Miss Congeniality sash to her pageant room, and spell congeniality with a silent "consolation."
Trish loveless-ingly hugs each of the three girls, who hug in glee after Trish takes her whoring self outside. Jesse tells her that he doesn't think they're meant to spend their lives together. She'll make someone happy. Just not him. She tells him that she hopes he finds what he's looking for, but pretty much keeps a straight face through it. Though in Jesse's estimation, what he sees in her eyes is tantamount to "pleading. 'Jesse, please don't tell me this is happening.'" In the limo, she tells us, "This isn't fair. At all. This sucks...I'm a good person. And I'm a damn good catch...I really want my boyfriend back. And if I want something, my god, I am going to get it." Back in the house, the three remaining ladies clink glasses and celebration the ding dong the witch is dead qualities of their combined victory, as we make an unconventional cut back into the limo to discover Trish threatening, "This is not over." The...end?