By Djb
Props to the predicate nominative, and my sincerest apologies for treating it so shoddily last week.
Bob "Assanova" Guiney moves with purpose around Bob's Villa, throwing clothes in a bag with the reckless abandon of one who used to be fat but now is not fat and also is really good friends with his ex-wife. He emerges in the bedroom wearing a red t-shirt and wearing a black skullcap, which I guess means he already packed the most important item in his wardrobe, e.g. whatever isn't that hat. He's shooting for "simple white man's co-opting of urban culture" and instead landing squarely on "three inches lower and he's a cliché cinematic bank robber." Bob carries bundles of clothes and throws them into a bag. Seeing as the only articles of clothes we've actually seen him wear since he showed up in Malibu are "a bathing suit" and "evening formalwear drenched in Meredith's tears," this middling adventure in business casual might be a little excessive. Perhaps he jammed all of those clothes in there as a stopgap to keep all of the skeletons he's hiding (such as which of Satan's many pacts he signed in blood to make himself impossibly irresistible) from clanging to the ground and making quite the ruckus. Either way, nice beige sportsjacket, Larry from Three's Company.
In a different red shirt, Bob over-backstories for the benefit of, I guess, Mary's parents, who are translating this show on a Speak 'n' Spell and are therefore five seasons behind on the central concepts of a television show entitled The Bachelor: "This stage of dating certainly gets more serious. I finally get to go to each of these ladies' hometowns and meet their families." Yes. Finally. How on earth have you held out so long, you brave, suffering soul? Remember the feeling you had when Mandela got released from prison? Well, this is just like that, except with fewer political ramifications and more beige sportsjackets. "I think that people opening up their homes and introducing their families to me is a big deal, because I think that that's probably one of the most telling signs as to whether or not I could be part of these women's lives and be a part of their families in the future." Oooh, the future! Where the dog is a robot and the hot tub is on the moon and, a thousand years on, the other girls have finally caught up in age to Mary's cryogenically frozen head.
Man, I knew the ratings for this show had been slipping for the last couple of seasons, but I wasn't aware that it had gotten so bad that they made the Bachelor book all of his own travel. Practically pulling out old copies of AAA triptychs and being all "and then, after The National Grammar Rodeo, we'll stop at the Knoxville Wigsphere," Bob files his flight plan in a way that makes for television as compelling as a locked list thread: "I'll be going to Illinois to see where Kelly Jo grew up." The expression "grew up" implies a certain amount of maturity, which...well, I still just don't know yet. "Then to Portland, Oregon, where I'll be with Meredith, her mother, father, and brother." And, if you scratch just below the surface, her Nana. "Finally, I'm going to Beverly Hills, where I'll get to spend some time with Estella and her mother." And not her father? Would this be a bad time to point out that the adjective best suited to describe her voice is "deafening"? But first, because of the whole playing-the-life-expectancy-odds thing, "I'm going to Tampa, Florida, to meet with Mary and her mother." On that cue, Mary walks down the stairs of Shady Pines (well, that's what it's called when she's in it, anyway) carrying a suitcase and a giant teddy bear, a gift from her as-yet-not-conceived child from its doting and loving never-gonna-be-its-father, given to her in that dark, cobwebby sanctum known as "Mary's crazy, crazy mind." Besides, isn't all this luggage precluding Mary from getting on that mechanized chair thing that's supposed to help her down the stairs?
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.
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.
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"!
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.
Oh, the Wells-Fargo Wagon is a-coming in! Yee-haw! I reckon it's time for some vis-i-tation out to the Ol' West! I'm a-gonna bring down Mr. Willoughby and Skeeter Bob Junior and Old Pappy, and we're a-gonna blow rhythmically in a jug and pan for some gold and develop the frontier! ["Dreamin'!" -- Wing Chun]
At least that's what the opening shots of Wheaton, Illinois make us believe we're going to do, playing with our preconceived notions of what happens in Illinois: a Gen'ral Store, a little red schoolhouse, a real live train, and two kids drinking outta one ice cream soda with two straws make up a mise en scène that belies that fact that we're literally thirty miles outside of downtown Chicago. Then again, we also seem to be about thirty miles from something the map ambiguously refers to just as "Indiana." Anyone got a read on exactly what in the hell THAT is?
Romance of romances, Bob meets Kelly Jo in a parking lot. She's wearing a black sleeveless top that's going to show up in the Wheaton Picayune Gazette police blotter if things there don't become a little more thoroughly modern by the end of the date. In the Suburban on the way to the house, Kelly Jo bemoans the fact that this will probably be a difficult day for Kelly Jo's mother, "because [Kelly Jo's] Dad's not there." Uh-oh. Remember, it was only in the editing that they made Bob look sympathetic to the lemming-esque nature of the Bachelorette's family members during the taping of this season. He likes the dead relatives. But he does not love the dead relatives. So tread lightly, because the ground is still pretty soft in Nana's new digs. Oops. Didn't mean to say "digs." That must sound wrong.
The car pulls past long stretches of stately, big, suburban, white houses, coming to rest on one stately, big, suburban, white house. Inside, Bob and Kelly Jo meet four screaming women of intergenerational breadth and scope. Kelly Jo's mother leaps right into Bob's arms. Her tight, sunflower-patterned Capris lift off the ground and wrap around him, which isn't that much farther to travel, seeing as that outfit looks like it got lost in the background of the Tampa segment and just happened to end up here. Bob also makes real nice with Kelly Jo's grandmother, who has a nickname that is either "Hooka" or "Booka" or "Pookah." I think it's a very soft "P." Kelly Jo's mom is immediately socially boozy, and we cut to her sitting at Bob's feet (for where else should this kingly subject be expected to supplicate herself, after all), asking him, "What did you think of Kelly when she first got out of the limo?" And the only really notable part of this interaction is that you can tell from her body language that she's expecting anything that comes out of Bob's mouth to be heeeee-larious, and so she's a bit nonplussed when he actually answers the question sincerely, and she has to sit back on her haunches and listen to him talk. Bummer. Lacking class, Bob immediately volunteers that he and Kelly kissed on the first night. The family reacts with it's-meant-to-be hushed tones, but the true originality would be if he suddenly showed up at, say, Shea the firefighter's house and was all, "Actually, what's really amazing if that your daughter is only person who I did not kiss that first night." Or those twins. Remember them? Yeah, me neither.
Kelly Jo keeps her emotions locked inside the confessional room where they damn well belong, telling us, "It does suck having my dad not there to meet the man that I could spend the rest of my life with." Back in the living (or is it the dying?) room, Grandma Hooka Chaka dabs her eyes with a tissue and proclaims, "Joey would love you." Careful with the expenditure of energy, old one. You've seen how this show treats the legacy of aging grandmothers. They Shoot Nanas, Don't They?
Dinner. Kelly Jo makes a toast to "the best family [she] could ever ask for," adding that she's with a man who makes her feel "amazing." And also to "an amazing night." All Tampa has to do is change its name to "Amazing, Florida" and they can consider their corporate synergy dollars pretty damn well spent in the final analysis. I feel like that word is reserved for circus performers on unicycles twirling rings around on their arms really, really fast. Mid-'80s television shows about ghost trains riding through people's living rooms? Amazing. Grandma Hooka Chaka? Non-threateningly maternal. And a big fan of this "Joey."
Kelly Jo's mother Barbara worries to us that they were having "too good of [sic] a time," and so, back in the kitchen (or is it the dying kitchen?), she asks if she can steal Bob away onto a back lanai, just off the room they're sitting in right now. Outside, Babs (may I call you Babs?) wants Bob to know what Kelly Jo can offer him as a person: "When her father died..." Bob's pupils dilate in a well-here-we-go-again fashion. "She had the worst time of her life. You know who got me through it?" Caspar Weinberger? I have no idea. "Kelly Jo." Ooooooh. May-I-Call-You-Babs goes on to explain that, during their hard times, Kelly Jo sent her mom a lot of cards in the mail. Awwwwwwww. Cards. Bob responds that he thinks MICYB did a great job raising her daughter. She trained Kelly Jo well. Trained her to be a shill for Hallmark. Trained to her to send cards.
And, we're done here. As Bob and Kelly Jo make their departure, we're in for more hugs and more screeching cries of estrogen-drenched love. Add Bob's laugh as the obligato above all that and, well, a thousand sad dogs. I'm just saying. As they leave, Grandma Hooka Chaka goes in for one more almost-inappropriate hug, nearly crossing the lines of propriety between a big, gross, sloppy grandma kiss and an "Oh, look, Fred, she's gotten her boobies" situation. Sadly, for Bob, that's actually something she could say to him and mean. Bob deems the night "awesome" and tells us that Kelly Jo's family reminded him of his own. And, in an abrupt cut back to what I guess is Kelly Jo's apartment, Bob asks, "What do you dream about?" I guess he means to get into her deeper psyche of what her hopes for the future are, but she rambles something about how she doesn't want to hold anything back from anyone, because "who knows in the morning, you could wake up and one of those people could not be there." Because they ditched you and sent you packing? Or, wait, are you talking about death again? Bob doesn't care as long as it ends with smacky kissing. Lucky for Bob, it ends with smacky kissing.
I've never been to Portland, Oregon. I look forward to going in it, through it, and, in one very special visit, six feet under it. Who's ready? Readers? Posters? Bachelor fans?
Nana?
Bob recaps (again, grrrrrrr...) his past dealings with Meredith, remembering with a furrowed, my-brain-hurts brow, "Meredith and I had a one-on-one date, obviously, on the day that her grandmother passed away. And that was really difficult for me, and I'm sure it was extremely difficult for her." Yes, but you still get to go first. Bob knows that he cares about Meredith, but he wants to make sure that they have a relationship beyond the simple fact that they've been "grieving together." After all, we wouldn't want a totally superficial TV relationship getting soiled with the lie of compassion, now would we?
Bob carries his usual bouquet of duty-free flowers and shoves them into Meredith's hands as she walks through a back gate and meets Bob on the driveway. They hug, and Bob proclaims the area "great," but it's possible that he and Portland have just been grieving together, so maybe it's all a big lie. Thsey waste no time slipping into something more bathing suit-y and hopping in her pool. Bob spits a whole bunch of water on Meredith and then laughs maniacally, causing the already-damaged Meredith to contract hoof-in-mouth and a splitting migraine with startling simultaneity. She responds, "I didn't know I was dating my brother." Ew. But just wait until you see the brother. When they take a dip in his gene pool later on, at least he'll make you stop wondering why Meredith's thoughts went directly to the prospect of what gets created when siblings combine their DNA.
"I asked Bob to go see my grandmother's gravesite." Uh-oh. "And I hope it doesn't make him feel weird." Uh. Oh. ["Meredith, I am beginning to realize why you are single, because, guh?" -- Wing Chun] As the Suburban coasts past the entrance to The Skyline Memorial Gardens at sundown, Bob ruminates on, "That was the first chance she's had to visit her grandmother's gravesite. And it was with me." And now that we know who got the boot, my inability to hear the stark panic in his voice when he says that makes me sad. We should have known. We all should have known. Meredith whispers a "thanks" to Bob for coming up to Big Nana's House, and he smiles wanly and desperately thinks, "I mean, Kelly Jo's family is dead, but at least they're not quite THIS dead." This really is a bit much. Bob and Meredith walk arm in arm to the gravesite, the bouquet of flowers having grown suddenly quite a bit bigger. Meredith breaks down and lays flowers at her grandmother's grave, the ensuing confessional fascinating in light of the footage: "Maybe my grandmother had a better plan for me, and that's why I'm here." You're saying your grandmother gave her life so you could cry to Bob about it and that would bring you together? Okay, by way of example, my grandmother still puts five dollars in cash inside my birthday card every year, and that is ALL I expect from that particular familial role. I mean, my grandmother's a cool lady and all, but I wouldn't ask her to kick it just so I could meet the man of my dreams. Or, the, um, "sweet boy" of my dreams. As my grandmother calls them. Whatever. It's fine. She also doesn't seem to like Irish people very much, for some reason.
Back at Meredith's house, we meet Meredith's mother, father, and her brother's gigantic, bulging, simian forehead. I know. It's mean. But he's too busy picking the lice and dirt out of his hide to sit down and read this anyway. So mean! Why so mean? Can't help mean. Just wait until he kidnaps me and I discover late in the going that it was earth all along. He'll have his day, don't y'all worry about it.
Whoa. Right to dinner. Nana is such a fame whore and she completely blew my walking tour of Portland. She's way past her Warhol-allotted fifteen minutes. Or her Nana's funeral's allotted ten, fifteen, or ten minutes. Sitting down to eat, Bob proposes a toast about getting to know Meredith's family better, segueing into his real reason for wanting to have the floor: "I want to say, too, I'm sorry about your loss." He appreciates their hospitality, in light of recent deathcakes, and Matt (the brother I'm feeling too guilty to make fun of anymore) tells us in a confessional, "I definitely think it was a good thing that Mary and Bob went up to see my grandmother at the cemetery. I think that it at least brought her some closure." Who? Meredith? Or Nana? Someone's mad that his sister didn't come home for the funeral, as I would most certainly be. But seriously, it was only going to be ten or fifteen minutes, anyway.
But now to the nitty and also the gritty, Meredith's round-faced father wants to understand how Bob reacts to adversity in the worst of times, positing this hypothetical dream come true: "Everything suddenly just goes in the crapper. Mortgage rates are 18%. Oprah hates your guts. What do you do, then?" Bob -- finally having adopted the fortune-cookie rhetoric of the homestay date -- responds with a simple "I get lemons, I made lemonade." Oh, no he di'in't. That's what passes for acceptable life management now? By juicing it? He should have suggested that to Kelly Jo's mom during her dark hours: god gave you Capri pants. Why not make them into Capri Sun? Bob tells us that he's "not afraid of failure," and Meredith tells us in a confessional that his response to her parents' questions was -- wait for it -- "amazing." Man, I can't wait until Oprah hates Bob's guts.
And, we're back in L.A. We montage from the scenic coastline of Southern California (which is not where Beverly Hills is, at all) over to that "Beverly Hills" sign that was a block from where I worked when I lived there, to the street sign for the 400 block of Rodeo Drive. We recap (okay, that's IT) through the Vegas date, Estella breaking down drunkenly as drunken cartoon birds lope around her head drunkenly, crashing into each other and wearing those beer visors with the two straws hanging down on which is written, "This job's for the birds." So today, Bob wants to figure out if he and Estella can just hang. Also, an L.A. address would be a really convenient place for Bob to base himself after the run of the show is over. So, if he's taking contingencies into consideration, here's one: you can't work for Extra when you're living out in Cheeseville.
Big hugs and small flowers for Estella at her house in L.A. Estella reminds us that she's been on her own since she was fifteen, so she's excited to show Bob her house, rather than her parents'-minus- one-dead-Dad- equals-Mom's-house. Estella glosses over the fact that she was a total deaky wreck in Vegas, airily flitting, "I am so looking forward to having [Bob] here and kicking back and not having it be a big deal." She asks Bob if he's excited to meet her mom ("No"), and Estella predicts that Mom will cry when she walks into the house. And speaking of tears: "Of course, I would love to have my father here. That would be amazing. And in a way, I'm sure he is." But she's not going on location to a place with flowers and an etched rock to show Bob how "amazing" her relationship with her father was. Dead, sure. But still somewhat less dead than others.
Estella's mom enters the house, Bob offering her a giant hug but not a patronizing "You're so cute" even though she is scores shorter than he is. Estella's mother kisses Estella on the lips (there's a lot of this going around) and cries just so that Estella can prove the point that her mother was going to cry, dammit. Awww, but she is cute. And she looks like Tootsie. And it takes her no time at all to volunteer the information that she used to call Estella -- ech -- "Pooterbuns." Bob asks if he can call Estella "Pooterbuns." She says no. True nuff. Never discuss it again. Mastella gets right to the point, asking what Bob is looking for in a woman. Everyone wants to find his or her mother, is what comes from his response. Have I mentioned she looks like Tootsie?
An exceedingly intimate dinner ensues at Estella's, the three of them sitting around (well, not entirely around) the table, eating something I'm guessing Estella cooked. Bob delves deeper, bringing up Vegas anew, asking Estella if her Vegas freak-out was just "a moment," or indicative of a deeper pathology where she would always...what, wonder if Bob were dating all of her friends? Estella goes with Column A, rather than what would be a far more damning "Yes, I'm totally paranoid to Plathian proportions. The only time I cook for you from now on, I'm making a meal of my own head in the oven. Because I'm craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy." Anyway, that's what she doesn't say. She says that getting out of the house gave her some "sanity," and, if that's what that was...wow.
Alone now, Estella asks her mother what she thinks about this knotty little dating-your-soulmate- on-television thing. Mastella says that it's hard to put it into words because she's so used to using sign language. Because her dead father was deaf, which gives her more heart-string-tugging pity points than Kelly Jo, but fewer maudlin fresh-in-the-ground pathos points than Meredith. In the Candy Bar Of Death, Estella is the creamy nougat center. So Mastella leaves her hands right on the couch and barely signs at all, telling Estella "he'd be a good man, baby." In a confessional, Mastella tells us that whatever happens happens and that Estella will be okay either way. Estella bids Bob goodbye as he tells us in a confessional, "I'm screwed. I mean, I don't know what I'm gonna do." He would have said he was "dead" by way of euphemism. But this season, that would mean he was actually dead.
Chris "Who?"rrison welcomes Bob into The Room Of Reckoning, sitting down and asking Bob how he's feeling. Bob responds, "It's the weirdest thing." No, the weirdest thing was that time that Kangaroo Jack was the #1 movie in America. Maybe this is the second weirdest: "I kind of go through the day not really thinking about it, and then I do start to think about the emotions involved." The emotions involved in asking someone to marry you? And it only bugs you at night? You have the depth of a spittle wad, my puffy friend. Chris is all, "So you met the families, eh?" or something. Bob is amazed (natch) that each of the women has such "amazing stories" (train in the living room!) that set them apart from anyone he's ever met. Chris tells Bob that tonight will be different from all other nights, an appropriate enough setting in which Bob will be asking The Four Questions of his remaining women (a little something from the Haggadah for all you Old Testament types out there. Thanks for visiting the Catskills! Please come again!). The women have not seen each other since moving out of the house, and will not be permitted to speak to each other when they arrive at the house. Ooooh, how fabulously barbaric. Chris takes the three remaining roses downstairs as Bob undertakes the video message portion of our show. Mary sees Bob as a part of her family because of how he's old, Cuban, and adorable! Kelly Jo knew how "incredible" and "real" it was bringing Bob home to meet her family, but she's not allowed to talk to Mary, and Chris lets her know it in a creepy whisper. Meredith has feelings "bigger than the rose" and metaphors that take longer to untangle than a very brief funeral service. Estella whines that she had a great time when Bob came to meet her mom, but the real B-story here is the smooch Estella plants on Chris when she enters the house. Nah, that's not really a B-story.
Silent. Glancing. Roses. Chris Harrison. Nana? Chris explains that this has been an -- sing it with me if you know the song -- "amazing" week. He recaps (STOP IT STOP IT JUST STOP IT YOU'RE TAKING MONEY OUT OF MY POCKET AND BREAD OUT OF MY MOUTH SO STOP IT!) that the ladies all went home and Bob met their families. Reeeeeally? Now, however, Bob is "struggling" with his decision. Because there are only three roses, which means someone's packing. With line readings like that one, it's not going to be Chris. He totally had his A-game tonight.
Oh, hi Bob. "Blah blah blee blee you look beautiful blee foobity foobity foobity tough for me la la lee lee loo if I had four roses, I promise I'd give out four roses merpy merpy merpy I care about you all." I hope y'all don't mind if I dwell here one more time: hey, buddy? Tell it to Estella's dad.
Estella, will you accept this rose? Eesh. You better just hope that she's not carrying the recessive "Tootsie" gene on the Punnett Square. Little "t," for those Mendelites scoring at home.
Kelly Jo, will you accept this rose? Hooka chaka hooka hooka hooka chaka hooka hooka!
Shut up, Chris. We've calculated Punnett Squares tonight. We can count to freakin' one.
And now, a small admission: I wrote my entire recaplet for this epoisode during the commercial break preceding the Rose Ceremony, and initially it went like this: "Bob gives each and every family reason to believe it's their daughter he's going to pick, but it's Mary and Mary alone who we finally get to see go loco when Bob tells the adorably short Cuban that her days are done." And while it's not exactly "Dewey Defeats Truman," it's a testament to the actual surprise that existed in this episode for one. Nice job. Not shocking. But pleasantly surprising.
"Meredith, sorry. Take a moment and say goodbye." Chris is truly a master of compassion. Bob and Meredith walk outside together, Bob asking, "Are you okay?" And whether she doesn't want to give him the satisfaction or whether she really doesn't care, her noncommittal "Yah" and resolute unwillingness to cry are an absolute inspiration. It's also a reminder that we have a nice little streak going of girls who don't cry in the face of their release from the shackles of this horrible place. Bob thanks Meredith "for everything," and she responds that she wants to be with someone who wants to be with her. "If it doesn't work out, I'm here," she finishes. Oooh, she was so close. Anyway, she's gone, telling us in the limo, "I know for a fact that what Bob was looking for is not in the house. He actually put her in the limo and let her drive away." Inside, the final toast ensues, everyone quietly saying a thank-you prayer that all that messy grieving and human emotion and perspective of what's important are gone and we can finally get back to the histrionics and self-obsession. And remember, folks. Be good to your Nanas. They've been good to you.