Self-Respect, Or Shaq Thereof

Props to Sars. Damn good show, bosslady.

"Ladies, if you would, come join me in the living room, please," calls an enthusiastic Chris "Holy Holy Holy He's A Boring Host" Harrison while we are treated to an establishing shot of The Malibu Barbies' Dream House (y'all, it's even in Malibu). The fifteen remaining contestants come a-running into the room, stop short with a collective look of "oh, sorry, we heard a male voice calling us and we just assumed the voice was made of cash," and continue in anyway because, well, this room has rolling cameras in it! Today, Chris is wearing a rugged, outdoorsy, short-sleeved blue button-down, causing brand confusion between him and every other reality-show host ever, while insuring the continuing bland Probstification of the lot of them continues unchecked. The only difference between those two at this point is that Chris's luxury item is actual luxury. Chris indicates the women's plush surroundings and asks the ladies what they think of the house, doing so with such a self-satisfied air you'd think he built it using his own hands, and the ladies coo and applaud with such a self-conscious obsequiousness that you'd think he built it using his own money. I've got your numbers now, you crazy, crazy, magnificent, gold-digging bastards, you. Chris launches right into the plot of tonight's episode: "Andrew has planned some exciting, romantic fantasy dates." Oh, he's planned them, has he? I'm sorry, but I was under the impression that when people planned dates, it involved, like, calling a restaurant, making a reservation, arranging to pick the other person up. You know, the "planning" part of the planning. Andrew has taken care of the part of the evening that includes the following: "Act humble, tousle hair fashionably, buy shoes no one but me can afford, add Dr. Scholl's Short-B-Gone lifts to shoes no one but me can afford, call Daddy and publicist from the limo to tell him it's about the wine and not the tires, and show up." But the "plans"? A little bit more of a stretch, is what I'm saying.

Chris adds that the girls will be going on individual dates with Andrew "later on in this process" (not so fast, Shannon), but for now, they'll be going out in group dates of five. Which, truth be told, pretty much eliminates the word "romantic" from Chris's earlier speech, right along with the aforementioned "planning." Way to shoot from the hip, Chris. Anyway, he concludes with great mystery, "I think someone's left you a present out on the porch." And if I didn't know any better, I would say that the terminology of "a present out on the porch" connotes less a surprise of the "exciting" and "romantic" variety, and more of the "deposited by that strange dog that inexplicably lived in the house during last season of The Bachelorette" kind. Chris calls upon Elizabeth to go fetch the box, perhaps thinking of what must be her innate, caring-for-animals goodwill based on the matronly, ye olde weddyng dress she wore at her mom's house back in the season premiere. Elizabeth -- not a blonde and therefore finally beginning to individuate herself -- leaps off the couch like her non-blonde-hair has been set on fire (and with such insanely catty energy coming from these girls, I would say she's not out of the woods yet, actually), and makes for the door. On her way toward it, Chris yells some cautionary words behind her: "And don't open it!" He means the box. That line kills. Did Andrew tell them that whoever laughs loudest at Chris's non-joke gets a stack of twenties or something? Elizabeth returns with a large white box bedecked in a red bow, and dances around it like it was some kind of godsent totem that dropped to earth from outer space. The producers must be crazy! Open it. OPEN IT! The only way for this drawn-out intro to pay off at this point would be if the opened box revealed the shooting script from the final scene of Se7en with Mike Fleiss's head Photoshopped in.

"This is the first of many boxes," Chris tells them excitedly. Oooh, box drama. Does he mean that the boxes are positioned Russian-dolls-style, and there's another box inside of this box, and then an even smaller one inside of that? This season...on The Bachelornyet! Cough. Ahem. Sorry. Wow. I'll just go. Anyway, Chris continues: "Inside, you'll find out who's invited, a little about the date, and a personal note from Andrew." Can't you just do all that with a 3x5 note card? Or has the powerful box lobby finally gotten to them, too? Elizabeth opens the box and we learn (compliments of the aforementioned suggestion of a 3x5 note card) who will be going on the first group date: Christina from Florida, Kirsten, Tina from Tennessee, Elizabeth, and Amber. Elizabeth reads from the card: "Me me me me me! I'm doing stuff! Look at me!" Oh, sorry. That was actually just the stage direction. Here's what it actually says: "Leave your stress behind, as we get down and dirty." Also in the box are numerous body care lotions, gels, and muds of various kinds. Thanks again for the pointless big-ass box. Corporate sponsorship brought to you by Origins. Excess brought to you by Pandora.

In an interview, Tina from Tennessee is the first to weigh in: "I don't like the spa for lots of reasons. The girls I'm going with, they're all really little and they all have really good bodies, so I'm kind of like, 'These are not the kinds of people I want to be in bathing suits to.'" Because her hundred and twenty pounds of nothing are so offensive. So that's the only reason then, eh, Tennessina? Which sucks, because, despite a speaking voice that would probably be mistaken in a voice-over for, like, mine (and I mean that hers is a leeeeetle too low and mine is a leeeeeetle too, I dunno, Paul-Lynde-tastic?), she's the coolest. I want to hang out with her and sing show tunes with her all day and all night. Do you think she would like that? Oh, who cares? I could love it enough for the both of us!

The front door of The Malibu Barbies' Dream House opens to reveal Andrew "Little Lord Bacheloroy" Firestone. He fills us in that today's group date will take them to "a spa in Ojai," and he adds for our sympathy, "I wish I could read a book or a manual about how to date five girls at once." And we wish we could publish one for you, sir, but the proposal for Guy's Guide the to Televised Brothels of Southern California was a bit too incendiary for publication here at Mighty Big Press. And, no unsolicited manuscripts permitted! Jerk. Anyway, Andrew enters the house and calls out a strained "hi there" with that weird I-promise- my-voice-is- about-to-change- riiiiiiiiight-now voice that sounds like a cross between Keanu on helium and Tina from Tennessee. And we're out the door for Ojai on a typical Malibu day (bright and sunny with a 70% chance of fake tits), Tennessina calling behind her into the house, "Goodbye! We won't miss you!" The remaining girls in the house look at each other, all, "How did Isaac Hayes end up on the group date, or...oh, wait. Tina."

The limo steams down the Time Elapse Highway (we're here already? I guess nothing fun happened while they were boozing in the car), and pulls up in front of a quasi-Tex-Mex-y pastel sign reading, "Spa Ojai." Ack! You sunk my vowel ship! Elizabeth fills us in on what happens : "As soon as we got to Ojai, we changed into our bathing suits and went in the mud room. So we covered ourselves in mud and got a little dirty for the bachelor." Ew. Cut to this display in action, Andrew rubbing mud on Elizabeth and Christina (I think) rubbing mud on Kirsten (maybe) and Mike Fleiss rubbing his hands together with glee and thinking about how to dispense with this stupid "plot" thing the networks keep insisting on and finally just creating a show entitled Chicks Bending Over. Which, I'm sure, has been done. "L'il Archie" Andrew puts way too fine a point on it, observing in an interview, "To have your first date, not only with five girls, but to be half-naked, is certainly a boyhood fantasy." That sentence makes so little grammatical sense that it almost defies reality. So, anyway. Back in the mud baths (wipe your cares and your pride away!), Elizabeth wants to talk deep, and she asks about Andrew's fidelity in past relationships. Andrew hems like a tailor and haws like an evil French villain, finally spitting out as a sort of response, "There's no way that I would ever jeopardize what we've been working for, for some kind of miniature satisfaction." And that right there is totally the name of L'il Andy's autobiography: Miniature Satisfaction: The Andrew Firestone Story. He's so lovable I could just put him in my pocket and not cheat on him. The ladies too offer their varying impressed responses, finding him reliable and adorable with an approving "aaaaaw!" Or maybe they just say that because "au" is the periodic chart's symbol for gold.

Amber, really, is the dumbest. Out in broad daylight on what appears to be a golf course of some kind (she must have wandered off there in her carelessly boozy state and the camera crew gamely gave chase, I guess), she reviews the evening's conversation: "Andrew definitely gave a good answer on fidelity. He says he's never cheated and he's never been cheated on, and I think that's awesome. It's totally something that I respect." Wait. WAIT. First of all, when did "he won't cheat on me" become the singular criterion on which the extent of one's moral fortitude is based? Not cheating on someone should be a given in a relationship, not the thing that makes that relationship and the people in it so kick-ass. And, okay, second? How does the logic of "...he's never been cheated on, and...[i]t's totally something that I respect" stand to reason? Huh? So if he'd been the victim of someone else's infidelity, he becomes the social pariah because of his inability to keep his women close? Hi. Amber? Your brain is a sieve, your liver is pickled, your tan is fake, and shut up.

Back in the mud room, Elizabeth asks Andrew what his goals are over the ten years. He must be thinking, "This is the weirdest job interview ever. (But in a total 'boyhood fantasy' way, of course)." Boring! He responds that his main ideals are "business"-related, adding, "But I actually don't know if I'll be able to do it by myself." Well then, how about hiring on your fifty million friends, all named Benjamin, to be consultants for you? Dude, you're loaded. Pick a business. You could buy a sports franchise. You could build a plane and charter it around the world. You could go all Howard Hughes crazy and foster vast-reaching paranoid Communist fantasies. You could build a fifty-foot perfect likeness of yourself made entirely out of salt-water taffy and let the neighborhood children cross the protective velvet rope on Sunday and feast on your taffy head. Sky's the limit. What more help do you need? He adds, without sequitur, "All of my friends are getting married and recognizing that they're a lot happier like that." Back in her interview, Elizabeth confesses, "I've developed a crush on him, and I want to see if it's more than a crush. So I want the rose." A generous, shameless, we're-better-than- American-Idol- because-the-only- boobies-you-see- on-that-show- belong-to-Ruben montage of the five girls showering off the mud together follows. This was totally just like all of my boyhood fantasies. This, and meeting Patti LuPone.

Back at The Malibu Barbies' Dream House, Christina from New Jersey (this is how the producers cleverly decided to tell them apart? State names? How about last initials? Or nicknames? Or not choosing twenty-five girls all with the same name?) finds the Box Of Mystery And Fun, opening it up to find a note that tells them that Rachel, Audree, Heather, Elizabeth, and Amy will be attending the group date. I think I know who, like, two of them are. The note says, "This date is sure to be a slam," and they scream in glee that the note, coupled with some other ephemera in the Box Of Mystery And Fun made up of purple and yellow Lakers colors, means that they're going to a basketball game. What are they so happy about? When did chicks start digging basketball so much? Well, live and learn. Looks like Andrew did a really good job with his "planning" on this one.

Meanwhile, back in Ojai, the five girls and Andrew sit outside and just chat it up. Tennessina, wearing a bikini and sporting her perfectly flat stomach and getting sympathy from none of y'all regarding how well she stacks up against anyone else there or in the world, talks loud and low: "I had a boyfriend for a long time, but I kind of thought getting married was like surrendering. I don't want somebody to surrender to me. I want them to say, 'I can't spent another day without you.'" Just like in the Melissa Etheridge song where...nah, forget it. She speaks eloquently and persuasively on the value of being with someone for the long term, noting, "We're all going to sag, we're all going to have wrinkles. Who can you talk to in fifty years?" Kirsten -- sitting to Tennessina and holding a martini glass -- hears the wrinkles comment and agrees, "We all are." Meaning, "We all are except for me, Old Man Tina." Andrew looks Kirsten's way and asks without subtlety, "You wanna go take a walk?" Faces fall. Someone must have asked the other four of them, "Do you want to look cinematically crestfallen?"

In an interview, Andrew explains his attraction to Kirsten: "All day, Kirsten had been catching my eye." Yeah. Words are for suckers. Kirsten and Andrew walk literally into the room to get a massage. They lie down on two nearby tables, and we're treated to an awkward moment where Kirsten can't quite get her bikini top off. Ironic, in a world where confusion over how to unclasp the top is usually left to the accompanying little boy. Kirsten adds in an interview, "I'm self-conscious about my chest." Lots of girls in Florida have "big boobs," she tells us, and she feels like "that's all guys want." Well, if it's spoken in absolutes, it has to be true. Throughout the massage, Kirsten and Andrew share a dizzyingly slow exchange about how they're both "planners," the result of which does nothing more than wrench me out of my Zen recapping flow and remind me that this week I lost my planner containing the addresses and phone numbers of everyone I know, my calendar, my checkbook, several unpaid bills, my college loan booklet, three pens, and a book of stamps. So if you and I have plans (or a birthday) between now and the end of 2003 and I fail to show (or sing "Happy Birthday"), I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. I'm kind of screwed. So thanks, Kirsten. On the other side of the patio, the four remaining girls talk about how jealous they are. Maybe they remember when Stee's birthday is. Because I, like, don't.

It's later now, and we're in a hot tub. The champagne is flowing freely and even the damn bikinis are pruning from overuse by this point, though for some reason Andrew is sitting only halfway in, and he's fully dressed. Amber, on the other hand, is fully loaded. She's downing glasses of champagne one after another, Andrew understating in an interview, "It became apparent that Amber had too much to drink." And how! Back in the tub, Amber slurs some weird invective Andrew's way, and then reaches into the tub for no reason other than to give Christina a big ol' "I love you, man!" hug. Christina wants nothing to do with this. At all. Cut to Andrew helping Amber out of the tub, Amber interviewing from a place of 20/20 hindsight, "I hardly ever drink." Oh, totally. "When you drink and you drink, it gets to you!" Hate. Hate hate hate hate HATE. She's like that one sort-of-pretty girl in every sorority who even the guys are like, "Yeah, she's foxy and all, but she's SO annoying when she's drunk. And she's always drunk." Dude. She's always drunk. Tennessina leads Amber back into their hotel room, interviewing that she thinks Amber has "put herself at a disadvantage by not knowing her limits." Anybody catch that there was a four-syllable word in there? I like this girl. The room door closes and the camera lingers outside the bathroom to find Tina calming Amber down while Amber retches and wails "I don't drink!" Oh, totally. "I'm not like this! You don't know me!" She so lacks all personal responsibility that it's painful to watch, and here we are, looking at that old scene of the dumb girl booting everywhere while the kindly lesbian from down the hall gives up her group date just to be a good friend. Flush that pride right down now.

Returning home to The Malibu Barbies' Dream House, Christina vies for screen time: "When The Bachelor arrived, I pulled him aside and made sure I got a few minutes to talk to him." Dude, just call him by his name. The title isn't so all-encompassing as to eclipse the presence of his name. He's not The Ayatollah Firestone or His Holiness The Dali Andrew. The other girls aren't such a big fan of Christina's actions either, the Other Christina observing, "I'm sure she's not the most popular girl in the house right now." Christina The First doesn't want to be popular. She just wants to be young. Outside the house, she sits him down on a chaise lounge and launches in: "I do hope that we kind of get to know each other." I see how this is important enough for a private, under-the-stars confab. Old Christina tells us that she doesn't care if other people think she's a bitch, adding, "If you want your time alone with him, it's fair game." And speaking of puking all over a pristine bathroom at an elite Ojai spa (which, really, when aren't we?), Shamber corners Andrew on his way in to tell him that she's "so freakin' sorry." Andrew tells us that "it just doesn't mean that much," telling her that she has "nothing to apologize for." Fine. I'll accept the apology for him, then. Or he could accept it on Tennessina's behalf for having to spend the night babysitting. Except, wait. I hate you, Amber. Andrew picking you would indicate what I perceive to be a weakness in Andrew's character.

More backstory from Andrew: "Today, I'm going to a Lakers/Clippers game." An accompanying shot of each girl reminds us who he'll be going with, but I would say that of these five, only Elizabeth can tell herself apart from the others. I sure hope the Staples Center is having some kind of "Generic Blondes Drink Free" promotional day, which will save them all a bundle, I'm sure. Amber will be so disappointed to have missed it. Andrew continues on: "I'm really looking forward to seeing those girls in that crazy scene." Um, "crazy scene"? I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that they would be enjoying their sports-related outing inside the shooting script of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. "Hey, freak-diggity! I can't wait to check out the crazy scene at the b-ball match. In New York? No! In L.A. It'll be totally freaky-deaky!"

Amy tells us, "Andrew came to pick us up in this big bus. We all felt like rock stars." Or hicks at home. Nice Winnebago. The six of them toast with bottles of beer (except one bottle of water that enters the frame, which I'll guess is compliments of Mormon Molly...prude). On the bus now, Andrew tells the girls what he's looking for in a wife: "A girl that...well, not independent." Eep. Let's just let that one lie there all twisted and out of context for a moment. He adds that he does want a girl who can "stand on her own two feet," explaining, "My father, whenever we have big events, he'll grab me and say, 'Look at your mother.'" Okay, what? Big events? Grab him? I realize I'm not all high-society like these tire-eschewing magnates, but my interpretation of that line is something like this: "Whenever my father is parading our family fortune around in front of other similarly blessed contributors to the Republican Party, he will look at my mother, the woman behind his manifold greatness though not possessing any greatness in and of her own self, and be glad that her lack of stressful activities and her dual lifelong commitments to getting her children into really good private schools and volunteering at the library have not caused her strain great enough that she has become unattractive or overweight or prematurely aged, any and all of which would have forced me to stop loving her and start cheating on her many, many years ago. Which I'm probably doing anyway." But then again, I'm just an old romantic at heart. Who fucking hates rich people.