When You're Here, You're Family

Props to Wing and Sars.

We again join the action in progress this week, finding ourselves in the Ladies' Villa just as Chris "Hostess Ding Dong" Harrison calls the ten remaining bachelorettes downstairs. Upstairs, the ladies put down their slam books ("She's way too emotional!" writes Christina of Liz. "She has a boyfriend back home!" writes Ann-Michelle of Kirsten. "I'm two dumm too no aneething! And drunck, to!" writes Amber of, as she spells it, "Ammbur." Eventually, all the remaining contestants arrive in the living room with empty pans, various prospecting gear, and t-shirts reading "I Heart 1849!" to discover two new nemeses on the premises: meet, as Chris explains it, "two of Andrew's closest friends. This is Kevin and his girlfriend Shannon." And I'll tell you what: I missed it the first time around that Shannon was Kevin's girlfriend. So for a few deluded hours, I thought -- even during the most dire, Andrew-judging moments of this episode (get that napkin off your head in public, you entitled, spoiled infant) -- that it was cool Andrew had friends who were girls who were just, like, friends. I wasn't aware that Shannon was the wingman (literally, "the one who serves the wings while the boys are watching football") to a guy made out of body hair and gigantic nose cartilage who causes the Oxford English Dictionary definition of "lunkhead" to be all, "Oh, you mean I'm that guy! I get it now." In a confessional that is whatever the opposite of the word "prophetic" is, Kevin offers, "I think I know what he's looking for in a girl, and I'm here to help find who his future bride may be." Right. By sending him up the champagne-and-puke-made river with Amber Drunkelman. Good show, Lord and Lady Lunkhead.

Some people learned that TV was invented juuuuuuuuust now, so Chris goes over the rules of engagement (will he propose? WILL SHE SAY YES?) for the fourteen hours of episode that lie ahead: "For the few days, you're all going to be going on dates with our bachelor. There's gonna be two intimate one-on-one dates and two group dates. Who's going on them? You'll find out over the few days as the date boxes arrive." Just like in real life! Except I'm not always home when they arrive, so my date boxes keep getting bounced back to UPS and being held at a distribution center fifty miles from my apartment, except this one time that I saw the really weird Russian guy who lives downstairs holding an opened box addressed to me in one hand and a prominent heir to a tire fortune who I think I saw speaking the words "it's actually all about the wine now" in the other. Damn those wily, date-box-stealing Russians.

Lord and Lady Lunkhead, we learn, are solely responsible for deciding which two girls will get the one-on-one time with L'il Elfin Andy, and that the two of them will learn a bit more about the girls through "a list of compatibility questions." As L&L Lunkhead accompany Ann-Michelle out to the pool for the first round of questions, we catch up with Lady Lunkhead (she was probably only separated from her boyfriend because she was on her way to the kitchen to get him a beer for him to drink and crush against his forehead while he burps and laughs with inordinate volume at a Tim Allen stand-up special), who drops new bombs in the latest battle of The Lunkhead Wars, explaining, "I think being an ex-girlfriendthat I can probably give him more insight." Augh! They dated? How did I miss that? And, hi. She went from L'il Andy to Lord Lunkhead? I guess her physical type is "guy who makes sure I end up on TV, somehow." I would fall back on the hoary clich that girls like her wouldn't date him even if he were the last guy on earth, but considering his stooped gait and excessive amount of gorilla-esque fur, I think instead he was the first man on earth and therefore doesn't have much statistical chance of making it to the planet's final days.

Lady Lunkhead poses the first question to Ann-Michelle: "Which best describes what you hope to be: career woman, soccer mom, or society wife?" Don't pick the one that means you love money! We go rapid-fire through the women in that "audition scene in every movie where people are engaged in the same task repeatedly" kind of way. It's the audition scene in The Commitments. It's the roommate-hunting scene in Shallow Grave. It's the how-would-you-spend-your-Publishers-Clearinghouse-money scene in Heathers. It's EveryScene. But at least it's a helpful tool in ensuring that I know the names of all the remaining girls. It's like flashcards. Answering the question I quoted in its entirety before sixteen superfluous editorial comments intervened, Ann-Michelle offers that she's "a combination," failing to add by way of further explanation, "Y'know, like my skin." Kirsten is a "soccer mom." Tina from Wisconsin is a "career woman." Liz (I have heard your plaintive call, America. She is "Elizabeth" no more) puts the button on the end of the scene, pausing for a second before asking, "What are my options again?" Ba-dum! Where's the snare drum guy when you need him? He's doing session work for the karaoke arrangements of Billy Joel songs going on two channels over? Oh.

question. Sound it out, Lord Lunkhead! "Whose marriage do you most admire and why?" Jen: "My grandparents." Audree: "My parents." All of them? Amber: "Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. I just think they're incredible." Wait, though. That's kind of brilliant in its raging, teeming dumbness. Amber is like hanging out with a trashy magazine; she's like what the world would be if Us Weekly were made out of girl instead of out of mulched papyrus. And at least she didn't go with the Cox-Arquettes.

Speak, Lady Lunkhead: "How soon should sex take place in a relationship?" Christina thinks it should take place from "day one." Sorry, snare drum guylooks like we'll be doing our rendition of "The Lady Is A Tramp" without you this week. Tina from Wisconsin just giggles like an idiotsex is funny! Jen believes that "if you really love that person, you can wait." As opposed to hating them mercilessly, in which case you shouldn't even bother with names, especially if you've given her $300 for the hour and she won't even let you kiss her. Ann-Michelle waxes, "Sex should take place when it is time for the couple." Meh? As opposed to when it's decreed by the government agency that usually makes such decisions, the Federal Department of Copulation (www.good-good-love.gov)? Was that just another corollary to 1441 they conveniently forgot to tell us about? Damn them and their weapons of massadoration. Right. Anyway. What the hell am I talking about right now?

"Would you have sex without being in love?" Liz says "no" with such immediacy and alacrity that I think they must have edited in the response she gave when Lord Lunkhead asked, "Would you have sex with me right now?" He zings her with a quick follow-up question, asking, "Have you ever?" Liz again shoots out a "no" with great emphasis. Kirsten has. Tennessina has. Tina from Wisconsin oddly notes that she would "if the opportunity presented itself, maybe." "If the opportunity presented itself, maybe"? It's sex without love, not "a ride in the space shuttle." You're a skinny, single girl living in an age when the two main hobbies of men in your age group and location are ice fishing and date rape. Just say, "Casual sex is not akin to murder, is it?" and move on.

"Are you a seductress or a seductee?" "Seductee"? What is that, the Latin root of the word "seduce"? Veni vidi seducti? Amber non-answers, "These are good questions!" to deflect from the fact that she has absolutely no clue what the question means. Jen is a "seductee." Y'all, who's "Jen"? Tina from Wisconsin is a "seductress." Liz is "both," in a world where "both" means "neither" and "Liz" means "little sister." Christina cracks herself up with her coquettish response, "It depends on the time of day." Right. Like how she's sexy when it's dark in the room. We're already gone over all this.

"Sex on the beach or sex on the bed?" Shut up, show.

"That's all we got for you," Lord Lunkhead tells Christina, but she flips her Glamour Shot hair and extends her screen time with the follow-up retort, "Do I get to ask a question?" Lord and Lady Lunkhead giggle nervously in that "we already haven't picked you" kind of way, but Christina launches ahead anyway: "What's his, like, most funniest little quirk?" Here be hoping it ain't "a love for basic grammatical competence," Christina, or you'll be the most losingest in not much more time. Augh. Shit like that really makes you look dumb in a hurry. Look at her. Even her hair is spelled wrong. She makes me [sic]. But Lord Lunkhead graces her with a response anyway, saying, "He plays with his own hair a lotI never see guys do that." Well, Lord Lunkhead, maybe if you gave it a try every once in a while, the collective store of your body hair wouldn't be trying so hard to escape your body via the top of your shirt collar. Because seriously, you are the most simianest of all.

Left alone with a clipboard and a camera, Lord and Lady Lunkhead review each of the interviewees (they came, they saw, they interviewed), accompanied by gauzy flashbacks to sixteen seconds ago to remind us of the difference between "Jen" and "tree." There determine that there is none. They believe Christina to have a "real outgoing personality," Ann-Michelle to be a girl you would "be friends with in college," and Amber to be physically "on Andrew's wavelength." They neglect to address her personality, just as God did when he sculpted her. When it comes to Tina With The Scarf, Lord Lunkhead thought "the scarf was a little much." Word. And also, totally a reason not to marry someone. They think Jen is a "sweetheart," in that way where "sweetheart" means "she's nice, and that's just exactly all she is." They review Liz favorably, but Lady Lunkhead thinks she might not be Andrew's physical type, noting that he likes pretty, petite blondes. Just like her! The relationship between the three of those so-called "friends" is so weirdly dysfunctional that New Order just showed up in my bedroom to perform "Bizarre Love Triangle" by way of example. I mean, not that they have that much else going on, really. Back on TV, L&L think Tennessina is a "girl Andrew." I don't want to quibble with the intricacies of the double helix, y'all, but chromosome for chromosome, it's actually possible that Andrew might by a girl Tennessina. I mean, look who's playing with his own hair, and look who's playing her Indigo Girls albums real, real loud after curfew. Just look! Or, as Tennessina's idols would no doubt refer to him: Chickenman, chickenman, chickenman. Chickenman.

I still think Jen and Heather might secretly be the same person. That is the most cheatingest.

While Lord Lunkhead goes to find a like-minded member of his species to help pluck burrs and nesting animal life out of his hide, Shannon sneaks in a quick wrap-up confessional: "There's a lot of concerns I have about gold-diggers. They could all be gold-diggers." Lord Lunkhead, meanwhile, shoots off the quick sentiment, "We really feel we could actually narrow down who would be right for Andrew in an intimate relationship," before spotting Dian Fossey lurking surreptitiously just over one of Malibu's rolling hills, holding a clipboard and writing furiously, and he scurries off on all fours, rejoining his pride and failing to find a modest way of covering his gigantic red butt.

Nobody loves a good date box quite like Livingston Taylor, so it's with the accompaniment of considerably gay strummy guitar noodling that Liz finds a gold-wrapped box sitting on a pedestal just outside the house. Since she found it and since she brought it in and since everything makes her cry like an overtired three-year-old who wasn't allowed to watch two episodes of Dora before bed, the girls defer to Liz and let her open the date box. She does so, and within finds a note addressed to Amber. The girls fake-cheer as Tennessina rolls her eyes extravagantly, and Amber sounds out a note (use your context clues, Ammbur!) reading, "Let's fade away under the stars." That's totally the name of the slim volume of Bachelor-themed, Ginsberg-esque poetry I'm going to publish through Mighty Big Press just as soon as this season is over. It'll be the most poetic-est! Kirsten snipes in confessional, "I don't think that if Shannon and Kevin knew that the last three times that she's been around alcohol and she's been really wasted, um, they would've have chosen her to go on a single date." Liz expresses similar skepticism about Kevin and Shannon's intentions as, back inside, we're treated to a wonderfully Fellini-esque moment of Amber standing in the living room, rocking an ice skate in her arms like a small child. Quiet down, bitches. The ice skate is sleeeeeeeping.

Darkness falls across the land. The midnight Amber is close at hand. A limo pulls up in front of The House That Spite Built, and from said car emerges Andrew "Little Lord Fauntler-goy" Firestone wearing a black zip-up sweatshirt thing over a black t-shirt. Are they on their way to drama tech rehearsal? Dorks. Andrew tells us that he's glad L&L chose Amber to go out with him, as "she's one of the ladies [he's] really, really interested in." Amber, meanwhile, tells us that she thinks tonight she'll be able to let her "true self out" because it will be a totally "normal" situation where there is "no one else around" except for a camera crew, a makeup team, the guy who holds that big-ass light, and some weird guy named Ted who's just always hanging out on set. Other than that, totally the most normalest. Meanwhile, Ted? Get a job, Ted.

Outside the house now, they share a laugh about the fact that they're going ice-skating. Amber asks Andrew if he's ever been ice-skating before, and I'm surprised at something he says for the first time. Rather than assert his inherent betterness in all areas of art, culture, commerce, and ice-skating (i.e. "My grandpappy invented ice, actually" or something like that), he just cops to never, ever having been ice-skating before. Amber's confessional tells us, "I don't think I'm very excited to go ice-skating, just because I feel like I'm going to be on the ice the whole night." There's a pause so glacial here that you feel the producers really could have cut the comment right there to continue developing the "Amber as simpleton" theme, but everyone's groggy from too much of that dee-licious Firestone wine to hit the "cut" button, and we're privy to the rest of her sentiment: "On my butt." She continues, "But I think it'll be cool because I'll be with Andrew." Okay, ladies. For the last time, they don't show him the dailies. You don't have to pour it on him every second. He already knows he's great, even without the behind-the-back lovefest. Such rhetoric is so excessive as to warrant a brand-new word to describe it. May I suggest "propagandrew," perhaps?

L'il Andy himself suggests that tonight's date is going to be extremely important, and we arrive at a deserted-but-for-them ice-skating rink in Century City, right under those two tall buildings you go past driving west on Olympic. Y'know. Those. They strap on their skates, and the two of them are one football-in-the-crotch shot away from some awesome Funniest Home Videos footage for about a second, until they get their bearings and skate boringly around and around and around. Wholly wanting for any and all conversation beyond that which is immediately appropriate for the activity at hand ("Skating is hard!" "Ice is slippery!" "I'm so dumm!"), Andrew kind of does something shitty in kicking it up to this notch: "Someday, if we have kids, what an amazing story it's gonna be!" Wait -- he keeps going, doing spot-on imitations of what he apparently he imagines his of-Amber-born progeny will sound like. And they all sound exactly like him: "Mom, Dad, how'd you guys meet? Well, it was on a skating rink. I didn't know you guys skate. Well, we don't!" Slow down, Sybil! There are too many of you in there! Maybe some helpful visual cues such as hand puppets or a ventriloquist dummy named "Andy's Little Helper" would help me parse out each of the characters in this spontaneous passion play of yours.

Christina must have very little in her life. Because seriously, that is some intense amount of glee she expresses when Date Box 2: Pandora's Revenge makes its appearance in front of the house. There's more spirited jumping, until Christina cracks open the note to discover that "Ann-Michelle, Liz, and Christina" will be sharing a group date in which, the note tells us, "An oasis awaits us. Let's see what the future holds." Liz expresses disappointment in a voice-over, and Tennessina mysteriously announces in the background mix, "It's gonna be some kind of Moroccan restaurant." What? How does she know that? What's going on? Is "an oasis awaits us" Moroccan for "Ann-Michelle, Liz, and Christina are going on a group date to a Moroccan restaurant"? I have a limited cultural understanding of any location other than "inside of my own tortured mind."

Back at Spite Club, a few members of the Coffee Klatch hang around the kitchen, blah-blahing the day away. Jen segues that Kirsten isn't "open and friendly, the way that the other girls are," and the plot thickens as we pan outside to find Not Open And Unfriendly hanging with L&L Lunkhead, trying to curry favor with the judges, as it were. Outside, Shannon asks Kirsten how she feels about Andrew, and she cleverly uses this moment in the most opportunistic way possible: "Just like you guys, I feel totally comfortable talking to you." In a confessional, she tells us that she'd rather talk to them anyway, noting that if she ends up with Andrew, L&L would probably be "good friends" of hers. Or even if you don't win, seeing as Andrew does such an impressive job of keeping all of his ex-girlfriends in his social circle, showering them with new boyfriends and free trips to Malibu. Lady Lunkhead agrees with Kirsten that "if you want Andrew, you want Andrew, and you need to get over this 'let's be best friends' thing." You mean the part where you're socially acclimated? Because honestly, that's insane. Lord Lunkhead pegs Kirsten as "the person to beat," saying that her personality is "second to none." Well, then, who is None and why does she have such a crappy personality? Kay-o! Dude, better get that snare drum guy back in here for when I go all vaudevillian on your asses again.

Andrew and Amber are done. And, I mean, they totally are. They put their shoes back on (did they eat in their skates?) as Andrew confessionalizes that conversation is -- wait for it -- a "two-way street," and that he felt "awkward" all night and responsible for "filling the space." So then, worst date ever, right? I think we saw that pretty clearly. Let's see what the not-at-all-deluded Amber has to say: "There's definitely a chemistry there and I definitely enjoy his company. I kind of think we do have a vibe." A vibe of "hit the road, Amber of the Proletariat." But then, even weirder, in the limo on the ride home, Andrew's final, valiant attempt at "filling the silence" is trying to kiss her and being rebuffed. He leans in. She whispers "not yet." He apologizes sheepishly. As well he should. They share some excruciating conversation born of Amber segueing, "I was telling the girls, 'I hope I don't fall asleep on him again.'" Ouch. Silence. Silence. Silence. Quick! Make with the hand puppets again! They're the only chance you have!

day. L'il Andy shows up at the house decked out in a leather jacket and sunglasses befitting a biker chick with a man grudge (Chickenman! Chickenman! Chickenman!), and we're off to the Moroccan restaurant which is called, according to the letters on the wall outside the establishment, "Moroccan restaurant." They call it something else, but really, that's what it's called. I wonder if Amber would be intrigued by their "all the free nan and chutney you can eat" policy. And don't even tell me nan is Indian and not Moroccan, because I already forgot that I wrote it. Thanks.