Life (x4)

He's one of "the most eligible bachelors in America"? Why, what happened to all the grownups?

Over a soundtrack of driving-yet-kind-of-faggy drumbeats that sound like they're about to kick into "Why Don't We Do it in the Road" as reimagined by Chuck Mangione, we begin this week inside the house of Andrew "Chardon, Nay" Firestone as he packs his pricey baubles and prays audibly that this "New Jersey" place the producers keep telling him about isn't as scary as it's depicted on the premium cable which he alone can afford. That toneless, vaguely nasal intonation that's hypnotized us all into a constant lulling state of "Wait, okay, now I'm sure I don't find him cute at all, so let's go ahead and just get on with our...or maybe I...?" for the past six weeks kicks in, as the thought-provoking voice-over of Andrew "Wine-O Forever" Firestone tells us, "I'm definitely looking forward to today. Getting the group dates over." Oh, I know. Those grueling group hot-tub sessions with four bikini-clad women while you're sitting there thinking, "When will I be relieved of this torture, oh Lord? WHEN? For the love of all that is holy, WHEN WILL MY MASSAGE SESSION TO A TOPLESS WOMAN COME AND EASE MY ACHING BODY AND MY TORTURED SOUL? WHEEEEEEEN?" Those can be a killer. Andrew continues in this vein, adding, "Getting out of Malibu." He says it with the relish of a man who would replace the word "Malibu" with the word "prison," and as if the man in question were Nelson Mandela. Dude, why is he so mad at Malibu? Was the Farmer's Market, like, totally out of wheatgrass shots or something? Fleeing the desperation and oppression of this tony, temperate coastal paradise as quickly as his chauffeured stretch limousine will allow, Andy throws some more shirts in his suitcase -- look out, Ricky! Wouldn't want to damage your "couple of silver spoons" -- and tells us that "these set of dates will change things emotionally and romantically." Why's that? Well, it's because "it's more like dating four ladies individually." Awww, someone went and taught L'il Andy some math! It's so cute, to watch him add all those numbers up in his tousled head all by himself! That must have been the lesson plan they covered in his class today. Which probably also explains why the first time he spoke his statement, he accidentally said, "It's more like dating four felt duckies individually" and necessitated a reshoot. Math is hard! Anyway, Andy decrees that, from now on, it's all about "finding the one." Look at Mr. Mathlete go! One is also a number! Though, clearly, it is the loneliest number that you'll ever do. One is the loneliest number. Much much worse than two. One is a number divided by two. And, for those of you who were under the impression that "tony" was a word specifically designated for Entertainment Weekly's "Gimme Shelter" column, here's some proof we can all adopt it for our own selfish needs. Because seriously? It's in there every week.

Over at La Villa Loco, the "ladies" are packing. Jen drags her own bags through the hallway, and it's clear that she'll just shepherd the luggage to her house all by herself, because it's not that far because what this show really needed to do was heap one more "the girl door" clich on her already homespun persona. She voices over that "it's a little sad" to be saying goodbye to the other, non-Kirsten-esque girls because they've "all gotten to be close" and this is the last time they're "all gonna be together." Until the Rose Ceremony. And the one after that. And the reunion show. And at the cattle call to audition for whatever fast-food product Jason Alexander is hawking after Trista Rehn's Warholian clock finally get around to ticking down to the zero hour. But anyway, Jen's bummed.

Tina, meanwhile, is not bummed. She's in a room surrounded by so much luggage that she should have no problem responding to a sudden call of "Build the barricade!" should the French Revolution suddenly break out in Southern California and the only knowledge she has of keeping the bad guys at bay is from a touring company performance of Les Miz her parents took her to that one time in Madison. You know. She has that much luggage. Apparently the only box that hasn't been packed is the one marked "Clothes, spandex and Spy vs. Spy," indicated by her body-hugging black-and-white number befitting a trashy Vegas stripper. Too bad the box marked "my poll" has already been duct taped up tight. Tina confidently tells us, "We're gonna have a ton of fun and he knows that." Ice fishin' and brew drinkin' and doin' some kinda stuff with cheese, or something. Should be a real barn burner. But don't actually burn the barn! Because, then, where will the family sleep?

Christina, meanwhile, puts some strappy high-heeled shoes in a bag and smiles dreamily. But wouldn't she be better served with a more appropriate footwear? Shouldn't she be getting ready for...THE BOOT? Oblivious to such insane spoilerage, Christina predicts, "I'm excited to show Andrew a little bit of my culture and a little bit of my heat." Yeah, so who wants to be the one to tell Christina she'll never get anywhere in this world if she keeps letting Glenn Frey write her copy? Then she says sixteen things about Portugal.

And, finally, cut to Whorepheus Descending, as Kirsten makes her way down a long flight of steps to the front door of the house. Wait. She's the dumbest. It's no wonder Andrew has pronounced her name some constantly-varying permutation of "Kristen" or "Keer-sten" or "Kehr-sten" for the duration of this show so far, as she comes across so dim from her interviews that it seems like she even forgets her own name sometimes. Here's some of what she says: "I'm just so thankful because I feel like he and I have gotten so close, just for the fact that we've had two one-on-one dates. And the other girls -- or two of them -- have never even been with him for, like, an hour alone." For those of you who needed a direct translation but left your "Delta Delta Delta to English" dictionary at home, thank me later. And thank me with cash. But even typed out, I have no idea what Kirsten's talking about. Maybe it's because she delivered that interview from a beach setting, and I can't hear her wisdom over the crashing surf. If you hold Kirsten's head really close to your ear, you can actually hear the ocean. And not just when she's near the ocean, either.

Vroom! That's totally the sound effect Andy makes every time his limo pulls away from the curb. We're at the airport now, where Andy voices over his travel docket for the week, failing to throw in so much as one kitschily ironic "You have to change in Atlanta" as he drones on, "I'm gonna be in Wisconsin to meet Tina's family, New Jersey to meet Christina's family, Florida to meet Kirsten's family, and then Ohio to meet Jen's family." What's an "Ohio"? Is that some fake place he tacked on at the end just to make sure we were following along? You know, they say if you hold Andy's head really close to your ear, you can hear the sound of loose change rattling around. But really, really high-value change, like dollar coins and those animated gold coin things that Scrooge McDuck swims through. And if you listen really carefully, you can hear the sound of me, dancing around outside your window, yelling "Tiny head! Tiny head! Andrew has a tiny head!" over and over and over again. Because he does. And because I'm a jerk. And, clearly, because I have a lot of time on my hands.

Andrew's Spruce Moose lands in Oconomowoc, a small hamlet known to its denizens as The Town That Buying A Vowel Forgot. It is a depressive, snowy wasteland of flatness and dead corn. If I had to guess, I would say that this date was shot in the month of "Wisconsin." Okay, I'm totally kidding. I like Wisconsin. I think only wonderful things about Wisconsin. I'm sure even Oconomowoc is lovely. That said...brrrr. From the comfort of his limo, Andy muses, "I think, of all the ladies, Tina's the one who's most standoffish when it comes to being intimate." We're then treated to a montage of Andy making, like, fifteen different attempts to plant a kiss on Tina, and her turning away every time. Jeez. Take a hint, Poindexter. But then again, he is the one with the power in this relationship, and he haughtily tells us that if the tide doesn't turn regarding Tina's willingness to put out in an attempt to prove that premature physical intimacy between them is a way of proving that she likes him...well, it's going to be "very difficult to try and see giving her a rose." It would be difficult, locked as her hands would be inside the wall of self-respect she's built around herself by not Screwing For Dollars, as the other girls have had no problem doing. Anyway. Andrew steps out of the limo and into a climate clearly borne of a day on which God was angry at fat guys who wore Speedos at the beach and went about creating a land in which such atrocities of the flesh would never manifest themselves, ever. Tina appears on some small, roofless, four-wheel drive vehicle that is the very size and shape I would have turned my toy Tonka trucks into when I was eight years old, driving across a frozen, icy pond like spring might never, ever, ever...oh, it never does, does it? I jam my thumb into the painfully underutilzed fast-forward button, trying to jump past the nine months and fast-forward into summer like this is some fucked-up, Einstein's Dreams fantasy temporal universe. I'm probably just messed up from rewinding my tape to try to get down Tina's speech about "butterflies in her stomach" and repeating the experience of watching snow fall up over and over and over again. It's very dislocating. Andrew tells us that Tina told him to "get on the back of the ATV." What's going on? ATV? Is that a term known by people who love snow or people who love money? Or both? I'm not well acquainted with either camp. Cut to a jerky (both camera jerkiness and, y'know, filled with jerks) montage of Tina and Andrew riding around on a truck on the ice, looking like -- as my grandmother says whenever she has the misfortune to see people engaged in activities of which she does not approve -- a bunch of horse's asses. Go, grandma. Speak the truth for a nation that concurs.

We're in an empty Elks Lodge or Masonic Center of some kind, as Andy and Tina drink hot cocoa and plan on not ever getting married. Tina reassures Andy, "It's not that I'm playing hard-to-get, so don't think that I'm doing that. It's just that I think I am hard-to-get and that I don't fall for just anyone." Andy asks her, "Anything you're scared about?" Why must he insist on turning every interpersonal interaction he has with a female into this boringly protracted game of Twenty Questions? And how does he succeed in somehow being animal, vegetable, and mineral, all at the same time? And yes, Tina's scared of something. Clowns and snakes. But who in their right minds wouldn't be? Misguided to the point of thinking she can both respect herself in the morning and do so while waking up on that morning as Mrs. Firestone, Tina tells us via interview, "I think Andrew did respect the fact that I haven't kissed him and that I don't just hand out kisses to anyone." Andrew segues us right into nighttime (theoretically speaking only, considering that the arc of the earth means the sun is set to rise at exactly 6:32 AM on the first day of July...and then, it's Farmin' Season!) with the oddly phrased "If Tina is putting up an act, it will be difficult to keep that up in front of her family." An act? What act? That she's an international superspy? Or that she's not so fabulous after all? Or, as my friend Potes posits, that she's hiding her secret alter ego "Drag Queen-a" from a world on the brink of figuring out she's a man? Heh. Drag Queen-a. Good one, Potes.

North, Miss Tessmacher! North! We're on the ATV (see how hip I've gotten with the lingo? See how much hipper I'd be if I were somehow able to stop using the word "hip" in my writing?), traveling across the frozen glacier that is the northern third of our great nation. We pull up in front of a delightful colonial with a deck and a picket fence and, probably, during the summertime, a pitcher of lemonade dripping with condensation while the parents sit on porch swings and chat about days gone by and the kids loll maybe on a hammock or out by the crick while that Country Time guy narrates everything anybody does. Inside, we meet Tina's mother, father, and her two sisters. I think I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Tina's dad bears a striking resemblance to Chuck Norris, if I could remember what Chuck Norris looks like. I think he looks a little like Tina's dad. How's that for a physical description? Tina's two sisters look like Tina, and Tina's mom looks like Tina in twenty years. So, basically, she looks like Tina with no makeup on, while she herself has makeup on. Got it? Chuck shakes Andy's hand and asks, "How's the weather out there?" which would have been like asking, "Andy, you ever heard of money?" in the "foregone conclusion" realm of introductory inquisitions. I guess Andy thinks the definition of the word "rhetorical" is "of or pertaining to that guy in Gone with the Wind," because he never could have imagined that he didn't need to supply an answer, blabbering, "It's a little colder than California right now." The "right now," of course, indicating a time period between the beginning of humankind until continental drift switches the location of the balmy desert southwest and the uninhabitable American tundra.

Andy posits, "I felt like I was walking into a house with a girl I've been dating and trying to impress her parents and trying to impress upon them what kind of person I am and what kind of person I could be with their daughter." Isn't that exactly what you're doing? We cut to the obligatory Q&A session, Tina's sister (y'know, the blonde one) asking Andy what impressed him about Tina. He responds that she "threw a lot of attitude" at him, citing quickly (because that's the kind of thing you say when you hate someone because of how much they hate you) her "confidence and energy and fire." In the room, Chuck Norris takes some interview time, telling us in a slow Midwestern drawl, "I don't think Tina is scared of love." Back in the dining room, Tina's relatives address how they would feel if Tina were to move across the country to be with Andy, and Chuck jokes that "if she doesn't go with you, she's gonna go with someone else, so you might as well take her." Okay, her family is kind of groovy. There's this weird moment where Tina's sister gets up to go to her first school dance, and the only reason I'm even mentioning it is because someone would have noticed it if I hadn't. And I'm way too tired to check my email these days.

Upstairs after dinner, the couple sits on two really uncomfortable bridge chairs, and Andy goes in for a kiss and finally gets one. So happy is he to have finally scored with all four of his remaining "ladies" that he actually puts his arms up in victory and takes Tina's hand. I guess he's just waiting for the coach to come running out and pour a giant vat of Gatorade over his head before we're allowed to cut to the scene. Yep. I'll wait. I sure do like Gatorade. Blue is my favorite flavor.

Edited quickly back downstairs now, Tina tells Andy, "I got you something." Uh oh. That's always a bad sign. She hands him a framed painting of a sun setting over some kind of body of water, with the words painted on, "I Want U 2 Want Me." Oh, crap. That is awesome. She told the little boy that she liked him in the lexicon of the Seventh Grade yearbook. That moment is 2 Good 2 Be 4 Gotten. And even more than it reminds me of that one chick who gave the creepy monkey guy a puzzle of herself onJoe Millionaire, it makes me think of the Simpsons episode where Ralph falls in love with Lisa. And for evoking such memories of better times, I think that Tina should be the winner. Tina? For your adventures in super-cheesiness, I Choo-Choo-Choose You.

Tina bids her parents goodbye, and we're off to the Great Northern for a drink and a fire in the fireplace. Andrew and Tina sit on a red, velvet couch, Andy telling her that every concern he'd had about her is gone. She shares with us that she's afraid her "heart will get broken" and that she'll have lost "of the greatest guys [she's] ever met." Who? Oh, him.