Sibling Bling Rivalry

Final, end-of-season props to everyone in the good and great TWoP community. Television Without Pity: when you're here, you're family.

Somewhere just between the intersection of Richie Rich Road and Easy Street lies the Firestone Vineyard. We join the action this week via a series of sweeping aerial shots, a clear sign that the true majesty of the place can only be captured from the air, just in the way that we are used to when viewing the Great Wall of China, the light on the top of the Luxor, and the few other man-made structures visible to the naked eye from outer space. Lush, rolling green fields -- the color comprised of a mixture of winery-appropriate grassy expanses, combined with the overflowing outdoor cash mines the family has been forced to resort to as a result of surplus -- surround the Firestone Family Manse, a somewhat enormous house with a confounding number of floors and, if I'm to believe my soap-opera lore about utterly wealthy semi-recluses living on estates, a deranged cousin named Rupert or Cecil or Stewart sequestered away in the dreaded East Wing.

The camera sweeps around the house to fetishize it from every angle, and you can practically hear Andrew watching this episode from inside the gilded walls of richdom, pointing comically at the screen and cracking himself up with some variant on the joke, "Hey, look, I can see my house from here!" Which you'd think was the most annoying thing you'd ever, ever heard, until he paused momentarily, leaned back into the Stickley couch with the five-billion thread count slipcovers and muttered just loud enough for you to hear, "My house is the bee's knees." Then he'd say it again. He'd say it at least thrice weekly. Grrrrr.

"Today we're back in my hometown in Santa Ynez," the nasal voice-over drawl of Andrew "I Can't Believe It's Taken Me This Long To Make The Inevitable 'Wine And Cheese' Joke" Firestone tells us. Ew. "Ynez." Buy a vowel, town. You can clearly afford it. I guess the Firestone family fortune was originally accrued by Grandpappy Firestone landing a triple word score in a high-stakes game of Geographical Scrabble and they're still collecting interest on the four billion points they got for the word "Ynez." Who was Saint Ynez, anyway -- the patron saint of unpronounceable consonant clusters? Anyway. We pass a large brick sign reading "Firestone Winery" at the entry gates, which are surrounded by tall, sharp-shooter-obscuring hedges on the off chance that an intruder should try to get in or if Crazy Cousin Stewart should try to get out. And for all you history buffs out there, the Firestone Winery was established in the Ye Olde year of 1972. What rich history! What timeless majesty! Doubtless it's only been a few years of the many since the fine elixir of Firestone Wine was used exclusively for drinking purposes, seeing as its chief use for centuries must have been to disinfect wounds during the Gold Rush years before the advent of proper medicines. I mean, 1972? How am I supposed to give myself over to the rich cultural heritage of the Firestone Winery if it isn't even older than Christina? Actually, though, come to think of it, what really is?

Andy tools around in a green Jeep, driving around the grounds and offering us the audio guide tour. Please keep your arms and legs inside your own tax bracket at all times: "This is a gorgeous piece of property. Five hundred and fifty acres of grapes, a couple hundred acres of farmland, and this is a very rural place." Fact, spurious fact, grievous generalization. To complete the pattern, we'll need "out-and-out lie," if you can come up with one: "Our family has basically set our roots here." Since 1972. Fine. I guess we'll just have to settle for "eye-rolling overstatement," then.

"I'm staying at one of the guest houses on the Firestone Ranch," we learn from Jen, who we discover walking from room to Stickley-adorned room, perhaps looking for a mislaid copy of the shooting script to The Princess Diaries so she'll have some context to all this freakin' weirdness. She continues, "I've visited boyfriends at their jobs before, but..." Awww. "At their jobs." You mean you haven't stopped by many woodland estates while visiting boyfriends toiling away at the Account Executive game? She continues, "It's bigger than anything I've ever seen," and we're treated to a cruel bit of visual irony, as L'il Andy approaches the front door to her guest house on the word "bigger" and the remaining audience members mutter, "And bigger than anything you'll ever see again, sister." She deems the whole experience "a little intimidating to me at first." The knock of opportunism on the front door of the guesthouse interrupts her musings, and Jen and Andy hug as he enters the house. He tells us in an interview, "Every time I think about Jen, I just get a big smile on my face." Careful there, Stewart Chandler; such excessive displays of uncontextualized emotion can occasion a chaperoned trip Eastward faster than you can say, "I think chains and solitary confinement are the bee's knees."

The green Jeep takes off with Jen in the passenger seat, Andrew wasting no time before he launches back into the tour: "This whole vineyard was planted in 1972 by my dad." Oh, I'm so sure. I can just totally see Brooks Firestone (and if I knew Roman numerals much better than I do, I'd probably tack on what whatever combination of X's and M's and C's equal "the billionth" after daddy's name every time I wrote it) in 1972, at the tender age of 100, carrying a big sack of grape seeds (or, like, whatever) around an empty expanse of marshland, promising his unborn children, "Someday, dearies, all of this will be mine." Andy continues, "It's about a thousand acres including the vineyard and the property, all told." Wow. Brooks Firestone The Millionth had a bit of a walk back in 1972. With so little help, he must have finished single-handedly seeding the place moments before Andy and Jen arrived.

Oh, how cute! A kitschy and adorable road sign reading "Alpaca Xing" with a drawing of a little furry animal! Who, like, totally loves nature? I do! I do! Jen, not so much. We learn from Andy, "From the start, Jen's been saying that she's a little uneasy around animals. And, as you can see around here, we have plenty of animals." And, cue montage. "Chicks and geese and ducks better scurry/ When Andy takes you out in the surrey/ Andy takes you out in the surrey with the fringe on top! At least he won't judge you like his brother/ It's a thousand damn acres but still you'll feel smothered/ You may be rich but you're living with his mother/ And you'll never stop!" When we return from my getting served with papers by the esteemed estate of Rogers & Hammerstein, we find Andy and Jen inside an alpaca cage, Andy making Jen try to feed one. It's not working. She's scared. She didn't know alpaca was (were?) a real animal either. I will say, though, that Jen looks all natural and windblown and generally lovely in this context. She'd look really nice in a sweater made of what just licked her hand.

But, Paw! I sher do lurve bein' up in them there kuntry! Why we gotta take the hog down to this here see-tay? After the bucolic times in the Santa that dare not speak its name again, we're back in the concrete jungle of Beverly Hills, where we find Cruella de Kirsten in a limo. She's wearing an enormously-necked shirt that is the height of fashion, were the height of fashion "the dog has stitches, and he needs one of those big-ass head collars." God, I love that fashion. She stares with entitled, the-man-who- does-not-love-me- could-buy-and- sell-this-and- buy-it-again- and-single-handedly- plant-grapes-all-over-it assuredness at the city rolling by outside her tinted windows, and she voices over all the while, "I think that Andrew and I have come to a point in the relationship where I feel really comfortable going to look at engagement rings Andrew is everything I've been looking for in a husband he is definitely the one for me." Take a breath! And, the obligatory Harry Winston visit. Kirsten walks in the familiar (well, from TV) front doors and is greeted by a "Randy," who welcomes her to H.W. and sits her down at a table near the door. She continues voicing over that the whole thing seems like "a fairy tale," and my only surprise is that it's taken her this long to say it. It is a fairy tale. And, as Potes has pointed out, she is the evil Disney villain, with the perfect complexion and the overly-arched, drawn cell-by-cell eyebrows. Her kind never wins. But she and her giant collar are willing to give it a try. Kirsten takes a look at a ring called "the fancy-shaped oval." Doesn't the concept of "fancy" just cancel itself out at Harry Winston? It's not like she'll look at something fancy, and then follow that up by trying on "the tacky zirconium cube," "the ghetto fabulous hexagon," and then finish up with "the strawberry-flavored ring-pop." Mmmm...ring-pops. ["That's what my engagement ring was, homes." -- Wing Chun] But secretly, it is kind of fancy. She visibly shudders when she puts it on, and Randy -- never one to let a cheap metaphor rest -- notes, "It's like Cinderella. Hopefully your Prince Charming is listening." Kirsten laughs a hopeful "Can I just keep it?" Randy fake-laughs for a full two minutes before ending with the sadly edited out, "Ha ha ha ha...no. No, you can't." Always the sensitive empathizer, Kirsten remembers just in time, "I just keep remembering that there is somebody else who is going through this experience as well." Randy wishes her good luck and takes the ring back. You be the judge of which was the more meaningful gesture of the two.

Back at Rancho Relaxo, Jen and Andrew arrive at an open expanse of land, and as they hop off the Jeep, Andrew tells her, "Someday, I want to build a house." They agree that it is "beautiful," and moments later they're sitting on a picnic blanket, toasting with Firestone wine, Jen asking, "Who couldn't live here and look at this every day?" Well, Kirsten, for one. They foreshadow the meeting of the family, and Jen tells us, "I definitely don't come from the same background as he does," but Andrew tells her that he trusts her ability to get along with his family, "One hundred percent." How much? "One hundred percent." How much? "One hundred percent." Is that a lot? "Can't get more than that." Well, not unless Daddy rolls over the interest into an offshore banking account and...well, you wouldn't understand. Andrew tells her that he wants her to come away with an idea whether or not she can get along with "this crazy clan." And, seriously, for the whitest family in the history of land ownership, I'd stop short if I could of overusing the word "clan" in any context. And now, ladies and gentlemen, possibly the least crazy clan in the history of the nuclear family unit.

As the Lite FM Guitar Of Easy Winery Living noodles away on the soundtrack, an SUV carts Andy and Jen to the front door of The House That Grandpappy Built. As they pull up a driveway longer than my entire street and equivalent in length to the cumulative tracks of the entire New York City subway system laid end to end, Andy helpfully narrates, "Mom and Dad!" Andy's mom actually, literally clutches her pearls in anticipation as the car pulls up, and his father, who has just returned from a thirty-one year planting stint and boy are his arms tired, looks on in an aged, cardiganed stupor. Jen steps out of the car and into the loving arms of her future in-laws (or, er...are they?), "Brooks and Kate." Brooks. Andrew's father's name is Brooks. Pardon me if I can't hear the rest of the family introductions; this sequence is completely drowned out by the incessant buzzing of thousands and thousands of WASPs. Also among the assembled is Andy's brother, Adam, and his wife, Kate. Ack! Andy's brother married someone with the same name as his mother, and you just can't Oedipussyfoot around it. More introductions: "My sister Hayley and my brother-in-law, David. And [Jen's] also going to meet some of my nieces and nephews." Cute kids. It's sad to see them already ruined. Now get them inside before a Tommy Hilfiger ad spontaneously breaks out and they all have to play polo and love America.

It's some indeterminate time later (though, if it's true as people like this say that time as money, it's always Money O'Clock around these grounds), and we find Brooks (Firestone, The Millionth), Mother Kate (Lockjaw), the creepily identical Adam (Andrew 2.0, which is weird because he's older, but meh), and an assorted band of others sitting around a porch drinking wine. Jen is seated between Brooks Firestone The Millionth and Lockjaw, the latter of whom possesses an accent from the ambiguous Western Europe locale of Foreignia, which I'm guessing she picked up there during her semester abroad from Wellesley and, crikey, she just wasn't able to lose it, now, was she? The conversation begins with Lockjaw asking Jen where she's from. Jen answers, "I live in Chicago, but I'm from Cleveland." Lockjaw alters her facial expression from "sucking a lemon" to "sucking a limon," and I mistakenly believe that her question will be, "Cleveland? Well now dear, what on earth is that?" But I am mistaken, for dear Brooks Firestone The Millionth is from Akron by way of Cleveland. And then it hits me: Midwest. Tires. You can take the heir to a billion-dollar tire-making empire, but...well, you know the rest. Andrew 2.0 jumps in: "How would you describe yourself? Are you demure, reserved, temperate, conservative?" Yes, she's "temperate." I always find that it's the best ice-breaker with new people to define yourself in terms of the question, "What sub-Saharan region's climate describes you best?" Me? Well, I'm arid. Jen cops to feeling "a little intimidated" by the whole thing, and when we cut back to Andy moments later, there's a little boy sitting on his lap who looks just like him, so they must have taken our tip from last week about getting him a little ventriloquist dummy. It works for him. And it ages him, relatively, from eight to fifteen. Brooks Firestone The Millionth makes a joke about snow and Lockjaw nearly laughs her Botox off. Snow! Have you ever heard of such a thing? The little kid on Andy's lap laughs even as his puppet master takes a sip of wine. Wow. He's really gifted at that.

Confessional time! Or, as Lockjaw would call it, "Confessionaul." Lets find out what she has to say: "My first impression of Jen was really somebody ready to join the party -- natural, warm, ready to be included, and absolutely adorable." What's "the party"? ["The Republican party, I assume." -- Wing Chun]

Brother-in-law David (Gary from thirtysomething) turns the topic to the show itself, asking, "How do you feel knowing there's someone else out there?" Jen responds that she finds the whole thing "intimidating," and skirts the question about what she thinks of the other girl with a sort-of egalitarian sinister laugh, followed by, "We were probably the least close of any of the girls." She tells us in interview that she doesn't want to be catty, but Andrew 2.0 notes that Jen was "somewhat non-responsive," guessing, "She was probably repressing some of her feelings and emotions about Kirsten." What would a WASP know about repression? Tally ho! Just then, Lockjaw suggests, "Shall we go inside?" She then adds on, in a bizarre baby voice, "I'm getting vewy, vewy chilly!" Everyone cracks up. Say hi to Stewart, Mother Kate. Please note, as well, at the moment she says that, the camera cuts to her, and right in front her is a perfectly placed bottle of Firestone wine, the label facing directly into the camera. Missed it the first time, didja? Your subconscious didn't.

Further endearing us to this family just like any other, we're treated to a montage of "the help" getting the meal ready to serve. How'd they fit those big, industrial cameras all the way below stairs, I wonder. At the dinner table, the party of eight (I think) clinks glasses, and Jen thanks them for having her. Her latest dangling speech in interrupted by a tight shot of a bowl of soup and a cry from across the table of, "Mother! What is this? It looks beautiful!" "Mother"? "Mother"? I guess they decided to go formal to show their guest what life at Rancho Relaxo was like; on this night, purely colloquial nicknames of endearment like "Mummy" or "Mumsy" or "Mummenschanz" or "Lockjaw" were considered off-limits. But just for the night. They oooh and aaah over the rest of the meal ("Kippers for breakfast? Is it Saint Swithins Day already?"), Jen trying to catch up with a futile series of "Very good. Very. Good. Very, very good." Conversation turns back to what Jen likes about Andy, and she hems around his being "a great person," adding, "I just like being around him." Sister Hayley is convinced, dramatically intoning, "That'll go a long way. Yeah. That'll go a long way." Andy volleys back that what he likes about Jen goes all the way back to this date that, as he puts it, "I planned." The camera makes a full arc around the room as a result of the cameraman and assembled producers fully rolling their eyes at that. Anyway, he bemoans the fact that their date got rained out, and that they had to resort to "bowling, " and that Jen "made the best out of a bad situation." Oh, come on. It's bowling. It's not like they were tied to back of an oxcart and dragged through a desert. It was planned. There was even a giant banner. Someone knew they were coming. I'm so tired of this story being their "triumphing over adversity in all that shall come their way" blah blah. Nevertheless, the story hits, and even Lockjaw looks as if she might shed a tear or two, had someone in the Olde Country not hit her on the back and made her face freeze like that forever. Brooks Firestone The Millionth cops to having proposed to Lockjaw two weeks after he met her, and now they've been married for forty-five years. Lockjaw adds on, mystifyingly, "I think background is terribly, terribly important. If not, you're in for a rocky ride." If not what? Background? What? Is it Saint Swithins Day already? Andy has an arm around Jen, and he tells us in interview, "I can definitely see myself proposing to Jen."

Tiny, tiny, tiny cups of post-dinner coffee lead us to a room I'm guessing they must call "the drawing room." The elegantly passive-aggressive third degree continues, Andrew 2.0 asking, "What scares you the most?" Ghosts! Jen says that what panics her more than anything is putting herself out there and having Andy choose Kirsten. Andy tells us he's impressed that Jen would answer his brother's questions so candidly. They all hug her goodbye and whisper encouraging comments, and as Andy and Jen walk out, he thanks her for meeting his "crazy family." Back inside, Brooks Firestone The Millionth tells the assemblage that "Jennifer was fun to be with. She made the party work." Why do these people keep talking about "the party"? Is that rich people slang for something? Was Crazy Cousin Stewart not good enough for "the party"? Anyway, they all think she was the grooviest.

Olive Garden commercial alert! Holy crap, does that kick ass. Anyone rather go and join that "party"?

Okay, and this is why I think maybe Andrew might be kind of a jerk, a little. "Waking up this morning," he tells us, "I was so excited to see Kirsten." Okay, fine. "I'm going to put my date with Jen on hold." Except for the part where he's "in love" with her. We're back at Rancho Relaxo, Andy showing up at Kirsten's guesthouse with two horses in tow. She tells us in an interview that she "can't believe" she's here, and we cut to them horseback-riding through the vineyard. More rehashing in Andy's interview about how "fun" and "outgoing" Kirsten is, and I guess he rules out another overuse of the word "vivacious" because he already landed the triple-letter score on "Ynez" and wants to give somebody else a chance, for crying out loud. Well, he's not going to find much competition in this crowd, what with Kirsten's conversational volley of "It's a lot bigger, than, like, y'know?" Too true, too true. They bemoan the tragic fate of kids who are brought up in cities (oh, I'm sorry...in the one authoritarian "The City"), Kirsten going so far as to proclaim, "I would never want to raise kids in The City!" Okay, lunchtime poll: a show of hands if you believe that the only way to raise a well-adjusted child is to home-school them on a thousand-acre ranch while teaching them cultural diversity by talking about "people who are different than us" and taking a trip to visit a heavily-sedated Crazy Cousin Stewart. Anyone? Hello? Okay, hands down. Okay, heads up, Seven-Up. Hey! No peeking! Man oh man, am I bored.

Back in The City (keep the eyes of the children shielded from its wealth-drenched, opulent, gentrified hideousness!), Jen kicks it in the limo, noting, "I am completely shocked and completely floored that I am going to try on rings today." Back with Randy at Harry's House Of Fancy, Jen picks out a somewhat plainer ring than Kirsten did (I will say no more on that), and as she puts one on, she muses, "I'm hoping that one of the rings I look at today will be the ring Andrew puts on my finger." Get your hopes up. But don't put your head up. I didn't hear anyone call "Seven-Up."

We're back at the Patti Smith wet dream (Horses! Horses! Horses!) at Rancho Relaxo, and Andy points out to Kirsten a nearby trail and tells her, "That's called Brooks's Trail. My dad's name is Brooks." And yet...and yet. And yet the sign reads "Brook's Trail." Which would be appropriate, though no less creepy-old-money-and-oh-yes-my-daddy-has-a-lady's-name, should his father's name be "Brook." It's too bad Brooks wasn't around last season, or he'd have been a shoo-in for life in Guy's House. What is with this show and the use of the possessive apostrophe, anyway? And you can bet, with all those animals up on the ranch, Brooks would be the one to bring the Pony Chow.

Kirsten bee-yotches out Jen in front of the camera, telling us, "I really don't think that Jen could live here. She doesn't like animals. I can't see her being here. I can't see her feeling comfortable here. She's all about the big city. I really just do not see her being here." Well, if you haven't got anything nice to say, say it eleven times, identically. Andy and Kirsten, er, de-horse, and make for a spread of food. Kirsten asks if they can only drive horses (no, really) ever again, and Andy agrees that they can, despite his previously mentioned love for driving the green Jeep everywhere, all the time, forever. Cut to an impromptu tour of the winery, interior, where -- oh, look! -- we run into Andrew 2.0 and NotMom Kate. I'm guessing something like this happened with Jen too and we didn't see it due to lack of interest. Because with this sixteen-hour, Roots-length (just like Roots, with the exception of, wait, what's that one thing...oh, yes, any black people AT ALL) finale, it certainly wasn't due to a lack of time. Anyway, they put Kirsten right to work in the bottling room pulling bottles of Firestone Wine off of a quickly-moving conveyor belt and placing them into divided crates. When in doubt, Lucy skit. You know that old television axiom, right? Someone does.

"Even though my parents and my family enjoyed meeting Jen so much and they really liked her," Andy interviews, "I have no reservations about introducing Kirsten." Anybody else getting the feeling that Andrew's prepping the camera for when he chooses Kirsten? Anyway, introductions. Brooks uses the word "vivacious" (ding ding ding!) to describe her upon introduction, and two of the smaller children approach her with a bouquet of wildflowers and a glass of wine. Oh, ha ha. Baby carrying wine. Winery humor. Dry like a fine Firestone Chardonnay.

This time the producers try to up the adorability quotient for Andy by putting a little girl in his lap. Outside on a large expanse of lawn, a large group sits around inside Kirsten's Punctuation-Free Zone, as she explains, "I went to the University of Florida and I graduated and I moved back home with my parents because I..." Brooks The Millionth asks what her degree is in, and she replies, "Magazine Journalism." Can she not just say "Journalism"? Why dumb it down when they'll figure out the "dumb" part for themselves? I'm sure it's a lovely major and all, but I can just picture the staid old Brooks The Millionth sitting in slack-jawed horror listening to Kirsten do a reading from her undergraduate thesis, Petty My Catty: A Statistical Analysis Of The Scoring System In Cosmo Quizzes. Brooks The Millionth asks if Kirsten plays any sports, and she responds, "I played some sports when I was in grade school I played softball and I did yearbook and that kind of thing." Ah, yes. The sport of yearbook. And, elementary school? I know she's young and all, but it's not like this is The Bachelor: The Greater Dakotas. She's not fourteen. Anything you've done in the, say, eleven years since grade school ended? She continues, "I kind of live for the weekends." That causes Hayley to quietly observe in an interview, "Where does the substance beyond this surface beauty lie?" Oh, sorry. I must have missed the part where all opinions of the bachelorettes would be expressed entirely in sonnet form from now on. Oops. I mean, "Nay, have I not thus neglected when therein all nymphs of Andrew's humor to be sung in thine form of a sonnet for his pleasure." Whatever. I ain't no poet. But I could kick your ass at yearbook.

The ladies retire inside with Kirsten in tow, and the men remain outside to smoke cigars and speak of sport (not "sports," nay. "Sport"). Inside, Kirsten's congressional filibuster continues with nary a breath, as she prattles, "Probably one of the most important things about making a relationship with Andrew and I work is the fact that I need to be where he is I couldn't be long-distance I think that's important like I wanna have my life and where I'm going but also at the same time I think he would make it so much better and so much happier." Hayley nods in agreement, but another curly-haired woman (who, point of order, was not at dinner last night) is skeptical. Kirsten adds that she wants a career, but adds, "I don't want a career that's tying me down or anything like I want it to be flexible like a part-time career." Oh, a part-time career. Said curly-haired woman (she's a sister, too, and her name is "Polly" and she wasn't at dinner last night, okay?) also doubts Kirsten's "substance," and we cut back to her in the kitchen, blathering blah blah blee blech. Outside, meanwhile, Andy tells the men, "I wish, in a way, someone would just screw up." Hear that, Andrew 2.0? The fix is in.

And, dinner. It's a totally different crowd tonight...where's Gary from thirtysomething? Hayley asks a question I'll admit I found confusing: "If we sat down with your three best friends tonight, what would they say?" I think they would say, "Delta, Delta, Delta," followed by ninety-six iterations of the word "like" and then a high-pitched squeal that would send the alpacas running willy-nilly into the wild. Kirsten's answer is slightly different: "I'm very independent I am very ambitious and I have a lot of things that I want to accomplish but at the same time I'm at a point in my life where I kind of need somebody that's gonna kinda help me do that and someone kinda that I wanna do things with." Hayley follows up by asking where that ambition is pointed, and Kirsten pauses (I know!) after a long, high-pitched, "Um?" Polly continues on in an interview, "She said she was ambitious, and I could see that. She definitely has a strong sense of what she wants. But I don't know what it is that she wants." And if you can't read the subtext simmering juuuuust underneath that statement of, "Because it is my fear and the fear of this family that what she wants is to steal all of my son's beautiful, beautiful money," then you've been watching a different episode than I have. They took one look at Kirsten's perfectly French manicured fingernails and knew that they'd be black from gold-digging, and they knew it within twenty seconds of her arrival. And they're going to bring her down because of it, and Andrew 2.0 is going to plant the seeds in his impressionable little brother's tiny, tiny mind, and that's going to spell the end for Cruella de CashWhore. I guarantee it.