It's My Bachelor Party And I'll Cry Because I'm Crazy And/Or Sad About The Sudden Death Of My Grandmother

The Vaguely Misleading Promo Department poses the question of "Who will be sent home broken-hearted?" in this week's oft-unrecapped intro spiel. However, when we first check in with our Bachelor, we find him in the middle of an extraneous swimming montage that lasts most of the hour, precluding us from any Rose Ceremony or broken-heartedness of any kind, thus forcing us to reconceptualize the aforementioned question as "How many gallons of Dippity-Do does it take to pollute a well-chlorinated Malibu swimming pool?" Let's go see!

"Sponge" Bob "Nair Pants" Guiney kicks it poolside at Chez Shame, moving with mysteriously waxed agility through the perfect blue water. His bathing trunks -- and I don't mean to be so Jazz Age in my descriptions of this show, as I realize that Bob is not trying to choose between ten "dames" and I realize that the Pig 'n' Whistle is not a "speakeasy," but look at 'em, they're trunks, I'm just saying -- are aqua-themed in a way that blend in with the water and briefly lead me to believe he is naked, which makes me sad and all the kiddies scream. They look vaguely Hypercolor, that changes-shades- when-you- touch-it fabric that was America's main export during the heady mid-'80s, but I realize quickly that it couldn't be, because the trunks lack a distinctively Lee-Ann-sized hand across the ass. As he prepares to capture the gold in this "Swimming For B-Roll" tournament in which we've found him so gamely participating, a far more suitably dressed (that is to say, "dressed at all") Bob confessionalizes from dry land, "I have to say that I did feel really bad at the last Rose Ceremony, just having to let people go...But...." But? "But I did wake up this morning with a renewed excitement." Yup. Nothing like the fearsome second-guessing of one's entire love life to leave one feeling rested and happy. And to what do we owe this giddy mood, anyway? "I'm left with ten women who would make an amazing wife for anyone." Ten parts of one whole. I'm sure that's exactly how they see themselves also, Bob. "Now I go into the rest of this time with them, figuring out if one of them could be an amazing wife for me." He climbs his buff bod (becauseheusedtobefatbutnowheisnotfat!) out of the swimming pool, pulls a yellow towel around his O.P. jams, and thinks, "I am no longer skeptical of the process, I'm still very close with my ex-wife, and I used to be fat but now I am not fat." Because anyway, that's what he'll tell us later he was thinking.

Meanwhile, downstairs at Bob Guiney Fan Club HQ, Chris "Chris Harrison" Harrison ponders the cost of an extra phone jack and a satellite linkup from his own bedroom so he can complete the literalization of the phrase "phoning it in." He calls the ten remaining women -- Lee-Ann, Krazy-Eyes, Kidneys a Go-Go, Girl People on the Forums Like, and six extraneous others -- to worship at the altar of his prepared introductory material. But upon their arrival in the living room, the girls find that The White Ottoman That Ate Cleveland seems to have grown even larger in size, a full third of the room now taken up with its put-your-feet- on-THIS-muthafuckah swagger. It's also noshed off a chunk of the rug in the room, badly injured the camera crew's A.D., and made no secret of its plans for the town's corrupt dentist, the other plants in the store, or Rick Moranis. Seriously, that thing is sarcastically big.

Chris offers all of the girls a good morning and they dully respond as if they're trying to learn the phrase from a "Let's Go America" foreign language tape. Unfazed -- remember, he can't see their hypnotized-with-boredom expressions from OVER THE PHONE -- he plows on: "This week, there will be two group dates and two very special one-on-one dates. As I've told you, there are some surprises this time around. Here's another one: which two ladies get the one-on-one dates? It's up to you." What? THERE ARE SOME SURPRISES THIS TIME AROUND HERE'S ANOTHER ONE WHICH TWO LADIES GET THE ONE-ON-ONE DATES IT'S UP TO YOU??? You mad geniuses! What's , Fleiss? Folgers Crystals instead of my brewed coffee? Is this just the introduction to the opposite sketch? Have I actually been buttering my toast with I Can't Believe It's Not Bachelor THIS WHOLE TIME? Where does the madness end, Fleiss? WHERE DOES THE MADNESS END? I'd use the expression "shock and awe" if it hadn't exited the lexicon twenty-four Presidential approval points ago. Meanwhile, the ladies utter words of incredulity and annoyance, and Brooke shows her surprise and displeasure though her eyes, which bulge unreasonably out of her head at...well, never mind.

Chris plays on unheedingly like Ferris Bueller's "I'm sick right now, so..." cassette tape, vamping, "We've set up a private voting booth in the room." Ew. I haven't heard a less inviting way to begin a thought since it was followed up with, "So I'm going to take some pictures of you in the back room of the bicycle shop, okay, Arnold and Willis?" Anyway, Chris wants more with the talking, already: "You'll get the chance to vote on your fellow Bachelorettes and decide who you think is most compatible with Bob, down to who you think is least compatible." Down to? Does that mean they all ranked each other from best to worst? They look smug. "And no, you cannot vote for yourself." They look crestfallen. "But, it is completely up to you." Up to me? Because that's when the "surprises this time around" really start to kick some ass.

Hey look, everybody! It's Antoinette! And she looks like Blossom! Over in a confessional, she wears a wide-brimmed black hat like some freakish amalgam of every role Streisand has ever, ever played (yes, including Yentl) and, realizing she can't have her kidney pie and eat it, too, muses, "When Chris came in and said we were gonna vote on who was most and least compatible, the mood just kinda dropped."

That's Meredith going first, right? Who is that? How is it germane to the four-second confessional that Antoinette is a thirty-one-year-old Senior Account Manager from Philly, and yet the first brave participant of the long-form Kompatibility Kompetition is only maybe Meredith? Well, if she votes for Meredith as most or least compatible, we'll know it's not her. Or that it is her and she's duuuuuuuuuuuuuuumb.

Can you guys believe Cuba Gooding Jr. is playing a retarded football player befriended by a grizzled though kind-hearted Ed Harris? No, there wasn't a commercial for it. But sometimes I just can't believe it, y'know?

Married to the Who-lys? What the hell is that?

Inside the Little Shop Of Fame Whore-ers, the girls stand around waiting anxiously for the first Date Box to rear its clammy head. When it does, it takes the form of a giant clam (file under "Trying To, Shit I Couldn't Make Up) inside of which is a note for Meredith reading, "I just found out that the ladies voted us the most compatible. Surprises in the sand await us. See you soon. XO, Bob." Squeeee! He writes the way I made the joke last week about how his story editors write the way people talk! A polite round of applause -- in which the rest of the girls unconsciously name their right hands "screw" and their left hands "you" before mashing them together repeatedly in a show of passive-aggressive fury -- ensues, Meredith sharing with us in confessional, "I held back from jumping up and down and being really excited in front of the girls because I didn't want to upset anyone...That's just not me." Instead, it's the pesky specter of Foreshadowing, who has presently escaped from the giant clamshell and activated its calling card.

As Meredith primps for the date and muses on other things that just aren't her (being mean, being catty, not looking vaguely like a duck), a white phone on an otherwise empty marble table begins to rig downstairs. Estella (wait, is it?) grabs it, listens, pauses, says "who?" calls upstairs to Meredith, and hands it off to her as she arrives downstairs. Jenny matches not-really-Foreshadowing with not-actually-Backstory up at a party (those two, thick as thieves, always together), filling us in on what didn't happen: "Everyone, including herself, thought it would be Bob, since he had a date with her in, like, an hour." After what I'm guessing was an excruciatingly long break to reset the angle of the phone, shoot Meredith walking down the stairs, and capture her picking up the phone, she's allowed to find out that her grandmother kicked it. But first she has to think that this is just another one of those amazing surprises we'd be hearing so much about this season, as she heard her mother on the line and offers a sentimental "It's my mom!" She and the Burrelle's transcript who suddenly show up to display Mama Meredith's words at the bottom of my TV seem to have a bad bit of news:

Mom: Little bit of bad news.
Meredith: What?
Mom: Uhhh...Nanny passed away.

Oh, great. Death. What am I supposed to do with THAT, exactly? Meredith is sad and crying. Her mother tells her not to go to the funeral. Mama Meredith tries to reason that "it's just one of those things," advising Meredith not to "let this spoil what [Meredith is] doing." And, she's gone. Meredith hangs up the phone and turns to where none of the girls are, asking whoever is in the path (the cameraman, I'm guessing), "Please give me a second." The camera shamefacedly pans away, coming to rest on the ReaperPhone that rests just feet away. Sadness may reign, but at least decorum is going to win the day; they're going to give her a second.

They're going to give her exactly one second.

We fade up again later that mourning, the girls comforting a weepy Meredith by standing around her in what appears to be a resigned game of Huggy Bear played at The Saddest Bar Mitzvah. In a confessional, Estella tells us that "when [her] father passed away" -- what? When her father passed away...WHAT? She picks up her yarn: "I was at a new job. My mother wasn't there, my friends weren't there. I had people comforting me who I didn't know. It's really lonely. It is." Back downstairs, Kelly Jo offers to do Meredith's laundry, I think, and, at the top of the steps, Mary does her best harassed-starlet routine and puts a hand in front of a camera begging, "Don't film me, please!" Did you know that certain really famous stars like Jennifer Aniston and Madonna (and now, maybe, Mary) often wear the same outfit every day in public because it depreciates the value of a paparazzi shot if there's no proof of how current it is? Isn't that a more interesting sentence to read than "Death death death death deathity death"? Now I feel like I need to tie that statement in with something actually happening in the context of the show. Okay, here goes: maybe that's why it's so hard to make any money taking paparazzi shots of the The Grim Reaper. Because he wears. The. Same. Thing. Over. And. Sigh.

At least Jenny is keeping sickly and opportunistically focussed on the matter at hand: "I think all the girls were scared, since Meredith's grandmother died, that she may not go on the date...we just wanted her to relax so she could go on this date with Bob." And show him how sullen and morose she is. Meredith knows that "he's going to be absolutely wonderful," and she's really looking forward to it, "despite [her] mood." Lucky for me I'm not one of those people who stands in judgment of other people's decisions.

Bob knocks on the door of The Crypt Keeper's Lair, expecting to find the usual torrent of "We love you Bobby oh yes we do"s coming from the inside. When such things do not materialize, he and his ego muse in confessional, "I sensed they were still excited to see me, just like they normally are. But I also sensed there was something else going on, and I had no idea what it is." Okay, (a) they didn't brief him in advance, and actually made the grieving granddaughter repeat it in front of the cameras? And (b) "just like they normally are"? Who needs the attention of ten rapturous women when nobody loves Bob like Bob loves Bob?

Outside the house, Bob puts an arm around Meredith on their walk to the limo and asks, "How are you?" She's already poised to tell him, and she begins after a long pause, "Well..." He takes this "well" not to mean "Well, there's something I need to tell you that should be prefaced with a mood-segueing 'well'" but instead to mean, "I am 'well' in a way that my second-grade teacher taught me that one says 'I am well' instead of 'I am good,' and also ''May I go to the bathroom' instead of 'Can I go to the bathroom' and also 'May I be permitted to finish one sentence about the death of an aged and treasured relative before you rant on about how you're still very close friends with your ex-wife and how you used to be fat but now you are skinny, asshole' instead of 'CAN I be permitted to finish one sentence about the death of an aged and treasured relative before you rant on about how you're still very close friends with your ex-wife and how you used to be fat but now you are skinny, asshole'?" Once the limo door closes, we hear only the audio, because death wears tinted windows: "I've kinda had a bad day. My grandma died." Bob tells us in confessional, "It really knocked the wind out of me." Meredith tells Bob, "You have to make me laugh, okay?" Okay, he thinks, but dragging that Running Man out of retirement right here in the limo ain't gonna be easy, y'know?

Estella promised us recently that it's lonely to have someone close to you die when you don't know the people around you that well. So here's poor, dear Meredith in a limo, with a guy she met through the TV and on the TV, who responds to her news with a "golly!" and follows it up, "I'm overwhelmed." "Golly"? Where did he hone his coping technique, from his high-school production of Oklahoma!? Poor Judd IS dead, you know. And I'll be someone must have responded to the news with a hearty "golly." A horse named "Sequitur" rides into the frame, then, as Bob confessionalizes, "We're having this deep conversation, and I thought the only way to break it up was to ask how she felt about horses." Meh? But, sure enough, in the car, Bob asks Meredith how she feels about horses. She does not like horses. Wacky, nonsensical banter probably also isn't her favorite right now, what with the exceedingly recent death of her grandmother. I'm just saying.

Seal Beach? Where is that? ["The Mall At Short Hills? Oh, no -- that's Wet Seal. Sorry." -- Wing Chun] Seal Beach is where we are, is where. It's a sandy expanse with an ocean at the end -- so I guess I'm just waiting for a rationale behind the "seal" modifier -- and Bob and Meredith are hoisted onto the horses she just told him that she didn't like that he somehow knew that she already didn't like. "I'm not a big fan of horses," she reminds us. "But, I mean, it's with Bob." And if Bob jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge? Well, then, yay, us!

Up and down the beach, they ride, after which they take a romantic walk with rolled-up pants. They are soon to come upon a sandcastle made of not sand, a enormous taupe palace with a full dinner and spread waiting for them inside. They sit on chaise longues outside, Meredith wrapped in a blanket telling Bob she'll try raw oysters for him, which she also doesn't like. Meanest. Fantasy date. Ever. She samples one and tells him, "That doesn't do so much for me." How about hearing about dead people in Bob's family? He offers Meredith a little speech about people who have died in his life, bemoaning, "We had three major losses in a very short period of time: my uncle, my grandfather, and then...my other grandfather." And this is my other brother Darryl. And then he remembers that his grandmother died, too, not long after. Three, then plus one? What is that, a baker's dozen? One for good luck? I would describe exactly how this is making me feel right now, but I wouldn't want anyone to accuse me of shirking my recapping duties, so I'll just suffice it to say that it rhymes with "flobody pares, Bob." (Rhyming "Bob" with "Bob"? Brilliant of me. By the way.)

"Bob made everything okay for me today. He made my tragedy okay. He made the horses okay. He made the oysters okay. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect person to spend my day with." Poor, lonely, ruined Meredith. She and Bob hold hands under the table and talk about how Meredith can't assume she'll ever get a rose. He tells her, "I don't understand what has kept you here until this point, but I'm thankful for it." It's you, Bob! You! You who you love, don't you remember?

The second date box arrives, Misty and Jenny using their cumulative IQ -- the sheer breadth of which could fit snugly in a box quite a bit smaller, I'm quickly coming to learn -- to operate the motor commands of "lift, turn, pivot, bring in house, put down on sarcastically large ottoman, pause briefly, think Antoinette's faggy hat is really queer, spot check on still living grandma, sigh with relief, giggle, and sit." The girls crowd around the ottoman, which means that some of them open the box in Malibu and some of them open the box in Torrance, as we learn that a group date of three isn't as bad as being the least compatible or using the death of an aged relative as a tertiary subplot. Mary, why don't you share with the rest of el class-o, por favor? "Mary, Kelly Jo, and Misty. Join me for a night of jammin' and jammies." Squeeee! He writes the way really hip Judy Blume books talk! Frederick himself walked out from Hollywood on foot to deliver the tawdry contents of the box: sexy negligees and a microphone. Misty celebrates, "At least I wasn't voted least compatible!" When you hear the dude's Rick Springfield, the only thing you're gonna wish you'd been voted was "Most likely to be more like Estella's dad": deaf in life but only really protected from Bob's karaoke stylings in death.

Back at the Pity Rose Caf, Bob and Meredith share some bonding time under a blanket, where smacky kissing and strummy music ensue. In confessional, Bob tells us, "I'm an old man as far as the Bachelor game goes. Y'know, here I'm thirty-two years old. It's definitely kind of interesting when you kiss someone and they make [sic] you feel like it might be one of the first time you kissed anybody, and that's how it feels when you kiss Meredith." He's giddy and Seussical: "I would kiss her if I were on a beach in a boat in a box with a fox." Bob tells us that, as far as one-on-one dates go, the bar is set pretty high. "It's not a bad problem to have, by any stretch," he admits. In that "shall I compare thee to a dead grandma" kind of way, of course.

I'm sure you've got better pajamas than I do, but I'm just saying: don't you EVER mess with my karaoke mojo. Bob shows up at the house looking like he's going to the kind of sleep where you have dreams about being a tired doctor, looking kind of baggy and clinical in a blue robe. The ladies are all in sexy shades of pink and red, and we show up at Pig 'n' Whistle, a bar I think I've been at. It's all lush and candlelit and has large seating areas that are the younger, more velvet-draped cousin of a certain "killer ottoman" I might stop and mention here. ["I've been there -- with Stee and Jessica. You may all commence envying me now." -- Wing Chun] They immediately hop on a giant bed and crack open the karaoke book, telling them, "You know which ones I like." Kelly Jo suggests "Let's Get it On," and Bob shatters the shelf liquor with his laugh, while Mary remains in a steely silence because I guess the English colloquialisms just don't translate. Bob and Mary go first, screaming "Open Arms" as Bob tells us, "If you don't like Journey, you're a damn liar." Pipe down, before Steve Perry gets it in his leathery little mind to plan a comeback tour. I'm fine with sporadically laughing uproariously at the egregiously bad "Oh, Sherry" video when it graces my screen on VH1 Classics, but beyond that, you can call me a damn liar in exchange for Steve forgetting he ever went solo. Deal?