Oh, the Wells-Fargo Wagon is a-coming in! Yee-haw! I reckon it's time for some vis-i-tation out to the Ol' West! I'm a-gonna bring down Mr. Willoughby and Skeeter Bob Junior and Old Pappy, and we're a-gonna blow rhythmically in a jug and pan for some gold and develop the frontier! ["Dreamin'!" -- Wing Chun]
At least that's what the opening shots of Wheaton, Illinois make us believe we're going to do, playing with our preconceived notions of what happens in Illinois: a Gen'ral Store, a little red schoolhouse, a real live train, and two kids drinking outta one ice cream soda with two straws make up a mise en scène that belies that fact that we're literally thirty miles outside of downtown Chicago. Then again, we also seem to be about thirty miles from something the map ambiguously refers to just as "Indiana." Anyone got a read on exactly what in the hell THAT is?
Romance of romances, Bob meets Kelly Jo in a parking lot. She's wearing a black sleeveless top that's going to show up in the Wheaton Picayune Gazette police blotter if things there don't become a little more thoroughly modern by the end of the date. In the Suburban on the way to the house, Kelly Jo bemoans the fact that this will probably be a difficult day for Kelly Jo's mother, "because [Kelly Jo's] Dad's not there." Uh-oh. Remember, it was only in the editing that they made Bob look sympathetic to the lemming-esque nature of the Bachelorette's family members during the taping of this season. He likes the dead relatives. But he does not love the dead relatives. So tread lightly, because the ground is still pretty soft in Nana's new digs. Oops. Didn't mean to say "digs." That must sound wrong.
The car pulls past long stretches of stately, big, suburban, white houses, coming to rest on one stately, big, suburban, white house. Inside, Bob and Kelly Jo meet four screaming women of intergenerational breadth and scope. Kelly Jo's mother leaps right into Bob's arms. Her tight, sunflower-patterned Capris lift off the ground and wrap around him, which isn't that much farther to travel, seeing as that outfit looks like it got lost in the background of the Tampa segment and just happened to end up here. Bob also makes real nice with Kelly Jo's grandmother, who has a nickname that is either "Hooka" or "Booka" or "Pookah." I think it's a very soft "P." Kelly Jo's mom is immediately socially boozy, and we cut to her sitting at Bob's feet (for where else should this kingly subject be expected to supplicate herself, after all), asking him, "What did you think of Kelly when she first got out of the limo?" And the only really notable part of this interaction is that you can tell from her body language that she's expecting anything that comes out of Bob's mouth to be heeeee-larious, and so she's a bit nonplussed when he actually answers the question sincerely, and she has to sit back on her haunches and listen to him talk. Bummer. Lacking class, Bob immediately volunteers that he and Kelly kissed on the first night. The family reacts with it's-meant-to-be hushed tones, but the true originality would be if he suddenly showed up at, say, Shea the firefighter's house and was all, "Actually, what's really amazing if that your daughter is only person who I did not kiss that first night." Or those twins. Remember them? Yeah, me neither.
“ We meet Meredith's mother, father, and her brother's gigantic, bulging, simian forehead. I know. It's mean. But he's too busy picking the lice and dirt out of his hide to sit down and read this anyway. ”
Back at Meredith's house, we meet Meredith's mother, father, and her brother's gigantic, bulging, simian forehead. I know. It's mean. But he's too busy picking the lice and dirt out of his hide to sit down and read this anyway. So mean! Why so mean? Can't help mean. Just wait until he kidnaps me and I discover late in the going that it was earth all along. He'll have his day, don't y'all worry about it.
Whoa. Right to dinner. Nana is such a fame whore and she completely blew my walking tour of Portland. She's way past her Warhol-allotted fifteen minutes. Or her Nana's funeral's allotted ten, fifteen, or ten minutes. Sitting down to eat, Bob proposes a toast about getting to know Meredith's family better, segueing into his real reason for wanting to have the floor: "I want to say, too, I'm sorry about your loss." He appreciates their hospitality, in light of recent deathcakes, and Matt (the brother I'm feeling too guilty to make fun of anymore) tells us in a confessional, "I definitely think it was a good thing that Mary and Bob went up to see my grandmother at the cemetery. I think that it at least brought her some closure." Who? Meredith? Or Nana? Someone's mad that his sister didn't come home for the funeral, as I would most certainly be. But seriously, it was only going to be ten or fifteen minutes, anyway.
But now to the nitty and also the gritty, Meredith's round-faced father wants to understand how Bob reacts to adversity in the worst of times, positing this hypothetical dream come true: "Everything suddenly just goes in the crapper. Mortgage rates are 18%. Oprah hates your guts. What do you do, then?" Bob -- finally having adopted the fortune-cookie rhetoric of the homestay date -- responds with a simple "I get lemons, I made lemonade." Oh, no he di'in't. That's what passes for acceptable life management now? By juicing it? He should have suggested that to Kelly Jo's mom during her dark hours: god gave you Capri pants. Why not make them into Capri Sun? Bob tells us that he's "not afraid of failure," and Meredith tells us in a confessional that his response to her parents' questions was -- wait for it -- "amazing." Man, I can't wait until Oprah hates Bob's guts.
And, we're back in L.A. We montage from the scenic coastline of Southern California (which is not where Beverly Hills is, at all) over to that "Beverly Hills" sign that was a block from where I worked when I lived there, to the street sign for the 400 block of Rodeo Drive. We recap (okay, that's IT) through the Vegas date, Estella breaking down drunkenly as drunken cartoon birds lope around her head drunkenly, crashing into each other and wearing those beer visors with the two straws hanging down on which is written, "This job's for the birds." So today, Bob wants to figure out if he and Estella can just hang. Also, an L.A. address would be a really convenient place for Bob to base himself after the run of the show is over. So, if he's taking contingencies into consideration, here's one: you can't work for Extra when you're living out in Cheeseville.