| Aired on 12.10.2003
"Well, here we are," the caffeinated-to-the-point- of-abject-sarcasm Chris "Holy Holy Holy Is The Lord Of Hosts" Harrison fairly shouts, grinning like a feline of the "Cheshire" variety and walking the wrong way down the long wedding aisle, thinking if he stays there long enough he still might achieve his wedding-night goal of accidentally marrying Trista himself and ending tons of heartache currently being experienced by both him and the actual groom, though each for entirely different reasons. Decked out in a black suit amongst trillions of pink-fabric-covered chairs like a fly on a coffin at a child's funeral in The Land Of Make Believe (and other prepositions as well!), Chris ambles purposefully toward the camera as if he's trying to bust through the fourth wall and join us on the other side. However, contractually obligated not to unearth his T-Mobile cell phone and hit "1 + area code + alternate dimension code" in an attempt to dial his ass out into our universe, he continues gamely, shouting that we've reached, "truly, the moment we've all been waiting for!" Oy! We've only just begun and already we're up to the Viennese Table? Save me one of those kosher cookies shaped like a leaf with the chocolate in the middle. God, I love the taste of marzipan in the morning.
You'll have to forgive me as we move along this week. I've been to a lot of weddings, but due to my cultural background, a majority of them seem to have been tacky Jewish weddings in New Jersey. So I'm going to try and keep up as the shiksa princess walks her Procession Through WASPland, but I hope you'll pardon me if I still express just a wee bit of concern that it's going to be just short of impossible to lift that girl up on a chair during the Hora, what with her being weighed down by $1.3 million of gaudy, jappy bling. Not that it's any of my problem. I'll just sit here, recapping in the dark. Don't worry about me. I'm fine.
Six words in, I'm losing the recapping thread already. Sorry.
Chris walks through a noxious cloud of gay-carrying pink (that's how it's spread, you know) and emerges on the other side all but singing that insidious "Things Just Keep Getting Better" song, continuing on: it's "the night Trista and Ryan finally become husband and wife, in what has to be the most anticipated wedding since Charles and Diana." All of which goes to show that a high-profile, high-expense, high-on-their-own- inflated-sense-of-self-importance wedding automatically equals a lifelong commitment to decorum, good graces, and each other, just as was true in that aforementioned trumped-up, televised marriage of two people who you were never exactly sure of what they themselves did to deserve such unquestioned luxury. At least in this case, the producers of said wedding have taken the pains to move the complaints about the paparazzi, the feeling of a car wreck, and the death of a small but significant piece of our global culture to before the wedding, rather than after. Fleiss, you devil...you thought of everything!
| Aired on 12.10.2003
Chris keeps going: "I'm here at the Lodge at Rancho Mirage" -- well, that product placement ought to make a dent in making back some of the money it cost to trademark the color pink for the exclusive use of Entertainment in perpetuity, forever and ever amen -- "where tonight, the entire country is invited to witness the marriage of Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter." And while I adjust my cummerbund and escort my sexy, reliable "+1" named Paid To Be Here into the reception hall, the rest of "the country" breaks itself down into "people who have better things to do," "people conditioned to be watching The O.C in this timeslot and forgot about this so-called ABC, and "people with the flu who don't need yet another reason to retch," and shoots back a response card with the definitive and inarguable box ticked off: "Cannot attend."
Anyway, that's the "country" for you. By the way? You viewers in Canada? Screw y'all. ["My part of Canada screwed ABC right back by bailing out at the 1h30m mark, for what it's worth, because we were so, so, so bored." -- Wing Chun]
Chris reminds us that it's "fitting" that the wedding is taking place on television because, well, that's where the couple met and fell in love! (Oh, no kidding?) He jibbers and he jabbers about the "dream come true" this is for the couple, smiling his biggest Guy Smiley grin and promising us that it's going to be "a night to remember." ["Huh, I read a book by that name once. About the Titanic." -- Wing Chun] What are you looking so smug for, punk? You're not even technically a guest.
We join Chris now at a remote satellite location, several dozen feet to the side of the outdoor ceremony location, sitting on a stool and earnestly continuing, "Earlier this year, the whole world watched as Ryan asked Trista for her hand in marriage." Oh, so finally the rest of the world is included. They're like the people who live reeeeally far away that you only invite to the wedding so you can choke a present out of them because you know they'll never come. Well, we'll see who gets the last laugh when "Lichtenstein" says it's coming, and it's bringing Slovenia as its guest. And it wants you to know that its capitol is "Vaduz."
Sixty-four slices of individually-wrapped American cheese "previously"s later, we're back in Palm Beach, Chris continuing in his role of "Look, an old dude, telling a story!" and we crowd like impressionable youngsters around his feet to hear his tale. "Obviously," Chris tells us, "this is no ordinary wedding." It sure isn't! It's fake! Also, "for more than six months, hundreds of people have been working tirelessly to make this the most spectacular wedding any bride could ever imagine." He tells us that this is the night to see how it all "comes together," from the designers and florists to the caterers and chefs, all of which leaves me wondering after the purpose of the first two installments of this particular series. Either way, Chris promises, this event is going to be "the wedding of the decade." That's a pretty bold promise in the same decade that brought you such power-couple nuptials as LeAnn Rimes and Dean Sheremet, Joan Collins and Percy Gibson, and James Van Der Beek and Heather McComb. Whoo-whee, but do I get weak-kneed in the presence of fame. Just a sec. I'll be fine. I just need to breathe a sec.
| Aired on 12.10.2003
Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards! Oh, I'm down again!
And then, that one moment where everything kind of goes batshit crazy. Chris promises a night so chock full of activity that there's no way he can cover everything by himself, because I guess he's so tuckered out from that grueling two-minutes-of- voice-over-a-week production schedule he's been on since the last season of the show wrapped. To help him out, they've brought in special "correspondents" Charlie Maher and Stephanie Lydecker. Charlie, we might remember, was Bachelor #2 (Or, The Last Remains of the Dodo) on The Bachelorette, and Stephanie Lydecker is...well, she's blonde, for one. I actually have no idea who she is. But her last name is totally cool and it rhymes with "home wrecker," therefore making it a perfect candidate for a couplet in a revenge song about a childbearing relationship gone bad.
Oh, oh, Stephanie Lydecker
A vicious wife and cruel home wrecker
Vacuumed up our love with the soul-sucking power of a Black & Decker
Oh, sister, please keep your day job
Man, am I bored.
Anyway, Charlie Maher and Stephanie Lydecker are standing in a split-screen, chilling in formalwear and holding enormous press-conference -in-the-1950s microphones emblazoned with "Trista and Ryan's Wedding" in that MS Whirligig Faggy Sans Bold font we've come to love so well. Chris introduces Charlie and positions us, telling us we're outside Ryan's door. Charlie's looking...I don't know. Broken? But in a way like he doesn't know he's broken yet, like how you feel the day before you get the flu and you feel kind of horrible but you can't really explain what's wrong with you yet? That way? His hair has chilled out a bit, though not in a good way, and he's wearing this simpering grin that says, "I know this is beneath me, but it's hard to remember which way 'beneath' is." What I'm saying is that he doesn't seem comfortable. And even less so when Chris point-blanks, talking about Ryan and noting, "This could have been you!" Now that he's on the payroll, Charlie gets to go with a canned answer, and he spins (not literally, for that makes you dizzy!) on the recommendation of the PR folks, putting the matter to rest: "I know it sounds like a cliché, man, but I truly believe things in life happen for a reason. Trista and Ryan were meant to be together, and honestly I'm just very happy to be a part of this." Chris shoots back, "I agree with you there," and since they're just chatting like dudes and this is all very colloquial, I'll leave out the fact that Chris's "I agree with you there" technically refers to the last thing Charlie said, his response officially meaning, "I agree that you are very happy to be a part of this." Well, we're happy Charlie's back if they're happy Charlie's back, I guess. I also love that, unlike pretty much everyone else in the world, Charlie doesn't have anything written below his name when it appears on the screen. No "Bachelor contestant, Season Four," no "Returning Champion," no "Former Mayoral Wife." Nothing. Just "Charlie Maher." And that's got to be good enough for us. Chris asks Charlie how Ryan is holding up, and Charlie tells us that Ryan is utterly calm despite the pressure of the day. He takes his big-ass mic into the room, where we find the male portion of the wedding party mutter quiet strains of "Oh, no" and "Oh, god" when they see Charlie approaching. And he really is the dorky A.V. guy wandering into the basketball players' locker room being all, "C'mon, you guys, if I don't interview you then you won't even be on the video yearbook! Come on...man!" Charlie marches up to Ryan, who is still wearing his cheese-ass velour Vail sweatshirt despite the fact that the rest of the guys are all in their tuxes already, and is all, "You're so relaxed you haven't even got your tux on!" Ryan tells him that he's not nervous because there's "no uncertainty," but Chris snarks from afar that Ryan looks like "a deer in the headlights." Watch out, Charlie. Give a wide berth between you and that testosterone den, or you're gonna get yourself pantsed.
| Aired on 12.10.2003
Oh, oh, Stephanie Lydecker
I love John Waters' Hairspray but I really hated Pecker
I went to high school with a guy named Rob Stecker
Your reporting style makes me sob
And the great thing about poetry is that it doesn't even have to rhyme! Or make sense at all!
Chris Harrison, The Anchor Of The Crazy News on the network known as Eeeeee! throws it over to the new woman on the scene, the eponymous star of the pop sensation "Oh, Oh, Stephanie Lydecker" that's sweeping the nation. He learns us real good that she is a former (?) Bachelorette producer who became friends with Trista during the filming of that show. We're watching a career overhaul in action, folks. Not since we watched J. Lo move from mid-market respectability (whatever, you can never take Out Of Sight away from her, so don't even try) to high-profile total, total shit has such a vocational evolution happened right before the eyes of the nation. Nay, the world. Except for Lichtenstein. They're still mad. Chris reminds us that Stephanie watched Trista and Ryan's love blossom, asking her, "Did you ever dream they'd end up here?" Right off the bat we're in trouble, as Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!) cops to having "had [her] doubts" in the past, but having been there from the first Rose Ceremony, she is now convinced that Trista and Ryan are "living proof that you can find true love anywhere, even on national television." She laughs nervously in an "I'm fired, right?" kind of way. Chris asks how things are kicking in the bridal suite, and Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!) is denied the symmetry of an audience with the bride, instead reporting that things are similarly "calm" as we glimpse a fully dressed Trista sitting ramrod straight in her chair at a distance from her "friend" Stephanie. Yeah, she's totally chill.
Oh, oh, Stephanie Lydecker
Watching you is like watching Becker
I stare at your on-air talent like a voyeuristic rubbernecker
Watches a really bad crash
See that, Bob? Everyone's a songwriter!
Stephanie and Charlie now move on to cover their "beat," that of the arrivals of the families of the bride and groom as well as the bridal party. Charlie runs into Stan and Carol, Trista's father and stepmother, while they're checking into the hotel, and he brandishes that big-ass microphone in their faces and they're all, "Charlie!" HRWEG gives him a big, loud hug that tries not to scream "THIS IS VERY, VERY AWKWARD" but succeeds in fooling no one except for the sleeping Lichtenstein. He then makes the tough observations that qualify him for this position to begin with: "I'm, like, nervous and anxious about this whole thing, and it's not my daughter." Man, how I wish he had taken that golden opportunity to turn to Carol and just scream in her face, "AND IT'S NOT YOUR DAUGHTER, EITHER!" Because, well, it's not. Oh, and remember how much more HRWEG liked Charlie than he did Ryan? Ah, memories.
| Aired on 12.10.2003
Charlie just happens to come across Ryan's parents, exchanging a "THIS TOO IS VERY, VERY AWKWARD" kind of hello and pretending that this is all fine, just fine. Upon meeting him, you can hear Bob Sutter actually speak the words, "It's Charlie! The loser!" Hoo-boy, you can't write a better line than that. And I mean you really can't! Because scripted television is dead! But seriously, this is totally awkward. I mean, why not just have Alex Michel walk around with the microphone? Or Bob's ex-wife? Let's make it as awkward and non-right as possible. Meanwhile, somewhere, Trista's poor mother looks at her husband and his wife and thinks, "Too late...this level of social awkwardness is already every day of my life." I really like her. And I wish her peace from all of this.
Speaking of which, Charlie stops by Roseanne's hotel room. She opens her door. She is alone. Charlie asks her if she is nervous about the impending wedding, and she instantly answers, "No." She adds that she knows this is the right thing for Trista, and so she doesn't have to be nervous. She's right. She's a good woman, who is a loving single mom, who might just a tiny little bit bear some kind of resemblance to my own mom. Roseanne should be the Bachelorette. At least we can probably already vouch for the location of her own Nana.
The bridesmaids stumble down a huge staircase and out onto the grounds of the ceremony for the first time. One exclaims, "I'm jealous!" Well, mission accomplished. Another muses, "I thought my wedding was great!" Well, think again.
And the guys are already drinking because boys will be boys and that's just the way it is, am I right? Charlie, lose the mic, or they're going to end up marrying your tighty-whities to your ass, wedgie-style, in The Wedding Of The Dorkade. You are making no friends. Put down the...ah, nobody listens. Charlie marches up to Ryan's brother Chris and is all, "Any words of wisdom from the brother?" Chris responds with what I think is, "Grab your balls, close your eyes, and go." But for some reason, they saw fit to smudge out the word "balls." Then the other guys throw Chris is the pool, because, well, boys will be boyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Then, we learn, it's time for another group to arrive, and up to Rancho Relaxo pulls a white van which we'll call The Mystery-These- Famewhoring-Strangers- Were-Even-Invited- To-Begin-With Machine. Bob and Estella. Brook the horse guy. Jamie. Russ, again. Past contestants of The Bachelor/ette. Are these people really even friends of the couple? And if they have their very own Mystery Machine, wouldn't their time be more effectively spent using the vehicle to travel around solving crimes in haunted mansions? Ah, damn. I've just gone and accidentally pitched ABC's primetime series, haven't I? After all, Bob's laugh reminds me a bit of Shaggy's voice. And Jamie could be Fred! And Shannon would make an excellent Scooby.
| Aired on 12.10.2003
Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!) is dressed down a bit for this meet-and-greet, though the font on her microphone grows no less ostentatious. She holds said instrument of amplifying doom up to the big, flapping lips of one Bob Guiney, who stands to a miserable-looking Estella. Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!) tells them how "happy" they look, a comment as true as if Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!) had just given herself the critique "you look very comfortable in front of the camera." And, say what you will about Bob (oooh, oooh, I'll go first: "yuck"), he spins his answer with surprising elegance, responding to Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!), "We're elated...to be here." Estella echoes a squeaky, "We are!" It's the first thing they've agreed upon since the words "As soon as this contract is up, we're done here," uttered by both of them, in unison, one thousand times.
Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!) is to catch up with Russ, asking him what a voice-over Chris promises us will be the questions "we've all been dying to know." She asks Russ, "Are you excited?" We've all been dying to know if Russ is excited? I am not one with the zeitgeist these days, people. It is now clear to me. Stephanie moves onto her question, asking Russ if he brought Trista "a little Tiffany box." Oh, Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!), that is so last year of you. More specifically, Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!), that is so January 11, 2003 of you. Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!) tells Brook that he's still "her very favorite cowboy," and Jamie tells Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!) that he's "still single," and that he'll be doing The Bachelor when he's eighty-nine. Ah, and it's true. I didn't watch the first season of The Bachelor, so I don't know who Amy and Angelique are. Amy tells us she's still single, but posits, "Maybe by the end of the weekend..." Stephanie (oh, Stephanie!) takes her cue and promises "an interesting few days." And, just like last week, another one of the world's great non-materializing subplots is set up and never knocked down.
Back over at the observation deck of Chris Harrison National Park, Chris tells us that "the excitement isn't just limited to the wedding party and guests." Cue, what, the entrance of the Pope, via satellite from Vatican City? "I am very sorry I could not attend the wedding of Trista and Ryan, but rest assured I will be watching the event on Wednesday at 9/8 Central, on my local ABC affiliate, right before local news. Oh, and death to deviants and single mothers." Wow, the Pope!
| Aired on 12.10.2003
Actually, what Chris is referring to when he mentions the overflowing, dizzying excitement of the day is a swarm of (well, four) helicopters churning overhead. Chris tells us that it's the "paparazzi, angling for a clean view of the bride and groom." To be posted without permission on ABC's sister site www.youcouldhavehadtheweddinginside.com or its mirror site www.bullshitbullshitbullshit.org. Let's go to a commercial while the production staff finishes their task of pulling those "Property of Entertainment" stickers off the side of the helicopters. Swarms of paparazzi. Bullshit.
Wow, Chris. You must be exhausted from all this knowin' stuff! Back at Rancho Relaxo, Chris learns us real good that there are few things in a wedding more important than choosing who will be performing it. And in this case, he really means performing. Cut to the chambers of one Reverend Clint Hufft, who loves his relationship with the lord, the Defense of Marriage Act, and sharing his hair products with one attending Bob Guiney. Too bad I've spent so much time dancing around this exhausted joke, or I might go as far as to say that the wedding vows will culminate with Reverend Clint instructing them to respond, " I Dippity Do." I'll bet you my confidentiality agreement about who the six Bachelors are that Mindy the Wedding Planner found them this guy. He's a totally smarmy, camera-friendly member of the clergy, telegenic and ready for his close-up...with the lord. In a meeting featuring the three of then, RevClint asks Ryan what he likes about Trista, and Ryan -- looking like he's really had just about enough -- mumbles something about Trista loving him for who he is. He can just be himself. She lets him be all that he can be. Awww, just like the Army. He marries Trista more before 9 in the morning than most people do all day! Reverend Clint now tells Trista, "The table now turns to you." Ha! Turning the tables! Just like the tables were turned when she was on TV. Reverend Clint must have been some kind of a fan of The Bachelorette. Trista likes Ryan because he makes her happy. Reverend Clint asks them now to look on "the dark side." You mean, if Luke is her father, or something? RevClint asks if the couple has had any major fights, and they both nod knowingly in that "well, after all, I am a total bitch" kind of way or that "well, after all, she is a total bitch" kind of way, respectively. He asks after the nature of their arguments, and Ryan tells RevClint that a lot of arguments center on the wedding. He leaves out the perfectly obvious fact that the fights are about the televised, famewhoring aspects of the wedding, but, I mean, duh. RevClint asks if they want to have children. Trista tells RevClint that it's her "one fear" that she can't have children. Wait, is that something that could be a problem? Why don't we get to see what's actually going on? Are there tiny, Asimovian paparazzi flying mini-helicopters through Trista's uterine track snapping sonogram pictures? If so, is Martin Short once again available to star?
| Aired on 12.10.2003
Sidebar: under any and all circumstances, please see your way clear to buying, downloading, or stealing a copy of the song "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)" by a one-hit wonder band from the '70s called Looking Glass. I've formed an independent counsel of myself and deemed it Trista and Ryan's wedding song. Now if she can get the paperwork underway to change her name to "Brandy," that'd be just super.
Wedding planner extraordinaire Mindy "Together We Defend Castle Greyskull From The Evil Forces Of Skeletor" Weiss makes a proud return, presiding over the substantially-sized wedding party. Trista's friend Cindy is adorable! The ring bearer is going to come down the aisle in a tiny fire engine. He's twenty-four. No, really, he's not. Trista expresses fear that she's going to fall down an enormous flight of steps in her billion-dollar shoes. Wait. Can I marry Cindy?
Back in the groomsal suite (what is that called? Is there a linguistic corollary to "the bridal suite"?), Charlie humiliates himself further and further when we discover him...tying Ryan's bowtie? I'm waiting for the wedding party to start spontaneously pelting him with super-soakers and screaming "dance, bitch! Dance!" They're so mean and he's so not cool. Charlie tells us that Ryan didn't like his attempts at a "double Windsor." Chris reminds him that last year they were competing, and this year he's tying Ryan's tie, noting, "I think they call that poetic justice." Well, Chris last year you were you, and now, well, you're still you. I call that lack of evolution. Charlie didn't have to do anything but embody the actual, technical definition of "loser" and, in doing so, ended up on the same payroll you're on. Isn't THAT actually what's called poetic justice? Think about it. And then download that song. What are you people waiting for? Million-dollar invitations? Paparazzi photos of Looking Glass? Do it!
"Of all the reality shows around the world, this is first to result in a real marriage," Chris tells us. Wow. How proud of themselves they've chosen to be. Chris introduces Skeletor Weiss, reminding us of her high-wattage wedding planning credentials (you say "Adam Sandler" one more time, muthufuckah, I dare you...I double dare you) including those of "Adam Sandler, Shaquille O'Neal, Jessica Simpson." AAAAAAHHH! Skeletor promises us that the "little touches" are going to make the wedding special. Such as, the things you can't see from the television. Oh, goody. I can't wait even more than I couldn't wait fourteen seconds ago.
| Aired on 12.10.2003
This wedding was planned in a montage! They montaged through the wedding plans! I thought they said it was going to be hard! Everything's easy in montage!
We meet the ring and the dress and the shoes again. But I already recapped this, so you can't fool me into recapping this again.
Heh. "Trista loves vanilla." You can say that again. And what the hell is a "cake diva," anyway?
Ah, money. I know there's been some controversy about whether releasing the tallies was a good idea, but I, for one, was thrilled. It calls to our attention so much more the conspicuous consumption of an American populace gone wrong, in which no expense can be spared because of the nobodies at the altar that I waste 6,000 words a week on. I mean, people: the shoes showed up at Rancho Relaxo in an armored car. That's a car. Made out of armor. I've only seen two other armored cars in my life, and one was in a History Channel documentary about World War II and the other was when I formed a mental vision of one when I read a fairly vivid description of it while reading The DaVinci Code. (Whatever. That book was really good.)
Anyway, here are the tallies:
Wardrobe: $250,000
Bridal gown: $100,000
Food and drink: $155,000
Wedding cake: $15,000
Flowers: $500,000
Music: $105,000
Gift bags: $30,000 (steal two and you can be on Page Six!)
Invitations: $83,000
Linens: $63,000
Location: $750,000
Jewelry: $1,250,000
But wait! Don't even bother with the pesky chore of pulling up the calculator! Damn the Accessories Menu! Papa Fleiss took care of the math as well! The grand total for just these very selective expenses is $3,778,000. And that's not including the million-dollar fee the couple was paid just for the "rights" to air the event. And the cost of renting those helicopters! ["Far be it from me to tell the Walt Disney Corporation what to spend its money on -- like, employees' salaries, for instance, or, like, charity -- but that amount of money is really obscene and gross. Particularly when you hear the shitty off-key flutist performing at the wedding and think, 'They paid some part of $105,000 for that? Damn, , shop around!'" -- Wing Chun]
A fabulous moment over in the bridal suite, where a few seconds of feed find Trista looking all pissy and put out until you can practically hear the "and...action!" of this totally unplanned, spontaneous "real" event. Then the two flower girls run in and Trista gives them a big hug. Because she's all heart and loves a good spontaneous moment. And...cut.
| Aired on 12.10.2003
Trip to the spa. Pink robes. Expensive gift bags. Lavish presents. Massages. I know that watching television is supposed to be about wish fulfillment to a certain extent, but it sure is hard to undertake an exercise in wish fulfillment when my wish is that I were no longer alive.
The men, meanwhile, hate pink, massages, and not looking like the frat boys they prove they aren't when they won't look at hot, skanky strippers in catsuits. You guys? Any dude cred you had was so exceedingly blown last week you might as well just put on the pink robes, enjoy a pedicure, partake in a pillow fight, and write mean things about each other in your slam books. ("Ben looks like he was named after the rat he so closely resembles from the song about the rat named Ben!" "Pete's head is shaped like a rhombus!") Instead, the last-ditch efforts of the faulty Y-chromosome make one more dire pitch for supremacy, as Ryan and the boys march onto a basketball court with the backwards baseball caps and the ripped tank tops. Only Trista's feminized-by-his- nine-wives-and- sixteen-daughters father seems unable or unwilling even to try; he's tucked his shirt into his khaki shorts, and I believe his belt may even be braided. Charlie goes flying after them with his microphone and tries another round of interviews. We learn that Ryan's gift to his groomal party is in the form of a mountain bag (whatever that is, but it's black, because that is the grimy color of dirt and men!), some ski passes, and a watch. Charlie, crack journalistic skills honed as an embed in the First Acting-Like-Infants Infantry division during the gory Bachelorette Wars, surveys his situation and brilliantly thinks to ask Chris, "So, what are you guys gonna do today? You gonna play some basketball?" I'm just gonna leave that one riiiiiight there.
It's later, suddenly. Back in the Groomal Suite, Ryan's father is sitting in deep focus on a couch with his son. Charlie, foreground (for isn't he the most important part of this sequence, really?), whispers into his microphone like he's finally found his calling as "The Password Whisperer" (the password is "booby prize"), tells us, "Ryan's father just grabbed him to sit down on the couch. I think he's going to give him a little advice." He implores us to "listen in." Yes, let's. Over on the couch, Ryan's dad is all, "Okay, son, on your wedding night you might feel a little bit nervous. Now, women are different, y'know, cough, 'down there' than you and your dad, so, erm, well...in the world, son, there are birds and there are bees." Don't worry, Papa Sutter. A girl in a catsuit already gave him this lesson.
| Aired on 12.10.2003
A rehearsal dinner is best experienced in montage. Bob and Estella are taking everything "one step at a time," Bob tells us. HATE each other. Trista's mom gets a moment to shine, telling us that she's "excited" about it. Trista's dad introduces a clip reel of Ryan and Trista growing up called "Trista and Ryan Through the Years." If the Kenny Rogers song of that name has a tendency to make you cry at inopportune moments, you may very well be my mother. Are you? Pete makes a speech and retracts his earlier "high-maintenance" comment about Trista. What were they doing, watching the dailies? After the dinner, Trista baby-voices an "I'll miss you" to Ryan as they wait for the elevator. She steps on and goes upstairs, Ryan staring moonily at her and me concerned that the ceremony hasn't even started yet and I'm completely out of applicable rhyming couplets for "Lydecker." ["Coat-checker?" -- Wing Chun]
RevClint makes his way through a squeaky set of gates as the processional starts in. Ryan's father and grandmother are first down the aisle, followed by the dawn of a new ice age it takes so long. In fairness, the aisle is sixty miles long. Chris attends Ryan's other grandmother. Wait. Are they showing this ceremony is real time? Wow. That will allow me to recap it in real time! Trista's grandmother and uncle walk down the aisle. Trista's maternal grandparents walk down the aisle. People, this is television! I wonder what's going on over on the other ch...ah! Fleiss has put a shock mechanism on my television remote. I can't change the channel. No wonder the ratings were so high. I love how Ryan is interviewed by Charlie every time they cut into the Groomal Suite, but suddenly Trista is suddenly all tweaked out and camera shy. Trista's dad and FakeMom process. Trista's mom walks down the aisle , with which one of Trista's other close relatives befitting the escorting of the mother of the bride down the aisle? "Trista's mother, Rosanne Rehn, now being escorted to her seat by Trista's lifelong friend, Andy Goldenberg." ANDY GOLDENBERG? The mother of the bride, people, and she walked in hours after the stepmother of the bride. And she got totally Goldenberged. I can't believe they Goldenberged the birth mom. Fuck all.
Ryan enters, escorted by his parents, to the strains (and I mean "straaaaaaaains") of Pachelbel's Canon In D. Contractually obligated to do so, everyone mentions the helicopters all faux-surprised. Don't play this song at my wedding. Don't play this song at my funeral. Don't play this song ever. ["But Blues Traveler's 'Hook' is okay, right?" -- Wing Chun]
| Aired on 12.10.2003
Ryan makes it to the end of the aisle, turning and facing back down it like people at weddings do. The bridesmaids enter, a symphony of pink. I still dig me some Cindy. Tiny flower girls in adorable pink dresses! The ring bearer in a tiny fire engine! That poor little boy. Scarred and mocked forever. My brother played a glockenspiel solo in the third-grade orchestra concert and we still make fun of him constantly, mercilessly, fifteen years later. This is going to be murder. (A glockenspiel is kind of like a xylophone. By the way.)
The music changes abruptly to "Here Comes the Bride." And, well, here comes the bride. And the moment might be considered by some shocking or beautiful, but those people were all there at the event or those who designed that which is shocking and beautiful, but we're been living inside the craw of the planners for the past three weeks, draining any possible dramatic impact entirely away from this moment. Other than that, it's grand, baby. Trista makes her way down the steps and down the aisle, her step ginger and her hair, well, Gilligan's Island's Ginger. It's a little buoyant, wouldn't you say? She processes with her father down the aisle, the helicopters adding nothing but, as my grandmother would say if I had married Ryan, "a whole lot of ruckus."
HRWEG hands off his only daughter (well, Jackie, but whatever...his only daughter) to Ryan with a misplaced "I love you, man" that actually means "now you deal with it, sucka." Trista tells Ryan "you can't kiss me yet" and then again muses on the presence of helicopters. Oh, there are helicopters? RevClint gives them some quick welcoming words and launches right in: "Thank you all so very much for coming to this beautiful place to watch these two amazing people do what they are about to do." That sounds a lot more fun than it turns out. RevClint adds that "we learn to love by being loved." Trista learns to love by watching it on Wednesday nights. This is so sickeningly surreal. I want to eat Trista's bear claw right off the Viennese Table.
A sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning sends the helicopter mix down for a minute as Browning drowns them out spinning in her grave, until Trista screws it up and has to apologize. Ryan screws up too and just keeps going. The poem, incidentally, is the one that begins, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." You just start counting, Trista. We'll stop you as soon as you get up to $3,778,000.
"To symbolize the importance of the individuals within the marriage...three colors of sand will now be layered into a vase." Wait, it will? Yes, it will! Trista and Ryan are each given a vase of sand, RevClint snarking on Trista's color of pink and therefore symbolizing that pink jokes are officially over. Ryan's sand is blue. RevClint's is neutral. Wait, is he accidentally getting married to them? Oh, neutral means that the marriage is grounded. No, it doesn't. It means that this sand art in a vase bullshit is one twisted Coke bottle away from being the worst booth on the strip of the most touristy town on Cape Cod.
| Aired on 12.10.2003
Trista and Ryan have written each other "a letter" declaring their love for one another. Ryan goes first, telling Trista "in falling in love with you, I've found something so special." He tells her, "You're the inspiration." If you're my mom, that song might make you cry, too. But to a certain sect of baby boomers, Chicago 17 is literally like crack. Don't even mention "Hard Habit to Break" around my mom unless you want a fully orchestrated version of the entire thing, complete with one-woman-provided backing vocals. And don't you worry about the accompaniment. She also has the sheet music. And she's not afraid to sight read.
Trista's letter is , in which she rambles almost drunkenly about Ryan's being "warm," meaning that he is a "warm" person, but also that he is her "own personal space heater." She tells him that living with him means "living with allergy shots." From the cloud, Brook bristles with understandable confusion. Ryan's the love of Trista's life, and she will love him forever and always. Shannon cries because she's sitting to Russ. Not a tear being shed up at the wedding trestle. Too much scratch spent on the makeup for that.
Vows. He does.
Vows. She does.
"By the authority vested in me by the state of California, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Will you please kiss your bride?" He will. We have processed. And now we recess. Everyone waves these little banners things at the couple as they walk out. Ryan can take them to mean "surrender." I take them to mean "Minnesota Twins playoff game." This recessional sucks. I liked recess better when there was more kickball.
Dispelling a rather staunchly held notion that Chris was positioned in front of a "Trista and Ryan's Wedding" blue screen in Sherman Oaks somewhere, Chris invited himself to the actual wedding part of the wedding, showing up at the reception and "introducing" the couple, because we have no idea who they are. Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Sutter walk into a lavish reception hall that gets literally no face time at all, Trista in her chilled-out reception gown. Chris tells Trista that Ryan has a surprise for her, and she tries to wipe the look of instant anger off her face. Ryan introduces country singer Brad Paisley, whom I've never heard of because I live here. He grabs an acoustic guitar and does a country version of -- wait for it -- "I'm Falling for Something about Her." I guess that means I have to stop telling people I'm a "lyricist" and expecting to gain the slightest kernel of respect for it. Back to just telling people I'm an exotic dancer in a gay club. Sigh. Life on the pole ain't as glamorous as it looks, people.