Props to Potes, as always. You've got...I don't know, something about waxes and faxes. It's true.
Why do I let reality television be smarter than me? WHY?
Hi, everyone. Djb here. You might recognize me from such recaps as "those three years I toiled in varying levels of fame and obscurity, watching people blow stuff up in the desert and then run away guiltily from the stuff they just blew up in the desert on Roswell" and "the day I watched my very first episode of Charmed." But tonight there's a very different kind of recap for me to write, and it's not one I'm sure I can do at all. It's not a recap written in another language or a recap I have to write without a chair or a recap about people whose intellect exceeds mine or yours or the average bowl of cashews. Instead, it's a recap of such tremendous volume (two hours? TWO HOURS?) written in such a frightfully short period of time (I'm on a plane to L.A. on Friday morning and before I'm gone this sucker is done) that I hope you'll stand by me through the two exceedingly late nights of hair gel, hanky-panky, and Trista's increasingly hard-to-bear high, cackling laugh. Like, for instance, if I use the verboten, Gong Show-era-approved hyphenate "hanky-panky" just for its alliterative value even though it sounds really gay. Say you'll stay. We've already been through so much together. Well then, what am I waiting for? Your recap is served, and the season finale is on the menu! Hope you were hungry for "Disclaimer."
Wednesday, 10:22 PM. I just ate an entire box of Cheez Nips. Just thought you should know.
We're in the lady's chambers of Trista "Christian Oh The Time Has Come And You Know You're Not The Only One To Say...Okay" Rehn. The cameras wander inside to find her pretending to be asleep for the sake of some stray pick-up shots, but from the looks of her regal bedding, it's clear that she hasn't had a good night's sleep since the wily Brook snuck in under cover of darkness and disrupted her slumber with the strategic, mid-mattress placement of a single pea. In her arms is the stuffed Shamu that Rhymin' gave to her on their romantic date to Sea World. And you've got to give him credit for hanging in so long despite such terrible wooing opportunities; "a romantic date at Sea World" is as likely an expression as "an appendix removal at Chuck E. Cheese's." It just doesn't happen that often is all.
Anyway, still lying in bed and from the infinite comforts of her internal monologue, Trista tells us, "I've been here for six weeks and it's finally coming to an end." Word up, voice of a loyal (or getting paid to be here) generation. She floats down the ever-bending, undiagrammable Sentence River, in which she cops to being both "happy" and "sad" about the steps in her decision. Now she lies in bed wearing her Smart Glasses and reading diligently from Hit The Moot Button: A Guide To Reality-Show Twist Endings That Twist Too Late, continuing, "The person I'm most sexually attracted to is Charlie." The color sepia leaps out of my Crayola 64, jams itself into the sharpener on the back of the box (because only in this fantasy sequence in which my crayons come to life does that freakin' sharpener actually work, crummy thing), and proceeds to smear itself all over my fourteen-inch recapping television on my desk for the ensuing montage of Charlie-and-Trista- sitting-in-a-sepia-tree, K-I-S-S-E-P-I-A. They have a "connection" that grows every second. We relive the night in Cabo, when Charlie leans in and tells Trista, "You're glowing." Of course she's glowing; the production staff has drenched them in plutonium like it's Gatorade and they're the team that just won The Big Game. It all took place in The Gauzy Past. We get it. Now stow away from the color gels until you're doing a stage production of Miss Saigon and you're in need of a garish Vietnamese sunset.
In the kitchen and in the present now, the director gives itself (for truly the cobblers and creators of this action have not yet evolved far enough to assume a gender-specific form) over to a bit of a Beckett-esque moment, as Trista stands with her face in her hands and a towel on her head, waiting for a bagel to pop out of the toaster. The bagel pops out of the toaster. Let us put cream cheese on the bagel. Yes, let's. Stage direction: They do not move.
That was a Beckett reference, right up there. Damn, I'm pretentious. And thinking about having some delightful cereal.
Trista further bemoans her non-Utah state of monogamous love, reminding us, "I would so like to be with both of them. But it's just not possible." Because in tricky matters of the heart, it's best to be regimented by the hard and fast rules of a game show. That makes intuitive sense to me. Anyone? We're back to the past as we remember Trista's earliest interactions with Rhymin' (His rhymes often scare/ Even more so drenched in sepia/ But when it comes to Charlie's hair/ Well, I find that much creepy-a). Trista's voice-over reminds us that "when he comes out of his shell, he's this witty character," and this assertion is backed up by the seen-ad-nauseum sequence of Rhymin' begging for booty and telling the driver of the limo in Seattle to get them back to the Fantasy Suite in a hurry. Which, fine, whatever. I already said I thought it was kind of amusing. But "witty"? Isn't that word generally reserved for the pithy words culled from the great, bored minds of those who sit around drawing rooms and speak of Wildean things like art and dandies and "oh, isn't that just the most delightful frock"? Is Rhymin' any of those things to any of you?
I haven't eaten Ramen since my senior year of college. I totally wish it were my senior year of college.
A tiny, tiny plane carrying all of the people interested in spending lengthy vacation time in St. Louis lands on a small airport runway or maybe in the deserted city streets. I have seen St. Louis at 80 miles per hour more times than I can count, and I have stopped there not once. There's something about the arch which fairly screams, "I'm the only thing here!" that sends a defiant message to my bladder that sounds something like, "No thanks, we'll just wait for Illinois." Has anyone been there? Do y'all live there and you were reading this out loud with a match held under it and vitriol in your voice at, like St. Louis's TWoPcon And Djb-Effigy-Burning Extravaganza? Anyway, we learn from Trista that Charlie will be the first of the suitors to meet her family, and we cut to Charlie waiting for her, voicing over, "I want, by the end of this evening, to have Trista's family say, 'Wow, he's got a solid head on his shoulders and I feel that he would be great for our daughter.'" Well, I can't speak for the latter, but I can tell you that he's taken both Vidal and Sassoon hostage in an attempt to secure himself the most solid head one's shoulders could possibly support. He could split granite with his solid, solid head.
Out of her limo Trista steps and into Charlie's strong, virile man arms. She welcomes him to St. Louis and celebrates the overall beauty of the weather (with a beautiful breeze coming in off the...oh, wait, it's also landlocked), as she tells us, "He looked great. He always does. And today was no exception." I think that exact interview snippet has been used four times to refer to four different "he"s on four different days. Through the Botanical Gardens we go, Charlie explaining, "After our date in Cabo, I felt kind of a new connection to Trista. Kind of a new comfort with her." And, first of all, he says "Cabo" in a totally frat boy way, over-accentuating the "c" and drawling out the "ah" like he had a tongue depressor permanently installed in his soft palate. Actually, it appears as if he has indeed had a tongue depressor installed, called "Trista's tongue." They're in what appears to be some kind of tree house (and, I mean, you always feel younger than you are when you go home again, but let's not get too literal here), "joking" in a very similar fashion how wacky it would be for Charlie to enter Trista's parents' house with his face all smeared with lipstick. I don't know. Whatever. That's what they're saying. Trista notes with a painful lack of foreshadowing that it feels "right" whenever she's with Charlie. Yes. But do you have a connection?
I have a connection in Chicago.
The limo speeds through the empty St. Louis streets (the Gateway Arch is a gateway to hell) as Trista tells us, "I have no anxiety about tonight. I am very much looking forward to seeing my family, and I think that my parents are going to be very impressed with Charlie." Looks like somebody's family is a sucker for a guy who can recite the entire Greek alphabet backwards while holding a lit match and, I'm sure, is naked from the waist down. Who is he besides his smarmy, frat-boy persona? What parental impressing arsenal could he possibly have at his disposal? Let's go see!
Inside of middle America's most middle-class home, we meet an odd configuration of family members. Now remember, I didn't watch the first season of this show so I don't know if Alex met the parents or what, but you have to admit there's something weird about the dad being at dinner with both his current wife and his past wife, both of whom seem to get along quite well, actually. New wife is an eensy bit more glamorous, so I guess she's the one who, Sixteen Candles-style, will just offer to "open this box of donuts" as part of their palling-around dinner prep slapstick in the kitchen. If we tried this familial arrangement in my family, the salad dressing would be blood and the wine would be red and flowing because it would be made entirely of blood. The ex-wife and the current wife all bond-y like this? Are they staying together for the good of the game show? Because that would be really big of all of them.
Trista and Charlie enter the house as hugs and handshakes are exchanged. The attending crowd consists of Trista's mom, stepmother, father, and stepsister. We cut right to Roseanne (Trista's mother), who offers her first impression of Charlie: "Wow." That's creepy in a sex way, Mom. Say something else: "Tall, dark, handsome." Awww, Trista went and brought herself home a real-life film noir cliché, didn't she? Trista's stepmother, on the other hand, notes, "You're a failure of a wife and a failure of a lover, and I got your man in the end so neener neener." She doesn't actually say that, but...wha? Aren't these two people who have no earthly right getting near each other without a catfight of the most primal, Kibble-throwing variety? Maybe it's me. I'm from a broken home. Much like the home I live in now. A home with no food left because I ate twelve toasted waffles during the freakin' blizzard Monday. I couldn't even leave. Thank goodness, actually, for the impulse buy of those waffles the day before the storm, or I would have been in my apartment gnawing my own arm off in some exceedingly Gus Van Sant shot-by-shot remake-of-Alive- but-without-the- airplanes-or- the-soccer kind of way. Oh, man. Where the hell was I? Ah, yes: "The first thing I noticed about Charlie when he walked in were his eyes. His beautiful eyes." Does he have nice eyes? They always seem so obscured by the weeping willowiness of his too-bushy eyebrows. In the kitchen now, Old Mom and New Mom discuss Charlie's inherently oozing freaky-deakiness, Mom arguing, "Wow. I wish I was [sic] still thirty." Dude. No kidding. Trista feels exactly the same way sometimes.
The grilling begins early in the living room. Trista's father, He Runs With Enormous Glasses (I've forgotten his proper Christian name, so I've been forced to resort to this less conventional but no less appropriate Native American moniker) asks Charlie what kind of hours he keeps at work. Because talking work hours makes for riveting television at all times, always. Those trendsetters at the Human Resources Network will see to that, as in their new reality show Time Won't Give Me Time: A Look Behind The Scenes of Payroll Processors. And that includes the hidden footage that they didn't want you to see. Charlie continues on that his "true love" is "the stock market," which he mentions is "booming." I'm sorry, wasn't this show taped in October of 2002 and not instead during some past year that maybe contained any number of "9"s? The market sucks. Who doesn't know that? I mean, besides this unemployed "Wall Street" guy who I don't think has ever been to New York. He Runs With Enormous Glasses changes the subject to mention that it's time for dinner, and that he's going to "bring the questions." The aforementioned "questions" refer to a white porcelain bowl filled with questions the family has written down, up to and including the obvious "Why'd you let that new tramp wife of yours come ruin our dinner?" which I'm sure will be read in conjunction with its follow-up question, "Maybe if you hadn't have been so frigid all those years I wouldn't have needed to step out on you." Those two. Always fighting. And that last one wasn't even a sentence.
You know what? They were Cheez-Its, not Cheez Nips. Which is the inferior non-union counterpart of the other? And, more importantly, how are you now supposed to believe anything I say? Trust me when I say this question will be important later.
Hey, do you think you could pass the...oh, you say you can't? You say you'll be hogging every damn thing in the house including all of the conversation, Charlie? Well, all right. Just as long as you're somehow forced to pay for it later. In fairness, though, I must say that Charlie kind of kicks ass at dinner, and if anything this meal reasserts Charlie and Trista's overall "rightness" for one another in a smarmy, plastic, public, wholly performative, we're-turned-on- when-this-thing's-on kind of way. HRWEG certainly sees it (as well he should, what with his enormous...oh, never mind), toasting the couple and wishing them "many good days ahead." Which I'm sure they'll experience. With other people. HRWEG requests the aforementioned bowl of questions as Trista voices over that she thought the questions would be intended for everyone, and not just a full-out third degree-ing of Charlie. Somehow, though, when HRWEG was unable to formulate a cogent reply to the repeatedly chosen, "You cheated on me with her HOW MANY TIMES, you craven BASTARD?" they were forced to abandon the socialist "everyone's playing" concept they'd apparently told Trista about. Back in the dining room, HRWEG asks the first question, practically taking one out of the bowl and holding it up to his forehead like Carson with a killer joke about the Ayatollah or how many times he nailed Jerry Hall. Carson. Not Trista's dad. But it's Trista's mom who instead asks the first question, inquiring of Charlie, "Are you a morning person or an evening person?" Trista's NotMom has the probing question, standing up (come back! You haven't even eaten your poorly-edited-together after-dinner mint yet!) and wanting to know, "How would you feel if your wife made more than you?" Charlie cracks up the crowd with a deadpan "All right." They love him. Love him! Well if they love him so much, why don't they marry him? Hey, hear that, everyone? Lisa's gonna marry a carrot! Ha ha! Lisa's gonna marry a carrot.
Mmmm...carrots are the same color as Cheez-Its. Sort of.
But NotMom isn't done with the questioning just yet. Whoa, no. "Could you be a Mr. Mom?" Charlie looks around. "Fine," his eyes seem to say. "Just as long as I don't have to be a Multiplicity later on." What he actually does is give some lilting speech about how a woman's place is on the Miami Heat dance floor, and he thinks that "marriage is a partnership," and women can make as much money as they damn well please. In a hilarious rebuttal, HRWEG makes a joke about wanting to see Charlie's tax forms. Oooh, take that, IRS. Burn.
HRWEG stops the action with a weirdly toneless "Ding ding ding ding ding," announcing that they've reached a portion of dinner called "the option round." Sensing a total lack of Whammies and a road paved only with Big Bucks, Charlie laughs confidently as HRWEG explains that in this round Charlie has "the option" (geddit? GEDDIT?) of asking any of them a question. Charlie does, opening it up to the floor and requesting information about Trista she might not have divulged. NotMom is all show-don't-tell, pissing off Trista to deadly serious "YOU'RE NOT MY MOTHER"-esque apoplexy with her suggestion that she show him a photograph of her. "She knows how much I hate that picture," Trista tells us in interview. We cut to Charlie gazing upon a typically dorky photograph (not "typically" for Trista, but for adolescence in general) of a young, flat, smiling-through- a-mouthful-of-metal Trista wearing a bridesmaid's dress (at what I'll imagine is at HRWEG's wedding to NotMom) and holding a bouquet of flowers. Meh. I've seen worse. I've posed for worse. And the dress never fit me half as well (despite our nearly identical body types at whatever age Trista was in that picture), I can tell you that much. Everyone chokes a forced laugh, Trista because she's being humiliated, HRWEG because it wasn't his idea, and Trista's mom because she's clearly thinking, "Any excuse to show them all pictures that prove he's not mine anymore, you troll."
"I got the one," Trista's half-sista chirps from the brink of irrelevance. What one? What's this one? What? Hello? Ruzzah ruzzah? Potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes? Pipe down, y'all! "The one" refers to a question they put in the bowl and then reconsidered. So obviously it's hot! Let's hear it from Half-Trista's mouth: "Besides your face, what other part of your body do you shave?" Well, doesn't everyone have a laugh about that one! Charlie reminds us that he's not "the type of guy who gets embarrassed easily," which we have already gleaned from this weekly, soul-sucking national airing of such a brazen lack of warranted humiliation. But this, seriously, is nasty: "I don't shave my chest, but I clip it with buzzers." Ew! Ew ew ew ew ew! I'm so not into hair. Oh, the thought of it. Don't y'all start some big forum war about "bears" versus whatever is the opposite of bears, because I don't want to know. I just don't dig no outer coating on my man. Thank goodness Charlie keeps going! "I have very hairy...like sweater vest by Darwin if I don't do it." Darwin's all, "Who, me?" What an unlikely evocation of his name. Anyway, you just watched Charlie jump right into sharksville. Whammy! Because that is gross, and yet defying my will it continues still. Good thing they're dining under the Gateway Arch, because it's clear that the pioneering spirit through which its architect symbolically welcomed America westward has displayed itself in Charlie's unwavering Manifest Chestiny.
Wow. The man is so smooth (but not like that), he actually sets off a music cue. An acoustic guitar music cue! The family asks him if he's more afraid of being selected or not selected at this point, and Charlie makes it amply clear that he doesn't fear commitment. "I would dedicate myself to her. Be faithful. And move together toward growing this relationship." Awwwww! Trista's mom breaks the awkward sincerity that's descended (that shit totally doesn't fly at my family's dinner table, either), asking, "So, do you know anybody my age?" Statistically? Trista in about five years. HRWEG disses any other man who would try and steal Trista's small, cold, blackened, one-Ice-Age-away-from-solid-coal heart, asking snidely, "So, who's this Ryan?" He's your, um, son-in-law, muthafuckah. Trista tells us that her family loved Charlie, and HRWEG calls him "likable" twice. NotMom tells us how happy she would be if Trista and Charlie got engaged, and Charlie confirms that sentiment while sitting in an interview in a room that appears to contain a wall-hanging of, I think, bugs. What is that thing?
Outside the house now, Charlie and Trista kiss and celebrate how well he got on with her family. Tristan says something about her family standing "by her side" in the event of a proposal, and it only dawns on us an hour later that that interview has nothing to do with the person the editing is currently purporting to modify. In the limo now, Trista once again shares her vague concern of Charlie's issues with "intimacy," telling him, "The reality of the situation is that there's still somebody else in the picture." Charlie correctly observes, "It sounds like your heart is with me right now." She confirms that it is. I just don't think he knows how localized her concept of "right now" really is. She tells him that she's "had sex before," and doesn't think it would be right for him to impose sexual sanctions on her. He agrees in a soft-spoken and egalitarian fashion, and I totally thought this part was the show trying to throw us off and make us think that there was trouble in paradise. Trista tells Charlie to go come back to her room. He will. They kiss. "Finally we'll...a little snuggle in the nook," Trista tells us. Their hotel room door closes and the camera pans to a far less kitschy "Do not disturb" sign than the "W" chain could ever conceive. Ladies and gentlemen? The last time she will have sex with anyone else. Ever. Again.
Go to hell, two-hour episode. We actually cut to a recap of the last segment, in which a montage of St. Louis (I mean, whatever...I'm just using my context clues here. It's one general store away from being the nondescript suburban town of the opening five minutes of every episode of Behind the Music ever) cuts to Charlie really "fitting in" at dinner. "But," Trista resolves in an ouch-on-you-Ryan segue, "today I am going to be meeting up with Ryan, and I'm gonna just try to focus on Ryan and let this day be about him and me." She hops out of the limo the rainy day (even the weather thinks she's a better match with Charlie) and gives a waiting Ryan a big welcome hug. She takes his hand and brings him into the car, where they haltingly catch up on how they missed each other. They always, always seem like they're one sentence away from running out of things to say forever. And, I mean, they both know such a painfully finite number of words.
Why are Ryan and Trista on a riverboat cruise? They hug on an empty boat called The Tom Sawyer, which goes under the Arch and all about town. Are they meeting her family on the boat? Is the boat her dad and this is some bizarre Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo man-as-machine switcheroo? Unlikely, I realize, but...hi, what's going on right now? Nighttime falls and it is never explained. They remain on the deserted cruise vessel, Rhymin' once more declaring his mad, unadulterated love for Trista. She remains...well, dead inside. Who's hungry?
Thursday, 7:43 PM. Unevenly microwaved Progresso lentil soup. With Cheez-Its for crackers. The meal of kings!
And, over at the ol' Rehn place, HRWEG will be eating his foot for the evening meal and Ryan will dine on crow, thank you very much. Trista cops to being nervous this time, worrying that her family won't give Ryan a "fair shot" following Charlie's PR-palooza of the evening. This time the conversation flows from a more natural place (that is, "not from a bowl"), as they sit around pre-meal and engage in a little light Q&A. "So," HRWEG asks, "How'd you develop an interest that made you want to be a firefighter?" He tells us...zzzzzzz. They're catatonic. I'm sorry, but they are. Even Trista's a bit...well, dainty, sitting politely with her hands folded in her lap and being really small. Mom comments in an interview that she felt they had to "tone it down" to suit Ryan's introverted demeanor. Ryan recounts his dates with Trista, tells the assemblage that Sea World is "amazing," and explains in a sentence how to paint using acrylic...zzzzzzz. Sorry. Is there a caffeinated Cheez-It available on the market? Because I feel it would be beneficial to me now for many, many reasons. HRWEG tiptoes back to the makeshift interview room (because heaven forbid he should walk louder than Ryan talks or accidentally wake up any interesting conversation) and gripes, "Out of the guys Trista's dated, Ryan's definitely different." They toast silently at dinner, Mom (tonight sitting to NotMom because pretending to be best friends is what passive-aggressiveness is, people). Mom asks them both, "How does she complete you? And how does he complete you?" Yikes. Someone rented Jerry Maguire on video and DVD and went home happy. Trista responds that the human head weighs eight pounds. Ryan gives the "opposites attract" speech veeeeeery quietly, and Mom tells us that he's a "special spirit." Ryan tells Trista's family that he doesn't write many poems, really, and that "she's the inspiration behind my poems. She's the poetry to me." Which doesn't entirely answer how he showed up in Encino with a poem he wrote before he met her, but we'll excuse him because he's going to marry her. And that makes Mom cry. Woohoo! Show me the rose!
Ryan is suddenly standing behind HRWEG, asking if he can talk to Trista's dad privately for a moment "if you don't mind." Mom deadpans a quick "Oh, we'll miss him terribly," which I like in the same way I've enjoy every embittered quip she's made. Ryan and HRWEG walk into an empty den-like room and sit, Ryan starting right in: "If there's some sort of proposal involved, or if marriage is broughten [sic, and a big one] up, then I just want to feel comfortable accepting that or making that proposal without talking to you first." Sixteen triple negatives later, Ryan asks HRWEG for his daughter's hand in marriage, though it's possible he may have asked HRWEG to marry him instead by accident. HRWEG notes that they "share one thing in common." Giant glasses? Oh no, that's only Dad. "Our love for Trista." Oh. HRWEG speeches back, "I would welcome you." They smile, and HRWEG calls himself all of "stunned," "floored," and "impressed" in an interview. Well, if you can't get them with personality, you can always go for sincerity. And I'll remind you that I'm not reacting negatively to sincerity on its own merit; I'm merely saying that it may not be the emotional state that best suits his future bride. But anyway, she drops him off at the limo and she...
...returns to the house, where Trista's family is ready with the carefully coded lies lies lies, yeah. They crowd around the living room and Mom announces that "I have a definite opinion, but..." She tells us in interview that Charlie has an "outwardness" and that Ryan is an "introvert," but ultimately she "connected most with Charlie." Ding ding ding ding ding, as the Rehns have been known to say. "It started a little slower for me," HRWEG says of Ryan. But he's "sincere." Which, again, meh. Back in my younger, truly evil days, we had an expression for people like Ryan, and that expression was "heart of gold." The expression is nice. The sentiments behind it are nice. The implications are nice. But we totally didn't mean it in a nice way at all. NotMom also says Ryan isn't "the kind of person I would picture Trista choosing," but she makes the best point going here, noting that the difference between them "aren't the kind of differences that would make her choose one over the other. They're just differences." Exactly. So why not take some time, get to know each of them better, and decide if one of them really makes the right guy for...oh, you say it's because of the game-show rules? You're saying it's because sweeps is practically over? Very well, then. When people say they're "getting married on a schedule," I didn't realize it was this rigid or controlled by Michael Eisner. Live and learn, I always say. HRWEG cops to the fact that Ryan asked him for permission to marry her, and Mom starts bawling and has to leave the room, and Trista insincerely notes that she's crying as well. In an interview, Mom tells us she's crying because "it was really good to see my daughter in the place she's in right now." And I don't know what place that is, exactly, but I'm not going to bust on Mom. She might be the best person this show's got going for it right now. NotMom likes Ryan. Mom likes Charlie. HRWEG sees clearly (natch) that it's not his decision to make.
The limo rides off with Trista in Ryan's lap, Ryan admitting in an interview that if he doesn't get the rose from Trista, "it's going to be a bit of a heartbreak." Not that he's putting it all on the line or anything. Back in the hotel, they...I think that's actually the same room she was in the night before with Charlie! Dude, the sex sheets are barely even dry! Or something. Nevetheless, Trista welcomes Ryan to her "humble abode," and the door again closes on the camera, this time to the vague sound of Trista muttering, "Bye-bye to them." Oh. Um. Sorry to bother you.
Ugh. I'm starting to not feel so great. Note to self: orange is not a food group.
Woohoo! L.A.! I'm going to be there 3000 miles, two planes, and one endless recap from now! From the shade of her limo in the shadow of that big famous circle-y building you can see from the 405 that I think belongs to some music conglomerate which means Phil Spector killed indiscriminately throughout the '60s and '70s, Trista sits silently contemplating her future. She tells us that Charlie and Ryan are still "head to head" and that she's "falling for two guys." She can't believe that in a few days she has to choose one of them, and says she hopes to "get a sign" before that time is up. "I have no idea what I'm going to do." Well, then. If this isn't a time to say yes to marriage, I just don't know when is.
Oooooh, Harry Winston. We're sizing rings (well, we're not. She is) today, and she enters through the giant front doors to meet a Kristin, who sits her down at a desk and sizes Trista's finger. She's a size five. Is that a small size? I've never sham shopped for a fake wedding before. Kristin then opens up four boxes and has Trista try on a few rings, Trista noting, "I'm having a little trouble believing I'm sitting here right now." Kristin puts a fourteen-karat point on it, noting, "Hopefully you'll be opening one of these boxes soon. But no pressure!" Shouldn't there be pressure? Should there be a lot of pressure?
Back at the Unstable Stable, Trista voices over during an aerial shot, which always makes it look like her interview space has been moved somewhat northward and into the Divine Kingdom Of Heaven. And what she tells us is this: "The black cloud hanging over this picture is that I can't be with two people. I can only be with one." She notes that these final two "intimate" dates will provide her with "vital information" as to "who will be the right choice." "Vital information"? That is so romantic. And then she'll be able to feed her data into the love-o-meter, and the computer will spit out a series of numbers that will determine that she knows who to be in love with. Just remember to fill out your Scantron forms completely! And eyes on your own papers! Wait. Ew. When did I become "the love proctor"?
The Love Proctor is totally the name of my first eight porn films. By the way.
Charlie shows up at the house first with his gay orange bag. The floor is festooned with pillows and a fire rages in the fireplace. Charlie kicks open a bottle of wine and they toast to "last evenings." You got that right, sister. Trista starts to ask, "Now what would you do..." but Charlie cuts her off, thinking that she's asked, "Now what would you do to me...?" Okay. I'm seeing her reasoning more and more here. He tells us, "I want to know if I'm really the one for her," and he tells her, "I want to let myself completely go. I want to let all of my emotions overcome me." But he worries her heart may be in another place, fretting, "I won't know until you make that decision." He goes on that he's had to put "a lot of faith" in the fact that they could "build something everlasting." Trista tells us that it's hard for her to reciprocate, and we cut back to Trista answering his calls of love for her with the similarly romantic "I like blue on you." He gave her his heart and she gave him a pen. Been there. She continues on that she thinks Charlie feels pretty "confident about where he stands," adding, "I didn't feel like he was pushing it too hard." Ew, not like that. Actually, totally like that. They banter for twelve minutes about why he isn't wearing a watch, and when they conclude their spontaneous stage production of Einstein's Dreams, she's running her hand up and down his wrist. "Ooooh, I just love the way you don't wear a watch! You're so sexy with your not-watch-wearing ways. Time is for suckers, no watch is for lovers!" she seems to say. Cut to Charlie lying in front of the fire all splayed out with his shirt rising juuuuuuuust a little too far off his pants. Gack! Get the clippers! "I feel that Trista has her mind made up on who she's going to choose in the last Rose Ceremony," he says. "And I believe truly in my heart that it is myself." Allow myself to introduce myself. Minus the muddled syntax, you've got a nation behind you on that sentiment. More? Oh, very well: "I would be very shocked if I didn't end up being the one that Trista chooses." Keep out the clippers! To trim his hubris!
Dude, my plane is, like, taxiing right now.
Shirtless Ryan! How long has it been since last we've seen you? Let me check my hope chest...says here it's been "way too long!" Hooray, naked Ryan! I just love these outtakes from the set of The Love Proctor! As Trista sets up for her big dinner, Ryan works his way from just his boxer shorts into a pair of pants while rubbing some kind of lotion all over his body (thank you, ABC!) and telling us, "I don't know exactly where I stand in Trista's eyes. I feel like we have the necessary ingredients to continue on after this because I love her, but the problem is I don't know the connection she's made with Charlie as well." Dude, shell-less turtles dangling on live wires over busy freeways are watching this, all, "Wow, I thought I knew what vulnerable meant before." Ryan knocks on the front door of the house and then lets himself in, giving her a big hug and handing her champagne she knew was her "favorite." They prepare dinner as Trista tells us that she's gotten "a lot of signs" from Ryan but is still looking for "a couple more." Again, I hate to quibble, but I have no idea what she's talking about again. "Signs"? Anyway, Ryan tells her that he's almost "relieved" that it would finally be over the following day, and he admits that he always thought he wasn't a person who experienced stress, but that he's feeling it now. He repeats (he said it once before, but I'm not sure I told you) that he was particularly nervous about meeting Trista's father, and Trista reassures him with that cackling laugh I'm coming close to not being able to handle, "You're a little bigger than him." Ryan laughs at that and riffs on the joke, adding, "Look, Stan. Don't get lippy with me, 'cause I'm not above taking you out back." And you can tell it wouldn't be the first time old Stan was threatened in such a way. If the turn in the millennium wasn't even enough to shrink the glasses, I can only imagine how big they were back in his grade-school days when he would try and impress the bully by offering to do his taxes. Loser to the two-hundredth digit.
"The fact that Ryan and I could just relax and enjoy each other's company really means a lot to me," Trista tells us. "Because it's something that I think we would do a lot in the future if he ends up being the one." Oh, you think? Spending the rest of your life with someone might mean "hanging out" is on the docket? Well then, bring on the monogamy with the big-ass cheesecake they're eating, 'cause if this is love, I'm hungry to try it!
Monogamy is for me/ I'm hungry to try it/ They'll be so full in love/ They won't even have to diet. There. Haven't written a Ryan couplet in a long, long while. That one felt good.
Really bizarrely porn-y music plays as they kiss and coo uncomfortably (for me, anyway), and Ryan offers to sleep on the couch. But Trista sends him packing, noting that "absence makes the heart grow fonder," which he dismisses somewhat cleverly as "rumor." She laughs. She's exhausted. She bids him a kiss-y goodbye, Ryan telling us, "I don't want to go home tonight." At the door, he whispers a breathy "Thanks again for having me." Oh, you only wish she had. As Ryan walks down the path of shame and out of sight, Trista voices over, "I think that I need to think about how my life would be with Ryan and Charlie. Because I think my life would be very different with both of them." I think it would be too, as it would entail breaking the applicable laws of most of the contiguous states. Perhaps you meant to say, "I think my life would be very different with each of them." Because this is clearly the time to diagram. She continues on that there's a "battle going on" inside of her as she tries to decide between the "dreamer" and the "realist." Trista? Thus quoth Christopher Cross: the best that you can do is fall in love. The best that you can do. The best that you can do. The best that you can do. Is fall in love.
More flashbacks. We're reminded through the healing power of montage that Trista met Charlie and immediately thought that he was "the one." Over at Harry Winston, Charlie enters for a ring-shopping extravaganza, Kristin seeing the first of two men that Trista may be engaged to later this evening and doubtlessly taking this moment to reflect on all of that information, surmising in the way of all those whose lives have been touched by this show: my whole life is a lie. Charlie chooses a ring and tells us, "I don't think that you can ever prepare for a moment such as this." To Ryan's montage we go, Trista telling us, "He's a hero at what he does." Firefighters? Our nation's heroes. Don't you go round forgetting it, either. Into Harry Winston he goes, ruminating along the way, "I've got to go shop for a ring today." He broods over which ring he should pick out, telling us, "I really want to be the one with the rose. I really want to have the opportunity to give this ring to Trista." He too leaves the store, and no sooner do the front doors close than does Harry himself issue a memo that his diamond stock is permanently soiled by this experience and that he's closing up business forever and ever and ever.
Back -- I don't know, somewhere -- Charlie fiddles with the ring, telling us that it's exciting and scary that he may soon be engaged. Ryan, in a tall building somewhere either across town or not, can't wrap his tiny mind around what the ring represents, thinking, "This could potentially be on Trista's finger for the rest of her life. It's kind of overwhelming." The screen actually splits, Telephone Hour-style, as the two prepare for their night ahead. They put the rings inside their coat jacket lapels, Charlie giving himself an off-camera "this guy!" with thumbs pointed at self in a nearby hotel mirror, and they hit the limos for the last time. In this scene.
Okay. We already know I was totally duped, right? I've admitted as much numerous times, I'm sure. I must say, this is the exact scene where I started to figure it out, too. And it was just one tiiiiiiny little moment, which I'll get to in a bit. But first let's check in with correspondent Chris "Guy Smiley" Harrison, who meets Trista in the Room Of Reckoning. They sit down in their respective chairs, Chris kicking things off: "Can you believe you're here?" She can't. He asks her how she's holding up, and her Zen-like response is a victory for all fans of life-altering decisions made as capriciously as possible over a hot cop of post-show endorsements: "I'm calm. I'm at ease. I'm happy with the way things are ending. And even though I'll have to say goodbye to somebody tonight, I'm trying to focus on the bright future ahead." That and a Xanax will get you halfway back to Vail, baby. Chris asks her if this last week has been beneficial, and she confirms that it has indeed. "The fact that Ryan had the decency and the integrity and the respect for my father that he showed that night really won him some big points." Chris asks if Trista can see herself with a ring on her finger tonight, and she outlines the remaining moments of the show by telling us that she is going to "tell him how I feel." Brave. That's good. Good and brave. Chris explains further: "The guys are going to arrive here one at a time, not knowing if they're arriving first or second. They won't see each other at all tonight." Show don't tell, ABC...somebody just asked me if I packed these bags myself. But first it's the final video messages from each of the guys. And this is where it started to come together. During Charlie's message, Trista remains stone-faced as he explains, "I want you to know how much I've treasured the time we've spent together thus far." "Thus far"? Truly in my heart that it is myself? Why is Charlie acting in the King James version of The Bachelorette tonight? He ends his message by telling her, "It's not a rose that I want." Well, wish granted.
Anyway, Ryan's own halting message starts, "Um, hi." Trista breaks into a sunny smile. Oh, really? Here are some more surprises: "In my life, I've laughed often and much. I've won the respect of intelligent people." He has. One of my friends told me today that when she heard that line, the only thing she could think of was, "How did he gain the respect of intelligent people? By saving them from fires?" Heh. Go, her. He adds that he "won't be quite satisfied until [he has] somebody to share [his] life with." He wants that person to be her. Ring of diamond, heart of gold.
Charlie shows up first, which I find an interesting development considering he's about to win the big rose, right? Right? Trista tells us it's "scaring" her that "the culmination of her dreams" has arrived. Charlie reiterates that he's "very confident," adding that he thinks they're "meant to be together." Chris escorts Charlie in as he tells us, "What I want out of this is to fall in love with Trista and raise a family." Too bad he hadn't fallen in love with her already. That's really the only way to her heart, as we're in the process of finding out. Right. So. Chris leads Charlie the lamb through the slaughterhouse door, leaving Charlie and Trista on the back porch among many, many rose petals. He walks up to her and she takes his hands in hers. And off we go: "The first time that I saw you, I got chills on top of my goose bumps." Charlie smiles broadly. "Unfortunately..." Un-WHAT-tunately? Charlie's smile falters. "My heart has led me another way." Charlie's smile recedes. "And I'm really sorry." Charlie's smiles fades. Cocky bastard. Oh, she's finished? Well, allow him to retort: "I wish you nothing but the past." Ha! Take that, you...oh. Why is everyone behaving so well? When did this show go and get so damn classy on us? They walk back through the house to plaintive harp music and past the rose that will never be his. They stand by the limo as Trista cries and Charlie comforts her (which, whatever), but he tells her that he won't question any of his decisions. He gives her a hug and tells her he'll miss her. She stands alone on the balustrade (four years it's taken me, and I've finally worked that word into a recap even as my heart is breaking) as Charlie gets back in his limo. Trista tells us that she didn't realize "how hard it would be," but adds, "I don't think he was in love. And in comparison to Ryan, and the feelings I'm having for Ryan, there's no comparison." Well, she almost admitted why she didn't choose him, had she only finished that last sentence as it began. Ryan loves her more and far more frankly, and so she has chosen him. It's true, isn't it? Let's ask Charlie, who is on the outbound express having no understanding of why he and Trista aren't going to have lots and lots and lots of babies: "I don't know, man. I don't know. It's really weird sitting here right now, knowing who I am and what I gave to her. And what I shared and what I opened up, and what I thought I was getting in return from it. Talk about getting thrown in front of a bus going up there. It was like, 'What?'" Pause. "This is ridiculous, what just happened." Ain't it, though? Plenty more unrecappable "harumphs" follow. Cry. CRY! I want man tears, and plenty of 'em. Otherwise, what's the point?
But those man tears weren't supposed to come from me! I'm not gonna cry. I'm not gonna cry. I'm not gonna cry. Say it. SAY IT! Okay. Go. Ryan's limo pulls up now, and Chris escorts him to the back patio to find Trista waiting. Ryan reminds us again that he's in love with Trista, adding that he's "extremely vulnerable." Oh, you think? Ryan and Trista greet each other with a hug, and she gets speechy all over again. This time it's good news. I think: "This day is a day I've dreamt about my entire life." She speaks these words like a four-year-old to remind us in acting form what it is to have experienced her whole life. God, she's Method. "I see a future of dreams coming true. I see smiles and laughter. I see babies and grandbabies. I see comfort and safety. I see a white dress. And I see it with you." And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. "My walls have finally crumbled and I can finally tell you without reservation that I'm in love with you." Sob! Wait, it's all kind of sweet. He kisses her, and then takes the ring from his pocket, with a speech already prepared! "I started down this road hoping for love. And I think I was only able to make to the end if I found it. And you were my strength. You were my inspiration. You were the breath on my voice." Then he says something else, too. He speaks very quietly, y'all. "Trista." Yes? "I love you with every ounce of who I am, and I offer you my hand and my heart." And? AND? "And my love forever, if you'll have it." And so on bended knee he goes, taking the ring from his pocket and asking, "Trista Nicole Rehn...will you marry me?" NOT! GOING! TO! CRY! He puts the ring on and they kiss again. Buddy, you have no idea how close this came.
In what I can only assume is a formality, Trista takes the final rose from the All of Me pan and asks, "Ryan, will you accept this rose?" He will. He will, indeed. He voices over, "For Trista to tell me that she's in love with me...those are the words that I've been waiting to hear since I knew that I was falling in love with her." Trista adds, "He has absolutely everything that I've been looking for." He agrees that he's finally found what he's been looking for, telling us over a montage of their six glorious weeks together, "Without a doubt, this is far and away the biggest day of my life." Only a calligraphy "The End" scrolling across the screen right now could adequately highlight the fairy-tale nature of this impossible romance! Besides, my cynicism wouldn't fit in my carry-on luggage and it looks like I'll have to email this recap from the plane.