“ Fade up on a stock-footage shot of a remote-looking island -- a shot used in every television show and movie indicating travel to remote islands, ranging from The Bachelorette to Cast Away to If You Catch My Drift: Getting To Know Your Downtown Pangaea. ”
Props to Nad and Christine.
Fade up on a stock-footage shot of a remote-looking island -- a shot used in every television show and movie indicating travel to remote islands, ranging from The Bachelorette to Cast Away to If You Catch My Drift: Getting To Know Your Downtown Pangaea. We montage to an aerial shot of sweet, sweet civilization, past a dock replete with boats and other dock-related ephemera, and into "Le Meridien," the luxuriously product-placed resort for a discerning audience that loves fun in the sun, beachfront relaxation, and the perma-daytime effects of twelve camera crews blaring constantly in your face because you accidentally booked your honeymoon at the same resort as a fame-whoring Miami Heat dancer who is apparently experiencing her fifteen minutes in the time-space continuum that exists on Pluto, where one year takes 248.5 Earth years, so fifteen minutes there takes...some extremely long period of time. (That's right. Pangaea and Pluto. I'm just trying to ensure that if Trista should accidentally stumble across this recap while Googling herself one late, lonely night, she won't think this is actually about her. Sssssshhhhh...Trista's coming.)
Like the most awkward moments of the Seventh-Grade Dance at a suburban junior high school, the boys' camp and the girls' camp of the wedding party walk separately on a beach. In a confessional, a blonde named Sara tells us, "This is, hands down, a dream bachelor and bachelorette weekend. We are in the Caribbean with this blue water and the sunshine." Below her name on the subtitle is her trade: "Maid of Honor/Trista's Jr. High Friend." She's a maid of honor! He's our returning champion! I mean, is there a way to be more reductive of poor Sara than referring to her that way? Though I guess it's still a more honest portrayal of the character she's here to play than when they continually insisted on referring to Trista as a "physical therapist" long after she got out of the old "helping people who aren't herself" game.
The boys and girls meet in the middle of a sandy beach spot (without even the social lubricant of a DJ playing "Eternal Flame," which is so often what brought together the boys and the girls at the aforementioned Seventh-Grade Dance), hugging and drinking and drinking and yech. And speaking of yech, a confessional comes compliments of Russ, "Cast Member -- The Bachelorette" (and definitely not our returning champion), whose backwards dirty white cap speaks volumes more about his personality than anything he actually says, when he says, "I was really excited to come down here and meet Trista and Ryan's friends, and they accepted us with open arms." Hands off the ladies, you monster. I'll bet you a thousand dollars that, turned around, that hat reads "Cocks" across the front. It would be utterly appropriate, and for more reasons than one. Either that, or it's from Tiffany.
Trista And Cryin'
“ Incidentally, my spellcheck really wanted me to change the word 'faggoty' to the word 'maggoty' before I did anything else. Which, I have to say... tempting, but no. ”
Back on the beach now, Bob "I'm Here, I Leer, Get Used To It" Guiney has appointed himself Master Of Ceremonies Of Tristopia, ambling around drunkenly with a big, froofy drink in his hand and welcoming all of the ladies with a nasty, lecherous hug. Man. A full calendar year since he first appeared on our televisions, and all his talent level will allow is for him to have finally achieved cult status as The Richard Dawson Of The New Millennium. The top six answers are on the board, Bob. And all of them are "Yes, You're Nasty."
Oh, look. Bob. Again. Identified as "The Bachelor Season 4" and wearing the most faggoty sky blue shirt this side of The Boy From Oz, he drones, "Ryan and Trista are very lucky...I'm very honored to be invited, actually." And then, right after that, in a vocal pitch and cadence that sound completely different than the one he was using until then and sounding like it was recorded one million years later and tacked on four seconds before airing, he adds, "It would be a lot more fulfilling if Estella could be here with me." You guys? We know they're not together. And for once, I thought I was watching some Wednesday-night programming that wasn't actually about Bob. Leave. It. Alone. Or you'll only make yourselves look sillier when their press tour is over and they're allowed to start seeing other failed reality-show contestants. Incidentally, my spellcheck really wanted me to change the word "faggoty" to the word "maggoty" before I did anything else. Which, I have to say...tempting, but no.
Speaking of failed reality show contestants who just can't let go, Shannon just then shows up, telling us that we're still waiting for Trista and Ryan to show up, but that this amount of time was the perfect opportunity for friends of Ryan's and friends of Trista's (and, in Shannon's case, friends of Fleiss's) to bond the day away. "I'm not gonna lie," she plot-develops in a spot of foreshadowing that would have kicked ass if it had actually gone somewhere, "Ryan's friends are hot." She then pauses the full length of a sunrise on Pluto before finishing her thought: "Hot." Very illuminating thoughts, Shannon. In the world where the storybook love of Trista and Ryan and their journey is told entirely through the songs of Buster Poindexter.
The wedding party cheers merrily as Trista and Ryan (and some random third guy, who probably only performs some stupid, menial task like driving their boat, so why can't he just get out of the way and let Trista have her day, already?) are seen approaching on a life raft of some kind. There's a Simpsons episode that starts off with a couch having been dumped across a railroad track, I think, and in the background ruzzah, you can hear someone muse something like, "It seems to be some kind of a couch." There's a moment here a billion times stupider and 100% less ironic, in which a female voice cries out, "They're coming on a life raft!" And they are. Coming on a life raft. The collective stands at the shore shrieking with joy as if this is the life raft-y homecoming for two war heroes rescued from the sinking of the Lusitania.
Trista And Cryin'
“ Oh, my god, but Trista's boobs are enormous! I guess we've never seen her in this bathing suit before, but it looks like she stuffed it with several miles of push-up padding and the shooting script to Tootsie. ”
Crowds cheer and fathers beam as Trista "Do You Take This Channel To Be Your Lawful Wedded Network" Rehn and Ryan "Just Cause" Sutter hop out of the boat, Trista voicing over all the while, "I'm so excited! This is my first time in St. Martin, and I can hardly believe I'm here, let alone that Ryan and I and all of our friends get to enjoy this entire resort to ourselves." Oh, my god, but her boobs are enormous! I guess we've never seen her in this bathing suit before, but it looks like she stuffed it with several miles of push-up padding and the shooting script to Tootsie. It's insane. Hugs and hellos are exchanged as Ryan and Trista hop off the boat, Bob standing right at the front of the receiving line, commenting on literally every move, every moment, every grain of sand. Ryan lifts Trista out of the boat, and Bob notes, "Always the gentleman!" Bob apparently saw himself as a much better friend to Trista than it turns out he actually was, as he way overshoots his hello and gets in turn the fakest greeting from her in the history of the salutation; she hugs him while cheating toward the camera and bellowing in her shrillest dog tones, "Hello! Mwah! What's up!" before turning immediately away from him and onto people she actually, like, knows. Ryan celebrates the "reunion feel" of this event in a confessional, while we're treating to copious shots of Bob, in the background, still talking. Seriously, Bob? Seriously.
"Hi, Daddy," Trista squeaks as if she's six years old and still figuring out why she only gets to see her father on weekends and alternate Thursdays. She gives her Hawaiian-shirted (and, nice jams, by the way) father a hug as we're taken down the path of the overly serious, Trista filling us in that she's glad her father was able to come to the island and chill, seeing as he's had no other meaningful part to play in this wedding at all. And now, a completely spontaneous and not-at-all staged walk down the beach so the two of them can catch up completely. She asks him how he's doing. He says he's doing fine. He Runs With Enormous Glasses reminds us of last week, when he talked to Trista about how she wasn't including him in any of the wedding planning. Now, on the beach, He Runs With Enormous Sunglasses tells us that he hasn't seen Trista since before that phone call, and he thinks this would be an excellent opportunity to "talk openly" about these issues. Sipping from a giant peenk dreenk so adorned with fruit wedges and decorative umbrellas that it ought to come with its own chaise longue, Trista tries to take it all seriously when she asks HRWES, "You feel in the know now?" HRWES responds that all he wanted was for Trista to keep the lines of communication open, and that he feels like he can ask her anything about the planning, if not (a) participate in them or (b) be told about them or (c) buy his daughter back from the soul-selling, blood-signed contract she inked with Satan. Sure is hard to be father of the bride. Trista takes this opportunity to ask HRWES if he'll walk her down the aisle at the wedding. He says he will, and Trista tells us what a "nice moment" it was, which we learn when we see that said moment has reached a niceness level nice enough to be rendered in a slow-motion hug. How odd that, for an event taking place in the Atlantic Ocean, HRWES is kicking it with so damn much Ocean Pacific.
Trista And Cryin'
“ Who is this Jackie? What soul- sucking life force could have had such a formative effect on this girl's delicate ego and psyche that left her such a husk of how acclimated people normally enter into social interaction? And then, according to the subtitle under her name, Jackie is finally identified: 'Trista's sister.' Ah. ”
Back at the party, Ryan wonders exactly how this weekend will go. It turns out, he reminds us, that bachelor parties have a tendency to be "a little over the edge," blazing new narrative turf though neglecting a nation's familiarity with the cinematic canon of a young Adrian Zmed. Whatever the legacy of these famed affairs, though, Ryan promises us that he's not going to get at all crazy, and that all he wants to do is "hang out with [his] friends." With strippers. And booze. In tears.
Again, if there had been some drunken, casual, maybe even extramarital hookup of someone from the boy's side and someone from the girl's side, I could rationalize a few dozen extraneous shots of everyone hanging out and performing an "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"-length rendition of "Getting to Know You." But hell be it to that subplot, because we still haven't gotten up to a few innocent dancers making all the boys cry. But wait! Here's something: there's a little boy -- no wait, girl, GIRL -- in a strapless red dress, sitting alone in the middle of all this LOOK-MA-I'M-ON-TV mayhem, looking downtrodden and used to feeling downtrodden. Who could this mysterious mystery girl be? Wait, wait, don't worry...Trista is more than happy to explain: "I'm actually not sure what's going on with Jackie." Though Trista wants this so-called "Jackie" to be included in everything, she realizes, "I think she probably feels a little out of place." And what does this Jackie think about all of this? "I feel like I don't fit in here. Because I'm younger. I don't have children. I'm not married. I don't have, like, a steady career." And, I mean, I don't want to split the excess hairs that seem to be sprouting from Jackie's chinny-chin-chin, but I don't think we've met one person there who possesses all of those qualities (married, children, steady career) except for My Two Dads and maybe one of the producers. Who is this Jackie? Why does she have such a complex? What soul-sucking life force could have had such a formative effect on this girl's delicate ego and psyche that left her such a husk of how acclimated people normally enter into social interaction? Won't you tell me what? And then, according to the subtitle under her name, Jackie is finally identified: "Trista's sister." Ah.
Jackie is not ugly. But say what you will about Trista (though some of you will respond to that with "What I say about Trista is that she's hideous"), I maintain that, objectively and conventionally, Trista is rather comely. Jackie, on the other hand, with her short-cropped hair and glasses, fits more plainly into the category of looks that makes my mother shake her head mournfully and opine with all intended subtext and some hearty tsk-ing, "Not a pretty girl." Her hair is parted on the right and swooped over with a certain amount of product that still can't control the flyaways, and her glasses are the identical pair to the ones I wore for many, many years until they broke in my hand during a visit to Wing and Glark's going on three years ago and I was forced into the present. ["Man, that was a good trip. Except for the part where you broke your glasses and suffered a blinding migraine by having to watch The Contender half-blind." -- Wing Chun] Jackie is me in ninth grade. A little bit, Jackie is all of us in ninth grade. It is why she is pitied, like a mirror onto our own dorkiness that we always wished someone would be nice to. But it is also why she is ignored, like a skeleton we've jammed into our closets along with our shoelace-less white Keds and our NKOTB pencil holders. Sorry, Jackie. We're not trying to be bullies. It's just that we had enough of you back when we actually were you.