“ 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. ”
"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!
Marry Me A Lot
“ '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. ”
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.
Marry Me A Lot
“ 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. ”
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 clich, 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.
Marry Me A Lot
“ 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. ”
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.
Marry Me A Lot
“ 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. ”
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?
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?