Props to Beth, and French fries for all.
Meredith stands stoop-shouldered and thoughtful in her bedroom at the manse, wondering why Heloise never added a chapter about folding an elaborate series of scarves and shawls that could have gotten her packed and us out on these home dates two weeks ago, wrapping up this season before the snow melted, the summer came, and Trista and Ryan's divorce was announced, enacted, and finalized. Oh, and televised.
"This week, I'm traveling to four hometowns," Meredith tells us, the budgetary constraints of Entertainment (and its parent company Burning Hellish Inferno LLC) laid bare in the locations we're traveling to, two of which are in New York and two of which are in Texas. And even though the dates are portrayed as taking place in an order that bookends Texas (oh, look! A sentence with "Texas" and "book" in it! Never seen that before) with two New York dates as their creamy nougat center, I'm hard-pressed to believe that they didn't just sequester Meredith, the poor dear, in God's Country for the length of two hometown dates. Poor, destitute Bachelor franchise. Where fate brings two people together in the most unlikely circumstance possible...as long as those two people are able to be serviced by Song Airlines.
As we're "treated" to shots of each of the guys pulling a bag out of his bedroom, Meredith spells out her itinerary, leaving out the unfortunate "I can't get there direct, I have to change in Atlanta" that I'm sure falls somewhere in the middle of this jet-setting dossier: "First, Houston to see Matthew. Then Buffalo to visit Chad's family; on to New York to meet Ian; and finally Dallas for Lanny." Man. If only there were some cut-and-dried, producer-enabled, Bachelorette-ready soundbites illustrated by an overactive inner monologue to let us know how our heroine is faring in all this. Hey, wait! Don't touch that cue card...here's one now! "I'm hoping to find some answers. Especially how these men act with their families, and who's going to open up to me. Because I'm going to open up even more than I ever have." If I didn't know Meredith to be the stoic, expression-free ice princess she's admitted being, I'd think she was talking about hot sex. But she's not. Because she is water dipped in Kelvin.
A plane we're supposed to believe someone we know is on takes flight in the blue, stock-footage sky, and touches down in the middle of a main highway. We're at "Exit 36," also known as the "City of South Houston." And such a pity no one thinks to call it "Soho." Though if they did, I'd probably be all, "And do you know what people from South Houston call the city? They call it 'Soho.' Oh, it makes me want to laugh in a condescending urban fashion! Maw haw haw haw. Anyone want to go to the Angelika? Me neither! That place is so The Piano, circa 1993. Anyway, gotta go. See you at Pastis for dinner at 11! Don't be late, they won't hold the reservation. Kiss on one cheek! Then on the other! By-eeee!" But anyway, that'd just be me.
“ The subtitle welcomes us to the town of 'Friendswood, Texas.' Awwww, where everyone's your friend! Or, as is true of both participants of this date, made of wood. ”
Meredith montages through her Texas introductions, whiplashing from cows (they're just like furry, dumb people! Except they have four legs! And horns! And we eat them! They're nothing like people) to a street sign reading "Texas Ave." (named by a proud four-year-old, I guess, though the full name of the street would then be "Texas Pretty Mommy Uhhhhh Flowers Smell Nice Avenue," which didn't fit on the sign) to a city skyline (I spent a month in Houston once -- A MONTH -- and I think the only way they could manufacture an actual skyline among all that sprawl would be to pile all of the Applebee's one on top of another until they could be seen from a distance, so that skyline right there must belong to another city like South Texasville...or "SoTex"), and flat, rolling, constant, flatty flatness. But hale and hearty Meredith doesn't mind...especially because Texas is speeding past in a limo! "Today I'm an hour and a half outside Houston to see Matthew at his family farm," Meredith tells us with a barely suppressed look of thunderstruck horror as the subtitle welcomes us to the town of (speaking of named by a four-year-old) "Friendswood, Texas." Awwww, where everyone's your friend! Or, as is true of both participants of this date, made of wood.
A big red tractor sitting on the front lawn of a nearby house inspires a ringing verse of "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" to rise in my throat, but it is quickly stifled by the reality that such aberrant behavior would cause that tractor to spring automatically to life and drive me to Confession and then reform school until the lavish Broadway show tunes part of my personality was drilled right on out of me. And, also, because that's from Oklahoma! and no one, to my knowledge, has ever written a musical entitled Texas!. Once again, Meredith takes the opportunity to remind us, "I am a city girl, so I don't really know that much about farm life." Okay, seriously. Why milk the city angle when there's so much milking still left to do down on the farm? She's from Portland. Oregon. It's a lovely, lovely town, but she didn't exactly grow up in the urban jungle, running from street fights and drive-bys on her way to her job at The Department Of Urban Renewal in East L.A. Matthew, meanwhile, sits on his porch thinking about all the things that still need shucking when an SUV pulls up, and two big black dogs run to welcome Meredith as Matthew follows close behind. Matthew and Meredith hug in greeting as Meredith hands off a bouquet of flowers, because if that place needs more of anything, it's a shot of nature. Matthew kicks us to a confessional, telling us, "One of the things that I hope to see today is that Meredith is comfortable here," and Matthew hopes she can adapt to a place a little far afield from, his words now, "the business of life." Wow. Deep talk from the Deep South. "The business of life." Is that the sequel to "The Politics of Dancing"? And, if so, is this message understood?
“ I too am the victim of a broken home, and I know it's no laughing matter, unless, of course, your parents are getting divorced and they're clowns. ”
On a gentle sloping hill in an open field under an oak grove ("I've got a wonderful feeeeeeeeeeeeeling!"), Meredith and Matthew cuddle on a picnic blanket drinking wine. Hey, isn't this show way too classy for them to be drinking wine out of a box? Oh, wait. That's not a box of wine at all! It's just time for the perfunctory joke about Matthew's geometrically perfect square head. But box or bottle or Boon's or whatever, the devil's poison is quick to go to his head, and Matthew jumps off the blanket and makes his way to a nearby swing affixed to a nearby tree, telling us, "I want [Meredith] to see the real side of me that's going to come out at a place like this where I feel at home." He swings back and forth above her head and she laughs in that increasingly familiar Are You Being Punk'd kind of way. Matthew swings and swings without a care, reaching heights that might allow him to say, "Hey you know what? I could call my ma while I'm up here. Hey, ma! Get off the dang roof!" Or some such thing. In her confessional, Meredith tells us, "I could just imagine [Matthew] as a little boy." Do you think it has anything to do with his partaking of the activities of a little boy, perhaps? I'm just saying, Meredith, it's cute now, but when you're down to the wire and your main question is "Will you accept this rose?" and he answers questions with questions when he volleys back "You wanna build a fort?," let's just see how this makes you feel. And I would once have advised you to run. But that was before the other hometown dates. After which your only question might be, "Should the fort be made with pillows or blankets?" Both, Meredith. It should be made with both.
Matthew takes another sip of wine and voices over his family relations: "My parents are divorced." Well, no wonder it's so hot down here. It's because the poor bastard child is halfway to Hell! Of course, I kid. I too am the victim of a broken home, and I know it's no laughing matter, unless, of course, your parents are getting divorced and they're clowns. Because then the only thing that gets thrown are cream pies and dad's big, red nose isn't from long nights hitting the sauce when he didn't show up for three days and you'd start to wonder if it was your fault for driving him away when you asked for a pony for Christmas. Meh. I'll save it for therapy. Matthew, however, seems unencumbered by such knotty emotional entanglements, as he assures us that he's well-adjusted enough to see his parents' divorce as a learning experience, preaching, "It's made me be very careful about who [sic] I spend my time with." Meanwhile, two hundred and sixty miles north on Interstate 45, Lanny's mother involuntarily "tsks" so hard she accidentally knocks herself off of her chair.