First of all, why have a reunion show prior to the last episode of the season? Why confuse me like that, Bravo? Do you do that with all your shows? Secondly, why did you even have all these kids come back when you only care about two of them? Third, how am I supposed to recap this bullmess?
Andy Cohen, who I understand to be the Senior VP of production and programming at Bravo, welcomes everyone to the show, introducing the ten "eliminated" models. He apologizes for referring to them as "eliminated," but, oh, how it makes me laugh. Now... it's fine, but, why is this dude doing this? Doesn't this show have enough hosts and guests and panelists without putting him into the mix?
"People may not realize it, but the show was shot in real time," Cohen says. What does that even mean? Of course people realized it -- they showed us the time and date on everything every five minutes. Anyway, he reminds everyone that the kids were on lockdown and could not see the show until they went home. Jacki says, surprise, that watching it was like watching an entirely different program. Somehow, these children, who have all grown up watching reality shows and their accompanying "reunions," all seem shocked that um, things get edited. It's different than what happened? By the way, Jacki is looking good. She has maintained her professional weave and her makeup looks great. Aryn says she thinks a lot of them forgot that they were even on TV during shooting. A montage is shown of each of The Eliminated's final moments on the show. Watching it, I am reminded of something I have felt each week of this long ordeal: whenever anyone gets voted off, it's like they were never even on the show. No matter how much camera time they got before they left, once they were out, they were never even referenced again. Honestly, have you thought once about Sarah or Jay since they were eliminated? We're again shown Dominick's awesome comeback to the judges, one of the finer moments on this show, and see many tears and proclamations of "I'll do it on my own!"
Casey laughs when it's over. "So that was nice," he says. "'Let's review all your failures.'" Sweet Casey, how I've missed your malleable little heart. Cohen puts the hurt on Dom. "On the show, you came off as like, the Mayor of Excuses Village," he says. "Did you see yourself that way?" I don't know if this, too, is edited, but Dom has the nerve to now make excuses about how many excuses he made. "Sarah," Cohen says, moving on with no segue or note of the extreme Dom-shaped irony, "what was it like being the first model eliminated?" Nice question. Sarah says something dumb about how it was better to go home because they didn't even have iPods in the house and all they could do was play charades. "It was like, oh my Gaaahd!" she says, and nothing she says makes sense, because this show is edited by eighth-grade girls.
No time is wasted jumping Katy's ass about how much she appeared to be eating. She shakes her head and laughs when Cohen reads a question from a "viewer" who busts her for eating cake. "Everyone ate the cake!" one of the other girls shouts, and Katy says she had a piece for Ronnie and Ben's birthday, just like everyone else. "Yeah, I had that piece of cake," Katy adds. "And it was good, too." Cohen smoothly moves on from one offensive question to another. "Jacki," he asks, allegedly reading another viewer question. "Do you think you were voted off because you are a bitch?" Jacki laughs. She says that when she watched the show and saw how she was portrayed that it's obvious that she had maintained a competitive spirit throughout the competition. She says it was hard for her, and any of them, to be themselves in the house.
"All right," Cohen says, dismissively. "So the ten of you were sent home by America. You ready for the final four?" Thus Ben, Ronnie, Holly and Perry are introduced and these other models are pretty much ignored for the remainder of the hour. Sarah seems so excited to see all these people, especially Ben, which is weird to me, as none of them probably remembers her even being there. Perry comes out and engages in a little bromance of his own with Casey, and even has a friendly hug for Shannon. I think she even calls him "mate," unless it's Stephanie that says that, but who knows? Cohen asks The Eliminated if they think America got it right in choosing these four finalists. "Uh, noooooo," they all say, laughing. Katy says she thinks they're all kind of biased. But instead of asking who they think should have made the finals, or even doing anything interesting like having an anonymous vote of The Eliminated and the shows producers or something, they just skip it. Dom says, showing some insight I did not know he possessed, he thinks Ronnie and Ben's bromance has kept them on the show longer than they might have stayed otherwise. He is very quick to throw in that both of them, aside from their storyline, have excelled and improved on the show, so maybe they deserve to be there, anyway. "The public loves them," Sara says and Jacki laughs, adding the completely unscripted line: "People want to know what you guys are going to do !" No, people do not want to know anything of the kind. Katy says that the first thing people asked her when she got home was what was up with Ben and Ronnie. "Let's take a look at the couple," Cohen says in his hostiest voice, "that America loves to call 'Bronnie.'" Now, listen, America. I may have been kind of down on you for the last twelve weeks. I think you've made some sideways moves in your voting some of the time. But never would I accuse you of coming up with the term "Bronnie." You wouldn't do that. Cohen, however, would. And he'd put it on a T-shirt. And he'd bring two of those shirts to Ben and Ronnie and drool openly as they stretch them over their tight abs.
We are subjected to an homage of the Ben/Ronnie love affair of mutual benefit, and watching it all a second time makes me wish I could go back and never have watched it the first time. It occurs to me that I placed all the blame on Ben for puppet-mastering Ronnie's emotions throughout, but now I see that's not fair. In the immortal words of Britney Spears, Ronnie's not that innocent. Plus, how shady is it to continue to openly lust after married ass? Very. Cohen does happily call Ben on Ronnie's assertion that Ben said he might always be "a few cocktails away" from allowing something to happen between them. Ben laughs and shakes his head. "OK," he says. "Ronnie plus alcohol, minus sex equals just a bad time." The camera is cutting around showing Perry and Holly, who appear to look uncomfortable with this conversation, and cuts back to Ronnie laughing and saying "Let's say they have some battle scars leaving that night!" Let's say... what? Who has battle scars? Leaving from where? On what night? Why are you SO confusing, editors? Cohen asks that old chestnut about what the fellas down at the jailhouse must think about Ben's relationship with Ronnie, and I am so sick of hearing about this, I consider committing a crime in Nashville just to get put in jail myself so I can burn the place down. Ben, to his credit, shrugs it off for the hundredth time, saying if the jail guys hate him for being friends with a gay guy, they're just ignorant. "That's one thing that's good about our friendship," he says. "It's good to be open-minded, and really bad to be ignorant." Less than creatively stated, but I can't think of anything bad to say about that, since it is true.
Cohen asks Ronnie about his feelings about Ben, now. Ronnie says yes, he did kind of have a crush on Ben early on, but those feelings dissipated. "I got over it," he laughs. "I'd see someone new walking down the street and be like, 'who's Ben?'" Ah, now here is a gay man I understand. Casey says yeah, Ronnie fell in love with a new dude every five minutes. "That's good," Cohen agrees. "Ronnie's a good gay." A viewer has written in asking Ben if he would kiss Ronnie if the assignment called for it. Ben says if it were a requirement, yes, he would. "I mean, maybe not like, tonguin'," he adds, "but I'd kiss him." His former roommates turn on him. "Then do it!" several of them yell. "This is not an assignment," he insists, but proves his willingness to get the job done by saying: "if I could make out with Holly, I could make out with anybody." Dude. I am sure he's just kidding around, but the show does him no favors -- he looks like he's making a mean joke, rather than a cute joke, and it does nothing to dispel my hate vibes.
Cohen giddily presents them with "Bronnie" t-shirts, saying they're even on sale now on the Bravo website. Ugh. Just blow them already, Bravo. Jeez. All that and nothing about Ben's snow trip meltdown and all his hate speech? That shit was so unacceptable and no one is going to say anything? And no one wants to point out that what offended Ronnie most about all of that was Ben calling him a girl? I am the last person to be oversensitive about things like that, but honestly, it was SO awful, and Ben didn't even half-apologize for it or seem to recognize the stupidity of what he said. And are we supposed to give him a medal for "being friends with a gay guy?" I am so over anything even having to do with either one of these boys.
A montage of their more interesting assignments is shown, and I am just about to get bored when we see Jay's little moment hiding his light under a bushel, again. That was really my favorite thing that happened on the show. Poor Jay. He seems like a really nice guy. Too bad they wasted his time flying him up and down the country and then... didn't let him say a word in this entire hour.
Cohen has another titillating question from a "viewer." You know the dude was backstage just making these up before he came out on stage. Someone wants to know if either Perry or Casey are bisexual. "What is with these people?" Perry asks, as Casey laughs and says no, the two of them are straight-up homosexual. (Sorry, Joe, I am pretty sure he's joking.) Man, Casey is beautiful. I think this contest should be down to him, Holly, Perry and Shannon. That would be a really tough vote, but at least a pretty good model would be awarded the prize -- even if Casey is still awkward, he's got so much potential. Cohen asks him breathlessly about his fear of snakes. These questions sound like they're off the "Mystery Date" board game. Casey says yes, he was very scared of Lemon, and is scared anew when Niki strolls up behind him on the catwalk and has Lemon placed on his shoulders again. He is a good sport about it, as usual. What is wrong with these people? Yes, we want to make sure you were really afraid of this thing... before we bring it back out and wrap it around your neck.
Back from commercials, Tyson has joined Niki in front of all the models. His face is currently featuring a goatee and mustache combo which, if this can ever be said about Tyson, is not hot. Cohen asks him who he thinks has improved the most, and of course he says "my boy, Ben." Why is everybody your boy? "What about your boy, Perry?" Cohen rightly asks. Tyson says Perry's just a natural, and that he barely even needed help to be great. Niki thinks Ronnie has evolved the most. I think Ronnie plays to Niki's motherly instinct -- she cannot stop lavishing him with praise. She says Ronnie has come so far since the casting special, which I must agree is true, though it isn't hard to bounce back from hideous orange tan and embarrassing fake tattoo sleeves.
Cohen brings up Tyson's comment that, were he a woman, ,he'd date Perry. Tyson laughs like he has no recollection of saying that, and I have to wonder what the big deal is, anyway. I'm about to get annoyed when Cohen asks when their perfect first date would be, and Tyson good naturedly makes a joke of it, saying it would be a picnic on the beach. "Oh my God," Perry says, chin in hands, giving him the mock mooney-eyes. Cohen reads another viewer question, asking if Perry's embarrassed at the "obvious preferential treatment" he received from Tyson. Perry answers that he thinks Tyson sees himself in Perry, and recognizes Perry's passion for winning. However, he points out, America votes, so it has nothing to do with Tyson. Whatever. All of that is so obnoxious, but maybe he's right. The narcissism is so unattractive, but he's not terrible at modeling, so if he wins, it wouldn't be a complete tragedy. (Except, yes it would, because I think Holly is the only one worthy of winning.) His hair is all grown out at this point, though, and the K-Federation is in fuller affect every time I see him in profile. He's a handsome guy, but I'm saying I haven't forgotten he's got a touch of the rat face. Shannon and Holly both say that it's been obvious that Tyson loves Perry, but they just accepted it. "I don't there's anything wrong with that," Shannon says. "It just gave us all the more reason to fight."
Speaking of Perry, we all recall that he was part of the ensemble, Serenade, that composed and sang Niki a song on her birthday. In a montage that saves this episode, we see that the group was churning out the hits way before that performance was ever filmed. Apparently, their little supermodel boy band has been making up songs all season. Now, see, if they had only shown this over the past twelve weeks... this would have changed my entire opinion about every one of these boys. Plus, the ringleaders have apparently always been Casey, Ronnie and Perry, which surprises me, as we were made to think all season (until the last two weeks) that Ronnie was not part of Perry's little cabal. The singing is so awful, but any kind of dumb song composition is going to get my vote. My band is struggling to write a second album, but if we were to record all the stupid songs we've written about little bears in the woods, how nobody understands you in the first grade, and how sweet coffee is so sweet, we'd have a twelve-CD collection by now. Seeing Perry sing Serenade comin' at you one more ti-iiime makes me almost love him. "Not only do we write hit song after hit song," he says in a clip, "we have great cheekbones, too." Love it. "We have an album," Casey says in a clip from the art episode. "It's forty-five tracks under ten minutes." Exactly. If I really was a damn millionaire, I'd sign Serenade to a record deal. If Perry wasn't so in love with himself, he might be fun to hang around.
Cohen mentions the obviously boy/girl division in the house, and mentions that each model was asked to keep an online diary on bravotv.com during the course of the show. He reads a portion of one of them aloud: "I can't over--express my frustration for my competitors' lack of passion, blatant spitefulness and general awful attitudes toward me and the entire competition. We're not a bunch of dogs fighting over a piece of meat. These boys want it but they want it for the wrong reasons. Watching people get ahead who don't deserve to kills me!" Cohen: "Who wrote it?" Everybody: "Shannon." And, yes, she did as anyone could have guessed at the intelligent structure of her sentences. Cohen asks what that was all about. "About the boys," Shannon says, incredulous that he's going to act like there's any way to see the bullying on the show other than what it was. "Give me an example," Cohen says, challenging her. Shannon: "Um...every episode?" I love her. Ben snarkily comes back with "good example," but he can just shut up and wait for his post-production blow job, okay, because I am DONE WITH HIS ASS.
Cohen asks Holly how she's doing as the only girl left in the house, and when she tries to explain that she's never lived with boys before, having grown up with only sisters, Perry interrupts to say that Holly's like their little sister in the house right now. Her face -- completely disgusted and repulsed -- says it all.
Cohen asks Niki and Tyson why they think so many boys are left in the contest and why the girls got slowly picked off by America. Here's their big chance to acknowledge the fallacy of the voting in re: Bravo's main audience. Or to say that maybe America is not qualified to elect someone to a job (ha ha -- as we've proven in the White House), but no, nobody is going to admit anything like that. Oh my God, this is the worst. Niki must be on tranquilizers. "Honestly," she says, "I think the guys just listened more." Now, none of us were there and thus cannot dispute this, but surely that's bullshit. Suuuuuurely it is. Plus, even if it were true, it makes no sense -- how would the voting audience know the guys "listened" more? Tyson's take is that the boys succeeded week after week because they spent time with...him. Unbelievable. He thinks his mentorship of the boys tipped the scale. "Niki Taylor for the rebuttal," Cohen says. Poor Niki says that they weren't supposed to "play favoritisms" but that Tyson did. Of course he talks over it, denying this, perfectly illustrating every girl's problem in the house over the entire run of the show. Hmm. Male models are obnoxious, competitive and full of themselves. Who'd have ever thought it? frankie jumps in and says the girls had as much opportunity as the boys to speak with Tyson whenever they wanted. I am about to let the whole stupid boy/girl thing go when I see Ben give him a fist-bump for sticking up for the boys. I have never wished more for Ben to lose.
Cohen moves on to highlight the more generalized smack-talk, showing clips of the confessionals in which the models ripped on each other. I don't want to go through it all again, because it's all been recapped and not many of them come out looking good at all. They're jerks, we get it. My favorite is when Ronnie calls everyone "two-faced." Dude. Check thine own two faces in two mirrors, OK? A little picture-in-picture box shows them all react to hearing this stuff, and when the agony is over, Cohen asks Ronnie who he thinks the house's biggest jerk would be. Ronnie says it would be between Dom and Perry. "Oh my God," Perry mutters, again confused about her jerk label, and Dom jumps up to high five him. Perry says he doesn't understand the jerk thing, which proves he hasn't watched a moment of himself on the show.
up, the models do a few impressions of each others' catwalks, which is actually pretty funny. Holly walks like Dom, stiff as a robot, and Niki does a perfect impression of Jacki's sexy, jaunty walk. Even forgotten Sarah does a spot-on impression of Ben which he seems to find only mildly amusing. Tyson gets up to do an impression of Ronnie, but it looks far more like the George Jefferson walk than anything Ronnie ever did.
Back from commercials, Cohen continues his junior high quizzing, asking the models who in the house was the best kisser. Since he's kissed the most people, Ronnie gets to vote and he says Aryn, who is appropriately grateful. Apparently they kissed during a truth or dare game when Ronnie had to choose between her or Casey. Now, I think Aryn is mighty fine, but... he passed up Casey?! That must be why they never showed it in the episode. Cohen says that everyone in the house seemed to enjoy kissing Ronnie the most, too. "It's fun," Ronnie says. "I like to kiss." Just how many points do you think Andy Cohen's systolic blood pressure jumped up just then?
This all segues into a montage of the show's steamiest moments. Holly says she feels bad for her fiancé if he's been watching the show week after week with his friends, all watching her make out with everyone, but that he's probably used to it by now. Cohen reads an email from a viewer who says she felt like there was a connection, unexplored, between Perry and Stephanie. The entire room erupts as Stephanie and Perry both laugh, embarrassed. Stephanie says they'd always have a glass of wine at the end of the day and talk about their hopes and dreams and whatnot. "She's a cool girl," Perry says. "She's got a cool vibe." Cohen reveals that Perry said at one point that Stephanie had a bigger crush on him than he had on her. "Oh my God," Stephanie says, rolling her eyes. "You are so obsessed with yourself, I can't even begin to describe it." Exactly. Perry very weakly tries to brush it off, but it's so obvious he said it. Tyson says that Perry and Stephanie would actually make a cute couple, and Perry says yeah, Stephanie's cute and a great girl. They might actually make a fine couple, sure. She's not more attractive than him, and she seems like she can put up with his endless, constant, energetic bullshit.
Since we can't go a week without giving Perry a chance to talk about his stupid girlfriend National Enquirer story, the one he claims not to want to discuss at all, they spend yet another five minutes on it. After making such a big deal about wanting his tattoo airbrushed out of his photo shoot last week, apparently he's going to wait until he gets home to decide what to do about his relationship.
Aryn pipes up, saying that Perry got a good taste of what it was like having his life put under a microscope (though I'd counter that he got not even a drop of a taste of what it's really like since no one cares about his dumb girlfriend or, tangentially, him), and that when she went home she lost sleep after staying up all night reading what people on the Internet had to say about her in the competition. "I was like 'oh, my gosh, people are so mean,'" she says. She says she was most hurt that people blew her friendship with Ben out of proportion, when what she should actually be upset about is that Bravo blew it out of proportion.
Cohen asks how many of their relationships ended as a result of being on the show. "Not me!" frankie says, giddily. Jay and Katy both raise their hands. Jay finally gets a chance to talk, saying that his girlfriend was just starting a bunch of crap with him when he got home, and so he just had to let the relationship go. I like Jay so much. I hope he gets some work out of this, of some kind. Katy, also, says she and her boyfriend had really grown apart and broke up. Perry KILLS me by adding: "It's got to be one of the biggest challenges any of our relationships will ever go through." SIIIIIIIGH, spoken like only a young 20-something could speak it. You should PRAY to GOD this is the biggest challenge your relationship will ever face.
Ben's face is blasé -- he knows what's coming -- when Cohen asks him how he feels his marriage will stand up under this ordeal, especially since he wants to move to New York. Ben acknowledges that his wife's dreams are really in Nashville. I thought I had done this already but, I have got to put in a plug for her song "Louisiana Moon," which I have listened to 1,000 times since finding her site. I think she sings really quite well, and that song is really sweetly recorded. There you go, unsolicited testimonial, even after I have been bashing her husband for several weeks running. See, I am only fifty percent evil. ANYway, Ben says yeah, he knows it's hard, but he's going to follow his dreams, no matter what. He doesn't want to say so, but yes, he admits being on the show has put a stress on his marriage.
Cory and Jennifer arrive to join in the fun, and ONCE AGAIN, compliments are slathered like Velveeta on Ronnie. Jennifer thinks he's evolved the most, and giggles like a damn schoolgirl about his transformation from the casting special. She and Cory both laugh about his spray tan and his tattoo shirt. Cory, not content with just kissing Ronnie's ass, must extend himself to also encompass Ben. Why did they bother bringing all these other people in for this show?! Hell, Aryn and Katy both had to fly from Alabama, and being from there, I can tell you that we don't take kindly to the big ir'n birds what fly up in the sky and done drop you in exotic lands. It's hard to get us on them thangs, yew knoooow? Hyuck! Sorry. I am just trying to distract myself from Cory's blabbering about how Ben's stepped up or brought it, or whatever he's saying. Cohen asks Jennifer to explain the difference between girlfriend/boyfriend pretty and model pretty, and of course the camera immediately jumps to Katy, but as examples Jennifer gives Jay and Sarah. I think those are good examples, really -- both are very attractive kids, but she's right. Of course, it's true about Ben, as well, and probably several more of them.
Cohen asks the panel and the models if any more of them read what various blogs were saying about them. It's a bit confusing here, because he could mean the model diaries on the Bravo site, but I think he's talking the Internet in general. Cory says he stopped reading everything, because he didn't want any of it to cloud his judgment and that he couldn't really stand to be called fat one more time. Aw. Jennifer takes pity on him, saying the only thing she's read out there was about what a "bear" he is. "Well," Cory chuckles, "let's not get into that," and nine zillion points go to whatever editor was sure to include Ben's whispered question to Ronnie: "What's a bear?" Cohen brings up one of his own favorite moments of the series -- when Jacki farted on command -- and points out that Cory was really disgusted and enraged by it. I have to back the bear up on that one, really. Cutting the cheese on TV ain't right. Jacki tries to say something, but they don't let her, and Niki adds that her husband adored Jacki from the fart moment and beyond.
We are treated to a string of the panel's most vicious moments, ripping every model up and down. Cohen asks if there's anything the panel has said that has stuck in the models' minds. Of course no one gets to talk but Ben, and he brings up the thing that just happened, when Cory said America voted wrong in sending Casey home over Ben. "That was the kick in the ass I needed," Ben says, and Cory smugly acts like that's what he meant to happen all along, though it so wasn't. Aryn says that when Tyson says she and Jay didn't try during their ill-fated photo shoot, it was tough to hear, because they really did try.
Because we haven't heard enough about the Greatness that is Ben, they bring Clay out to talk about who's improved most, physically, during the show, and Clay naturally says that it's been Ben. Cohen reminds us all that Holly got ripped last week by the panel for her current weight, and she responds exactly as she should... if she weren't in a modeling competition. She says she's happy with her body, and is used to hearing that in the business. "You can't please everyone," she says. "You have to accept yourself." Though she does add that she can always change her body, she says again that this is who she is, and the industry can take it or leave it. That would be OK, except that given that option, the industry will easily leave it. I wish she had said that she would keep working on it, and just move on, although I like that she didn't get upset about it.
Cohen can't wait to remind us that no one thinks she has a personality, but then delights me by introducing what I believe to be a seriously cute montage of her talking about squirrel gravy. I just love her, okay? I want to go thrift shopping with her and sit around discussing our favorite jug bands. Everyone applauds when the squirrel gravy show is over, though Niki looks disgusted, and Holly says though she does not eat squirrels, her dad does.
Finally, we get down to the interesting questions, when Cohen asks for a show of hands about each model and the consensus on whether or not they should win. When asked for a vote on whether or not Ben should win, frankie quickly asks if he means "should, or will?" Good one, frankie -- I sincerely didn't think he had it in him to be so insightful. It pleases me that Ben's hand alone goes into the air. Ronnie doesn't get many more votes than that, either. It looks like he and Aryn make up his only two votes, though I can't see everyone. Holly gets several more votes, as does Perry, and Cohen points out that if it were up to the models, Perry and Holly would tie for the win. He asks if any of them think any of the final four should not be there, and frankie weirdly says he should be in Perry's place. Maybe in Ben's place, sure, but Perry's? Hmm. Shannon says she thinks Holly and Perry have both been consistently good throughout the competition, whereas Ben and Ronnie have not been, but who knows what else she says, because we don't hear the rest, and after another dramatic montage of the final four and their many attributes, and some emotional last words from Tyson and Niki about how much the love everybody, we are reminded that the winner will be announced on Thursday!