Des #8: You Can Never Go Home Again

I try to imagine how I would feel, the parent of a Bachelorette contestant, on the day of the dread hometown visit, cleaning my house, getting ready for a TV crew to appear and record how I handle being introduced to a stranger I understand my son will tell me he's madly in love with. I try to consider the way I've already written off said son, so cute that little girls in fifth grade started calling the house and turning his head before middle school, the drawers full of hair product, all that walking around the house shirtless, the better to check himself out in any mirror or window he happened to pass. I spawned a tool, I would sadly tell myself as I basted a chicken everyone would converse over but no one would eat. And then Do these pants make me look fat on TV?

My favorite hometown visit was to the family of last season's "winner," Catherine. Their nonchalance delighted me. You're bringing home a boy? Oh. Whatever. Our daughter goes through boys like potato chips. You want our blessing? I guess, if that means something to you. Hand me a towel.

These brilliant people understood the seriousness of The Bachelor. They understood their daughter had gone on a lark, was still on it, and if things were really serious, they'd prove themselves in time just fine. No worries. Sean and Catherine, however, were mortally offended that they weren't taken seriously enough. Well, nobody made that mistake this time. These well rehearsed families had picked up the importance of a hearty welcome.

To be fair, Des is made for these kinds of settings. She's a master of light conversation, a properly timed tender pout, and ready laughter. She will always make a good first impression. Perhaps she elevated those skills in a desperate attempt to cover for her unfiltered brother:

Oh wait! My mistake. THIS guy:

Yes, that's it. Surely you understand the confusion. The Bluths were always trying to cover up for Buster, too. Though I must say Buster is doing a better job of being neither seen nor heard. (I apologize for the cross-show reference. Impossible to resist.)

ANYWAY, the visits themselves were way less entertaining than I wanted, but for Zak's. Thank you, Zak, for being my reliably sparkling little elf of delight. If Zak's on camera, I'm gonna be smiling for one reason or another. His doom was expected before the show started, and inevitable when he pulled up in the sno-cone truck.

Oops! I did it again. Here you go:

Again, surely you must see the reason for the confusion. It's a utility vehicle forced into family service, embarrassing a man wanting to be taken seriously as a romantic prospect. But wait! Zak isn't embarrassed in the slightest. And there's your problem. Zak was doomed early on as the super-fun guy you like to be around but don't necessarily love. And he never got it. I'd say there's a decent chance that if he'd shown up in an Audi things might've turned out differently. But no, he chose to do his wooing this way:

Women appreciate a man who opens the door for them. But when the hand holding that door is clad in fuzzy penguin-paw mittens and the other hand is holding a penguin head...maybe not quite what she pictured in her Sir Galahad.

Plus, his family holds their forks weird:

Sort of a bird claw grip. Maybe that comes from too much wearing of penguin paws.

All that said, I love this family. They love each other in a way that gives them their own sugar-fueled rhythm and language, and are just so gleefully uninhibited together. Zak is a lucky guy. I hope he remembers that.

From there, everybody else kinda bored me. I think Drew gets younger every time I see him. And stiffer. The collision between goofy reality TV and a genuinely complex family situation was difficult, and I have to credit them with comporting themselves with extraordinary grace.

Chris, at least, gave me this:

No, we're not looking at a medical emergency. This is a heart-to-heart, father-and-son conversation had over mucus, which is apparently common for them. This is how they bond. Fishing? Nope. Baseball? Nope. Nasal adjustments, hanging out in the basement, just a couple of dudes, opening their hearts and sinus cavities to each other. This perhaps explains something, though: The perpetrator of unsolicited poetry comes from the perpetrator of unsolicited spinal adjustments. I mean, seriously, who says, to a first-time visitor in his home "You want me to give you a medical procedure?" Well, Chris's dad, for one. Thank goodness he's only a chiropractor is all I have to say. It could've been worse. And less televisable.

Brooks...uh...nothing. I'm getting his appeal more now, but nothing happened for the benefit of my entertainment. All effort now seems to be directed to setting us up for Des's heartbreak over him. Lengthy interviews with Chris Harrison in which she clearly says he's the one. Lots of excerpts of him talking about his doubts. And, most tellingly, the Men Tell All episode scheduled for this next week, while there are still THREE men in the running. Thus...we must not get down to two, but will see the whole thing blow up at the three-point. Which works out better for my schedule, anyway.

So it's not too soon to start planning next season, right? Come on, who wants to join me in the #ZakforBachelor campaign? As with all of my next-season wishes, it's hopeless, I know. But wouldn't it be fun? The playground-pick rose-ceremony model of breaking up is the worst imaginable way to be told your beloved doesn't love you, but it gave producers some priceless setup footage for Zak's opening montage. Complaints of never having been in love like this before, check. The probability-challenged clueless-narcissist quote, check. ("Something told me that doing this, I had a good chance of getting out of that slump I've been in so long. I really thought this would work out for me.") And the tragic visual? Please. Can't beat the extremely photo-oppy flinging of the ring out the window. I had Zak picked for high entertainment value at the beginning of the season, and he certainly delivered. Bon voyage, my good man. Hope to see you again.

Des #7: Slow Day at the Office

Putting people under stress and then seeing what they do is the foundation of reality TV. Survivor, Amazing Race, Project Runway, and certainly The Bachelor/ette. Lab rats will eat each other in crowded conditions, and The Bachelor/ette shows us that people will do the same thing, as men are crowded onto undersized furniture or multi-occupant bedrooms and then left there with nothing to do but threaten and be threatened by each other. Fascinating group dynamics. But by the time we're down to the final five, the crazies are gone, the men can stretch out in the suite, the jet lag from the trans-Atlantic flight is gone, and now they're lying around in the sun enjoying the alcohol. To lower the tension even further, no roses were at stake or even on offer on the dates this week. This is a week to watch through half-open eyes, saving energy for next week when the low man-numbers get padded by crazy family members on the hometown dates.

No-stakes date #1 went to Brooks, where we were at least benefited by grammar lessons. Lesson 1: Metaphors, in which one concept or image or object is used as a comparison to add understanding to the nature of another. As Des and Brooks drove to altitude, through the clouds, our understanding of the nature of romantic relationships was vastly increased by learning that they couple didn't just "break through the clouds, but had a breakthrough in our relationship," and we learned more about the degree of their happiness by learning they were "literally on cloud nine." Note, however, that they were not "literally" on cloud nine. "Literally" means "actually," which is not true. They were standing on rocks. Shortly after, they stood at the edge of a cliff, which I believe is also like a relationship, but which they missed commenting upon. C'mon. If you're going to do it, do it right.

Lesson 2: Adjectives. An ADJECTIVE is a word that modifies a noun. For example, "scruffy" is an adjective modifying "Brooks' facial hair." Or "Euro-trashy" to describe "the combined effect of scruffy facial hair and long head-hair." When the couple (standing on a rock, NOT on cloud nine), decided to come up with adjectives they "like and love" to describe their relationship, I was looking for words like "shallow" or "inexplicable." I wouldn't have thought a list of adjectives would be that hard to come up with, but Des needed time. Later in the evening, after hours of concentration, Des announced that she'd come up with her list of adjectives. Oh good! Ready? Here they are:
stepping, skipping, running, and the finish line. Need I comment? Nah, you've come up with plenty of great material on your own, right?

No-stakes date #2 was with Chris, where we got to learn CONTEXT DEFINITIONS. Or one, at least. The word? "Awkward." After a lovely sail to an island picnic, Chris said how natural they were together, and that writing poetry together felt "not awkward." Tricky! Sometimes you have to back into a definition, and in this case, what Chris said felt "not awkward" actually WAS awkward, because that's how it made US feel. Taking the poetry, putting it into a bottle, and heaving it into the ocean was also awkward, or it could have been if the waves had smashed that bottle against the rocks into a gazillion little pieces. Trying to tell somebody you're in love, when the receiving person can't acknowledge any mutual feeling, is also awkward. More awkward? Doing it sweating AND in poetry! Do we understand "awkward" now? Des did not. She said it melted her heart. And in a good way, she clarifies, which is smart, because the bad way is more like the Wicked Witch melting (thank you, Cheryl), which would be really awkward.

No-stakes date #3 was with Michael G., which seemed like a force, and on which I learned nothing. I should have, though, because the girlfriends from Sean's season (awkward = hanging out with women who competed for the same guy) all said he's "so smart" after they learned he was a prosecutor. We got to see another metaphor (love is "like a roller-coaster ride" to explain the importance of their street-toboggan tear down the mountainside). Remember, he's "so smart," so I should expect that. Des is struggling to connect, though, because she hasn't seen his vulnerability. Here's where I could've used a definition. What, exactly, does his vulnerability look like when displayed on a reality TV show? Remember, this is the guy with Type II Diabetes and a doctor so bad he thinks he's on the verge of death at any moment. Is that not vulnerable enough? 

The no-stakes double-date was with Drew "One Fluid Motion" and Zak "No-Shirt-No-Pants-No-Problem." I learned I want to look up that go-cart track when I'm in Madiera. And that between a complete tool and a complete goof...I'm way more interested in the goof. I was rooting for Zak to get a hometown date all the way just because I want to see whether his whole family runs around without shirts. Or if they all get a slightly maniacal look in their eyes when they're excited about something. 

In the end, Michael "the contender" went home wondering what's wrong with himself. Because clearly something must be wrong with you if you're not the one among 25 that a girl picks. (Ahem. I'll tell you what's wrong with you: Thinking you would necessarily be the one picked from among 25.) So we'll get to see how Chris's family numbed any natural capacity to feel poetry-based social discomfort; we'll learn whether there was no one available in Brooks' family to teach him how to shave; we'll see whether Drew's icy too-cool-for-alla-youse glare is genetic or learned, and see how clueless-and-happy narcissism distributes itself through Zak's family. With this show safely behind us, I'm looking forward to having some quality material to work with next week!