‘The Bachelorette’ Recap (Season 8, Episode 8): Meet the Parents

Another week of lots of making out and no boob touching or anything else. I’m either watching a reality TV show or reliving my adolescence through people more beautiful than I will ever be.

So tonight, I come home late from my job after a 12-hour workday, ready to sit down and get into The Bachelorette, as has become my Monday night custom. This will last forever and ever and ever or until Arie gets eliminated which is the same thing because I’ll die I’ll literally die until the end of this season. I almost threw a fit because my DVR (which I use my goddamn recapping fees to fund, go figure) hadn’t recorded the first few minutes correctly, but then I poured myself some whiskey, took some deep breaths and went to one of those spoiler sites. I don’t know shit about Chris’ taking Emily home to meet his parents, except that it was in Chicago and he apparently didn’t break into hysterical crying jags like someone had just killed his dog right in front of him. (Which he did last week.) Also, I caught the tail end of it in a scrambled kind of feed, and Emily said she could see herself falling in love with Chris. (Which doesn’t really mean that much. She says that about as often as Michael Vick used to kill dogs. #peopledontforget.)

My Comcast box decided to pull its head out of its ass just in time for me to see a shot of a pair of white Chuck Taylors followed by Emily shooting skeet, so I know she is at Jef’s. Because of the Chucks, not the gun. The gun is surprising. Also, now my apartment is comprised of two factions: #teamarie (me) and, I guess, #teamjef (my cable box). Eventually, Jef takes Emily to meet his family, and I am excited because I’ll finally maybe get some insight into whether Jef is Mormon or not. I mean, all he’s done is kiss Emily, which took him forever, and he is from Utah. Also, his profession actually helps people. And his parents are in South Carolina, doing charity work, so they can’t even be there. There are about 3 million people in his family who greet Emily.

I’m guessing Mormon, but I could be wrong. They could just be a farming family. Whatever, doesn’t matter anyway.

Emily is freaked way out because Jef once broke up with a girl because his family didn’t dig on her. He is not on some Romeo shit. His family doesn’t seem like the type who would like some TV woman with fake tits, but they do seem like a woman who incessantly spews clichés about love and wanting a family really really badly, so this could go either way. Jef’s brother and three sisters seem to dig her. And Jef says seeing her around his family has “changed his life” and made him fall more in love with her. I feel like Romeo and Juliet is the only oft-quoted romantic thing he has not seen or read and used as his own. This is illustrated when he writes her a poem/list about all the things he loves about her.

This makes Emily cry, say it’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for her, and then they make out. Then Emily says it feels “perfect inside her heart.”

I begin to sob uncontrollable tears of joy. I now believe in true love again. (Author’s Note: The previous sentence was written by my cable box while I got a refill. He/she/it really is #teamjef. I blame myself; I feel like I sort of programmed it to go for the melodramatic, rom-comesque lines by watching nothing but Nora Ephron movies for the past five days. I need to watch some Game of Thrones stat, so he/she/it gets back into lesbians and decapitations and whatnot.)

Time for #teamarie’s date. He takes her for a ride in his Indy car. Emily says he looks stupid hot in his uniform. Emily says if it was anyone other than Arie, she wouldn’t go on a ride in an Indy car with them. Well, no fucking shit. He’s a professional race car driver. I wouldn’t go putting things in people’s mailboxes with a pastry chef. But I would with a professional postal worker. Unless the chef was putting pastries in peoples’ mailboxes. That’s just a nice thing to do. Unless said people are on vacation, don’t check their mail and an ant colony begins in their box. I guess to be safe, we’d still have to bring the mailman, so he could let us know which homes had put in the “Stop Mail” requests.

Anyway.

Arie kind of tiptoes around telling Emily that his parents are kind of douche bags. Namely, his mom. Present are Arie’s parents, his sister and his twin brothers. They start speaking in Dutch, which to Emily is probably as confusing as when somebody talks about reading for fun. Arie’s mom pulls Emily aside and asks her what happened with the last season of The Bachelor, with Brad and her breaking up. She doesn’t really elaborate much on it, and they end up talking with each other about whether Arie would be able to juggle family life with driving all over the world.

Arie’s mom looks like she’s four surgeries away from being a Joan Rivers body double.

Arie tells his dad he could propose to Emily right now. I don’t get these people. Arie has known this woman eight weeks and he’s ready to wife her up. It usually takes me eight weeks to complete my customary Facebook background check.

Next up is Sean, who greets Emily with his two kickass dogs. He goes to drink some wine (from stemless glasses, the only way to go) and talk in a field. Whilst there, Sean says he’s only really had one serious relationship, and that he ain’t lookin’ for another one unless he’s going to love that woman for eternity.

Emily goes in to meet Sean’s family, and I’ve just realized they all live in ridiculously lavish homes. You must have to make a certain amount of money to be put on this show. This makes me wonder if I should ditch my current job and become a mushroom farmer. It’s never too late to follow your dreams, and my dream is to make a shit ton of money so that I can go on game shows and try to wife up girls.

Sean tells Emily he still lives at home. She’s immediately weirded out by this, and it becomes more understandable when he brings her into his bedroom. Which is a mess. And full of stuffed animals. There’s a half-eaten cookie next to a glass of milk. Come on. This has got to be staged.

Ha!

It was. He played a prank. It was just a goof, guys! He doesn’t really live at home. That was fucking awesome. He got me, I’ll be honest. I thought this was one of those things the producers may or may not make these people do.

Sean’s dad and him have a heart-to-heart that is kind of like the ones I have with my dad in that they’re about why he’s in his mid-20′s and still single. His dad realizes Sean really wants to bang might love Emily.

Sean kisses her goodbye, and as her car is driving away he chases after her, stops the van and kisses her again. Like a boss.

Emily sits down with host guy and says she fell in love with all of the families she met. She falls in love more often than I watch porn. Which is to say she falls in love so often that she might want to consider seeing somebody about it because she might have a legitimate problem.

THE ROSE CEREMONY

Emily says this is the most difficult ceremony so far. This makes perfect sense and is how the show is supposed to go.

Winners: #teamarie, Jef, and Sean.

Chris is gone, and when he finds this out he looks like someone just discontinued Zima, and then told him that he was going to have to wake up every day for the rest of his life reliving the day that Zima was discontinued. He’s all like, “I told you I loved you!” which happened after the family date that my TV didn’t want me to see. Then he gets in the van and is like “I’m 10 times the fuckin’ man of any of those guys in there!”

Next week, we’re on a Caribbean island I don’t know how to spell, where Emily is probably going to make out with the three guys a whole bunch of times.

Discussion questions:

—Does whoever wins this watch the show with Emily afterward? Do they get pissed when they realize she says pretty much the exact same thing to each contestant?

—Why did they discontinue Zima, and how excited would you be if they brought it back?

Image courtesy niagarafallsreview.ca

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