Chris Episode 8: I’ll See Your Small Town and Raise You a Dirty Movie

Amazing Count 104

Journey Count 21

Yogi Berra once said, “it’s like déjà vu all over again.”  I suppose that’s as good as anything I can come up with on my own to describe this post.  

For those of you who are just tuning in, this is post number two this week.  Episode 7:  Des Moines is Des Pressing was posted yesterday.  If you haven’t already read, click over and double your pleasure.  That’s tantamount to . . . oh, I don’t know . . . finding ten bucks in your jeans pocket or sitting with a girl on a third date and looking at nude pictures of her on her laptop and then finding out she also has a naked movie to show you. 

Let’s get to the home towns, shall we?

Becca gets a severely truncated one-on-one in lovely Des Moines.  Her yellow shirt was very Ali-esque yet seasonally appropriate.  Matched with black skinny jeans and a tasteful heel, Becca’s outfit was a metaphor for her personality.  It was demure with hints of playfulness, yet not risky or controversial.  It hadn’t been deflowered either.  She’s been consistent all season and the date was no exception.  Wine and dinner at “Chris’” loft followed by a rooftop sunset.  Boring. 

Back at lockdown, Jade sports her male lead from Xanadu outfit as the girls discuss Britt’s meltdown.  I checked several times to see if she was nude.    

I posed Nude once

Britt’s “date went sour,” Carly opines, all the while failing to realize that Britt has likely wanted out since she took that road trip to the corner of Nowhere Street and Dead End Lane in Arlington, Iowa.  

Look, we all saw this one coming but it surprised me at first that Britt didn’t roll the dice to see if she’d get to the Fantasy Suite before backing out.  Hell, a free trip to the Bahamas is a free trip to the Bahamas.  I’d even make out with a lipless farmer in exchange for a free week in Barbados.  After some calm reflection, it was apparent to me that she’s not taking any chances on her potential stint as the next Bachelorette. 

Frankly, she didn’t do a lot to secure the “America’s Sweetheart” moniker that will undoubtedly be bestowed upon her by Chris Harrison if she makes it to the chair in the WTA.  The crying session in front of the hotel in addition to the manufactured rift with only Carly might fix that problem, however.   

Jade lets Carly in on the big “secret” that she’s posed naked in the past.  I’ll have a lot more to say about that little fact later, but first we have a rose ceremony to attend.  Carly, in the meantime, gloats a little too much over Britt’s announcement that she’s packing her bags and heading West.  When you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before, Carly. 

Chris walks in to the rose ceremony as clueless as any Bachelor before him has ever been.  The term “hayseed” came to mind.   

Britt interrupts his meaningless speech, sealing her fate.  She pokes Chris in the eye until he sees fit to “walk her out.”  She cries hysterically in her expensive shoes and her quirky dress.  Fear not, however, we’ve not seen the last of Britt.  Carly f*cking celebrates. 

But wait. There are five girls left and only four roses.  Carly’s celebration was shorter than Jillian’s shorts.  She’s sent packing with a big fat giant suitcase full of “I’m feeling sorry for myself because no one has ever loved me.”  

She clearly has male abandonment issues she needs to get past, which is too bad because she’s a nice person with a killer sense of humor.  Her edit was kind because she’s a nice person, but she’s got to work out the childhood stuff if she wants to attract a man who’ll respect and love her.  The only date she should say yes to for a while is one with her therapist.  

Roses.

Whitney

Becca

Jade

Kaitlyn

Jade cries for Carly for two reasons.  First, she likes Carly and, say what you want about Jade, she seemed like a genuinely nice person.  She also feels bad because she knows that Chris made the decision to ditch Carly without an important piece of the puzzle.  That piece’s name is, of course, Playboy. 

Becca Hometown.  Shreveport, Louisiana.  Shreveport is in the northeast corner of Louisiana—or, as we affectionately refer to it in Texas, “Lousy-ana.”  There are many beautiful places in Louisiana—Shreveport isn’t one of them.   In fact, if Louisiana was constipated, Shreveport is where they’d put the enema.   95% of the women in Louisiana are beautiful.  The other 5% live in Shreveport.    

Also, once you go East of the Sabine River, everything changes.  Louisiana is very southern and very French. It’s very unlike Texas—even East Texas.  The cuisine, culture, accents, and even the laws make Louisiana its own country.  Interestingly enough, the reason it’s like that is not due to the fact that the Sabine River is a formidable boundary.  It’s not.  When the French were colonizing Louisiana the Spanish were in control of Texas.  Because the Spanish and the French hated each other (with good cause up to that point in history) they refused to trade with each other.  As a result, Louisiana independently flourished while Texas remained sparsely populated, Indian controlled territory for many more years.  

Back to the recap. 

Becca does the jump, wrap, and hug before bringing Chris home to meet the entire buzz kill of a family.  In the first of a pair of ball busting, dream shattering, bitter older sisters, we meet Becca’s sister, Katie. 

I loved her as Blair on Facts of Life and it was nice to see her back on television. 

I'm not happy so you can't be either.  

"Becca is not an affectionate person.  Becca has never cared about a boy.  Becca isn’t intimate.  Becca doesn’t hold hands."  It was endless. 

She might as well have just come out and said, “Becca was prettier than me as a child and I took it upon myself to use my domineering personality to take advantage of her passive nature and ruin all hope she had of a relationship.”  Hey Katie, you’re failure to lose your baby weight isn’t your sister’s fault.  Move on.  

Leaving the family, she and Chris go to State Fair to make out on every ride. Ahh, nothing says romance like a rusty, uninspected, fifty year old ferris wheel operated by a toothless guy with a two pack habit and a motel tan who skipped out on parole a few states back.  Festival food, on the other hand, is fantastic.  Too bad the funnel cake stand and the giant turkey leg trailer were closed. 

I have a Playboy with Jade in it in my van.

Whitney Hometown.  Chicago, Illinois.   Whitney greets Chris in her Mary Poppins outfit in Chicago.  “Let’s go make a baby,” she says as she leads him to a guided tour of the fertility clinic where she works. I was hoping Fleiss was sadistic enough to have Jade’s Playboy issue in the Jerkoff Room. 

By the way, I used to work with a guy who was having trouble getting his wife pregnant.  He went to a urologist to get tested and after he was verbally screened by the nurse he was given a cup and told to go down the hall to the restroom, provide a sample, and leave it on the toilet tank before returning to the exam room and waiting for the doctor.  Sweating, he did the deed and left the cup on the tank. 

Ten minutes.  Fifteen minutes.  Twenty minutes went by when a nurse eventually walked into the room with an embarrassed look on her face.  “Uh, Mr. Smith, we actually needed a urine sample this time.”  He left in embarrassment.  

True story.  He told us that at lunch one day and I’ve never stopped laughing about it.  I suppose it’s very male to not ask for directions, but that was certainly a situation where it would have paid off.  Annnnyyyhoo . . .  

Chris tips his hand on the way to meet Whitney’s family by insisting, in fact begging, for someone he can ask for her hand in marriage.  You know, in light of the fact that her dad was probably the guy running the ferris wheel at the Louisiana State Fair. 

Enter Bitchy Sister Number Two.  Good Lord.  She made Becca’s sister look like Patty Simcox from Grease.

HELL no, I won't give him permission.

She should have just done her sister a solid and tacitly agreed to give her blessing.  If she was that worked up about the premise of the show she should have just refused to be on it.  If Chris does pick Whitney that first Thanksgiving is going to be tough. 

Whitney ends the night with a heartfelt “I love you” and a bottle of wine she saved for the man she’s going to marry. Nice work, Whitney.  Remember my “authentic” rant a couple weeks ago?  Different version here, but the same principal.   Whitney saw her opportunity and made the most of it.  She was brutally honest with Chris.  She “asked for the business” as they say in the sales game. 

I want the Neil Lane Ring and the Iowa Lifestyle!

“We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize?  Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.”  

I suppose we can modify David Mamet’s quote to fit our show. 

“We’re adding a little something to this week’s dating contest.  As you all know, first prize is a Neil Lane engagement ring.  Anybody want to see second prize?  Second prize is a dejected boat ride back to the resort.  Third prize is a cab to the airport.” 

By the way, if you can write like David Mamet, your ugly daughter will get an HBO show with the spoiled daughters of her rich friends’ dads.  So much for hard work and talent. 

Kaitlyn Hometown.   Phoenix, Arizona.  I’m going to gloss over this one.  Like you, I’m ready for the (tasteful) nudity.  Kaitlyn’s family is a flock of Canadian snowbirds.  Her divorced parents and their new spouses come together under the same roof with Kaitlyn and her porkier sister to size up the farmer from Iowa which is, of course, the American version of Canada. 

I found it refreshing that her parents could set aside whatever drove them to get divorced in order to support their daughter.  That was a nice moment for me amidst the aforementioned selfish behavior of the other siblings.  Kaitlyn’s mom looks like Marlo Thomas and Kaitlyn opens up enough to make us like her but not enough to win Chris’ heart.  She’s the “funny girl” she’s always been.  My guess is she’ll get the boot next week.  With a family that supportive she won’t have a long way to fall. 

Hurt my daughter and I'll kill you. 

Jade Hometown.  Gering, Nebraska.  This one was a beauty. 

Chris meets the family after being given a tour of Jade’s hometown. 

Dad—“She’s too much for her boyfriends.”  “She’s a wild mustang.”

Brothers---“She’s a free spirit.” 

I didn’t get the judgy vibe from the family as much as they appeared genuinely concnerned about her happiness (and Chris’s too).  Jade and Dad have great father/daughter conversation that ends in dad with tears in his eyes getting a firm hug from his daughter.  I don’t believe I saw any of that in Whitney or Becca’s houses.  They didn’t have time.  They were too busy getting lectured about how they should lead their lives.  Her family knows her, knows her past, and clearly accepted her.  What more can a person ask for?  Not much. 

Let’s get to the couch.    

A clearly nervous Jade opens up about “kind of this period in” her life.  She gives him the “I posed for Playboy speech.”  Keep in mind that the episode we were watching was filmed prior to any of that being made public on a nationwide scale.  Even then it was apparent that she’d paid the price in the past for those pictures.  I’d hazard a guess that there’s not a “Potential Consequences to Think About” section on the Playboy consent form.   

Note to Chris:  When an attractive, vulnerable woman asks, “Do you want to see nude pictures of me?”  The answer is always yes.  However, if she shows you a couple and its glaringly obvious that she’s uncomfortable with them, close the computer and tell her to stop.  If there’s an entire camera crew in the room, it’s even more important to stop her.  Log on after you get back to your hotel, for God’s sake.    

Unfortunately, those pictures ended up being her swan song.  I don’t care what he says publically.  He invited her to his hometown to meet his parents.  That didn’t happen by accident and it wouldn’t have happened if he was dead set on Whitney at that point in the season.  Personally, I think it’s a bad move.  I’d rather date someone with a nude portfolio than a self-serving actress like Britt or a sociopath with a history of (alleged) husband-icide. 

We all have things in our past we wish we could take back.  Unfortunately for Jade, one of those things happened to be captured on film.  If any of her relationships revolve around that decision, then she’s in the wrong relationship.  She needs to put that in perspective, own it, and put it behind her.  

We are, after all, talking about a woman who put herself through chef school at Cordon Bleu and had the courage to move to L.A. on her own and start her own business.  So she posed nude.  Big deal.  I’d submit to all of you that I’d rather have my own daughter pose nude in Playboy than be the third girl in two hours to get banged by a guy she’s known for three weeks in the Fantasy Suite on national television or, even worse, have a sex tape with Ray J.  

Just a thought.

Hey, Jade, the irony is that those pictures actually saved your dignity rather than diminishing it.  Chin up, Buttercup.  Life will move on whether you want it to or not.  It's easier to see what opportunities lie in front of you if you're not looking behind you.     

Harrison shows up and drops a “how ya feelin’?” before Chris commences the rose ceremony.  I wished he would have gone with, “how about those pictures?”

Rose Ceremony.

Whitney

Kaitlyn

Becca

Fantasy Suite time, Ladies and Gentlemen.  Let’s enjoy the rest of the season.  My guess based on the huge rally is Whitney, Becca, then Kaitlyn.  Becca was a top 3 pick of mine but the other two were off the radar.  We’ll see what happens.  In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll getting yelled at by my sister.  DP