A source has revealed that Ben consults his mom for advice on everything, except, apparently, whether it’s wise to choose a wife based on the number of positive tweets about her hair. When it was down to two women between whom he must decide whether to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death or too many Kimmel appearances do them part, the young bachelor couldn’t make up his mind. So he Skyped with Mom to nail down the better one. The loser should consider herself to have dodged a bullet-in-law.
Meanwhile, the rejected bachelorette also should have sought Mrs. Higgins’ sage advice. Reports have it that she (*coughJoJocough*) is currently dating Nick Viall, the Bachelor That Wouldn’t Die. You have to wonder what’s in his bag of tricks, or perhaps Jockeys of tricks, that renders so many women powerless to refuse his advances. Let that be a lesson to you to never leave him alone with your drink.
Tonight, Ben will travel around the nation to meet the families of the final four gals in their hometowns, where he’ll receive an even less enthusiastic welcome than Jeb Bush in South Carolina. Will the parents of Amanda, the single mother from Orange County, CA, approve of this fatuous intruder into their already emotionally scarred grandchildren’s lives? Can Ben remain unfazed under the inane, but directed to appear heartfelt, questions of Lauren B.’s understandably suspicious Portland, OR relatives? What if Caila’s family in Hudson, OH is also unable to open up and be vulnerable to him? Will Ben enrage JoJo’s Dallas, TX family when he remarks that he would never name a child of his after a character in a creepy kids’ Disney Channel show? The excitement begins around 7:55 PM, when we learn if the contestant can solve Wheel of Fortune‘s final challenge.
Amanda’s family visit is first. This is all about her daughters, she asserts, which suggests she should’ve relied on match.com and stayed home all this time. The two tiny girls are brought to them at the beach. Amanda rushes to greet them, sobbing as if she hasn’t seen them in several weeks, but still agreed to wait another few hours until after they finished shooting this footage.
They play in the sand and chase seagulls amid tinkly piano music while Amanda conjectures whether Ben could be a good dad or just an extra hand when applying sunscreen. “They’re not his kids at the end of the day,” she shares helpfully. For his part, Ben’s feelings for Amanda are even stronger than ever now that he has seen that she can produce attractive children. Nevertheless, “tough conversations” are going to have to be had, such as, “Are you good about picking up the Legos so I won’t step on them?”
The little girls kvetch unrelentingly during the ride home, but Ben is ready to meet Amanda’s parents and sister. He knows they will be protective, especially since Amanda’s last choice of husband was a failure matched only by New Coke and Windows 98. Mom is concerned that this whole process is unconventional, and the divorce attorney doesn’t give discounts for return visits. So she’s cautious, but not so much that she reported Amanda to their city’s Family Services office.
Mom questions Ben about whether he’s prepared to take on a whole family, particularly one that doesn’t enjoy playing disc golf. Amanda cries as she discusses how embarrassing her divorce was. She must have gotten her PowerPuff Girls voice as a result of a gene mutation.
Ben must now meet with Amanda’s dad. Either the family’s houses are all rented, or the set decorators move in beforehand to fill them with furnishings from a catalog and paint the walls with a neutral palette. Sinking deeply into a Raymour & Flanigan leather side chair, Dad sagely points out that there’s a big difference between playing with pails and buckets for three hours and actually being a father. But Ben has faith that his fondness for little Kinsley and Charlotte, as well as how many shares Amanda’s picture gets on Facebook, would be the only drivers in his decision to take over the helm of this family.
Onto Lauren B.’s family estate. She’s in love with Ben, and today may be the day she tells him instead of just the camera operator. “He just makes me so happy, and it’s so nice to do everyday things,” she reveals as they visit around Portland and eat the kind of food that someone as skinny as she is probably always purges. Afterwards, she reports that the day has been fabulous, but the family meet-up still looms ominously. Ben asks what scares her. She doesn’t know because there are “still so many unknowns.” Dating Ben could end like The Descent.
But if she gets her family’s approval on him, Lauren will admit to Ben that she’s in love with him. Good strategy, Lauren. Ben will meet her parents, brothers, and sister, as well as her dog, who is the only one who seems genuine. This was the longest they’ve all been away from her, which would be a red flag for Ben except that he, too, is absurdly dependent on his parents long past the age of legal adulthood.
Sister Molly interviews him first. She wants to know if he’s telling every family that he likes their daughter this much, which is reasonable if she’s familiar with how the show works. “What makes her stand out to you?” she asks him about Lauren, probably hoping he won’t say it’s her C-cups. He can only say he feels really lucky before he choked up. Good strategy, Ben. It’s as if the whole thing were written out in advance.
Molly then asks Lauren how she feels. Ben is her person, Lauren explains, and also, “Laurben” is an adorable couple name. Meahwhile, you know a set designer did the bedroom because they hung a tiny mirror behind a lampshade where no one can look in it.
Next Ben meets with dad, who is sitting in the same leather chair as the previous dad. I think I’ll start a Tumblr about this phenomenon. He asks how Ben is coping with the contrived, artificial process of dating over two-hour episodes. “By regularly depositing very large paychecks,” Ben’s expression tells us.
The couple leaves together, but Lauren still can’t bring herself to tell Ben she loves him. She realizes that if she doesn’t get a rose this week, she’ll never get to tell him how she feels, not even with heart-hands on Instagram.
Hudson, OH is Caila’s home town. Ben feels this is the deepest relationship he has, so Molly is going to be pissed when she watches this. Caila wants today to be a fresh start, not just another encounter wherein she is unable to let down her guard with dozens of people shining lights on her and poking microphones into her face. She’s happy to have Ben see this town that she calls home, even if it is in Ohio. They design their future house together, where, Caila dreams aloud, they can make out in any room. They’ll build this Fisher-Price sex palace at a toy factory, where they make out in front of the injection molding machine. As they leave, they reenact the scene from An Officer and A Gentleman where Richard Gere carries Debra Winger out of the factory. This time it’s The Bachelor and A Famewhore.
At Caila’s house, Ben meets her dad, mom, and brother. She wants her parents’ validation, so Mom starts by testing Ben and serving Filipino food to the whitest guy since Mitt Romney’s attorney. Dad tells the hapless young man that he believes marriage is for life, and he expects Ben to believe it, too. Come on, even Chris Harrison doesn’t believe that. Ben looks ill, but maybe that’s the arroz caldo.
Next, Mom takes Ben aside to ask what has sparked his connection with Caila. “It’s been really cool,” he explains, as if Caila were a new video game release. He does want to know the source of her fear that she can’t love. Basically, she’s picky, Mom explains. Dad thinks Caila appears happy with Ben, but wants to know more. On this set, they painted the walls olive to complement the brown leather sofa and chairs. “I know this is it,” murmurs Caila emotionally. So did the set designer, but neither can expect it to last.
She must tell Ben she loves him, Caila believes. Mom told her not to hold back. But she doesn’t fully trust him, and she can’t allow that to continue. Questions hover disturbingly like Chris Harrison at the edge of a cocktail party.
Finally, it’s JoJo’s turn. “This is the most important date I’ve had with Ben,” she points out, discounting the greater value of having ridden in a helicopter for free. She starts excitedly reading the emotional love letter she found with flowers outside her door, until she discovers it was written by her ex. I guess they didn’t date long enough for her to recognize his handwriting.
“You’re doing this now?” she cries out to him on the phone as he declares his love. But if it had happened earlier, her redemption arc would have been truncated.
She’s still bickering with Chad when Ben arrives. Suddenly we’re watching Edge of Night. “Something’s going on,” Ben observes perceptively as JoJo breaks down in tears. He blinks convincingly as she starts to explain that Chad, with whom she had broken up some time ago, wants to get back together. Ben is uncomfortable since the producers never had this happen in a previous season.
But JoJo wants Ben to know that she and Chad are officially kaput. He won’t even get an IMDB credit for his voice-over work. She is so happy now because Ben is in her life. We can only hope Chad will fight his way back into her heart so we won’t have to hear about Nick ever again. Ben wishes he could have been there while she made the call, probably so he could yell, “Dude! Not cool!” into the phone.
JoJo does have the capacity to tell Ben she loves him, which is ironic with all we now know. They set off to meet his family without his first getting a nice day of sight-seeing in the city. They are greeted enthusiastically by the parents, two brothers, and sister. The set designer focused on having plants for this scene, to communicate the living thing that is JoJo’s love for Ben.
“This was one of the best days we’ve had, talking about life and things,” Ben tells the assembled relatives over their uneaten meals. But one of the brothers is fiercely protective of his sibling, and he’s thoroughly unimpressed with the goods she’s presenting. I bet he wouldn’t even have let Chris Soules in the house.
Both brothers take Ben aside to interrogate him. Will he hurt JoJo? Does he mean it when he says he cares for her? They glare malevolently at Ben’s vague, flaccid response. “It’s very real,” he assures them, even realer than his relationship with the three other girls, but not as real as with his mom.
JoJo confides to her mom how scared she is that she’s falling in love. Mom is astonished at her fears, or possibly because she’s heavily medicated. She seems to have overlooked the fact that her daughter has never spent time with Ben wherein he was not wearing face powder.
Ben meets with Dad in front of some bookcases, obviously because this dad wears glasses. “I can say my feelings for her increase every time I’m around her,” Ben assures him, hoping he doesn’t read “increase” in a dirty way.
The brothers are still dubious when JoJo tries to convince them she’s genuinely fallen for Ben. “You went on two dates with him,” one reminds her sternly. She insists the group dates had some private time, too, so therefore she knows Ben at least as well as the FedEx man. The entire family continues to hector Ben about his sincerity, this time in the kitchen. I’ve been doing that in my living room since Kayla’s season. Ben is becoming irritated that they won’t accept his banal reassurances. Meanwhile, Mom’s lip collagen is making it hard for her to speak at all.
Afterwards, Ben is confused and defensive. He tells JoJo about her brothers’ aggressive questioning of his intentions, which made him feel like, I don’t know, the scripted star of Season 20 of The Bachelor.
As darkness falls over LA, the girls arrive for their most important Rose Ceremony since last week’s. JoJo is anxious over the effect of her brother’s vocal concerns. Amanda would accept Ben’s proposal right now. Caila is nervous that she didn’t tell him her feelings again. Lauren is in love, but fears she may go home anyway, because otherwise we might not doubt Reality Steve. None of them is worrying about immigration reform.
Ben arrives and blathers about how much he liked meeting their families and why he cares for all of them. He thanks them for opening up their doors to him, which actually won’t happen til next episode. Lauren gets the first rose, making Amanda give her the side-eye. The next goes to Caila. JoJo is resentful and despairing. The final rose awaits. It goes to . . .deep pained sigh from Ben. . . JoJo. Amanda regrets that she didn’t slip some brandy into her kids’ juice boxes.
Ben walks Amanda out. She is angry that he waited until the ceremony to let her know he was kicking her to the curb. She wouldn’t have bought a new cocktail dress she can’t wear again. But of course, he was unsure whom he loved most, or first, second, and third most, until the producer let him know on the plane ride back. Looking like a Keane painting, Amanda broods over this loss. She’s never introduced any man to her kids before, not even the guy she suspects of being the younger one’s father. But she did with Ben because the script required it.
Ben is tearful at her parting. “It means a lot that she trusted me to be with her kids,” he begins, then breaks off because he can’t do this right now. The director has indicated that they are out of time if they want to be able to squeeze in previews of next week.
