Boy Meets Boy, Episode 6: The Home Stretch… and Stretch… and Stretch…

Basically, if you combined last week’s and this week’s episode into one and used some judicious editing, you’d get a pretty decent 90-minute finale. Since they didn’t do so, we get more stretching than in the five minutes before the Boston Marathon. Ah, well - if nothing else, it’s easier to recap.

And speaking of recaps, here comes Dani to rehash the entire season! What James and Andra DIDN’T know, but what plankton in the Bay of Bengal do by this point, was that SOME of the mates were STRAIGHT! Blah blah fifteen suitors zzzzzzz… oh, hey! At least they throw in some additional footage. “I’m saying I want to leave. Is that direct enough of an answer?” snits Matt to James. Umm… yeah. I’ll say. “They all think I’m gay right now!” exclaims straight Dan. Here’s the candle inferno, here’s the country dancing with Jorge, here’s Dan’s naked ass, here’s Dani gleefully telling James, “ONE of them is STRAIGHT!”, here’s the entire free world screaming, “We GET it, lady, can we MOVE IT THE HELL ALONG?!?”, here’s Andra shoving the mates down James’s throat, here’s… yup, Dani couldn’t end the season without one last gross exaggeration. “James WENT TO THE LIMITS OF INTIMACY!” she crows about last week’s dates. Yeah, and bounced off them and went ricocheting in the other direction, apparently. Please - I’ve seen quilting bees that were more sexually charged. Moving - or not moving - right along, here’s one last drop of blood to be squeezed from the “You assumed I was gay - why?” stone. “This week!” Dani excitedly announces, and since I draw the line at prerecapping a recap, it’s time to say goodbye to Dani, as she isn’t in this episode whatsoever. Don’t everyone cry at once.

What is, you ask? Well, fourteen hours before the final selection ceremony, with the battle cry of, “The lushes have retired to the west wing,” Brian, Wes, and Franklin proceed to get bombed on Skyy Vodka. Wes shares with us that they had too much wine (so by all means add some vodka on top of it, apparently) and too much nervous energy, so they wound up chattering all night, which he demonstrates by imitating a windup doll. Brian slurs that the drunker he gets, the more things start to slip out of his mouth! Oh please - it’s no fun when it’s set up as broadly as that. We’ve reached that point of late night drunkenness when the obvious becomes completely profound, apparently, as Brian announces, “Which one of us James picks will be who he likes better!” as if he just discovered the meaning of life - think the same unintentionally hilarious gravitas that, say, Stevie Nicks used to declare, “Thunder only happens when it’s raining,” or Julie Chen on Big Brother brings to bear on things like, “Justin, the headhunter from Pittsburgh, doomed the entire household to a day of PB&J when he failed to eat his baby clams in chili sauce in time.” But, hey, we’ve all been there. Yes, even you.

They spy a camcorder sitting on the table and swipe it. “We have commandeered the camera,” a blitzed Wes solemnly intones. Much drunken running and teasing and flirting and hijinks ensue until they collapse in their beds and declare their drunkenness. Apparently reading directly off the producers’ cue cards, Brian grouses about how awful it would be if there were some STRANGE TWIST in the end with regard to James’s final selection; Franklin agrees. Then Brian starts interrogating them about whether they’ve kissed James; Franklin says they just did the peck on the cheek thing, but Wes admits he and James kissed. Brian jokingly shoves a potted plant on top of him in retaliation as they all laugh.

Seven hours before the final selection ceremony, James tells us that the final day is a lot different than he had originally thought - it’s not just eeny meeny miney mo, but eeny, meeny miney… ‘mo or straight? He wakes up Andra and confesses that he didn’t sleep nearly enough, while in the Mates’ House of Hangover, Brian whaps Wes good morning with the potted plant. When they said, “Say it with flowers,” I’m not quite sure if this is exactly what they had in mind. They have breakfast and much inconsequential yakking about the last day and its significance and the tension ensues. To hammer the point home, Wes tells us, “You really are living for that last day! You get taken out of your life and you’re put in that situation and you are living for that last day and here it is! It’s that last day!” I think he just unintentionally wrote the sequel to “Hey Won’t You Play Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” “The fun and games are over,” he further informs us.

Sure enough, Brian asks Wes if he’s nervous, then when he says no, snits that of course he isn’t because he kissed James! He and Franklin, on the other hand, have reason to be nervous! “We’re just jealous that you kissed him!” he snots. But he kissed James too, so I’m not quite sure what he’s going on about on that scale. Reading my mind, Wes replies, “I’m not sure what that means, exactly.” Franklin shares that James and Wes have developed chemistry, while Brian admits that he’s feeling some jealousy because he feels like Franklin and Wes got to have much more romantic dates with James than he did - massages and horse-drawn carriages as opposed to “flames over your head and three pancakes at a hotel” - and I’m almost drawn in until I realize that most people would probably consider a hot air balloon ride plenty romantic. Then I remember that Brian was scared a good deal of the time because of the height factor. Then I realize I’ve officially overthought the subject.

Six hours before the final selection ceremony, James tells us that he and Andra realized that some of the other guys were probably straight as well, so they started looking back at signs and clues - and in the process prove that their gaydar is riotously on the fritz. Darren? Straight, they decide. We immediately cut to a “gay”-labeled Darren telling us he wants to know why James chose Brian over him. He’s hurt because he made himself vulnerable, thought there was chemistry, and really was developing feelings for James. I didn’t get to recap his departure, but when I finally saw it, Darren was one of the guys I honestly felt bad for. He hopes James finds his life partner out of this, and he’d be most happy if it were Franklin, but he’s not giving up on James and when James is back in L.A., he’ll be hearing from Darren! Oh dear. I’m having visions of Darren singing “Every Breath You Take” outside of James’s window. Or, speaking of coming to people’s windows, virtually anything by Melissa Etheridge. I forget who said this or where they said it, but one of the most hysterical things I’ve ever read in a music review was that Melissa Etheridge only sings about two topics: “Why don’t you want me?” and “You used to want me - why don’t you want me now?!?”