FoL 2-2: Riding the Pole on the Bus with my Sister

After the Drippy Brown Menace of last week, this sophomore episode of the sophomore season was bound to deliver something of a slump. How spoiled we have become, when a Flavor of Love episode that includes pole-dancing in a moving vehicle and a table dance in public elicits a mere "Meh."

 

What is it with Flav and poultry? I have never seen anyone eat so damn much chicken in my life. Foxes don't eat this much chicken.

Flav snacks heartily as he narrates the episode's beginning. He and the rest of the house are still coping with the fallout (hee hee!) of Somethin's... er... contribution to the decor of the night before. This doesn't often happen, but I'm pretty much on the same page with Flav: he believes in giving second chances and he's trying to get past the event, but it's not easy.

I'm having a much harder time getting past Somethin's choice to wear that bra with that top. I mean, I'm always relieved to see a well-endowed woman wearing some kind of supportive undergarment, but I don't necessarily need to see the bra itself, y'know?

Somethin had actually left her clock outside Flav's door that night, figuring that he wouldn't want to keep her around. I think it was that gesture of humility, more than anything else, that appealed to Flav. He tracks Somethin down (she's in the shower, so he can be reasonably certain she's fresh and clean) and tells her to stick around.

Of course, the skanks are still having their fun at Somethin's expense, but she's taking it with a pretty good sense of humor. To nobody's surprise, Spunkeey is being something of a turd. "It was karma," she says to Somethin, then she mocks Somethin's antics of the night before. "You were mean to me" she says, implying that the universe is so absolutely on Spunkeey's side that it loosened the bowels of someone who only got up in Spunkeey's face after Spunkeey butted in nastily on her time with Flav.

Shut the fuck up, Spunkeey.

Later, by the pool, Big Rick (free Big Rick!!) greets the skanks with a message from Flav. Spunkeey tells us that Big Rick delivered the Flav-o-Gram to her because of her intelligence. Shut the fuck up, Spunkeey. Flav is going to meet the skanks at a gourmet restaurant, and the skanks' challenge is to select a dish from the menu that they think he'll like.

If you had instructed this crew to split a helium atom, they would not have had a harder time than they do attempting to understand both what is asked of them and what the items on the menu are. Like Dat immediately takes the reins and begins calling out entrees and asking who wants to claim them. "What's a tenderloin?" asks the self-described intelligent Spunkeey. If one of the skanks had begun quoting the lyrics to "Tenderoni" as a legitimate answer, I could have died happy. No such luck. However, the skanks manage to pick their dishes and hit the bus, where...

Of course, there's a pole on the bus. Don't even claim to be surprised by that. However, since I watch this clip almost every day, I am now incapable of imagining a bus without Rosie O'Donnell on it in a tragic t-shirt.

There we go. Okay, now, you couldn't help but notice that most of the skanks worked that pole as if they had grown up with one in the house. (Well, Nibblez actually claims to have a pole in her living room, so her performance should come as no surprise.) To their credit, Like Dat and Wire kind of navigated around the pole, while Tiger -- well, I no longer think that training big cats at the zoo is her only vocation.

Somethin was probably the worst person to attempt the move I call "To the Batcave," and the show's editors seem to agree. But for Toasteee to work the pole the way she did while going commando? Yeeeeeeeeeee... I'm not sure which sanitation crisis is greater: the pole's, for having so much contact with the skanks, or Toasteee's, for doing the splits on that carpet with no underwear. Hopefully all the alcohol in her system will have a sterilizing effect.

 

Once at the restaurant, Flav dons a blindfold and goes table-to-table. After about the fourth table or so, nobody bothers trying to feed him any gourmet food. Instead, they chat with him, flirt with him -- Buckwild shakes a bottle of champagne and sprays him as if he just won the Daytona 500 -- and Nibblez gives him a lap dance with horrifying consequences.

"Little Flav." Shudder, twitch. Gaaaah...

Anyway, Flav soon completes his circuit of the room. Having had very little actual food, he decides to chow down on -- what a surprise!

 

I can hear one of the skanks yell, "Eat that chicken! Chew it, now!" I think it's Buckwild, who seems to share Flav's enthusiasm for chicken; when her name is called to go on a special one-on-one date with Flav, she joins him in a bit of the bird:

 

Flav is shocked that Buckwild is white, given her industrial-strength ghetto accent. The other winners are Like Dat and Tiger. Say, does anybody know what Sebastian Bach was doing about 20-odd years ago? 'Cause Tiger could absolutely be the product of a teenage indiscretion of his:

 

And the thing is, it's not like the presence or absence of any musical talent on her part would indicate anything, 'cause it's Sebastian Bach. I guess we'll never know...

The next day, the lucky (?) three meet Flav by the water to take turns riding with him in what the rest of us call a "gondola." Flav's pronunciation varies; it's usually something like "gonzolier," but I've decided that what he really wants to call the boat -- or perhaps just the dude who steers it -- is a "gondoleezza":

 

First on the water is Buckwild; she and Flav amuse each other and seem to have a good time. Next up is Like Dat, whom Flav genuinely seems to bond with. I think it helps a lot that they speak in the same kind of patter and are only a dozen or so years apart in age. That said, I got a little queasy when Flav described his take on Like Dat: "You tell she'd be down for her man. Spend her day in the kitchen, walk a few miles for groceries..." Well, what lady in her right mind would refuse the opportunity to do that?

 

When talking to her, he says he wants to treat her like a queen. But when talking about her, he seems to relish the idea of treating her like a domestic employee with no union representation. I'm warming to Like Dat, so I want something better for her.

Then it's Tiger's turn in the gonzolier of love. And damn, could her body language be shutting him down any more?

 

As they approach a bridge, the gondoleezza says that it's customary to kiss when you go under the bridge, but Flav's attempt is blocked like Star Jones's colon. Tiger says that she's not comfortable kissing him after he's kissed both Buckwild and Like Dat. As Flav established last season, though, his life is an ongoing series of makeout attempts with any woman who will touch him, so his special lady needs to be okay with that (and, again, who could imagine turning down such a great relationship partner?). This refusal to share in other women's backwash does not bode well for Sebastian Bach, Jr.

 

Meanwhile, in the other gondola, Like Dat and Buckwild are chatting, and Buckwild reveals that she's from Rancho Cucamonga. Now, Rancho Cucamonga has many things. It has my favorite place name in the United States -- yes, even better than Walla Walla; it has a street named after Gerald Ford; it even has a jail. What it does not have, however, is much of a ghetto. Like Dat had found Buckwild's accent dodgy from the beginning, and her Cucamongan provenance doesn't help. I'm willing to give Buckwild a little wiggle room based on the jail, and the fact that she amuses me, but I kinda see Like Dat's point. On the other hand, if Buckwild had referred to her hometown as "da RC," she'd be untouchable in my book.

Back at the mansion, the skanks compare booty moves to pass the time. Most are of the usual Harlem-shake variety, but the sheer specific muscle control in this one impresses me:

Spunkeey, of course, finds all this booty-ness utterly gross and beneath her. What she doesn't find beneath her, though, is pulling some sixth-grade manipulative shit on Nibblez. She pulls Nibblez into a hug on her bed and says, "I hope you don't feel like you have to do anything extra for us, you know, to make up for anything." Shut the fuck up, Spunkeey. Nibblez knows what's up, and basically says that she does what she does for Flav, not for anybody else, and she doesn't feel like she has to apologize for the sexual nature of her interactions with Flav. "I'm a healthy, well-adjuthted perthon who jutht happenth to like thex!" I'm thtarting -- er, starting to like Nibblez.

 

[Sigh] Well, at least she's happy.

 

Someone who's not so happy is Like Dat, who has decided to take on the role of Officer Keep It Real. She seems protective of the concept of the ghetto, which is oddly touching. I get that she doesn't want anyone fake around Flav, but Buckwild seems to genuinely enjoy being around Flav, so I don't think her intentions are fake; just her personal presentation. Oh, hell, I just like watching her.

Speaking of fake personal presentations, here are six different Delishis moments from this episode.

 

Now, in those last two in particular, she totally looks like a dude. However, I've read that she was in a serious car accident a few years ago, and it could be that what we're seeing is the effects of some imperfect reconstructive surgery. She might also have had some elective surgery, which would explain the slight Jocelyn Wildenstein resemblance. Regardless, I'm not taking her off Wang Watch just yet; it's too much fun.

 

You know, maybe he replaced his drug addiction with a poultry addiction. And now he can't get the chicken off his back.

Flav decides to have a little more one-on-one time with the skanks before elimination, so a series of mini-dates ensues. Nothing terribly noteworthy happens, except that I think that Toasteee's caught on that the best way to get rid of someone is to tell Flav that they've tried to get on TV before. As hypocritical as Flav's rejection of anyone who clearly wants to be on TV is (this is your what-th series, sir?), I'm glad someone has taken the initiative to eject Spunkeey.

Halfway through Flav's date with Buckeey, Wire appears, apparently intent on telling Flav something or giving him something. He shooes her off until it's time for their date, but she passes the time by noodling on the piano, which irritates Flav and Buckeey. When Wire's date with Flav finally occurs, she doesn't say much of anything and comes off as pretty much insane.

 

Back in her room, though, she seems even more unwell. When one of the skanks asks Wire if she wants to have kids with Flav, she responds, "I do want dark babies." This does not go over well. Now, I don't think Wire is being hateful in any way, but that statement was just ignorant and wrong-headed. Buckwild theorizes that Wire has to have kids with someone darker than herself because if she had kids with a white man, they'd be see-through. This helps defuse some of the tension.

Tiger's a little nervous after refusing to kiss Flav earlier that afternoon in the gonzolier. Can anything Save the Tiger?

 

Of course! And it works; Tiger is not eliminated this week. Wire, rather predictably, is, and, to my utter delight, so is Spunkeey! Yeaaaaaa!

For about half a second I almost like her, when she jokes, "I'd have shit on the floor if I thought it meant I could stay." Good line, but it's too little, too late. Even her rejection soliloquy is fake; she cries about how Flav picked the beauty queens and the sleazy skanks over her. Shut the fuck up, Spunkeey. You know, maybe it's not Flav or anybody else; maybe it's you. Not that I expect you to learn a damn thing from this experience, or any other.

You might be wondering what I'll do now that Spunkeey's gone, who I could possibly hate as much. I'd be perfectly happy not to hate anyone as much as I detested Spunkeey. I think I scared a couple of friends of mine with my vehement dislike of her while we re-watched the first episode last week (the phrase "swing a fire extinguisher like a baseball bat" was used). I'm sure there will be someone else for me to root against -- Bootz is appearing on my "ick" radar -- but I'm truly hoping to find someone to root for. (Beatuful and Payshyntz -- God, the spelling! -- both seem nice and low-key.) Maybe things will perk up next week.

Comments

[Mojos Daddy]

It looks like Rosie enjoyed herself quite a bit on that bus ride... you know she does like the "ladies"...

and Delishis is totally a dude...

[ShawnaLanne]

Thanks for once again taking it for the team and watching this. Since I can't actually sit through an entire episode without getting ill, your my only reliable line to the Flaver.

[Susanna]

Dude. Not fair.

I have some bizarre back spasm and El Herm and I are sitting here together reading this while I attempt to be still and allow it to heal.

And then?

1. I clicked on the Rosie O'Donnell clip which I had not previously seen, because I couldn't bring myself to watch her *pretend* to be retarded. (crikey, that montage should be illegal)

2. I scrolled down and saw Rosie in a tragic t-shirt riding the bus with the pole and the skanks.

3. Gonzoleezza? Am dying over here. Hurts to breathe, okay? Laughing is much worse.

You've outdone yourself. I may never have to actually watch this show. You navigate the putrid waters for us.

Brava, Catherine!

[Cath]

Just call me your gondoleezza of Flavor. Thank you so much!!

[Ang]

That was a great recap. Im gonna petition New Zealand television to get this show.