We kick off Part I of the Finale with Lauren and Becca taking turns meeting Arie's family. I felt a cultural difference with them that I, as a person with a parent from a very different culture, loved. His parents were very sophisticated and polite, yet SO blunt, particularly evidenced by Arie's father when he told Becca TO HER FACE that he'd be happy "either way"....

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Fantasy Suite week kicks off with Kendall's date, on which she and Arie go sand buggying and sand surfing. Side note: I once went buggying in the desert in Marrakech and it was seriously one of the coolest things I've done, so I had major nostalgia and envy watching this. We also got some very funny moments...

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Hometown week kicks off in LA with Kendall. Surprising nobody, this date revolves around taxidermy, but what I found really interesting here is how the TONE is so different from seasons past. To me, Kendall represents that contestant who could be seen as a caricature, who is painted as weirder than most and who could easily be made out to be someone you'd laugh at or deem "crazy". But because she also has a lot of depth and intelligence (and is SHOWN possessing these traits), it prevents that negative edit.

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Becca K gets the first 1-on-1 date and appears to be finally back in the game. We've known she's a season-long frontrunner but I've felt for awhile that we haven't been seeing enough consistent conversation. And even one we did see, back in Episode 5, was about 80% make-out and only 20% conversation.

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I've been keen to see Lauren's 1-on-1 for quite some time. I mentioned this last week, but one of my favorite things about Lauren (in addition to how not performer-y she is) is this feeling that she's not necessarily as into Arie as he is into her. I'm not saying that cruelly, because obviously I'd like him to end up with someone where the interest is entirely mutual, but rather that that subtle inequality creates opportunity for confessions like this...

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As you might know, I was in Toronto this past week. Over coffee with my editor at Flare, Maureen, we established that Arie isn't really what we were expecting based on his bad-boy, player reputation. In fact, he's proving to be somewhat dorky in a very endearing way.

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