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Anyway, Kathy gives each person a silver spoon, not only to symbolize the type of life they are getting themselves into, but to split them into teams. Green spoons would be for team Park, and blue spoons would be for team Madison. And with that, they were introduced to their new homes at the Melrose Hotel, with each team getting a suite directly across from each other. Quickly, we see that the teams are clearly different, with the Park team being more serious, and the Madison team being much more laid back. While the Park team was enjoying the little gift baskets Kathy had left them and completing a little champagne toast, Madison was busy figuring out how to get comfortable in their own way, and Johnny the plumber decided one way to do that was to moon the other team from across the building. A home isn't really a home unless you've bared your ass to your neighbors across the way.

Each week, we are promised that everybody is going to learn another lesson in how to live the life, and the first lesson of "Etiquette Boot Camp" is going to be on attending a dinner party. Whenever you go to a dinner party, it is polite to bring a gift, and so each team had to pick a person to go shopping for a gift. The trick was that they weren't going to be picking somebody from their own team, but instead picked somebody from the other team. The teams know that this is going to be judged, so we get to see our first little bit of strategy in the choices each team makes to go gift shopping. The person who goes shopping is also going to miss that day's etiquette lesson, so not only do you want to find somebody who probably has no idea what to get, but somebody who is really going to be harmed by missing out on the etiquette, and at least for the latter point, there was nobody that could afford to miss anything.

Park picked Jabe from Madison, and Madison picked JW from Park. JW is a construction worker from Missouri and Jabe is a ranch hand from Texas. Being picked is kind of an insult, even among this bunch, because it basically means your peers think you are the least qualified of anybody there. With that being said, JW was determined to prove that the other team made a huge mistake. And to his credit, he did a good job. He had no idea what he should buy, but settled on something simple with some flowers and a bottle of wine. Not the most creative gift, but one that you really can't mess up. Assuming he spent about $50 each on the flowers and wine, you can get some decent quality stuff for that price.

Jabe, on the other hand, was just as lost, but about one hundred times less effective. Now, he had a good idea for his gift, which was to buy some chocolates, but he didn't go searching for any gourmet stuff. When you think of chocolate, at the very least you are going to try and find some Godiva, right? Sure, there are plenty of high-end chocolate shops, but if you are new in town, maybe you don't know what to look for. Jabe is one of my favorite characters, a Southern cowboy who may not know what sort of wine goes with truffles, but completes every thought with a nice "yes ma'am," which makes him kind of endearing.

So, he had a good idea, but the execution was off. He bought chocolates at what looked like a tourist gift shop, and the problem wasn't necessarily that they weren't expensive, but he did buy a lot of them, like five or six pounds worth, an amount your host probably won't know what to do with. If JW had tried the same thing, he would have bought a case of Two Buck Chuck and a hundred carnations. But that wasn't the worst part of his execution, believe it or not. Jabe decided that he was going to get his chocolate wrapped. Not only was the paper sort of tacky, but in lieu of a card, he simply had the salesperson write Kathy's name and thank you directly on the box with a sharpie. Seriously, no card at all is better than that.

While the guys were shopping, their teammates learned some of the basics of dining etiquette, including mastering things such as wine tasting and the intricacies of eating escargot and lobster. They even had a little lesson on cheeses, and in case you were thinking that the etiquette teachers weren't any fun, they did have plenty of jokes, like the one about cutting the cheese. Apparently even the fart humor was below most of the contestants, because nobody was laughing.

With all of their newfound knowledge, everybody got dressed to the nines in preparation for what they thought would be a group dinner with Kathy Hilton. When they arrived, each team discovered that only one member of their party was going to eat with Kathy, and that would be the one who had spent the day shopping. The other team members had a chance to use what they learned, however, as the dinner guest would wear an ear piece, and their teammates would feed them instructions on what to do and what not to do during each situation. Joining in the dinner would be Ted Allen from Queer Eye, Billy Bush from Access Hollywood (looking very excited not having to sit at the kiddie table), and Prince Dmitri of Yugoslavia.

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Posted by J-Unit on June 26, 2005 7:52 PM