The following sequence, edited into soup by the fine folks down at The Cobble Hill Editing Lab, begins with Trista arriving at ManDaLay Bay to pick up Russ, the first (and most deadly) of her one-on-one suitors. Tuck in the shirttails, little man. Or, wait. Would that reveal the tail? Trista voices over that this date is so important because "I told him that he needs to lay off the aggression and let it go naturally." Back in the Vaseline-y dream gaze of The Not Too Distant Past, we flashback to last week's episode and again watch Trista telling Russ (in front of a roaring fire that he's controlling with his mind), "The guys that I'm normally attracted to are the guys who aren't really aggressive." She likes guys like Russ when they're not guys like Russ. Trista adds that when they're together, "it feels great" (ew. What does? What is "it"? And again, ew), but that she needs to know he's taken what she said "to heart." Ha! Made you look! Russ doesn't have a heart. Y'all, whose dog is that?

In the back of a black limousine where only they two and the cameraman and sound guy and a couple of fat guys in a sound-booth-rigged van traveling beside them can share their most intimate thoughts, Russ opens up. Sitting Roofie-popping distance away from Trista in a vehicle that could easily seat a circus freak who could swallow baby grand pianos whole, Russ regales Trista with a tale of domestic tranquility: "My mom sent me a card before I left to come down here. I open it up and it's a rose. My mom wrote, 'Y'know, no matter what happens, y'know, I'm, I'm glad you came this far in the process. I love you. And that's it.'" Love, Mrs. Satan. I can't believe we haven't heard of this letter before now. Perhaps this is because the ABC marketing department neglected to remind us that, at the time Russ's mom gave him the card, it was the most! Shocking! Rose! Ceremony! Yet! Trista reaches out a hand and, with a superficial "awwwwwww," grazes Russ's upper forearm with an accompanying I-pity-your-eternally- dark-soullessness cock of the head. Russ, in turn, takes this new sensory information as a sign that he must reach out with his own non-liquor-glass-containing hand and grab Trista's upper thigh for an extended period of time. Trista looks out the window in what I decide is horror. Cock? Blocked. Gack. Good luck dry-cleaning the smarm off of that fabric. And though we all know Trista won't end up with Russ in the end, for now, at this moment, Trista has sold her pants to Satan.