If there's one thing I think about Meredith -- and there is, quite literally, only one thought I've had about Meredith, what with her static brand of negative television energy -- it's that she mumbles. It's a habit my grandmother hates, and we know how far out of her way Meredith will go to please a grandmother. When we rejoin her in the process of acting out the scripts of the last three seasons of this show, what I think is "Chad is going on the date with me today. My friends thought his was the best love letter" sounds a lot like "Chad is going on the date with me today. My friends thought he was the best love butter." Mmmm, delicious love butter. But me, I've started to switch over to non-stick "Love Pam" for all my love baking needs. It works much better than the plastic-tasting Love Margarine, and I simply won't each food that comes in sentence form like I Can't Believe It's Not Love Butter. Off she shoots in a silver Maserati, in which, we learn, she'll be picking Chad up and driving to dinner down in Newport Beach. Meredith picks Chad up at the house, and he hops in the driver's seat, pumping that thing up to an almost delirious thirty-five in a quickie shot of the dashboard. Surely no man can drive so fast without breaking the sound barrier or at least going back...to the future! Chad and Meredith drive along the ocean and park at a marina, where they meet a man in a straw hat with a red bow tied around it, a black-and-white striped shirt, and black pants. He shakes Meredith's and Chad's hands and escorts them to a nearby boat, where we learn they'll be taking a ride on a gondola. Or, as Meredith so appropriately calls it, "A gon-DO-la ride." Well, la di da. Look who majored in "Twee Boat Pronunciation" at The Prissy Institute Of European Seafaring. She thinks it's "pretty cute" that Chad had never been on a gon-DO-la, which is a concept totally foreign to her because gon-DO-la rides are actually the primary form of transportation in Portland, Oregon (for those of you who have never been there).

Super Gay Mario rows Chad and Meredith gently down the stream as they sip champagne and speak of Chad's great, big, throbbing...heart. Meredith tells him that word is he has the biggest heart. Man, I guess the time when a dude crying at the thought of his lover made him the world's biggest something else entirely are loooooooong gone. "There's an old Italian tradition you have to kiss under every bridge," Super Gay Mario tells Meredith and Chad from the rowing place at the back, and so Chad kisses Meredith under a bridge because the sovereign nation of Italy told them that they had to, which I'm going to start using on dates from now until forever. Hey, can you pick up the check? Italy said you would. Dude. Italy.