'The Bachelor' recap: Family Business

Ding dong! There's a squealing dentist at the door! A gleeful Ashley greets her family with screeches and giggles, and her pleasantly peppy family receives her in kind. At dinner, Ashley's tattooed sister Chrystie gives a toast to the happy kind-of couple: "Thank you for choosing her… and we look forward to dinner and the start of whatever comes next." Brad scores major points with the whole clan by reminding them all, "It takes her choosing me, too." It's a nice sentiment, pal, but if Ashley believed that she wouldn't be on The Bachelor in the first place. Things get a little dicey when Brad sits down to talk to Ashley's dad Mike, who lets him know that Ashley is determined to finish her dentistry schooling -- so settling down and popping out kids may not be part of her five-year plan. "Now I'm wondering if I'm going to hold Ashley back a little bit," muses Brad. "I need to figure this out -- will a proposal scare Ashley?" And here's what I need to figure out: Why did Team Bachelor blur out the large framed photo or painting hanging in Ashley's family's living room? It looked like an aerial photo of flowers or cupcakes or something… but maybe it was obscene.

After a commercial break, we're greeted with… a commercial, for Newton Bracewell Funeral Home, where Shawntel and her family work, which I guess is supposed to be, what, funny? This sets the tone for Shawntel's entire hometown date, which has been tastelessly hijacked by Team Bachelor to maximize the morbidity and squirm-inducing effect of her profession. In keeping with that theme, Shawntel meets Brad at the funeral home where she works. "This is really going to almost be the final test of Brad and I's relationship," Shawntel explains in broken English. "I mean, we might as well find out now if he's comfortable with this."

Ok, fair enough, but are we really to believe that it was Shawntel's idea to start their date in a crypt? None of the other "ladies" had to turn their dates into Take Your Bachelor to Work Day -- we didn't see Ashley scraping plaque off of his teeth, or Emily asking him to help her arrange a birthday party for a kid with cancer, or Chantal… answering his phone, or whatever it is that she does. But there Shawntel is, leading Brad to the terrifyingly sterile "prep room," where all sorts of creepy hooks and hoses hang from the ceilings and walls. Then Shawntel asks Brad to lie down on the embalming table. "Ok, I'm starting to freak out a little bit," admits the Bachelor. "How many bodies have been on this table?" Shawntel proceeds to give Brad an excessively detailed account of how to embalm a body, and I've gotta give him props for not passing out -- once I heard the words "aneurysm hook," I hit the FF button, fast.

NEXT: Emily's daughter tells Brad to go fly a kite

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