Melissa & Joey 2×09 ‘Eat, Pray, Date’ recap: Lie, Cook, Repress your feelings for your nanny

Mel begins the night by bringing home a guy who I assume works for the city because it sounds like they just came from a work event, where Mel paid $200 for a date with herself in an auction. I get it that she didn’t want to look like a loser if nobody bid on her and she didn’t want to end up with some creep either, but why didn’t this Travis dude bid? DUMP HIM NOW, MEL! Because the food at the event was awful, they end up snacking on some of Joe’s leftovers, which Mel pawns off as her own. Joe then walks in on Mel’s lie and goes along with it to save her butt.

The next morning, Ryder reveals that Holly’s texting him from out of town to make sure he doesn’t watch any of her favorite shows without him. This sounds totally like my husband, who refuses to watch The Bachelorette by himself, even though I’ve usually seen a new episode at least twice (for my blog, I’m not a freak) by the time he gets around to it.

When Mel gets to work, Travis pops in and asks to redeem his date that weekend, but absolutely has to have her to cook for him. Take a note guys, girls love it when you drop the three-day rule, but don’t make her slave over a hot meal on your first date. Not cool. Mel agrees to the date and perpetuates the lie, saying she doesn’t like white wine.

Back at home, Joe gets started on dinner while Mel “works” on her laptop, but she’s really watching a movie. I swear, this episode was like a snapshot of my own home, except watching stuff really is my “work.” As though they don’t have cable TV (Helloooo, Food Network?) Mel tells Joe that she needs to watch the Disney flick to learn how to cook. She then begs him to show her how to cook a dish for Travis and he agrees after some light groveling. During Mel’s cooking lesson with Joe, he shows her how to prepare a meal out of a whole chicken, which completely disgusts Mel. He has her rub the chicken down, and she makes a joke that I didn’t get until the end of the episode because it was massage humor, not “chicken humor.”

That afternoon, Lennox comes home from school with her friend Noel. I know, none of the kids on this show have normal names, but this one isn’t so bad. However, this girl must be completely desperate, because she instantly takes a shine to Ryder when she sees him in the kitchen texting Holly. Lennox tells her to back off because he’s such a little weirdo, but Noel isn’t hearing it. When Lennox walks Noel out they find Ryder sticking to his routine of sitting on the swing with Holly via text message. Even though Lennox tells her about Holly, Noel sees this opportunity to attack him and writes her number on his arm. Unless she can write upside down, he’s gonna have a really awkward time trying to read it, which I would have loved to see. Despite warnings from both Lennox and Joe, Ryder decides to two-time Holly and get with Noel on the side.

At dinner, Ryder and Lennox are surprised and excited by the fancy meal in front of them, but turn it down when they find out Mel cooked it. Joe insists that it’s safe to eat because he supervised, and the kids are impressed with what they taste. By Saturday, Joe has Mel all set up to cook for Travis and ducks out for his stay-at-home date with a masseuse. When Travis arrives, he reveals to Mel that the store didn’t have any chicken because of a salmonella outbreak. Instead, he brings lobster and crab meat, which is odd because Mel told him she didn’t like white wine. He’s a man though, so who knows if he’s aware of the pairing rules.

Panicked, Mel rushes upstairs and interrupts Joe’s regular programming to bring him the breaking news. If there was ever a time for Joe to be gratuitously shirtless, it would be this moment, which is why it makes no sense to me that he’s getting his massage while fully clothed. They can make sex jokes left and right, but partial male nudity is where they draw the line, even though Joe and countless other ABC Family hunks have gone topless in the past. Regardless, Mel takes a note from Ratatouille and decides to use video chat to get live cooking instruction from Joe.

As if Mel wasn’t having a hard enough time hiding the tablet from Travis, Ryder suddenly barges in and demands to use it to video chat Holly about the Noel crisis. Among so many other elements of this episode, I have a hard time believing that there’s no other device in the house that he can use to talk to his girlfriend face-to-face. Just as he’s about to start chatting with Holly, Noel comes down and Ryder’s knee-jerk reaction is to throw the tablet in a pot of water. Sadly, we don’t see or hear Holly’s response to the situation in this episode, which would have added some of the comedy it lacked. Holly drama or not, Lennox ultimately gets her way when she scares Ryder away by rehashing Noel’s illustrious romantic resume.

Because he’s secretly in love with her such a good friend, Joe runs downstairs when he loses video feed with Mel. He holds her hand through the meal and all seems peachy until Travis walks in on the two of them having a moment. Mel is forced to confess that she doesn’t know how to cook and they try to convince him that there’s nothing going on between them, but he doesn’t buy it. Obviously, they don’t either because they have to talk themselves into it also. Do you think they’ll finally hook up this season?