HERE WE GO. It’s finally starting to get really interesting.
You’d be forgiven if you thought this Bachelorette experiment might have fizzled into a dud at the start of the season, with all the Bachelors engaging in gentlemanly agreements of mutual respect and admiration – fucking SNORE, tbh.
But now we’re at the business end of this truncated season and the numbers are dwindling, the blokes are – at long last – starting to get a bit prickly. And it is MAGNIFICENT.
And that is none more apparent than when we drop in on them at the start of last night’s episode – sweating, grunting away. Doing a workout. Lifting the heavy things. Wearing minimal shorts. Full credit to the boys.
Except that Alex Perry Sans Sunglasses still somehow looks like he’s kind of playing dress-ups in his macho gear, leading me to believe that he actually only works out in velour tracksuits.
“Yes. This is my sleeveless Bonds undergarment and Truck Driver’s peaked cap. I wear them often.”
Meanwhile Dave the Plumber is getting about the backyard in a Parkway Drive basketball jersey, which frankly explains a tonne about his personality.
If there’s not a piece of footage of Dave trying to belt out an a cappella version of Carrion as an attempt to show Sam his inner pain on the editing room floor somewhere, I will eat my goddamned hat and the hats of several others.
Osher arrives to pull an envelope out of his butt, letting everyone know that it’s Sasha who scores another solo date. Michael does not take terribly kindly to this, as it is he who has not yet had a solo date. No solo dates for Michael yet. And did you know that Michael actually hasn’t had a solo date?
He takes this news ~well~.
*cough*
The group date – featuring all five of them – sees them tasked with cooking dinner, each bloke taking a different course. Apparently we’ve reached the stage where, after back-to-back Bachelor/Bachelorette series, we’ve seriously run clean out of ideas and are now circling back around to MasterChef.
I’m utterly, utterly shocked that at this point the phrase “a Channel 10 reality TV show filming a cooking segment” didn’t float out onto the breeze and cause this bloke to sprint through the doors.
“It me. The White Chocolate man.”
I heard from a friend-of-a-friend that if you say “Bloody Adobo” into a mirror three times he appears and fucks up your cooking relay.
Owing to the fact that food isn’t anyone’s passion, the cooking section is short and remarkably dry-eyed. Although Richie has to suffer through people ripping on his canapes practically non-stop.
IT IS SPICY DELICIOUS SAUSAGE ON SALTY CHEESE WHAT FUCKING MORE DO YOU WANT YOU ABSOLUTE PSYCHOS?!
The rest of the group challenge becomes a tale of two stragglers – Alex and Dave, both of whom are feeling the pinch.
The problem with Alex is that he is forever talking to Sam like he’s interviewing her. Seriously. It’s ridiculous. It’s to the point where suddenly Osher’s lengthy absences throughout the body of the show are starting to make sense.
Alex isn’t a contestant. He’s a secret co-host. He’s going through the longest and weirdest auditioning process the TV industry has ever seen.
As for Dave? Bless him, he’s just having a shit of a time. The body language does not lie.
It’s the bad date where you know it’s going nowhere, but there’s no “emergency phone call” to get you out of it. You just have to gut it out and hopefully avoid looking like too much of a fool.
Which, for the most part, he does quite admirably.
But then they break out the “Fun Facts.” And Dave absolutely cracks it.
See, Dave saw the phrase “fun facts” and just assumed it would be light-hearted, joking little titbits about themselves. Y’know, like a normal fucking human would assume.
Except this is The Bachelorette, and everyone else is playing fourth quarter football.
So when Dave breaks out the cutesy “I got me teeth knocked out once hurr hurr,” Michael swoops in to ruin everything with a “MY HEART IS A CAGE THAT ONLY YOU HAVE THE KEY TO, SAMMMMMMMMMM.“
You can actually see Dave’s brains slowly coming to the boil. It’s phenomenal. And it takes until the final cocktail party for them to completely erupt.
Right from the start of it, he’s had enough of these preening loons that he actually has to compete against. And he makes ZERO attempt to hide it.
Oh? Sasha’s solo date went well, huh? WHO GIVES A SHIT.
How about those Fun Facts! More like Sad Facts, AM I RIGHT?
Oh! “Just go up to Sam and ask for a chat” ay? That’s all I have to do, huh? I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time HA HA HA HA HA SILLY ME.
ABOUT TO E-X-P-L-O-D-E.
And even though he insists that if he could just get to the home-town phase where Sam would be able to see him in a comfortable, non-forced, outside of a pit-of-lions situation, he realises his goose is cooked.
How on earth is he supposed to compete against the likes of Old Painty Kiss Ned, after all?
This being a feat Sasha managed to achieve despite listening to Sam literally split her freaking soul open with a harrowing and detailed story of watching her Step-Dad pass away from an unexpected stroke and responding with the profoundly awkward sentence: “You are adorable.”
*inhales deeply*
MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE.
And also despite missing a clearly golden opportunity to do a little casual Blues Brothers schtick in that ’58 Buick.
“It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago. We’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes. It’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”
“Hit it.”
No, despite all that, Dave sees his fate coming from a freaking mile away, and he cops that shit like a champ.
He gets no rose. He keeps his chin up. He leaves with dignity…
…and then Sam rips his guts out with that little “I just think we would be really great friends” speech.
*heart shatters forever*
Tough break, Dave. This Bachelorette business is some rough stuff.
