There is a core problem at the heart of basically every single series of The Bachelor thus far: the blokes are fundamentally not that interesting. Sure they’re universally blessed with washboard abs and beautiful faces carved from gourmet ham hocks by skilled artisans, but they can barely string a sentence together without a producer whispering coherent English phrases through their earpiece. The drama, obviously, comes from the women vying for his attention and that interplay, rather than what the cardboard cutout himself actually says or does.
It’s entirely possible that Nick “Honey Badger” Cummins could blow that dynamic right open. Put aside for a moment that Channel Ten seem to have caught themselves in a descending hell-spiral where no Bachelor / Bachelorette can ever be a non-celebrity normie ever again, and consider this: we definitely have a Bachelor who can go toe-to-toe with Sophie Monk in being independently entertaining beyond the contestants. Quite frankly, the formula needs a swift kick up the arse – especially if said foot is wearing footy boots.
The dude is genuinely funny. Aside from the handful of rugby union heathens polluting our Facebook comments who had absolutely no idea who the guy was – suggesting they have not once looked at an ICONIC ad on a bus shelter – the guy has cut-through purely from being insanely funny. His Queenslander patois, apparently absorbed through listening to his dad’s tradie mates talk shit in their garage, is as fluidly hilarious as it comes, despite the fact no one who doesn’t live on this continent could ever make head or tails of it.
If you’ve never had the pleasure of diving into a Honey Badger compilation on YouTube I strongly recommend you remedy that:
Personal favourite is “like the kid who fell out of the tree, he just wasn’t in it,” which stands high in an already very high pantheon of post-game interviews.
(I hung out with the Badge for a couple of days back in 2016 and I assure you he’s dropping these clangers at literally every opportunity, off the cuff, in regular conversation. It’s honestly overwhelming how many bits of eldritch Australian slang he throws in the ring – phrases that have literally not passed human lips since circa 1972.)
This is a pretty smart play by Ten. Much like Sophie brought in a big audience to the Bachelorette who otherwise wouldn’t have dipped their toe into this pool, Nick is almost certain to bring in a large (and probably overwhelmingly male) audience who are there more for the banter than the actual televised pursuit of love. They’ll watch whatever overexposed, soft-lit dating scenes they need to get to whatever filth pours freely from Nick’s mouth, trust me.
And the great thing for Ten is they absolutely didn’t have to sacrifice the rippling physique for someone with banter. Doesn’t matter if you reckon he’s got a face like a dropped pie. He could probably crush a watermelon with one hand. It’ll be a tough act to follow in the ‘best of both worlds’ stakes.
Here’s a prediction for you to chew on: there are going to be an incredible number of challenges which attempt to break his Instagram image, which currently focuses very heavily on doing shit like driving speedboats off waterfalls and catching frankly quite enormous fish. On the other hand, there is guaranteed to be at least one challenge compelling the girls – whoever they are – to catch an enormous fish. If this doesn’t happen, we will eat our collective hats.
Quite frankly, it’ll be hard to walk this one back for the next season of The Bachelor, if and when it does happen. Once you’ve gone with a guy who is genuinely funny and interesting, it’s not easy to go back to ‘whoever crashed out of the last season of The Bachelorette’.
So them’s the stakes. This will easily be the funniest and most compelling season of The Bachelor yet, and it is going to bring in a big audience who probably never tune into it otherwise. And even if the Badge himself doesn’t find love – and, honestly, the track record of Australian Bachelor doesn’t leave a whole lot of hope for him, to be honest – then at least Australia is going to walk away knowing slang we never knew we needed.
