Every Terrible Lesson I Learned About Love While Watching ‘The Bachelor’: Swordfighting Edition
Attack your bride with a sword!
Welcome to our Thursday recap of The Bachelor Australia — you can read Sinead Stubbin’s excessively funny Power Ranking from Wednesday here.
A wise woman once said that love is a battlefield, and there’s a lot of truth to that statement.
The Bachelor has taught me that in order to win at love, you need to be strategic and practical. You need to plan how to defeat (woo) your opponent (poor sap who will end up in love with you). If you don’t — well, son, you’ll have a massacre on your hands. Your lil’ heart will be storming the beachhead, only to be mowed down by a hundred angry machine guns (Tinder, etc).
Things are starting to get tense on this season of The Bachelor Australia, with Nick ‘Badger-features’ Cummins slowly killing off many of his romantic prospects.
This means he has to put on his big boy face and truly get his head in the game. He’s been winning each battle (kissy-kissy smooch time), but now it ‘s time to win the war.
So, as we do every week, let’s learn everything there is to know about love from The Bachelor Australia.
“Haha, this guy is doomed!”
1. Dating Is About Being Scared All The Time
This week’s group date is at a CAR RACING OVAL or whatever they call it. It’s a Scalextric set, except huge and made for humans.
Sometimes I wonder if Honeybaby is worried about his masculine image — I mean, he does have to talk about his feelings a lot and touch a bunch of flowers on national television. Plus, he’s absolutely gay for about twenty women, which must be pretty embarrassing for straight men. So, perhaps that explains why every second date he goes on is car and sport based.
This is exactly what his wedding will look like.
In this one, he’s being very smart — he’s just a regular, red-blooded man who wants a woman who can drive a manual car while blindfolded! Pretty normal. He also wants them to be able to zoom backwards and then do a big zingy-around thing.
He wants his reality-TV crushes “to push their limits, in a safe environment.”
“Your fear pleases me, The Bachelor”.
Obviously, this is terrifying to these normal women, but they have been living off only champagne and wheels of cheese for the last few months, so they are starving and in their weakened state think it’s a good idea to drive like an absolute hoon to impress The Honey Bachelor.
The lesson here is that dating is terrifying and uncomfortable, but you need to do it in order to become a semi-famous Australian Instagram influencer at the end of the show.
Imagine if it said ‘Sydney Motor Spork Part’ instead. That would be mildly amusing.
2. Lavish Gifts On Your Beloved
As a reward for absolutely choking down her crippling fear of reversing (I get it, I’m a top), a blonde woman named Sophie was given a single date AND a box of avocados.
We’re doing it, we’re living in the dystopian future that the Herald Sun readers always feared: Millennials have elevated their insane love for avocados so much that they have now replaced diamonds or flowers as romantic gifts.
I guess gifts are always good, and sometimes a coveted green fruit that’s packed with Vitamin B is the best way to say “win this dating show with me”.
3. Fight Your Beloved With Swords
Can we be real for a second — I have never been so proud of the HoneyBachelor. He just got dang excited about some cool sword fighting and I think that’s beautiful.
“DING-DONG-DIDDLY SOMEBODY’S GONNA LOSE AN EYE”
For this date, he took Jamie-Lee to watch some people fight with swords, and then HE would fight HER also with swords.
“Who wouldn’t want to get dressed up like samurai and play with some swords,” he asks, which is really a question for the ages. This is his version of “to be or not to be”.
I thought this was maybe about domination. Poor Jamie-Lee was the one who got absolutely smashed in the sport-type game a few weeks ago, and snapped her leg like an old Twix. Now, he has decided to finish her off, once and for all, with a goddamn sword.
“I’ve made so many mistakes in my life”
But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here — I think the test is about passion. The Badgerlord is a giddy child for a cool ninja sword, and someone who truly loved him would love seeing him happy. I don’t think they need to play along — but they should be happy he’s having a lovely day playing with swords, and that he’s chosen to include them in his happiness.
Jamie-Lee was not happy. Jamie-Lee hates swords.
“My leg hurts so much”.
4. Break Up With Someone Before They Break Up With You
I’m pretty sure The Art Of War said something about there being a certain kind of dignity in leaving the mansion quietly before you get dumped on TV by a giant mole creature.
This is what… Tenielle? Tenille? TenDaily? decides to do. Last week, a human lie detector came along and said that she was mildly guarded, and wasn’t telling every single thing about herself to this giant statue of devon on television.
This was bad.
TFW this show mistakes performative displays of rapport as being synonymous with actual honesty and trust which are rare and hard to find.
TFW “being guarded” is the worst thing you can be, even though the person you’re having a relationship with is literally dating 15 other women.
TFW maybe THE BACHELOR should hold HIMSELF in contempt, your honour, YOU’RE OUT OF LINE, THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS OUT OF LINE, IT’S CHINA-TOWN MARGE
Anyway, Termantha did the right thing and got the fuck out of there. The lesson is, dating is broken and we should all get in a fast limo away from it.
The Bachelor is on every Wednesday and Thursday nights from now until when we all die. Junkee will be recapping them all.
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Patrick Lenton is an author and staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.