Eyyy, it’s our lovely bachelor Matty J and his hungry brides, back for another week of rip-roaring adventure. We begin this week as the mansion waked up in a new utopian world. The ladies step out into the bright sunshine and blearily consider what their lives will be like in a post-Jen universe.

“It felt like Christmas” said Tara. Looks like the drama cabana has gone back to being simply a highly-formulated reality-TV mansion that’s filled with cameras.

OK, let’s see who holds the power now that Jen has stormed away, no doubt to haunt the nightmares of small children and to titillate our Instagram feeds. Miss ya, Jen

NOW LET’S POWER RANK

+ 15 pts – LAURA

Laura is obviously a powerful candidate to be Matty J’s forever bride, and not simply because she is a clone of Georgia Love, Matty’s long-lost television sweetheart. Laura has definitely been doing some good dates, and attracting the wheat-lad’s porridge eyes. I also think she would look good and healthy in big ski shoes, and that seems to be a major factor in winning The Bachelor.

This week, we see exactly why Laura has risen above the petty infighting of your Jennifers or Leahs, and hasn’t resorted to evil sorcery like Flo or AKATHLA THE SPIDER QUEEN. She’s winning this game through good old-fashioned research.

Matty lopes in, as eager as a boy on a bike, and is ready to whisk his potential mate away to a date thought up by a room full of recent uni grads. And here’s the thing: Laura knows how to play this game, and guessed the dates immediately.

“Ummmm where do you think I’ll take you?” Matty said with the unearned pride of a young lad presenting a “breakfast in bed” of cold bread and water to his tolerant mother.

“The observatory and also to a psychic,” says Laura without batting an eye.

“Oh wow” says Matty, trying to remember if he’d already told her somehow.

Laura probably then remembered that she didn’t want to intimidate the beefy child with her intelligence, and referred to the observatory as a ‘conservatory’ for the rest of the time. The fortune teller was fairly non-eventful, except for Laura heroically restraining her eyes from rolling all the way out of her head and back to her normal life where she doesn’t have to deal with any of this shit.

At the conservatory, Matty showed her Jupiter, and then a random star which “he” bought for her, and then forced her to name. They decided to mash their names together, to inflict something awful on this poor star: Mataura. He also asked if it was “a healthy star”, showing that he was either projecting his dreams of child-bearing on both Laura and the star, or he doesn’t know what a star is.

+ 10 pts – Simone

Hey look, Simone got kicked out this week, so it’s a fragile kind of power she wielded. But she died as she lived – without having a date and being absolutely weird and delightful. We didn’t get to see a lot of Simone, and she was weirdly ignored to the extent that the first time we heard her speak it was utterly baffling to discover she’s got a cockney accent, and everything sounds a bit ‘pickler yer ginger, guvnor?’

So, let’s go through two really odd things from this episode:

• In the weird childhood fun-house challenge, the picture of young Simone clearly has red hair, but she adamantly denies it, as if we aren’t all literally looking at a picture
• Later on, Matty presents all the girls with treasured items from their past, and Simone gets some battered pairs of ballet shoes. She has no idea what they are, and has never done ballet, but then, lies to Matty saying that she did. I love her for lying. Why did her mother send them?

Either of these things on their own is mildly weird, but together makes me truly believe that Simone has stolen some ginger’s identity.

Simone also put a love heart on Matty J’s wang to signify it was the “part of him she was most attracted to” and then clarified that it “stuck to the right when he wore suit pants” and just… yes. This is the level of blatant thirst I respect. She also got a gluten free donut all stuck in her chompers, and between that, the blatant objectifying of The Bachelor, and the confusing lies, I have never related to someone on television more.

+ 10 pts – Osher

In the cocktail party, Osher had FANTASTIC hair. I also enjoyed his stubble during the nightmarish fun-park themed challenge. But mostly I enjoy that Simone made him touch Matty J’s wang, which is basically all I’ve ever been here for. This is what it must feel like to peak in high school – what the hell do I even have to look forward to for the rest of my life?

Remember, #tvweekLogies don’t win themselves. #TheBachelorAU pic.twitter.com/10ZsBayK90

— Osher Günsberg (@oshergunsberg) August 30, 2017

+ 5 pts – Elise

I do NOT feel this chemistry, but Elise is being pushed as a viable option besides Laura and Tara, and she got some dates and pashes this week. After seeing some form of memento that reminded Elise of her beloved father, Phil, Matty decided he had to get in on that.

All of Elise’s power seems to come from her dad, which is a SEXY thing on a dating show. Phil’s magic is clearly still worki ng, and I am frankly more convinced about the chemistry between Matty and Phil, but in a kind of adopted paternal nature. I think they might go fishing after all this craziness is over.

The Losers

-10 pts – Flo

Ah, the crazy witch-battle between Flo and Matty continues! As long time viewers might remember, Flo tried to curse Matty with her never-ending dancing clogs on the very first night. Remember that? We were so much younger then. Later, Matty tried to capture Flo’s soul by encasing their hands in plaster forever. In the ‘tricking my loves with childhood mementoes’ portion, Matty produced her creepy voodoo doll/ familiar ‘Knupf’, which at first seems to be chilling and horrifying.

However, Flo then calmly states ‘I used to cut off his ears when I was mad at him’ which shows that she is the true monster.

I feel like Matty is going to stop their occult sparring and just kick her out, because yeeeeeeesh.

“Once I cut his leg off” she finishes, staring blindly into the distance.