‘The Bachelor’ Week Five Power Ranking: Richie Revels In The Pleasures Of The Patriarchy

It’s that special time of week where we all settle down, grab a glass of sparkling with our ladies and watch the worst aspects of societal gender roles reinforced on screen, knowing that we are but helpless but to acquiesce to the most depressing and demoralising rules of courtship. Nah, just kidding — maybe you’re drinking a cosmo!

This week new villains were made and already fragile hearts were set alight by the flames of jealousy. On tonight’s episode (which regretfully, I’ll be missing; I’ll be too busy clutching a single rose and walking directly into the sea) the contestants are tested by being forced to take part in a haggis-eating contest to prove their dedication to Richie.

Watch as the girls dry retch, attempting to swallow plates full of the putrid, dripping carcass of stuffed animal organs, which is the greatest single metaphor for the patriarchy I have ever encountered.

LET’S DO THE POWER RANKING!

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Faith (5 points)

Every time Faith does something to impress Richie, the girls say: “Oooh, wildcard!!” and then seem to immediately forget about her tendency to win every task by the following week. Faith is the unthreatening girl, you see, the girl who is quick to laugh and rarely gets embroiled in dramas, the carefree girl we all secretly want to be but know that we couldn’t sustain because our souls are dark and complex and cannot just be satisfied by the promise of ice cream.

No offence, Faith!

Faith won the group date task this week, which was an inane compatibility test that aimed to measure Richie’s suitability with the contestants through getting them to answer real head-scratchers like “dogs or cats”. All of these questions were coded of course (SHE CHOSE CATS, SHE’S A HIGH-MAINTENANCE NIGHTMARE!!!) and Richie, Osh and the “relationship expert” Samantha Jane laughed themselves silly watching the girls try to anticipate Richie’s answers and mould themselves into mirror images of this creamy, matchstick and plasticine man.

“Remember, answer what you believe girls!” said Samantha Jane, the relationship expert with two first names.

Faith executed a magnificent power play in the next round, in which they had to amuse Richie while he was blindfolded, a task that is meant to make a statement about society’s reliance on visual stimuli, aiming to take Richie to a deeper consciousness and — hahahaha just kidding, it’s about arousing him in a way that’s still suitable for a 7.30pm time slot.

The catch is, they are being watched on a monitor by the furious losing contestants — which seems to catch many of them off-guard, as if they had never contemplated that EVERYTHING they’re doing is being watched. Everyone must be watched at all times, everything must be viewed and gif-ed and tweeted and Vine-d and snapped and live-videoed until our eyeballs are nothing but screens screens screens and the line between reality and performance begins to dissolve like a single tooth left in a glass of coke.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Faith acted really dumb and cute and gave him a massage, so she won.

Richie chose Faith and Alex to go to the final round because he likes fun girls and also girls who have obviously thought about what position they’ll be in the first time they have sex with him. The third task is to measure trust or some bullshit and involves Richie driving a golf cart while blindfolded, with the dutiful contestant directing him. Faith thinks the car is funny and Richie is funny and life is funny.

Kiki says that, “Faith has a more gentler way of delivering instructions” than Alex, which means she is VASTLY better because girls should be relaxed and comforting at all times, especially when in a car driven by a blindfolded man.

Faith wins. She sticks out her tongue to celebrate.

Faith and Richie munch on nitrogen ice cream that we’re meant to believe that Richie set up for her (“I invented nitrogen!” – Richie “Wow!” – Faith) and Faith explains that “this is her element”. She’s soooo sweet. Richie explains the concept of chemistry to her for a while and she politely listens, but then Richie totally misreads the situation and starts joking about how funny it would be if they got married, moved to Perth and had kids. Faith thinks the conversation is serious. “Aren’t you fly in fly out?” she asks puzzled, wanting to discuss the mechanics of his work life. “Ah, let’s kiss,” says Richie.

They both continue to laugh at ice cream, two balloons tethered to the ground by their joint insistence to continue to dye their hair that blonde colour that does not occur in nature.

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Serena #1 (4 points)

Wohoooah, watch out, look at this cool girl!!

Serena #1 has made powerful strides since entering the Bachelor mansion last week, but I’m still not entirely convinced that she’s not catfishing Richie with her “I’m so relaxed, watch me drink a beer while riding a motorbike one-handed, yes my lips are just naturally this colour” deal. When she wins the single date this week, she immediately feels the energy in the room change; it feels like the concentrated energy of 12 drunk girls wondering how they can murder her and make it look like she was just allergic to roses.

“I think Steph and Richie would just be good mates, she’s one of the boys,” Alex says in quiet desperation.

On this show the women are impressed by any and all moving machinery, so Serena #1 loses her goddamn mind when she sees Richie on a jet ski. This could be because Serena #1 is from Ballarat where apparently “you don’t date”, which yes, is absolutely true, because in Ballarat they just line up corresponding genders and match them off for life according to height order.

Now that Serena #1 has escaped the horrific jail town that is Ballarat, she’s ready to be woo-ed and wants to discover his “depth”, not knowing that Richie is in fact just a quarter inch of plastic. Richie can already sense that Serena #1 gives off the impression of being very rowdy and uncontrollable, but in such a way that never challenges his comfort zone sooooo, she’s perfect!

“She likes anything with an engine, just like me!” Richie says. “This is everything I ever wanted,” Serena #1 says. This makes me so upset :/

Serena #1 motions to Richie’s life jacket and he says “Just like Ghostbusters! Ha ha,” which yep, once again confirms that despite his insistence in referencing them, Richie has actually never seen a film in his entire life and maybe just walked by the DVD section of a Kmart once.

Serena #1 explains that she is guarded and blah blah blah, it’s the same speech all the girls have given as insurance for when they’re inevitably kicked off (except Alex, she seems so free of guards and walls that she’s just like an endless and vacant forest of hope and disappointment that anyone can just wander in and out of as they please, poor Alex).

She never gets jealous of other girls, because jealousy is soooo annoying, how annoying are jealous girls, fellas? All Serena #1 cares about is trust and engines, and saying things like “at the end of the day”. She just never stops thinking about the things that can and cannot happen at the end of the day.

Serena gets a rose and is holding a very powerful position in the show because Richie just LOVES that she “tells it like it is, ha ha”. You know, as long as “it” continues to be a reality that is pleasing to Richie and unthreatening to his dominant masculinity, let’s all shoot ourselves into space :)

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Rachael (3 points)

Since Keira was kicked out for being too spirited, there is a power vacuum in the house that Rachael seems to have occupied with relish. I actually really admire this because up until last week I didn’t even know who Rachael was and maybe Richie didn’t either? Even the other contestants sometimes look at her like, “who u”.

Rachael didn’t do much in terms of the tasks this week — although she did call Serena #1 a “bogan” which from a bougie princess like Rachael is unequivocally the worst thing you can be — but she made EXCELLENT strides at the cocktail party. Compelled to get to know this contestant who he only realised existed last week, Richie takes her to a secluded part of the garden, which makes the other women react as if they had both stripped down and consummated the thing on the front lawn.

“This is really nice! Away from everyone!” Rachael says in glee, because she is a woman with zero chill who is determined to wed before Australia outsources all remaining single women to the Vegemite factory in the middle of the desert. “When I’m with you I don’t feel like I’m talking to a girl, I feel like I’m talking to a woman,” Richie says. Rachael freezes, because society has told her than men don’t like women, they specifically like GIRLS. She contemplates getting a scooter, stealing one of Keira’s abandoned chokers and forgetting everything she knew about superannuation.

Richie reckons she’s direct, and Rachael immediately replies “NOT TOO DIRECT, I HOPE!!!” because she knows that Richie would not like a woman to be direct, no sir! Richie just means that she is sassy; she does not speak any realities that would unsettle this man of Vaseline and straw.

Now, I don’t know if I FULLY believe that last week Rachael told Alex that she “might as well go home” because she has a kid because loooooooool and also, it wasn’t on TV. But part of me desperately hopes that it IS true, because that really would mean that Rachael is the new Heather.

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Alex (2 points)

Alex wants to marry Richie. She is in love with him and wants to carry his seed. She wants to collect his dead skin and bake it into a pie and then eat it, but also share it with Richie because she loves Richie. She wants to bathe in his sweat and swallow his eyeballs whole. “I love Richie,” she is thinking, probably.

Alex’s unbridled adoration for Richie has turned the house against her, particularly when she ferociously groped him during the group date. “She obviously doesn’t care if she’s hurting anyone,” says Noni, as she adjusts her politically incorrect bindi. Everyone said that she was “too controlling” during the golf buggy challenge and guys HATE girls who are controlling, urgh they hate them so! Why won’t she RELAAAAAXXXXXAAHHHHHH, just RELLLAAAXXXXXX ALEXXXAHHHHH.

Alex is so intensely in love with Richie that she manages to cry every episode without fail. Because her identity to Richie seems to be “the mother”, she goes to great pains to emphasise to him that he “was worth leaving” her son at home for. This is a thing she actually says and I hope Son of Alex is not watching.

Alex is savvy though, she is a woman who hides many motivations in her artfully flicked hair. By getting Nikki to feel sorry for her by saying that Rachael said Nikki was a shoe-in, Alex almost gets Nikki to say “Nooo, YOU are the true winner here!” but instead Nikki says “blowing out someone’s candle doesn’t make yours brighter” or something, and Alex starts laughing and crying at the same time which gives her the impression of someone whose skull is trying to escape from their face.

“This isn’t a game,” Alex says. “Now excuse me, while I wash off the sweat from the golf cart race earlier today, good day sir.”

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Kiki (1 point)

I mean, if I had boobs like Kiki I would take the opportunity to push them up against Richie’s back too, 100 percent.

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So, Who Did He ditch?

Bye, Noni! Noni, you were always too brunette for Richie. You had a brunette personality, a brunette sense of humour and most of all, brunette hair. You were not long for this game. “This has shown me there are actually good guys out there,” Noni says through tears, because nothing puts your faith back in men like crushing disappointment and a degrading ranking system, administered by a man who is quite literally a Kraft single shaped like a stick figure.

Bye, Blair! Sorry I never learned your real name. “NO MORE BRUNETTES!” Richie announced, tossing a flaming rose into the air as the blonde contestants cheered in rabid glee.

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The Bachelor is on Channel Ten at 7.30pm Wednesdays and Thursdays from now until forever. Read last week’s power ranking here.