The Bachelor Recap: A Bluffer’s Guide To The DRAMA Of Tonight’s Finale

Okay, so let’s be real: everyone at your work watches The Bachelor. Everyone at uni watches The Bachelor. You may have tried to avoid it, but now it’s finale week and the conversations are just too fun. Here’s a quick primer so you can navigate your way through and finally get someone to talk to you on your lunch break.

Sam is the Bachelor and he is a 34-year-old fitness instructor and owns a kids’ fitness company. He wants to get married and have a family with someone, without the hassle of actually having to go out and find these things himself. So, who are the lucky ladies!?

Lana: 27, a Communications Assistant (whatever that means). She was a latecomer to the house and has giant eyes like a Tim Burton character. Sam? Apparently a huge Tim Burton fan.

Sarah: 26, an Event Manager. She’s a straight talker who looks fantastic in red lipstick and says she comes from Melbourne, but is obviously too glam to come from Melbourne. I can say that as I live in Melbourne and am currently writing this while wearing a potato sack.

Snezana: 34, a Scientific Sales Rep. Woah, there sure are a lot of jobs out there that I’ve never heard of before. She has a kid and has introduced Sam to a name that he previously mistook for a sneeze.

People are still hung up about the fact that Heather — everyone’s favourite cool girl who said cool things like, “I just want a friend to drink beer with” and “Dude!” — was sent home last week. But here’s the thing: there is no way Sam could get rid of Snez in the same episode that he met the fruit of her loins, because that would have made him seem like a heartless asshole. Can you imagine how Australia would have treated him? It would be like Malcolm Turnbull taking the prime ministership from Tony Abbott, except you know, about people we actually care about.

Anyway, don’t feel too bad for Heather; she was on The Project last night making jokes and being reliably quirky.

In the series’ second-last episode, Sam is taking all three women out on dates. The flashbacks start and he remembers how he LOVES that Sarah is driven! He LOVES that Lana is cultured (read: bilingual)! He LOVES that Snez is nurturing, because now that he’s met her kid, her default personality is ‘mother’!

Sam’s first date is with Snez, who apparently had him “speaking in tongues” from the first time he met her, which is a round about way of saying, “I couldn’t pronounce her name until she told me it rhymed with ‘parmigiana'”. The “twist” when it came to Snez was that she had a kid, who Sam met last week and reckoned, “we hit it off right away”. In this show, “hitting it off” apparently means laughing awkwardly next to a tree.

Sam pulls up in a Fast and Furious-style car and picks up Snez. Sam tells her that he is going to take her on a tour of Sydney, which seems strange as he does not actually live there (spoiler: the ‘tour’ turns out to be just driving somewhere near the Opera House). In a voiceover Snez says, “It was white, loud and fast!” and it’s not clear if she’s talking about Sam or the car.

The pair then go to a penthouse that’s filled with mirrors and talk about Snez’s daughter, again. Snez often talks about her daughter as if she’s just waiting to ensnare Sam outside the mansion. But no time for that — Sam has given Snez a dress! Snez has conveniently worn a strapless bra that day! LET’S GO TO THE OPERA HOUSE!

Sam can’t believe how good Snez looks. “I was almost speechless,” he says. Thank god it was *almost* or we wouldn’t have classic one-liners like that. Sam — not the producers, just Sam — has organised for the Australian Ballet to perform to a creepily empty theatre for just the two of them. The ballet begins and Snez cries because she is classy as hell. Sam is almost speechless again! They make out a little, and then go back to the penthouse because they are not drunk enough, and being wasted is a contractual requirement of being on this show.

Back at the penthouse they mention Snez’s daughter about 70 more times, maybe so Sam doesn’t get too drunk and forget that she exists. In a touching moment he tells her, “If someone asked me what I’m looking for, I wouldn’t have described you”. Wait, what? He then corrects himself by saying, “Having a daughter, you know, it’s hard”. Oh. Okay?

Meanwhile, some flawless audience engagement happening on Twitter:

That moment you discover QASHQAI comes standard with Bluetooth® handsfree phone system #TheBachelorAU ? pic.twitter.com/Cg9QfRUTzI

— Nissan Australia (@Nissan_Aus) September 16, 2015

I’ll take five Nissans, my good sir!

Now it’s time for Lana’s date. Their past outings are a montage of awkward dancing to some singing English geezer and wearing terrible hats. Lana still can’t believe she likes Sam, especially because she specifically came on The Bachelor to protest outdated gender norms and heteronormative traditions. Boy, is her face red!

Lana meets Sam at the waterfront, wearing a floppy hat and a flowing white dress, and it all looks like a Taylor Swift video without the accidental colonialism. Sam knows she loves water (?) so they take a seaplane to Palm Beach. While they get cosy in the plane, Lana asks coyly, “How far north are we going to go?” Woohoo, Lana! Get it, girl! Oh wait, she said north. Never mind.

When they get to Palm Beach, Sam tells Lana that her family freaked him out a bit. “I walked in raw!” Sam says, for some reason. Sam says he is scared of Lana’s mum and Lana says her mum is great, so Sam agrees because he is a little bit scared of Lana too. They laugh, then they make out. Osher watches through the CCTV camera he has covertly placed in Sam’s quiff.

LAna's Hair Always and forever #TheBachelorAU

— Osher Günsberg (@oshergunsberg) September 16, 2015

Here’s the thing: Lana seems like the obvious winner, right? But why is that? She’s not exactly an open book. “Lana and I always have great conversations,” Sam says, while they are being dragged at high speed on a plastic tube in the sea. Later at dinner while bullying Lana into moving to Melbourne (which happens to be a favourite pastime of people who live in Melbourne) Lana admits that she “gravitates to Sam on an intellectual level”.

Now, hang on! When exactly did these astute conversations occur? What are these two talking about behind the scenes that is so goddamn intellectual that they can’t imagine discussing with anyone else? Did they discuss splitting the atom at that blackout restaurant thing and I just missed it? Urgh, I don’t know. Sam reckons Lana is the best communicator of any woman he has ever met, so he makes her get into the pool and they make out. Lana just loves the water, you know?

Now we’re onto Sarah’s date. Snez was picked up in a fancy car. Lana was picked up by a plane. Sarah is picked up… by a horse and carriage? It is immediately clear that Sam has no idea what Sarah likes or who she is, so is just hitting up the Default Stuff That Women Like archives to impress her. Then again, the fact that she conveniently lives only two suburbs away from him seems to be a mighty big drawcard. Sam is a simple man.

The problem is: Sarah is not a simple girl. She is scared that he has only seen “glimpses” of her personality, a fact that is confirmed when he takes her out on a generic date to drink tea during the day on a patio. As if sensing that this is the beginning of the end for her, Sarah decides to lose all chill. She uses the word “strategy” (and not in a ‘safe word’ kind of way). She decides she can’t get past the fact that he is still seeing two other girls, and that she wants “the majority of his heart”. When explaining this to Sam, she seems to immediately realise that she has made a huge mistake, panics, and then inexplicably starts examining the underside of her teacup.

The rest of the date unravels as Sarah, knowing she has fucked it, nervously tries to explain “the wall” she has put up between them. Then she starts talking about her ex-boyfriend. Sam looks like he’s having a brain hemorrhage. Sam agrees that Sarah has a wall and even goes as far as to describe it as “massive”. Sarah keeps talking, no one touches the wine and cheese and NO ONE MAKES OUT.

Sam goes out and designs a custom ring for the winner. I wonder how much the jeweller paid for this advertising spot, and I become sad.

It’s rose night, or as both the French and the producers call it, rosé night, and everyone is drinking alone in separate corners of the mansion. In a totally not weird more that has nothing to do with product placement, the three women leave Sam video messages on a tablet device that is not an iPad. Sam says, “I don’t want to spend my life with three women — I want to share it with one”, obviously deciding that the pre-rose ceremony foursome he was going to suggest is not going to fly.

The three women wait in line and Sarah pretty much knows it’s all over for her, particularly as she has been dressed in funereal black and the other two are rocking wedding white. Sam walks in, sighs heavily and closes his eyes. He says Lana’s name first, because obviously. She accepts and whispers something in his ear which, knowing the intellectual conversations between these two braniacs, is probably in Latin. Sam coughs a little and gives Snez the other rose.

Poor Sarah! Sam walks her out, tells her again that she’s “driven” and that he hopes she’s successful in her career. He also sort of tells her that it’s her fault for “putting up a wall”, but that he’ll miss her anyway. All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall, hey Sam?

Tonight: someone loses!