The Bachelor Recap: Riding The Rose Ceremony Pony

Let’s not kid ourselves here: Amber was the part about this season of The Bachelor. Sulky, unstable and perhaps the only bad thing about Canada I can think of, she was the Joffrey Lannister of the Bachelor house. Watching her unravel with increasing ferocity was like watching me, aged ten, skateboarding down the nightmarishly steep hill near my house, my ability to keep my board from losing its shit growing increasingly tenuous second by second. We called this phenomenon ‘the death wobbles’, and it was pretty obvious to everyone that Amber was, behind the scenes, spinning out of control.

But that’s skipping ahead somewhat. This week, Blake dropped something of a bombshell on the girls. Well, Osher Günsberg did, and watching him saunter into the room, eyebrow cocked, and deliver news is always a highlight of The Bachelor. If you go back and listen closely, you can hear Louise saying ‘hi, Osher’ with more and more flirt in her voice every week. They rarely film her doing so, but I’m guessing that’s because her pupils dilate to the size of dinner plates every time he crosses the threshold.

Osher told the girls there’d be no group date. He then let that hang there for a minute, in order for Amber’s lizard brain to fart repeatedly into the confines of her padlock-shaped head, before announcing that there’d be three individual dates instead.

Sam, Laurina and Lauren win this honour; we’ve already seen Sam get taken on a stilted, bizarro date to a ’50s-style drive-in cinema, where she was subjected to a Wolf Creek-y home movie featuring her sister berating Blake for not choosing Sam to couple with. Then they drank milkshakes in a cheesy diner which, apart from a single waitress on roller skates, was completely empty. This leads me to believe the entire date was actually a dream sequence.

Tonight, though, Blake flew Amber to a polo club for a picnic, where Sam dropped the L-word (in a voice-over; she didn’t actually say it to Blake). Meanwhile, Blake took one of the new girls, Lauren, on a date to an Italian restaurant, where she proceeded to be so wooden the waiter almost covered her with a tablecloth and surrounded her with chairs. The gambit by the producers to introduce new girls into the house was, frankly, an odd one; the moment when they entered should have been followed (post Amber-meltdown) by a “JUST KIDDING! As you were.” Instead, they’re still just sort of… here. Like lingering, dead-eyed farts.

Then, we had the piece de resistance: Laurina and Blake going bowling, then going for #DirtyStreetPie. This was a brilliant move; taking Laurina on an everyman’s date is akin to Alladin taking Princess Jasmine back to the fruit seller for dinner and then some post-pomegranate shoplifting, only Jasmine would almost certainly handle it like a champ.

Laurina, however, is both emotionally and physically wound tight like a drum, so getting her into a cocktail dress and taking her to Strike Bowling, then Harry’s Cafe Du Wheels, is like whacking a bear in the nuts: it’s only going to make things worse.

Holy HELL, that was some entertaining viewing. Laurina is less suited for dating other humans and more for The Real Housewives of Melbourne; in fact, I’ll bet dollars to donuts she’ll be on next season in some capacity. Laurina comes across as pretty, mean and stupid, and having her date right after the date with the self-deprecating, sweet and innocent Sam (who twice this episode compares her looks unfavourably to Laurina) seems to show that the producers are cannily setting her up as the Betty to Laurina’s Veronica; the cuddly Yin to a bitchy Yang.

Which brings us neatly back to Amber. The signs have been there all along to indicate that off-camera, Amber has been a nightmare to deal with. And so, rather than call her to a rose ceremony, Blake pulls the unstable Amber aside mid-meltdown, and fearfully but forcefully tells her that whilst she’s hilarious and wonderful, he doesn’t feel the spark, and he won’t do her the indignity of subjecting to her to a rose ceremony. She leaves, Osher tells the girls the news, and Laurina stalks back upstairs, like a deadpan preying mantis.

The whole thing was, much like Amber’s grasp of grammar and tact, jarring and deeply disappointing.

Tomorrow we’ll see Jess (my pick for the winner, though I quite like Chantal) once again get Blake all to herself!

My guess? Gobbies.

Until then!

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The Bachelor airs on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7.30pm, on Channel TEN.

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Paul Verhoeven hosts Save Point, writes for TheVine, and is a presenter on Triple J. He tweets from @PaulVerhoeven