This Week On The Bachelor: Mountains, Mints, And Manipulation
Another ridiculous week is over, and it's coming down to crunch-time.
Feel that itch on the back of your neck? Well, you’re either being bitten by a spider, or you can sense that pre-finale fever. Which means you have some kind of Spidey Sense, so maybe that Spider was radioactive! Either way, you’re going to need a doctor very soon.
Wednesday!
I’m not sure if this is The Bachelor or a commercial for Metamucil. Now they can ALL ride horses!
The remaining girls sat around making small talk, before being burst in upon by Osher who, based on his first words, had been listening from behind a door, Tony Wonder style. He announced a single date in which the lucky girl would be visited by someone very special – I half expected him to pause awkwardly, then loudly exclaim, “ME! It’s Osher’s time to shine!”.
Instead, he left an envelope with “may the fairytale continue” on the card.
A little girl dressed as a fairy arrived to take Sam on her date. Which basically makes her the youngest most magical pimp I’ve ever encountered. Sam was given a present – a pretty princess dress – before the fairy kissed her and left. The entire thing was either an adorable gesture, or a dedicated and unsubtle fuck-you to Sam’s age.
Blake finally reveals his true identity.
What followed was legitimately adorable: Sam got taken to Bunda, a high-end jewellers, to borrow some jewellery for the night. Sam was crying and shaking from a startling lack of exposure to finery, with Blake seeming to genuinely get choked up as he told her that she’s one of the world’s best kept secrets.
This put her up there with the city of rampaging subterranean Mole-Men who live in the hollowed-out Earth’s core, waiting for the upworlders to let their guard down.
Be sure to stay tuned for the first season of The Bachelor: Moleman Edition. Will Crgolor find his love?
Blake took Sam to the Tea Room at the Queen Victoria Building and, after negotiating seven thousand pre-lit candles, they sat. Then they got up and danced.
It was stilted but cute, Lumiere and Mrs Potts standing outside watching through the window. When Sam dropped a mint down her dress, Blake handed it to her, pretending it was a wedding ring. If it were a wedding ring, however, she probably wouldn’t have swallowed it.
After Blake and Sam left, the piano player was paid in macaroons.
Sam ended up losing it completely, confessing her feelings through tears. Blake said he was falling for her. They kissed, and the sound of ovaries exploding echoed throughout every capital city in Australia.
The group date had been announced as ‘a taste of the exotic’, with Louise, Laurina, Jess and Lisa and Zoe — everyone but Sam. It couldn’t have been more different: an Arabian Nights style soiree, with Jess blinking in bullet-time and Laurina complaining at a rate of knots.
The girls were fed fancy food and then forced to belly-dance. Jess continued to manipulate Blake like a kitten with a human’s emotions, and Laurina… holy crap. Laurina deployed ballistic missiles of neuroses, turning the way Blake rubbed his eye into a spiral of self-doubt and toxic whining. Later in the episode, she staggered into the room to retrieve her bag, freaking him out even more. Eventually, of course, she was kicked out of the house, but not before her final horcrux was destroyed.
Producers have had to replace the real candles on set with electronic ones, after Jess’s blinking kept blowing them all out.
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Thursday!
It was a risky gambit having Osher and Blake standing with their back to a Blue Mountains cliff face, with Jess facing them; a single slow blink from her could generate enough wind to fling them to their deaths. Which is eerily appropriate given that, after their clifftop debrief, the girls and Blake had to abseil down the 100 foot drop together, with Sam declaring, “I am afraid I might die”. She paused, then continued, “…but if it makes Blake like me…”
All the girls got one-on-one time with Blake. First was Louise, who concluded their meeting by jumping up and wrapping her legs around him like a Bond villain. Blake promised “some very special accommodation”, which turned out to be a nuclear fallout bunker, where the girls prepared for their incredibly boring catch-ups.
More than any other episode so far, Thursday showcased the incredible awkwardness and reality of Blake dating five women at once. It also showed what it looks like when they slowly eat raspberries. Which was upsetting.
Louise, oblivious to the cameras, let Blake gently enter her.
Zoe told Blake she thought guys like him only existed in rom-coms. Blake paused, before responding “…You got me”, removing his rubber mask to reveal that he was, in fact, Matthew McConaughey. Lisa went on a stilted horse-ride and picnic, then Jess leapt onto Blake, took him to her creepy blink-sauna, and told him there’s nothing she won’t do for love, admitting by default that she is, in fact, up for anal. (She still didn’t make it through to next week, though.)
The real deal, though, was Blake’s date with Sam. The entire thing was furtive glances, choking up, and heartfelt utterances; I strongly suspect that with Sam at the tail-end of Blake’s five dates, the show’s producers have given away exactly who Blake is going to end up with.
The phrase ‘If you like it then you should have put a ring on it’ has a variant: ‘If you sort of like it then you should put a huge weird disc on it’.
The rose ceremony was typically tense. Osher told the girls that for four of them, next week would be the home date where Blake would meet their families — a statement that would have been cripplingly tactless were any of the girls orphans.
If Blake did go with an orphan, though, they’d make a hard knock wife.
*drops mic*
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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, presents on Triple J, and tweets from @PaulVerhoeven