All The Heterosexual Nonsense I Was Forced To Endure During Episode 5 Of ‘The Bachelor’

Hello, and welcome to Junkee’s recaps of The Bachelor, where we watch episodes of The Bachelor Australia and try to pretend we’re OK with all the hetero nonsense we see in front of us.

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Hello! Welcome to another week of The Bachelor! How are you? What have you been up to? Have you been drinking plenty of water? Have one now while we are thinking about it. DON’T stop reading though, take me with you. Okay now that we are all refreshed and hydrated, it’s time to get stuck into tonight’s episode.

The ep was strangely structured, with half an episode, a rose ceremony, and then another half of an episode. This is probably due to how they are parceling out episodes because of the upcoming lockdown eps. However, I like to imagine that it’s actually because the show producer saw Tenet and is on some Christopher Nolan bullshit.

Whatever the case, this episode was our most Locky-decentralised so far, and mostly featured a lot of women standing around a beautiful garden calling each other crazy.

LEAST ANNOYING

Kristina

We will get into the drama from tonight’s cocktail party in a bit, but from the start of this season a lot of the action has revolved around Kristina, Areeba and Juliette. The latter two are big personalities that have taken the spotlight until now, but in this episode, Kristina came into her own.

She was quiet and calm, but made the occasional deep-cutting and sarcastic remark. As a lesbian, we are biologically inclined to become obsessed with this kind of woman, often starting with our friend’s mean older sisters in high school.

She just sat around looking beautiful and composed, and occasionally saying things about the drama like “they don’t exist to me.”

There was also a funny moment where she told an angry Areeba to smile, so that none of the other women would feel they had the upper hand.

She’s everything. Help.

Laura’s One Liners

Sorry, sorry I’m trying to delete it. But Laura is confusing to me!

On one hand, she says some shitty annoying stuff and seems to just want to stir up trouble. But on the other hand, she delivers some really funny deadpan lines. Like in tonight’s episode, referencing some fighting, when she said “We’ve got more than 500g of beef here.”

Then when there was tension and Osher arrived suddenly she said, “we’ve gone from The Bachelor to Thank God You’re Here.”  That’s funny, I’m sorry to say.

But the best moment came when she was talking about how often she thinks about Locky, and she said “I think about him in the shower, I think about him on the toilet… that’s too much isn’t it?” and caused a producer to have to respond.

Sorry, but I enjoyed this.

This Llama

This Llama popped his little head onto screen during a conversation between two humans, and then appeared again later, and it was delightful. More llama, give us llama drama, llama for next bachelor.

 

MOST ANNOYING

Roxi

This season of The Bachelor is fast taking us into Mean Girls v West Side Story territory. On one side we have Areeba, Juliette, Kristina, and Kaitlyn.

On the other side we have approximately seven hundred white women, led by Roxi.

To be fair to the rest of the women, most of the issue seems to be coming from Roxi in particular, with seemingly everyone (including those who comfort her) annoyed by the way she acted.

Now, I know I’m not usually the best at recapping actually what has gone on in each episode, but this time it’s not my fault — as I found it completely baffling. In more proof that the producer are giving us some confusing Christopher Nolan plot lines, this episode was centred around a bizarre Roxi vs Juliette issue I simply could not figure out.

I’ll try to explain. Roxi had just come back from her one-on-one with Locky, where she had been given a rose. The point of the cocktail party is generally to make a connection with Locky, so that he gives you a rose in the ceremony following it. Roxi had a rose, so should have been chill.

Locky came into the party, and Juliette, who had missed out on the football game last episode, took him aside to explain why, and have a chat. Completely normal ‘cocktail party on The Bachelor etiquette’ behaviour.

This caused Roxi to melt down, saying that Juliette was going to throw her under the bus, spread lies and rumours about her, and that it had ruined her night. She then complained to everyone about it the entire night (and following day), and cried pretty much the entire time.

When the other women tried to console her by saying “you’ve got a rose, there’s nothing to worry about” she would say “it’s not ABOUT THAT!” when in fact the night is literally only about that, and in fact the entire television show itself.

Then she and some other women decided that Juliette was “planning something”, Laura asked Juliette what she was planning, Juliette acted confused because wtf would she even be planning, this isn’t a heist movie.

Roxie continued to say that Juliette had dragged her name through the mud to Locky, and we were given no explanation as to why on earth she would think this, so it was all extremely confusing and annoying.

Then Areeba got mad because just as she was having her cocktail chat with Locky finally, he left to go and console Roxi, who ALREADY HAD A ROSE.

This part was the only part that made sense, and Areeba was right to be mad. Anyway sorry, I don’t know if that was even possible to follow. If you need more explanation, i’ll tattoo what happened on my body and you can come and find me.

If Roxi is truly into Locky and wants to end up with him, she has made the terrible misjudgement of getting ‘involved in drama.’ To win this show and win the heart of the bachelor, you have to stay separate from the drama, because men are like nervous horses, and will be spooked at the slightest sign of imperfection or personality.

Rosemary

Sorry! I like Rosemary, I think she’s fun and nice. Unfortunately in this episode we had to endure her reading out a poem rap thing to Locky in the middle of the cocktail party, and I don’t know why it happened, and I don’t know what we did to deserve it. Some of her gimmicks, fine. Penguin, great. But I draw the line at this. A woman has to have boundaries.

Here is some of it, you need to experience it, so I am not alone.

so it was only just the other day when we first met, you grabbed me by the flipper and thats when i started to sweat

i never knew i had a type, until i saw your hype

you can tell i’m more than wifey material, because i can cook more than a bowl of cereal

Poor Locky did a great job of pretending it was good, which will be great practice for when his children show them their terrible drawings. The poem did what nobody else could that evening — it brought both feuding sides together, united in cringe.

It’s truly beautiful what art can do.

NEVER TO ANNOY AGAIN

After making such a HUGE impression by doing a monologue about red-haired discrimination, Zoe-Claire had disappeared from the edit almost completely, only cropping up tonight to be eliminated. Apparently there was also another woman named Claire, who seems nice, and was also eliminated.

I have a feeling we will be talking about Zoe-Claire for a long time, and undoubtedly we will see her being sunburned on Bachelor In Paradise at some point in the future.

So that brings us to the end, my precious readers. Thank you for coming on this journey with me, tomorrow night you will be in the smooth yet masculine hands of Patrick Lenton, and he will cradle you like a baby bird.

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The Bachelor airs on Channel 10 Wednesday and Thursday nights, and Junkee will be recapping both episodes.

Rebecca Shaw is the co-host of the very regular comedy podcast Bring A Plate. She tweets @brocklesnitch