All The Heterosexual Nonsense I Was Forced To Endure During Episode 1 Of ‘The Bachelorette’

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

[Mrs Doubtfire voice] Hellllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Yes, that is a reference from the 1993 movie Mrs Doubtfire, undoubtedly a reference everyone understands, especially those of you reading who were born after that year! Now, that wasn’t just a fun and delightful way to welcome you to the new season of The Bachelorette, it was also a BRILLIANT and INSIGHTFUL reference to something that we will be experiencing in this episode.

But for now, welcome to yet another season of The Bachelorette! We will get through this together!

If it feels to you as though we haven’t had a break or even slept a full 8 hours or have not felt one moment’s peace within our souls, bodies, or minds since The Bachelor ended, you are on the same page as me.

I will yet again be sharing recapping duties with Junkee’s Patrick Lenton, partly because we are both extremely popular and busy queers about town, and partly so that we don’t have literal breakdowns!

There are however, some key differences between our recapping of the season just gone and this one, and they are:

• Angie! She has been a star of Gogglebox for several years, and it seems as though her BFF Yvie from the show (who rules) will also feature on The Bachelorette. I love that.
• Angie is, I think, going to be good! She is somewhere between Instagram model and big celebrity, and I think it will be the sweet spot for a fun season. She’s funny.
• It’s SO much easier and more fun to make jokes about a big group of men, rather than women! You can decipher the reasons for yourself (they are much worse).
• There’s a much more diverse cast of men with less white people! Hahahah just kidding that will never happen.
• Unlike last season when Patrick and I were both single and bitter queers who scoff at the very implied existence of love, only I am that this season!

Another difference (and now please refer back to my Mrs Doubtfire opening) is that this season they are sending in Angie’s BROTHER into the house, UNDERCOVER! He is unfortunately not dressed as a quite-scary-in-retrospect ex-husband pretending to be an old lady in order to nanny his kids and eventually almost kill his wife’s new boyfriend Pierce Brosnan with cayenne pepper that he is allergic to, as happens in Mrs Doubtfire..

but as a contestant! I’ve always said the one thing The Bachelor and Bachelorette series needs is some weird mildly incestuous storylines! Can’t wait to see how this pans out, and truly anything that helps bad men be discovered is okay in my books.

Once again, as always, we will be ranking each episode based on heterosexual nonsense and whom was least annoying all the way to most annoying. The rankings consistently change a lot, especially during The Bachelorette, because like with real life, some men are only able to keep up the facade they are decent humans for a certain amount of time before you see the real them.

I am practically BRISTLING with how annoyed I expect to be, and it is giving me a sick thrill that I expect will wear off very quickly and I will pivot to simply being annoyed.

Get excited! The first episode is always fun, if you are playing a drinking game and want to get fucked up, I recommend drinking every time a man says something he wants in a woman that sounds good but actually just means ‘skinny’ or ‘will do what I say.’

I love being gay, let’s get into it wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

LEAST ANNOYING

CIARRAN

Look, I know. I’m as shocked as you are! But at this stage of the show it is important to have entertaining and funny people around that absolutely will not make it to the end. Ciarran is one of these.

He is VERY English, so english in fact that his accent sounds fake, and that is the right level of English to be.

He is reminiscent of Paddy from the last season of Bachelorette, except that Ciarran actually seems to be quite quick-witted and came out with some lines. One of these was referring to himself in his red velvet suit as “sexual Willy Wonka.”

That’s clearly funny. I also appreciate a man who has a good skincare routine, doesn’t take himself too seriously, and I found him quite charming throughout the episode (I’m sure this will change).

But fair play to the lad!

TIMM

Timm is being set up to be around for awhile.

At first he put me off when he said “If Angie is going to be my girl…” because I think you should only reference “my girl” if talking about the 1991 Macauley Culkin movie and perhaps bee safety. But then he slowly won me back.

He immediately made a good impression on Angie by bringing her sunflowers, stumbling on the flower that she believes her nanna shows her signs with.

This was undoubtedly just a coincidence, but gosh we all love to give meaning to things in order to make some semblance of sense in this cruel world don’t we!

Angie’s undercover brother found it hard to get a read on Timm, and so did I — I suspect his dual personality of sweet and meaningful with her, and rambunctious and cheeky with the boys will be his downfall when it is revealed only the latter is real, but maybe not!

I have hope because of two moments: One when he was sweet to Jamie.

And the other when he whispered to Jess that he should have been the one going home.

Also he has a very cute smile

And looks like a lesbian sometimes and we know how much I love that (a lot).

Let’s hope he proves himself to be Good. In any case he is also fun and funny to watch for the time being, and he is the kind of guy you would have a long conversation with on ketamine in a Marrickville sharehouse. I ASSUME.

I was happy to have his presence so far! Do NOT disappoint me.

MATT

Matt did a cool bike trick!

He’s also ADORABLE

He seems sweet, and did nothing annoying to me.

NIRANGA

Niranga is on the list for his funny joke when discussing which contestant might be Angie’s brother and he goes “Well it’s not me…clearly!”

Funny!

MOST ANNOYING

JESS

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Like I know Jess was cast in order to annoy me, and I would like to congratulate the show on nailing it. “Send in a sleazy Queensland councillor who has no redeeming qualities in to specifically annoy Rebecca Shaw” someone said, and it happened. Yes this is all about me!!!!!!!!!!

Jess DID however give Angie the opportunity to burn him multiple times and that was very, very, funny. Like when he brought out the throne and could barely carry it, and she was like “bit puffed there?”

And then when he gave her his apartment key and told her she’d “have to work for it,” she replied,” What about you work for me there champ?”

Anyway he looked and sounded like one of those men that has been drinking beer at the bowls club for ten hours and kept calling her “my darling” and “my girl” and “my dear” and I wanted to scrub off my own skin with my keyboard.

I actually think he went a little bit tooooo far, and so it became completely unbelievable that Angie would ever keep him around over any other human male on earth. But she did, probably for the DRAMA, and I imagine he’ll be gone next week. And then we will finally feel clean once more.

My guess from the promo for the next episode is that he is being kept around long enough for Angie to have a Feminist Rant at him, to establish her beliefs. I have never seen a feminist rant on this show, and absolutely am frothing for it.

Oh there was there was also the thing where Jess said if he got offered the 24-hour-rose (self explanatory) that he’d say no to it, and that got relayed back to Angie by her brother and he accused Jamie of telling her and Jamie got upset. It was odd!

JAMIE (THE FIREMAN)

Did you guys know that Jamie is a fireman.

I was off him from the start, wearing his fireman outfit and bringing a puppy to win her over. A boring gimmick, sorry! And puppies are cute but they are not just for the bachelorette red carpet! Where is that puppy now? Bring her to me!!!!!!!!

Also want to shoutout the guy who failed miserably by bringing a vegetarian coeliac a meat pie, but I would like to encourage anyone reading to bring me a pie. In any case Jamie’s puppy stunt also backfired.

It was funny because Angie completely ignored him as soon as she saw the puppy. He kept saying things like “I’ve seen you be interviewed, I think we are on the same wavelength” and she’d be all

And he’d be like “you’re a bright star” and she’d be all

Anyway then he wore his fireman outfit the whole night, and like, we get it sir.

He also got very weird and jealous about the time everyone was getting to spend time with her, and insisted that he only got 3 minutes out of 10 and that he deserved 7 minutes, and he just ended up walking around angrily muttering numbers dressed as a fireman.

UNTIL Jess accused him of dobbing, and then it was a real Alien V Predator situation when they had a showdown, a very boring showdown, but one where Jess pushed Jamie, even though Jess is the size of a goblin and Jamie is the size of a giant man with muscles who fights the element of fire for a living. Men!

Anyway it all meant that Jamie had to go sit by a fire to be sad. Because he’s a fireman.

But this accusation REALLY shook Jamie for some reason I could not fathom and he literally cried a lot of tears. Men are so emotional.

I do not think it is bad when men cry, I think it is good and healthy and I’d love to see more men cry on this show. I do however think it is weird that Jamie cried about the thing he cried about, when adding it to all of his other intense actions and personality red flags. Sorry! I think he was putting it on! Either that or he’s odd in a bad way! Annoying! No thanks!

KAYDE

Ok “Kayde.” I can BARELY take it when men have self-confidence, so you can imagine that arrogance in men is untenable and disgusting to me. Kayde has unfortunately been told he looks like Zac Efron a lot, and is therefore unbearable.

SPECIAL MENTION: CARLIN

You may come for me for this, but I’m not sorry. Carlin seems nice, great. I love nice men. Some of my best friends He got the 24-hour-rose, good for him.

HOWEVER. However. Let’s not pretend that the only reason he is in such a good position isn’t simply because he is extremely handsome. The man pulled out a GUITAR, and SANG A SONG, that he WROTE. At the COCKTAIL party. Angie was like “Usually I’d find that cringe, but weirdly for some reason I didn’t.”

HERE’S THE REASON ANGE:

I’m all for him proving himself to be a worthy contender, because I’m sure he’s here for a long time, but Angie herself said he didn’t have banter. He has his face, and his white suit, and his handsome face. Let’s be REAL here.

NEVER TO ANNOY ME AGAIN

Sorry to Oliver, and some other guy.

I remember Oliver because I drew him in the office sweepstakes. I drew Chelsie in The Bachelorette, and won, and now I go out first here. Men ruining my life as usual. Also leaving us was Angie’s brother Brad or Mark, I can’t remember which one was his real name. I thought it was a fun twist, and I think he should have stayed the whole season, allowing us to see him grow more and more uncomfortable as men spoke to him about his sister’s bazoongas.

I feel bad for the two actual contestants that left because imagine watching JESS get a rose over you. I would try to have my lawyer stop the episode from going out. In this scenario I have a lawyer, and also she’s my wife.

Anyway thanks for tuning in to reading, sorry this is so long they will get shorter! I just also need to point out that Angie, a Queenslander, says “HOLY Dooley” and not the incorrect “HOOLEY Dooley” as everyone else says. For this, and many other reasons, none of these men seem good enough for her, but we will see who shows themselves to be worthy over the coming weeks.

Make sure you read Patrick’s recap tomorrow.

I’ll be back next week with more current movie references, and more critiques of masculinity!

Bye!

---

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