Bachelor Recap: The Book of Revelation
This season of The Bachelor begins with the Bachelor himself, Richie Strahan, talking to Fitzy on the panel, where he…
Oh, that’s actually The Project, one of many shows that Richie is starring on this season. The Bachelor actually starts….right…about…
NOW.
“Where will love take us this year?” asks The Artist Formerly Known As Andrew G. It’s such a difficult question to answer, but it will almost certainly take us, sooner or later, on a balloon ride.
Now we get an in-depth look at Richie, the handsome young man who enjoys taking his shirt off, diving into pools, and reminiscing about his happy times with Sam, the woman who rejected him on national television. Of course that was after Sam herself was rejected by the Bachelor, Blake Garvey, so Richie is one of those rare men who isn’t good enough for the woman who wasn’t good enough for a complete douchebag.
A flashback to The Bachelorette reminds us of the time Sam told Richie he had “a beautiful soul”, which is pretty much the verbal equivalent to being kicked in the balls.
The knockback on The Bachelorette took Richie a long time to get over, but with the help of his family, his friends, his motorbike and a series of long soulful gazes into the distance, he’s finally regained the self-confidence to go back on TV and hit on twenty five women at once. “I’m ready to go through this crazy process again,” he says, as if it’s the same process, when actually begging for a woman’s attention is quite a different process to having dozens of women beg for yours.
So let’s meet the women who have decided that the only way they will ever find happiness is total debasement of their entire identities in the service of a man’s ego. First there is Megan, who thinks she is a mermaid and is willing to do anything for love except retain her self-respect.
Next there is Noni, who is a swimwear designer who not only loves bacon, but is one of those people who thinks loving bacon counts as a personality trait.
And now, Marja, for whom yoga is everything. “If the Bachelor was a yogi I would die,” she said, which is one of the stranger things anyone has ever said on TV.
Oh God, it just gets worse. Janey is a children’s entertainer, but we don’t see her entertaining children. We do, however. see her wandering the streets alone IN HER CHILDREN’S ENTERTAINER COSTUME. She enjoys going out for ice cream dressed as a four-year-old, and giggling like a psychopath.
Next is Georgia, who claims to be an overachiever, an alpha female, and “hard on the outside and soft on the inside”. In fact she claims to have a “mushy heart”, so she’ll probably be the first to be medivacced out of the mansion.
Speaking of the mansion, Richie has just arrived there, to find out the owner still hasn’t taken down their Christmas lights. He reveals to TAFKAAG that he is thirty years old and looking for love and bad at doing a convincing impression of a human being.
“My palms are sweaty, my heart’s beating out of my chest,” says Richie, cursing his decision to stop off for a kebab on the way to the mansion. “I’ve had some wild experiences in my life, but nothing compares to standing there waiting for that first limo to arrive,” he goes on, proving that in fact he has had no wild experiences in his life.
First to arrive is Nikki, who we haven’t met before, I guess because she’s somehow less interesting than the others. Richie tells her that she makes the dress look amazing, and it’s certainly true that she’s wearing it the right way around and with her arms in the sleeve, so I’d say it’s definitely arranged in the intended manner.
“Wow,” says Richie after meeting Nikki. He seems a bit flustered. After ten more of these meetings he’ll probably have a stroke.
Next to arrive is Megan, the one who thinks she is a mermaid. “You look incredible,” stammers Richie, only just avoiding adding, “both of you” as he goggles at what might be termed the most eye-catching portion of her presentation. Megan tells Richie about all the things she likes. Eerily, Richie likes every single one of them too. MEANT TO BE?
Richie asks Megan what she’s like when she’s in love and Megan replies with a story about being at the bottom of the ocean because that’s the only thing she’s capable of discussing.
Next to arrive is Janey, the deranged children’s entertainer who spends her spare time begging frogs to kiss her. Richie tells her she looks incredible, making this the third woman he’s said this to and strengthening the suspicion that he doesn’t really mean it. Janey tells Richie that her favourite character is Cinderella and that she wants to date him, and then she tells us that Sam Frost is her hero and if she gets to kiss Richie she’ll buy Sam Frost two bottles of champagne and a jumping castle and it becomes pretty clear that Janey’s mental age has not kept pace with her outfit.
Then Janey leaves her shoe with Richie. You know, like Cinderella? LIKE CINDERELLA? Whatever institution Janey lives in, the staff have been extremely remiss in letting her escape.
A few more women arrive in a speedy montage that makes it clear how little anyone would want to know who they are. Then Eliza arrives, to the strains of a disturbing tune on the soundtrack: like the kind of tune that plays in a movie just before the knife attack happens. We quickly learn why the producers made this choice, as Eliza tells Richie that she’s written a song for him. “Can I sing it for you?” she asks, and Richie laughs nervously and agrees, knowing the worst thing you can do with a violent criminal is antagonise them. Just humour her until the SWAT team arrives, Richie, that’s the way.
Eliza sings her song and I’m not saying it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life, I’m just saying that if I’ve ever seen a worse thing I’ve repressed it.
Blessed relief as Eliza floats off to her next victim, and here’s Alex, who seems quite normal until she reveals that she’s written something for Richie too. Why do these women do this? Why did they sign up for The Bachelor if all they want to do is terrify this man?
What Alex has written is a poem. Or at least I think it’s a poem. Bits of it rhyme, so I guess it must be. It’s pretty awful because she rhymes “start” with “start” and reads it in the sort of voice you’d use while reciting a shopping list — but at least it’s not Eliza’s song, so in relative terms she’s Maya Angelou.
A few more quick looks at women too boring to meet, including one who Richie insists on spinning around to make sure she doesn’t have a tail or anything. Then another woman makes Richie spin around, to check that he knows how to follow instructions.
Some inept saxophone music greets the next bachelorette that we greet in detail. “I’m fun, I’m successful, I have amazing style, I’m pretty much the whole package,” says Keira, who is incapable of forming a relationship by any other means than competing against two dozen other women in a game show. “What turns you on, Keira?” asks Richie, but Keira refuses to answer: let him wait a few days to find out that she is a robot incapable of sexual feelings.
At the cocktail party, the women have gathered to have a nice chat and pretend they don’t all want each other dead. Eliza sings her song again for reasons that nobody will ever understand, and Keira cannily notes that Eliza is terrible and should go away forever.
Oh here is Noni, who as you’ll recall, loves bacon. How much does she love bacon? So much that she gives Richie a bouquet of flowers made out of bacon! Just like a serial killer would! Richie, aware that he is about to die, accepts the hideous meat-blooms with good grace. “Don’t go bacon my heart,” says Noni, just in case Richie wasn’t already terrified.
Next comes Vintaea, who tells Richie she’s “fucking excited” to meet him, and proves that this show would be MUCH better if everyone was swearing all the time.
And now Olena, whose thing is speaking Russian and staring slightly too hard at people. I think she might be some kind of sleeper agent.
The ladies sit around talking and planning each other’s deaths, and Keira takes careful note of how much uglier and stupider and less well-dressed every other woman is than her. Their passive-aggressive babble is interrupted by TAFKAAG, who arrives and shows them a red rose, which causes them to have 25 simultaneous orgasms, trained as they are in Pavlovian fashion to respond sexually to flora.
He then shows them a white rose, which excites them even more: Keira yells out “BRING OUT THE WHITE ROSE” which is a weird thing to shout because he just did. The white rose will go to the woman who made the best first impression. Eliza is hoping her song was enough to get her the white rose. Haha, Eliza, you freaking maniac.
The winner of the white rose will get private time with Richie in a secret retreat, where there will be no witnesses.
Richie turns up now to tell the women that they should feel comfortable opening their hearts to him, as he is there looking for love and also will be putting his tongue inside the mouths of all the other women while they are opening their hearts.
Richie sits down on the couch, and straight away Noni asks if she can talk to him for a moment — presumably to discuss bacon. While they’re off talking about meat, psychotic fairy princess Janey and psychotic singer-songwriter Eliza discuss the moon and how big it is and probably what it would be like if you could fly to the moon and dance with the moon pixies.
At this point Nikki pulls a power move and steals Richie away from Noni, much to the rest of the women’s chagrin, but much to the amusement of the one who looks like Katy Perry — not sure which one that is. Nikki tells Richie that she enjoys staying in the same place her whole life and never doing anything interesting, and Richie agrees that it’s great and that’s why he still lives with his mother. They have a lot of tedium in common.
Now Sasha comes along to have a chat and kicks Nikki to the kerb. Then someone else, then someone else, and there’s a whole parade of women strutting into the middle of someone else’s conversation and trying to find a way to abandon all their dignity while retaining the appearance of a person who has self-esteem.
Alex and Richie are sitting talking about her awful poem. Alex tells Richie that she has a five-year-old son, and Richie keeps a terrified rictus frozen in place on his face as he responds politely and mentally puts a black cross through her name. Luckily, someone else shows up to steal Richie’s attention away and tell him about how she’s beautiful and well-toned and has no children.
Alex tells the other women she has a kid, and Keira sweetly uses the fact to begin breaking down her confidence. Keira can’t fathom the lack of foresight of a woman who would recklessly go around having children without even considering the fact that one day she might go on The Bachelor. But then it’s easy for Keira, who reproduces via spores.
It should be noted that although Keira is pretty smug about the advantage she has over Alex, a single mother won The Bachelor last year, so stuff that in your peignoir.
Oh the Katy Perry one is Georgia, from before. The alpha female. She feels the other women have no class, which is correct. She also feels they are behaving like children, which is equally correct. She also swears repeatedly, which is awesome, although it’d be better if they didn’t bleep it.
Keira finally gets her wish: some time alone with Richie to bite his face off. Richie explains that when he asked her what turned her on, what he meant was…well basically that, but he’d like to emphasise that he didn’t want to phrase it that way. Keira tells Richie that what turns her on is receiving white roses, just so he’s in no doubt how unpleasant she is. She adds that he’s sweet and that she’s ready to be with someone and that she’d basically like to lick him all over and snuggle up in his lower intestine.
Cut to later in the evening, and Eliza is singing AGAIN. What is wrong with this woman? Besides writing dreadful songs and singing them horribly, Eliza also enjoys penguin impersonations and moving her head in a disconcerting manner. Because the evening hasn’t quite hit its nadir yet, she then organises a “plank-off”, which is much worse than what it sounds like.
Richie and two women lie face-down on the floor for a bit, and then get up. Something about this causes Richie to be so impressed by Tiffany’s “will to win” that he reads a sentence about it off a cue card and then gives her a rose. Only a red one, though — you need more than planking to get the white, as the old saying goes.
At this point the show drops possibly its biggest ever bombshell when it is revealed that it’s not over yet. In fact there’s HALF AN HOUR to go. Jesus wept.
“There are some massive personalities here tonight,” says Eliza, and if this is true, it’s a shame none of the people on camera has one of them. She notes that usually she is the “loud, crazy one”, by which she means that she’s usually the one everyone wants to get away from because she’s always telling people how loud and crazy she is.
Meanwhile Vintaea is saying “fuck” over and over again because her earrings are too heavy and her boobs are bigger than normal. Vintaea is the best one here.
Janey has been sitting still all night waiting for Richie to bring her shoe back, because she is certifiable. Finally he comes back and puts the shoe back on her foot and all the enablers surrounding them squeal with delight. “This is better than any fairytale,” Janey says, apparently working on a scale in which the quality of a fairytale is proportional to how many other women are standing around hoping to have sex with the prince when he puts a shoe on a stranger.
Speaking of shoes, Megan doesn’t have any on. Richie notices this and Megan explains by telling him she’s from Geraldton, site of the terrible Shoe Famine of the early 2000s. Richie and Megan have a great talk about how terrible shoes are and how much fun it is to jump off cliffs. Olena comes along to pull Richie away from the shoeless harpy, but Richie tells her to get back in her box and gives Megan a rose. Megan has definitely taken the lead at this point: her habit of eschewing footwear has the edge over Tiffany’s powerful stomach muscles.
Olena chats with Richie about the hackneyed motivational bullshit she said to him in Russian, while Keira bitches to her friends about how bad other women suck. Suddenly, everyone’s sphincters tighten as Richie snatches up the white rose, and walks past a line of tense, hate-filled women, to give it to…
ALEX.
Ha, stick that up ya, Keira! The woman with the kid gets the white rose! Richie says he wants to get to know Alex better because his time with her was cut short and he didn’t get to fully explore his white-hot fear of responsibility. But mainly it’s great because it makes Keira feel bad.
“Strategic,” says Keira, by which she means…nope, no idea. She then does this really funny thing where she pretends that she doesn’t even care about the white rose and starts saying the word “bed” over and over again like Rain Man.
“It’s probably for the best that I didn’t get the white rose,” Keira simpers. Bitch, please, we see your game.
Time for the rose ceremony, in which the women are made to truly understand their worth as human beings. Georgia is nervous about the rose ceremony because she doesn’t know if Richie likes her. Keira isn’t nervous about the rose ceremony because she knows everyone on earth loves her.
Richie begins handing out the roses. Someone called “Faith” gets one. OK look out for her next episode I guess. Nikki gets one because Richie is intrigued by women who kind of look half asleep all the time.
Suddenly, Vintaea, our favourite swearer, steps out of line and walks up to Richie. What’s going on? Everyone is baffled. Confused glances are exchanged. The candles shrug their wicks. The shock is too much to stand and we have an ad break to recover.
AWWWWWWWW NO! Vintaea’s going! “I realise this just isn’t for me,” she says. BOOOOOOOOOOOO! She was literally the only person on this show who I wanted to spend any time with at all. This is, as Vintaea herself would say, a fucking tragedy.
And then Keira does a bitchy little “bye, have a great night” thing that just makes you sick.
Not that it even bloody MATTERS anymore, but Rachel gets to stay, and Olena gets to stay, and oh, Janey gets to stay because Richie just really needs to see how that plane crash turns out. And then…Mia? Mira? Meera? Whoever, she gets to stay, and Kiki gets to stay, and then…someone else gets to stay? Laura, who is a person, gets to stay.
Another crash of percussion on the soundtrack, and we are introduced for the first time to someone called Sophie, who gets to stay. Then Sasha, the Russian one who isn’t Olena, gets to stay, and immediately starts…eating her rose.
Seriously. She’s standing there in the line, nibbling at her rose. What the hell is going on here? What psychoses won’t this show examine?
Richie picks Eliza because he is just a man with terrible terrible judgment, and then Marja, and then…Talena? Something like that. And then Georgia, in recognition of her ability to be honest about how dreadful all the other women are.
Only one rose left, and it’ll go to either Keira, the uber-bitch who has had more screen time than anyone else in this episode, who makes a great personality to put on promos and draw in viewers, or one of two anonymous women I don’t recognise.
WHOEVER WILL HE CHOOSE?
Oh, he chose Keira, that came right out of the blue. The two other whatshernames wander off into the night to join Vintaea as she tries to hitchhike home.
And so a huge number of desperate women are narrowed down to an almost-as-huge number of desperate women, all vying ferociously for Richie’s cardboard affections.
Tune in tomorrow, when Keira is nasty to everyone some more.
