Bachelor Recap: Not A Peasant Plucker
Previously on The Bachelor, Richie made the women dress as kangaroos and fight for reasons known only to his own perverted hindbrain, while Keira continued to somehow be objectively the worst person on a show containing only very bad people.
Tonight, on The Bachelor, everything gets even worse as we are introduced the “Intruders” — the innovation that reality TV producers came up with to ensure that nothing could ever be good and pure ever again in any of our lives.
Here we are at the mansion at night, and we are forced once again to ask, why the hell all the lights? It’s not Christmas, dickheads.
Inside the mansion, Georgia bitches about not having had a single date. Keira also bitches about not having had a single date even though she actually has had a single date. They are interrupted by the angular, forgettable appearance of TAFKAAG, who presents them with an envelope and leaves, that being his entire skillset.
Inside the envelope is a card that says, “Love is on the horizon”, and there is much excitement as the bachelorettes speculate that they may finally be able to prove that the earth is round. Rachael is the winner of the single date, even though Keira had assumed it was going to be her, but Keira rationalises the fact she’s not going on a date as actually being a sign that Richie likes her the best, and then she licks her teeth and goes off to disembowel a chicken. Meanwhile Georgia just gazes at Rachael with undisguised loathing.
Next day Rachael sets off on a speedboat, hoping that her personality will outshine the other girls. So it’s to be hoped that she’s one of those lucky bachelorettes who actually has a personality. The speedboat pulls up alongside a sailing boat, on the deck of which stands Richie in all his blank splendour.
“It’s got an element of him, and an element of him, because he does ropes for his job and I love boats,” says Rachael, so apparently her personality mostly consists of an inability to make any sense while talking. That should outshine everyone.
On the deck of the boat, Rachael tells Richie that she’s a risk-taker, and Richie nods and makes noises, as his programming instructs him to whenever sensors identify a pause in the other person’s conversation.
Richie tells the camera privately that Rachael is “always honest” with him. He has spent literally no time with Rachael before today, so it feels like he’s leaping to conclusions a bit, but he does need to justify to himself his habit of sucking the face of multiple women in such a short space of time, so whatever helps you sleep at night, Richie. Rachael is “very real”, whatever. I guess that means he’s realised what disgusting liars all the other women have been.
Back at the mansion Megan is fretting because she thought it was special when she went on a date and got a rose, but all the others who’ve gone on dates got roses too, so maybe, she surmises, it’s not so special after all. Well done Megan, only a month in and you’ve worked out the premise of the goddamn show.
Meanwhile Richie and Rachael are climbing the rigging of the boat, because you have to fill the time in somehow I guess. Rachael starts to panic as she realises that climbing ropes on a boat requires one to be quite high up. “How’s the view?” Rachael asks. “Not too bad!” says Richie. Rachael assumes he means that he’s looking at her butt, but actually he’s just looking at the sea — he’s a patient man and knows he’ll get a good look at her butt in good time.
Standing on the crow’s nest, Richie and Rachael experience a real moment of something or other. I don’t know why this is happening. He tries to make Rachael join him in the Leo and Kate pose from Titanic, because the producer in his earpiece has told him to, but she’s not very cooperative. Eventually she gives in though, and says Richie “made me feel safe”, because the producer in her earpiece told her that’s what she should be feeling. The camera whirls around the crow’s nest majestically and whatever else you say about The Bachelor, everyone on this show works very hard to convince us against all available evidence that something inspirational is happening.
At the mansion another card has been delivered, informing the Bachelorettes that there will be a garden party for all the Bachelorettes. They’re very excited — even though having a party at the mansion is literally what happens every day for them — but little do they know, am I right? Kiki observes that with ten Bachelorettes left, “that’s exactly the right ratio of girls to Richie”, and if that doesn’t sum up what a sick situation we’ve found ourselves in I don’t know what will.
Back to the date, and after Richie spouts the blatant lie that “I’ve commandeered a boat”, he takes off his shirt and Rachael gets all squeaky and damp over the sight of his pink plastic torso. They jump into the sea and Richie becomes convinced that Rachael is trying to drown him. Probably because that’s what Faith did, the last time he was in the water with a woman.
After getting out of the water, Richie claims to have the perfect plan to warm them up — another lie from a man who has never made a single plan in his entire awful life. The plan is to go below decks and talk to a strange man about rum. The strange man gives them some rum and orders them to smell it. It’s a bit like Blue Velvet. “Breathe through your nose and mouth at the same time,” the rum captain commands. “Is that possible?” giggles notable idiot Rachael. “I feel like a duck,” observes Richie as one of his conversation chips malfunctions.
There follows an awkward yet boring conversation about rum, punctuated with cutaways to Rachael laughing like a goon about how wacky it all is.
After filling themselves with rum, Richie and Rachael sit down for an extremely cheap dinner and talk about nothing for a while. Richie finds Rachael’s willingness to throw herself into the unknown — by which I presume he means her willingness to climb ropes and then jump into water — incredibly attractive. Rachael finds the fact Richie is technically male just as attractive.
Richie now puts into action his one and only seduction technique: telling a woman that he wanted to kiss her earlier in the day. Rachael is suitably impressed by this tired ploy, and falls deeply in love as Richie goes on to tell her that she’s incredible and beautiful, as he has to every single woman he’s dated so far. He then gives her a rose and in a disappointing submission to cliche, she takes it. Then they have a rather off-putting kiss that resembles two pelicans trying to grab fish out of each other’s beaks.
And then it’s back to the mansion to say hi to all the other women who Richie thinks are incredible and beautiful.
It’s the day of the garden party. “We’re all very excited,” says Noni with what seems to be heavy sarcasm, although Alex appears genuinely thrilled by the fact that bocce is available. The Bachelorettes immediately set about the vital task of getting drunk.
But as that happens, dirty pool is afoot. Richie is walking through the woods to a group date, only to be shattered by the sudden appearance of TAFKAAG, who is standing in a clearing looking ominous. “This group date is not going to happen,” says TAFKAAG, and just like all of us, Richie automatically thinks, “Deliverance”.
Sadly that’s not what’s happening. Actually Richie is going to have a date with three NEW women. These are the “Intruders”, three women chosen specifically for their ability to make other women hate them.
Richie’s heart begins racing as Steph shows up on an ATV, because all Richie has ever wanted in life is a woman with wheels. Richie describes Steph as “absolutely beautiful”, a hauntingly familiar phrase.
And here comes Sarah on a motorbike, ready to rock Richie’s world with her garish costume and irritatingly juvenile voice.
The final intruder is Biscuit, a large brown horse with kind eyes and a love of the outdoors. Biscuit has also brought along a woman on his back. Her name is Khalia, and Richie tells us that she is very intelligent, something he has clearly gleaned from the several minutes he’s spent talking to her so far.
Off Richie goes on a horse ride with Khalia, who asks him what the hell he thinks he’s playing at. He tells her that he has a great family and friends, but something was missing, and that something was a large group of women who would fight each other for the right to subjugate themselves to him.
Back at the mansion the drunken Bachelorettes are wondering where Richie is and throwing their bocce balls around. Alex and Megan discuss the Bachelorettes’ dilemma: it’s nice to love a man, but it’s not nice to love a man who keeps going on dates with other women. The existence of other contestants has really come out of left field for these ladies, and it feels like a cruel twist in a show that they presumably had expected would just require them to spend a few weeks making out with a guy in hot-air balloons and then get married.
In the woods, it’s time for Richie to go bike-riding with Sarah. It’s an apt moment for Richie to drop the bombshell that “riding is a passion of mine”. Up till now we’d thought Richie’s only passions were kissing and being non-specific in conversation, but he’s more multi-faceted than anyone knew.
“I’ve never dated a girl who liked dirt bikes as much as me,” Richie says, an objectively ridiculous thing for any man to say unironically. “Sarah seems like a girl with a lot of personality,” he adds, and God knows this show could do with one. Sarah tells Richie that she is very excited to meet him. “I’m blushing!” Richie replies, but he’s lying: his model doesn’t include blush functionality.
“What are you like when you’re in love?” Richie asks Sarah, genuinely unable to come up with anything better to say in what it must be admitted is another demonstration of his mind-blowingly consistent ability to keep every conversation he ever has utterly vacuous and devoid of content.
Back at the mansion the Bachelorettes are still drunk and still bitching about Richie not being there, as Richie and Steph go for a ride on the quad bikes, vehicles notorious for their vulnerability to lethal rollovers, but sadly on this occasion remain upright all the way through.
Richie assures us that Steph has many of the qualities he looks for in a woman, while being careful not to mention what any of those qualities might be. He compliments her over lunch on her ability to keep up with him on the quad bike, even though she’s just a girl, and she is deeply flattered.
Richie demands to know why Steph would go on The Bachelor, a question he revealingly has NOT asked any of the other Bachelorettes, because Steph is the first one he’s met who he thinks would be able to form a normal human relationship.
Steph doesn’t really answer the question, except to say that she broke up with her boyfriend and so naturally thought that going on a game show was the next step. “Don’t break my heart,” she adds. “Ha ha,” Richie responds, a producer having hit the “laugh” button on the Richie Remote, thus sending a mild electric shock through his genitals to produce the laughter response. Say what you like about Richie, but here is a man who knows how to carefully enunciate every syllable of his laughs. I’m pretty sure he learnt how to laugh from a book.
Back at the mansion the heavily intoxicated Bachelorettes are sick of waiting and on the verge of violence, when they spot a helicopter coming in to the lawn. “THERE’S GIRLS IN THERE!” they scream, their worst nightmare — having the same number of women in the house as there were a few days ago — coming true.
“THERE ARE THREE!” Noni yelps, showing off her status as the intellectual of the group. Rachael is devastated because Khalia’s hair is the same colour as hers, and she was really relying on hair colour as the only point of difference from the other women that she could offer Richie.
TAFKAAG shows up to smile hollowly and inform the women that there are three new women present, which it seems likely they already knew. He then leaves, something which, to give him his due, he is pretty good at.
As the Bachelorettes continue to drink and plan how to murder the intruders, Keira becomes increasingly furious at the sound of Sarah’s voice, which is a reasonable and correct reaction and shows that though Keira is literally a demon, she at least is good at identifying the ways in which other people are horrible. Meanwhile Noni is sure that Sarah is going to turn out to be bitchy, and she should know. And Rachael is upset because she thought the Bachelorettes were becoming a “happy family” that the intruders have now disrupted, which shows how hilariously deluded Rachael can be.
After a quick and pointless establishing shot of the millions of pointless lights in the garden, Richie shows up to walk stiffly around the courtyard and say “ha ha ha” at regular intervals. He is quickly whisked away by Alex, who has abandoned any qualms she might’ve had about using the white rose and is ready to lay the fucking smack down if she needs to.
Noni continues to whine, banging on about “being here to find love” and “not wanting to have my heart broken”, in which case, seriously, just leave. Do you really think the best way to “find love” is to rock up to a televised mansion and try to crack onto whichever random man they happen to chuck in front of you? You cretin.
Luckily Richie tears himself away from Alex long enough to sit down with Noni for a deep and meaningful talk about how hurtful he has been to her and she scores major regretful-hand-on-leg action.
Prior to this, Kiki and Noni told Steph about Keira. “She’s a good person!” they said, although this was, slightly confusingly, one second after explaining in detail what a vicious bitch she is. Unfortunately they did this in front of Georgia, who has gotten no attention from Richie and is going to take out her frustration by burning this whole fucking thing down.
Georgia proceeds to tell Keira exactly what the others said about her, and Keira, in a fit of white-hot anger, tells her that she doesn’t care what they said: she cares so little, in fact, that she demands to know every single thing that was said and immediately throws a tantrum. She is particularly angry that Kiki called her “ungrateful”, which she says is “the worst thing anyone could say” — surprising given there are about a million worse things one could say about Keira based entirely on fact.
Keira is both furious and extremely drunk and she demands that Kiki come over to her. Kiki won’t come over to her. Keira tells her to. Kiki refuses to. Keira goes to the toilet. Kiki follows her. Keira tells her not to come near her. Kiki points out that Keira just told her to come near her. Keira tells Kiki that she’s in the toilet and doesn’t want to see her and there is then a supremely weird moment where Keira calls Kiki “peasant”.
“Peasant”.
What?
I don’t know where she pulled “peasant” from — maybe it’s one of the insults they used to throw around back at the cult — but Keira seems to believe it’s absolutely the most cutting thing a human can say to another human. Kiki seems faintly amused, and notes that Keira is Satan, which is one of those accurate things people could call Keira that are worse than “ungrateful” that I noted earlier.
Meanwhile all the other Bachelorettes and intruders have a good old laugh and Richie doesn’t even know what’s going on because he’s at the shop for repairs.
We have arrived at the rose ceremony, and it’s an extremely tense one, because everyone is angry and frustrated and drunk and dying for a shag. TAFKAAG comes in to soothe frayed nerves with his odd, unsettling cadence.
Rachael got her rose on the boat, thanks to the pelican-tongue action, so she’s safe. Richie comes in to wreck someone else’s life. Georgia says she’ll be pissed off if she goes home tonight before an intruder, but to be honest she looks pretty pissed off already. Also, judging by her eyes, she might be suffering the early stages of alcohol poisoning.
We then get a snippet of voiceover from Sarah, which is very unpleasant. “I’m there for one thing and that’s Richie,” she says, using the correct noun in reference to him.
The first rose goes to Alex, who is just the smuggest motherfucker who ever breathed.
“Richie’s mad to give an intruder a rose,” says Keira, which is stupid, because only one woman won’t get a rose, so he has to give roses to at least two intruders. “They haven’t gone through what I’ve gone through,” she adds, referring to her harrowing ordeal of drinking, sitting on couches and treating everyone around her like shit. Unless she means the whole cult thing.
The second rose goes to Steph, who is a quad-bike-riding professional model who previously studied biomedical science so, you know, duh. Even if she hasn’t gone through what Keira’s gone through. “What the hell is going on?” Georgia asks, possibly meaning the question literally as she’s now too drunk to see or hear.
The third rose goes to Nikki, who is still, you know, kind of around. The fourth to Noni, whose tactic of blubbering in the garden pays off.
As the roses are handed out, the music is spiralling to a crescendo and we’re getting a running commentary on the violent tumult of emotion heaving within Megan’s fragile heart, and you can just tell that something dramatic is about to happen, possibly the thing that we already knew was going to happen because it was in Woman’s Day, but who knows, right?
And then, suddenly…
WOW! The thing we were all told in advance was going to happen suddenly and shockingly happens. Richie offers Megan a rose, and Megan does NOT accept it!
Everyone gasps. Georgia says fuck and looks like she’s about to vomit, probably not for the first time tonight.
Megan takes Richie outside to talk, which is really going to mess with his program. She tells him she thought he was someone she could fall in love with, but that she can’t do that with all the competition. Thus Megan achieves the highest status possible for a Bachelor contestant: “woman who fully understands how fundamentally revolting the basic concept of the Bachelor is”.
Richie can’t believe it. Only that morning he had looked in the mirror and he was fairly certain he saw someone irresistible there, so what went wrong? Was it something he said? Something he did? The way he licked the inside of her cheek? The way he had no discernible mental or emotional characteristics? Ah, the human heart is an indecipherable dictionary indeed.
Megan drives away feeling sad but confident she did the right thing, and ready to start her new life of being a proper person.
The rose ceremony keeps going for some reason — doesn’t he now have a rose for every woman? Everyone goes to bed happy tonight surely? Anyway the fifth rose goes to Faith, and I bet you’d forgotten her. The sixth to Olena, who I’d forgotten myself. The seventh to Keira, because the publicity department still has no real ideas.
The eighth rose goes to Kiki, because we really want to see more fighting, right?
The last three are Georgia, Sarah and Khalia. Sarah gets a rose, Richie having already fallen in love with her unbelievably annoying voice. Georgia, assuming she still knows where she is, seems upset. It’s between her and Khalia, and Khalia’s got to be the favourite given Richie probably thinks she’s actually Rachael, what with the hair and all.
And there’s only one rose left, so I guess when Megan left she took a rose with her?
The last rose goes to…Khalia! She gets to show off her horse another day. Georgia’s bold tactic of wearing a weird chain on her head has failed spectacularly.
TAFKAAG comes in to tell Georgia to bugger off, and Richie says goodbye while Georgia tries as hard as she can to convey with her eyes her desire for him to be penetrated by a flaming bayonet.
On the car ride home, Georgia reflects on the intruders, asking “who the fuck are they?” and opining that “they all look like fucking skanks”, which to be fair they do. She makes the depressing realisation that after all her time in the mansion, the intruders spent more time with Richie than her, which I guess goes to show he never liked her and has been playing a cruel game with her the whole time. She is devastated that Richie could send her home ahead of people he doesn’t even know, so I guess, like Megan, she sort of understands the basic premise of the show now.
Tune in tomorrow, when Keira just won’t shut the fuck up.
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