The Bachelorette Recap: All in all you’re just another Douche in the Wall
Previously on The Bachelorette: A bunch of guys went to a big house and tried to get a weird lady to squeeze their biceps.
Tonight on The Bachelorette: Georgia tries to kill all the men.
It’s morning in the mansion, and the Bachelors conduct the awkward breakfast conversation that they are contractually obliged to engage in. Sam is worried that some guys won’t like him based on first impressions, but he has little to worry about: they won’t like him based on second and third impressions either. Sam is also clear that he dislikes Rhys intensely, and to be honest, so say all of us.
TAAFKAG shows up in the kitchen to spray his inadequacy everywhere, drops and envelope and leaves. Aaron reads the card, which says, “Let’s hang together.”
Why do the cards have clues on them anyway? It’s not Survivor, there’s no hidden immunity idol — whether they figure the clue out or not, the date is happening, so what’s the point? Huh. A rare hole in the usually airtight logic of The Bachelorette.
Anyway it’s Jake who’s going on the single date, which the clue indicates will involve him and Georgia murdering someone with a rope. But no, in fact it involves going up in the Blue Mountains on a…thing. Like one of those things you go up mountains in. Like they go on cables. They’re like buses on cables. Those things. They’re going up in one of those.
And then they’re going down on a rope. Because the show only pretends to be Survivor when it comes to the date cards. When it comes to the dates themselves, it pretends to be The Amazing Race. Georgia thinks it shows a fantastic adventurous spirit that Jake, when confronted with her idiotic idea, didn’t say, “that’s an idiotic idea”, but instead enthusiastically cried, “yeah OK I guess”. But it’s not like he had a choice, right? What would have happened if he had said no? Would Georgia have replied, “Oh, OK, let’s just go to the movies then”? To be honest, what probably happened is he DID say no, and they had to stay in the cable bus for several hours while a producer negotiated a bigger contract for Jake.
Back at the house there is much laughter as a group date is announced and the selected Bachelors announced and the men hide their true feelings behind masculine jocularity, except for Sam, who makes no attempt at all to hide his utter hatred for all the other Bachelors.
On the date, Georgia and Jake have finished their oddly anti-climactic gorge-drop and are discussing why they decided to go on TV. Georgia explains that she became The Bachelorette due to her firm belief that a woman without a man is empty and worthless. She tells Jake about her mother’s cancer, and Jake tells her that his mother has had cancer five times, and Georgia is like for god’s sake, must you rain on my backstory?
Throughout the conversation Jake and Georgia hold hands, which as we know is the most erotic thing you can do with another person except for rimming.
“Are you looking for a relationship?” asks Georgia, which is frankly a weird thing to ask a contestant on The Bachelorette.
“I’m not looking for a relationship,” says Jake, pausing before, “I’m looking for THE relationship!” Ooh, he’s done a Matt Preston on us! Georgia is so lost in his eyes that she doesn’t even notice what an immensely knobbish thing this is to say.
Then they kiss, and meh. Whatever.
“I like what we have,” Georgia tells Jake, by which she means, “I’m totally gonna kiss a bunch of other guys as soon as I can.” She gives him a rose and they pash again.
“This could definitely be the start of something amazing,”Georgia avows, which is a rare sentiment to hear from anyone at the beginning of a series of The Bachelorette.
At the mansion the men sit around discussing how the date might have gone and how little they care. Jake arrives home and they excitedly quiz him a la the song “Summer Lovin’” from Grease. They ask him if he kissed her, and he avoids the question so as to make sure they all know that he did. Throughout this that awful, brittle laughter keeps ringing out as the Bachelors desperately try to keep their terrible insecurity hidden.
Next day, the Bachelors walk into a field to meet TAAFKAG, Georgia, and a strange troll-like creature from Harlequin books. Today they will be participating in a photo shoot for the cover of a Mills and Boon book, the books famous for being terrible and looking gross.
As the Bachelors prepare by dressing up as Tom Burlinson, Courtney asks Sam for advice on modelling. Unwilling to give up the arcane secrets of standing in front of cameras looking handsome, Sam refuses to say anything. Rhys, on the other hand, is eager to tell absolutely everyone absolutely everything he knows about modelling: eager, in fact, to a rather disturbing degree. You get the feeling Rhys may have gone on this show as a way to get a job as a modelling teacher.
Georgia is very excited about the photos. “I’m picturing four best-selling Mills and Boon books,” she says, correctly repeating the date’s basic premise, “and Mills and Boon means romance”. Which I guess is true when compared to a show like The Bachelorette, which is the sickening demonic opposite of romance.
In her capacity as covergirl, Georgia is carried across a river and then gets on a horse with Lee, who I guess was selected as the horseman because of his experience with donkeys. Meanwhile Rhys is still talking about modelling: apparently the stereotype of models as stupid is quite incorrect. Rhys’s enthusiasm for talking about the modelling industry is genuinely off-putting: I can’t imagine he could possibly enjoy any intimate moment with Georgia as much as he enjoys telling everyone about modelling.
Rhys is required to take his shirt off and pour water over himself, while Sam occupies himself rolling his eyes and talking about what a dickhead Rhys is. Rhys says he enjoyed the experience because “the attention was on me, which means Georgia’s attention was on me”, but it’s pretty obvious that that last bit is superfluous to his requirements. For Rhys, the only thing that ruins The Bachelorette is the presence of The Bachelorette.
Georgia chats to Sam about his experience modelling for Big W and Aldi. Rhys doesn’t believe him — he is sure that Sam is a great and mighty model with powers almost equal to his own. He is itching to call Sam out and challenge him to a model-off.
The next part of this intensely vacuous “date” involves Georgia and Cam staring into each other’s eyes and lightly frotting in a barn. Apparently all four of the books whose covers are being shot today are about farmers neglecting their chores. The watching Bachelors are jealous of Cam, who gets to lightly press his lips against Georgia’s in a dry, passionless facsimile of a kiss.
Cam denies that he actually kissed Georgia, but the other Bachelors are dubious, as Cam is a known liar: remember when he said The Lion King was too sad?
Tearing ourselves away from the high country, it’s time for the cocktail party, at which conflict between Sam and Rhys is expected, although it’s unlikely to happen: Sam prefers standing to the side smirking to direct confrontation, and it’s a hell of a job getting Rhys to acknowledge the existence of other human beings at all. Instead Sam gets a few jabs in during a one-on-one conversation with Georgia. “I’m a fan of Rhys,” Sam says, “but…”. He leaves the “He is the biggest cockspank ever to walk this earth” hanging unspoken in the air.
Rhys, sick of Georgia talking to his mortal enemy Sam the supermodel-in-disguise, moves in to stammer a few lame, unappealing words about how he’d like to talk to Georgia maybe at some unspecified time in the future if it doesn’t put anyone out too much. Sam and Georgia have a hearty laugh about how much they hate Rhys. Sam comes up with a memorable description of Rhys’s seduction technique, picturing him as rolling uncontrollably down a hill until he hits “the douchebag wall”. It would seem apt that from now on, Rhys be dubbed The Douchebag Wall permanently.
As if to emphasise the point, he has written Georgia a poem, which he proceeds to read. It is a terrible poem. It is the most dreadful thing we’ve seen on the show since his personality. Georgia tells him she loves it, in the sort of voice a woman uses when a man has written a poem and she wants to be nice while at the same time figuring out how to avoid having this ever happen again. You know the sort of voice.
Meanwhile Sam is continuing to endear himself to me by doing a pretty spot-on impression of Rhys’s crawly oil-slicked anti-charm, and then making a joke about the Douchebag Wall going home to be breastfed by his mother that is the funniest thing anyone has ever said on any of the Bachelor franchise shows.
Frankly, I adore Sam. I hate everyone involved in these shows, but Sam I love, because I’m fairly certain he doesn’t even care whether he gets the girl, he just wants to sit around and slag off other men, which means his reason for being on the show is the same as my reason for watching it, so we’ve got a kinship there.
Rose ceremony time, and The DW is confident of his chances because he thinks she liked the poem, a sentiment that millions of men have expressed over the centuries, and that millions of men have been wrong about. Sam is confident that The DW is going home, but he’s probably wrong too: the producers won’t want to deprive Sam of material.
TAAFKAG shows up to remind us that even looking at these contestants, a woman could do worse, and then Georgia arrives to present roses to a couple of guys she likes and a bunch whose names she does not recall.
Jake of course already has a rose because he shimmied down a rope and his mum’s had cancer.
Clancy gets a rose because his name matched the scenery on the group date. Rhys is already upset that he didn’t get called first, given that Clancy didn’t even write a poem.
Cameron gets a rose because he is a fireman and looks like the guy who played Ellery Queen. Remember Ellery Queen? Good show.
Rhys gets a rose because the show would be less funny without him. He hugs Georgia like a sister.
Tommy gets a rose because, I dunno, good diction?
Lee gets a rose I assume still riding that wave of donkey goodwill.
Matt gets a rose because at some point Georgia wants to know who he is.
Sam gets a rose because he’s awesome and there’s no point Rhys being there without Sam to do impressions of him.
Courtney gets a rose because he is eleven years old and you’d hate to disappoint a child.
Matty gets a rose to prove that he and Matt are two different people.
Jay gets a rose for excellent posture.
Aaron gets a rose because he looks like he’s about fifty five years old and lends a certain gravitas to proceedings.
It’s between Ryan and Ben for the last rose. What does Georgia prefer: being bored or being annoyed?
Being bored, apparently. Ryan gets the last rose and Ben must go home and find another woman to creep out with his dogs and faeces-themed small talk.
“Take some time to say goodbye,” says TAAFKAG, as if Ben cares about any of these men, or they about him.
“Back to the drawing board,” says Ben on the ride home, referring to the enormous slab of cardboard on which he scrawls cartoons of himself French-kissing his huskies.
Tune in tomorrow when Courtney wears an utterly inexplicable jacket.
