The Bachelorette Recap: Partial Recall

So Sophie visited the Bachelors’ home towns — I hate that term, makes it sound like they’re all living in picturesque rural villages. What Sophie does is visit them at their homes.

I watched this episode, but I didn’t recap it at the time. And I cannot stand the thought of watching it again, so I’m going to recap from memory. IN A WORLD FIRST.

So the first home town visit Sophie makes is to Jarrod’s place, where he shows her around his manure-strewn wasteland, and then eventually introduces her to his mother, whose physical appearance he seems slightly too excited about. Jarrod’s mum is slightly worried about Jarrod getting his heart broken and going on an axe spree and having to be electroshocked all over again. How many more times, Jarrod? But Jarrod isn’t worried, because he knows he is in love with Sophie, and if his family gives her the tick, he’s going to tell her.

(I mean the tick of approval — a figurative tick — not an actual tick. There is no question that after visiting Jarrod’s farm Sophie will definitely be getting an actual tick.)

Sadly, his family makes the dreadful mistake of approving of Sophie, and so Jarrod tells Sophie that he’s in love with her. Swept off her feet, Sophie replies that she thinks he’s pretty OK as well, and that she now has to leave to go put her tongue inside several other men’s mouths.

The next home town visit is to Apollo, who emerges glistening from the sea, bearing a golden sword in one hand and a newborn baby in the other. Sophie dribbles all over his muscles for a bit and then Apollo shows her his horses, the ones he uses for riding along the beach in romance novels. Resisting the urge to beg for his seed right then and there, Sophie says one of his horses “doesn’t look real — it looks like something out of Neverending Story”. By which I presume she means: it looks like a horse. Unless she thinks the horse looks like a giant snail or furry dragon or evil murderous wolf-monster.

And really, who knows what she thinks, given she spends this whole episode continually babbling about how much she craves wine.

Anyway Sophie meets Apollo’s family, including his 94-year-old grandmother, who is described — far too many times — as “sassy”. Is there anything worse than a sassy grandma? Yes there is: but we’ll come to Blake later. Apollo’s family show some mild interest in the fact that Apollo is much younger than Sophie, but Sophie assures them that actually she is red-hot for fresh flesh, and they seem satisfied.

Moving on, Sophie visits Stu, who takes her out on his yacht. Or at least, on a yacht. Possibly the yacht of a visiting millionaire who is out dancing at a roadhouse with Stu’s best friend from the band.

On the yacht, Stu drops a bombshell: he’s had a vasectomy. This is a severe blow to Sophie, who is strongly attracted to Stu’s net worth, but desperately wants some little Monks of her own. He is, however, willing to have his vasectomy reversed if the right washed-up popstar comes along.

Then Stu drops another bombshell: he’s technically still married. Sophie, who is an old-fashioned kind of girl and also currently in a serious relationship with four different men on television, is put off a little by this, but not nearly so much as she is by Stu’s father, who sits down to dinner and immediately begins calling Stu a fucking idiot. Meanwhile Stu’s sister gently probes Sophie on the convergence between her claim that she wants man who loves her for her and is totally uninterested in fame or fortune, and her decision to force any man who wants to date her to first become a nationwide TV star. Still, Stu’s family comes away reasonably convinced that Sophie genuinely likes Stu a bit, and will be perfectly willing to give him the odd smooch in between shopping centre appearances. Sophie then makes out with Stu’s dad for a bit.

Finally, Sophie visits Blake, who tries to trick her into thinking he lives in an ice rink. While at the ice rink, Blake makes it snow. Who knows how, but probably through his connections in the cocaine trade. Although Sophie enjoys her time on the frozen wastes — as she says, “I love anything on ice”, and though you could make a funny joke about drug addicts there, she is in fact just talking about her alcoholism — she is eager to meet Blake’s family and ask them what the hell they did wrong.

Blake stalls for as long as he can, because the people from Airtasker he hired to be his family are running late, but finally they’re in place, and home they go. Before dinner Blake promises Sophie that if his family starts getting too robust in their interrogation, he will have her back and support her in fending off their impertinence. Sophie for some reason thinks this means that he will do what he just said, which is a big mistake.

Meeting Blake’s family, including Ronnie Wood as his mother, is a traumatic experience for Sophie, almost as traumatic as meeting Blake himself. They grill her ruthlessly and make it extremely hard for her to keep up her usual implacable facade of the ordinary Aussie sheila who just wants to settle down and never be on TV or wear a dress again. Having promised he will have her back during this grilling, Blake dutifully stays completely silent throughout, his alpha maleness shining bright.

Back at the mansion, TAFKAAG shows up to collect his paycheque, and introduce the rose ceremony. Everyone is scared of not getting a rose, apart from Blake, who is pretty sure he wowed her with all that snow and stuff. And then everyone gets a rose, apart from Blake, who Sophie let’s face it thinks is as big a dick as everyone else does.

Blake is stunned by his elimination. Sophie takes him outside to explain that when his “family” was putting her under the microscope, he sat mute like some kind of manscaped doorknob. “You said you’d have my back!” she says. “I’ve ALWAYS had your back!” he angrily retorts. Sophie notes that talk is cheap. Blake, confused and furious at the discovery of a truth he never suspected — that sometimes women might like men who aren’t him — walks off into the night, leaving Sophie with an ill-mannered “Enjoy your time with the other guys”, and free to seek another woman to receive his greasy genes.

Tune in next week, when Sophie struggles to decide whether to pick Stu or to reshoot all these episodes so she picks someone else.