It’s time for all the girls to move into the Bachelor mansion and there is is a mad scramble to secure a bed and be first to endorse the brand name products that have been left in the gift basket on the end of each. The baskets are full of everything a girl could want…except Gabrielle’s, whose first attempt to bond with the rest of the pack is to try to offload her nail polish.
Nail polish rejected, Gabrielle makes the astute observation that Whitney, the anaconda boxer, doesn’t like her. Would that be because you called her a skank last episode, Gabs? Whitney, meanwhile is looking in the kitchen cupboards ad we get our first look at the diet of a bachelorette, when Whitney finds a year’s supply of pasta sauce and coffee pods.
Whitney explains that she clearly understands why she is on the show. “I’m not here to make a new girlfriend,” she says. Agreed. That would be an entirely different program.
Tyler emerges from the pantry and brings the exciting news that some of the girls are about to go on a four-on-one date, one will get a one-on-one date, eight of them will get to go on another date and that means three of them will get nothing except some skill at cooking a huge batch of semi de-caf fetucine all’arrabbiata, because no doubt when they get back from all that dating, the girls will be too tired to cook for themselves.
Tyler tentatively drops the first date card on the table then skulks away in retreat, only seconds before the envelope is pounced upon and ripped open by the teeth of Chantelle, the pastor. It’s the quiet ones you have to watch. It’s the eight-on-one date, and Chantelle gets to read out all the names in her annoying, sing-song upward inflection: “Melissa MaREEEE, TEEEEah, BrittNEEEE, Michelle VEEEE….and Chantelle. Oh that’s MEEEE!”
Brad is waiting outside in a stretch limo, big enough for him, eight girls, and 127 suitcases after the girls were asked to shave their legs and pack six to nine outfits. Presumably no-one packed trousers, given the ample use of the Schick products from the gift baskets. No expense has been spared on this first Canadian Bachelor season as Brad announces that he is taking the girls to New Orleans – the “Big Easy” of his cryptic clue that none of the girls managed to get. At least BEEEEanka managed to identify a landmark, albeit several thousand miles off course, but most of the girls looked like they though it was just a nickname Brad had given himself.
Brad is very excited when they arrive because they have the whole street to themselves. That tends to happen when you are walking nine abreast, with abreast being the operative word for all of them, except for Chantelle of the little au naturale boobies.
Then Brad takes all of his girls to “burlesque bootcamp” which almost sets Chantelle into apoplexy and Melissa MarEEEEE can’t find a corset to fit her ample bosom. Brad says he’s all excited and he can’t wait to see how excited the girls get. Brad, you do remember that this is technically a first date, don’t you? Must be the French Canadian in him, s’il vous plait?
Melissa MarEEEE’s burlesque performance is woeful, and despite the ill-fitting corset, Bard is not excited. Michelle VEEEE then gives the type of performance one would expect from a petroleum land administrator before BEEEEanka rubs her bosoms on Brad’s face and he finally has a response – possibly an allergic reaction to feathers. Then TEEEEah comes out and twerks her plumage and Brad speaks. “Wow!”, he says. “What am I supposed to say but wow, eh!” Well, Brad. How about, “I’m not really such a misogynist and this date was a really bad idea and I will call it off before poor little Chantelle has to sell her soul to the devil in her quest for love, eh?”
But no. The whole demeaning episode continues, but before we can witness the anticipated train wreck which will be Chantelle’s finale, we cut back to the mansion where a date card arrives for the four-on-one date. Purely coincidentally Whitney and Gabrielle both end up on this adventure. What are the odds?
Meanwhile, Chantelle has summoned the Lord’s strength and performs a burlesque like Hello Kitty worked in a strip joint.
Brad then calls all the girls together and tells them he can’t believe how lucky he was to have eight beautiful women perform for him. Not sure that luck plays much of a part Brad. Having thrown aside the last shred of human dignity in auditioning for this show in the first place, the dance isn’t that much of a stretch. Where you are lucky is that you decided to ditch Bubba last episode. Had she been allowed to perform burlesque for you, she would have sucked every ounce of life out of you and you would be draped over the chair as a saggy sack of skin.
Anyway, muscle and bones still intact, Brad tells the girls that they are off to his hotel room to have a little party. I think that is the same line that has been used by NRL teams on end-of season getaways, but I digress.
All of the girls are fixated by the rose:
“That rose has a long stem,” points out one.
“That is a long-stemmed rose,” observes another.
Then Chantelle confesses that she is afraid of the rose, making me really wonder if she did ANY research about this program before she submitted her application.
Later, Brad is talking to Chantelle on the balcony. Suddenly, he dashes inside, grabs the rose by its elongated stem and thrusts it at Chantelle. Instead of throwing herself over the railing, she accepts the rose. Phobia cured.
Melissa MarEEEE is cranky because she only had two, three or five minutes with Brad, depending on whom she is whinging to. In any case, none of this was enough time to tell Brad she has a daughter, and she bails Brad up demanding to know if they have a connection, but still forgets to tell him about the child. Brad, meanwhile, is wondering if Bubba is back in Playboy centre-fold form.
Next morning, Brad is off to Las Vegas to meet up with Whitney, Gabrielle, Kara and Sophie, leaving the other eight girls to thumb a ride back to Canada. I must say, Brad is amping up the exotic locations. At this rate, at the pointy end of the season, he’ll be taking them on Virgin Galactic to Mars. The only gambling to be had in Vegas, however, is who will win Brad’s heart. Somehow Brad manages to find four racing suits that will zip up over fake boobs and a Ferrari with seat belts that will clip over the same, and the girls attempt to drive the cars in the fastest time in order to win some alone time with Brad. Whitney ends up winning by one-tenth of a second, making second placed Sophie wonder about the drag caused by her enormous hoop earrings.
Brad and Whitney take off in a helicopter, stirring up a maelstrom of hair and attitude in the three girls left on the ground. Back on the ground, they make a connection next to a fountain.
Back at the mansion, Laura B finds out that she has the one-on-one date, leaving Romanian Ana, wondering why he bothered to vandalise the garden at the end of episode one. Melissa MarEEEE and Chantelle, the unlikely buddies, are bonding over that fact that they both have difficult news to break to Brad: Melissa MaREEEE’s daughter and Chantelle’s virginitEEEEE.
Brad arrives to pick up Laura for their date and he gives her a sparkly necklace. Whitney is severely pissed off, because all Brad gave her was a pash behind a water feature. The first stop on their date is to the world’s worst street caricaturist. We don’t see any money exchange hands for this service, so maybe the artist was just giving Brad his money’s worth. Then there’s a bit of dinner and dancing.
Next morning, horror of horrors, Brad sneaks into the mansion and wakes up Ana to take her on a date. This is not good, because she had no warning to use her Schick products and apply her Rimmel make-up, and she wishes she had sucked on a few more coffee pods, which might have kept her awake. Brad takes Ana in a seaplane to a secluded beach where Ana tells him about her miserable life. They walk over soft sand to where Brad has set up a picnic blanket on sharp stones and they have a beer for breakfast. On the way back on the seaplane, Brad has a little nap. All this dating must have taken it out of him.
At long last it is the cocktail party, which gives Melissa MarEEEE the chance to down a few champagnes and then bitch about not being able to talk to Brad about her daughter. So after a few more buckets of vino, she finally spits out her news and then berates Brad when he doesn’t give her the answer she wants.
Laura B too, has emptied a couple of bottles of wine down her throat and threatens to give back the rose. She ends up having a deep and meaningful with Brad while she is sitting on the dunny. Nothing spells future wife like the whole poor-me-crying-in-the-toilet routine.
Whitney has reneged on the deal the girls had about one-on-one daters not having alone time at with him at the cocktail party. Instead she pashes Brad, giving the other girls an opportunity to call her a “pack of shit”. Gabrielle tones down her assessment by calling her a “psycho” and she seems well skilled in being able to make the judgement (pot, kettle and all).
All too soon (not), Brad produces his tray full of normal stemmed roses, ditching the long stemmed ones to avoid anymore rose-fuelled hysteria. As they get handed out one at a time, Whitney and Gabrielle each get more sullen and when Gabrielle gets one before Whitney she makes sure she rubs it in. Then Whitney gets one, and again restrains herself from thumping Gabrielle in the chops. Finally, BEEEEanka gets the last rose which sends the medical student, the petroleum land administrator and the model/neuroscientist home. The latter never even got a date, so I guess will never quite know the complexities of that job description. The last one to be culled is Melissa MarEEEE, a sad outcome for Chantelle who now needs to find a new Jezebel to school her in all things worldly, like how to recognise fake boobs. And how to break the V word to Brad.
Watch this space.
The Bachelor: Canada, Lifestyle You (Channel 129), Tuesday 8:35 pm, repeated on Fridays.
friday night with kath 