So as regular followers of my blog would be aware (all three of you), I am away at Uluru for a week and sadly that means I am unable to watch this week’s episode where the women tell all, and my notoriously unreliable Foxtel box may or may not have decided to record it for me for when I get back.
Now before you feel too envious for me about my mid-term holiday to the Red Centre, I must point out that the northern hemisphere is still just coming out of winter, so the resort is full of sun-seekers from foreign locales, mostly aged in their seventies who think that since Australia invented the Speedo, it must be perfectly acceptable to wear the garment pool-side. The result is a whole lot of this:
So, anyway, I thought I would take the opportunity during this break in transmission to put together my top ten moments from Season 20. Strangely enough, Lauren B features in NONE of them. Actually that’s not so strange at all, because I think we all get that I don’t get Ben’s fascination with her and her incredibly poor command of spoken English and riveting conversations about her father’s lawn manicures. But there have been plenty of fantastic moments without her, so let the countdown begin:
Number 10 – A horse is a horse. Of course, of course?
I can’t even remember the name of the girl, but who can forget the moment Huey the miniature pony emerged from the bushes, pranced on into the Bachelor mansion and made an impression at the cocktail party – stepping on frocks, helping himself to the canapes and attempting to look interested in Lace’s wine-fuelled sob stories. But I guess he had to go. We just couldn’t have another male cutting Ben’s grass…and eating it as well.
Number 9 – Do I make you horny?
Now this girl can rock a red plunging dress like no-one else this series. Why on earth she decided to rock a unicorn’s head as well in that first episode is beyond me. It seems so long ago now. If it was some sort of a twist to show she was from Texas, then surely, there were less…macabre…ways of doing that – say, a lone star or even a yellow rose, but the Horny Horse of Texas? Anyway, something about that first impression must have stuck because here she is down to the final two, though I suspect it had more to do with what was below the shoulders than above it.
Number 8 – Open-wide, come inside.
Maybe it’s just me, but if anyone were to come at me on a first date with a fist full of dental instruments and a latex dam, that would be the end of it. But Ben, perhaps still bewildered by the enormous rose she wore on her head when she got out of the limo, just lies back and lets Mandi probe him. Not only did he let her so this, but then he kept her to live another day! Thankfully her stay was short-lived, because she ended up making a dud of a home-coming queen in in the Back to School challenge; three laps of the oval in the back of a convertible proving her undoing.
Number 7 – The High-five fail.
In the Back to School challenge, Lace grabbed Jubilee to form her unbeatable dream team, which apparently was comprised of Lace’s intellect (well there was the first problem) and Jubilee’s brawn developed fighting the bad guys in Eee-rack or wherever she was. To celebrate this wonder-union, the girls attempted a high-five, failing terribly. This really set up their whole demise. Lace then couldn’t read the formula for the science experiment meaning that they couldn’t make Ben’s volcano erupt. It would not belong before Lace would skol one last chardonnay and leave of her own accord, and from this point on Jubilee set off on the road to ruin.
Number 6 – You expect me to swallow that?
Jubilee’s one-on-one date with Ben was a disaster right from the start when she offered to swap with someone because she hates helicopters (Boy, was SHE on the wrong season of The Bachelor), then sunk lower with her bizarre racist humour and awkward hot-tub chemistry. But what topped this all off was when Ben tried to impress her with champagne and caviar and she showed her gratitude by spitting fish eggs into the linen napkins and looking at Ben like he had asked her to eat her first born. She survived to go crazy another day, but the writing was on the wall, as well as liberal spray of beluga.
Number 5 – An above average moment
They say that the male brain doesn’t fully develop until the age of twenty-five. I’m not entirely sure at what age the brain of a cheerleader develops, but it definitely isn’t twenty-three. Actually, I shouldn’t be too harsh on Emily. She admitted to sharing a brain with her twin, and once she kicked Hayley to the kerb, she only seemed to have half function. Had there not been so many other classic moments, this one, where Emily tells her prospective in-laws that her dream is to become Broncos cheerleader, that her favourite thing to do is lounge about all day watching movies and that she thinks she will be an “above average” mother, would have rated much higher. The look on Emily’s face: clueless. The look on Mother Higgins’ face: priceless
Number 4 – Canklegate
Oh, Olivia! How we hated you! How we wanted you gone! How we realised once you were how boring life was without you!
Way up there in Olivia’s list of cringe-worthy highlights came at the cocktail party where Ben appeared puffy-eyed to tell the girls that he had lost two dear family friends in a plane crash overnight. It’s Olivia to the rescue. She whisks Ben away to a quiet corner to point out that even though he might be grieving now, it would be much worse if he, like her, was afflicted with fat ankles. Obviously this put everything into perspective for Ben, who didn’t eliminate her at the subsequent rose ceremony, much to the bewilderment of the global audience.
Number 3 – Show girl? No, girl!
As much as we were keen to see Olivia kicked to the kerb, there were a couple of moments where we were positioned to feel genuinely sorry for her. The Las Vegas group date was such a humiliating trial-by-cabaret for all involved (even Ben, who only seemed to realise the misogynistic nature of this date half-way through), but no more so than for Olivia, who donned full feathers and sequins, clambered out of a cardboard cake and clomped around the stage like a lumberjack. Even Huey the horse could have done better. Her break-down back stage while the rest of the women bitched about her in the next room, was car accident television. You just didn’t want to look at the bloody carnage, but your eyes remained transfixed.
Number 2 – Robinson Olivia
When the end came, it came hard for Olivia. It wasn’t so much that Ben chose Emily over her, it was the way she was left by herself on the island, staring forlornly out to sea as Ben and the chosen one motored back to the mainland. The realisation that her dreams were but a delusion was all too much for her and she appeared frozen, as a blowhole metaphor spewed foam into the air behind her. If this weren’t enough, there was the funeral procession back at the hotel as her luggage was silently hauled away by a couple of production assistants with the assembled girls being given no word as to Olivia’s whereabouts. It all gave the impression that Oliva was left there forever (which gave me plenty of mileage for the blog), so it came as a relief that she had been retrieved from her briny outpost to appear in “The Women Tell All” episode; albeit considerably thinner from her diet of seaweed and sandworms.
And the number 1 moment of season 20 – Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug
It took up less that two seconds of air time and yet it became one of, if not THE most talked about incidents this season. For me it was the best moment I have ever seen in ANY episode of The Bachelor ANYWHERE, even surpassing the cat licking its genitals in front of Art and Matilda’s picnic blanket in The Bachelor: NZ.
And why did JoJo’s mum having the swig out of the champagne bottle resonate so much? Because we could feel her pain at wishing the whole sordid thing was over.
And wished we had a bottle handy ourselves.
friday night with kath 