So due to a forgotten credit card. I found myself stranded at Woolies on Tuesday near the service desk waiting for Mark to arrive so I could pay for my groceries. What better way to kill the time than to scan the magazine covers?
“Brad and Angelina’s Bitter Divorce!” screamed one. Yeah right. Made up nonsense as usual. Not going to get sucked into that one.
Besides, that was only a big enough issue to make one cover. Australia’s own glamour couple du jour, Richie and Alex, made it to three.
“It’s Over! The Truth Behind the Shocking Split!”
“Secret Bali Wedding!”
“Richie Cheated on Me!” Well, at least that one was true. The whole nation watched Richie stick his tongue down the throat of anything with a pulse for three months.
But in all honesty, hats off to them. What a tumultuous week! Apparently there has never been such a negative backlash about a Bachelor outcome anywhere. Or such a negative backlash against those who made such a negative backlash. Richie came out fighting.
“They can all go suck lemons.” Oooooh. I’m scared. I’m shutting down my blog right now.
That’s social media for ya. But I have said it before and I’ll say it again: if you want to play out your personal life as entertainment on national television you can’t then be upset if people become invested in it, even if they are invested in a different way than you.
It’s not like the mainstream media have taken the relationship too seriously either, a case in point being Monday night’s Have You Been Paying Attention? where Richie and Alex were guest quizmasters:
“Where did Alex take me on our final date?” asks Alex somewhat naively.
“On the bathroom floor?” responds guest panellist, Marty Sheargold.
Yep. Sheer gold.
But anyway, enough about them, because they are yesterday’s news. Channel 10 has wasted no time rolling out season two of The Bachelorette and we are about to go through it all again with Georgia Love’s quest for love.
Now I’m not quite sure how this all panned out, whether the contestant actually applied or whether the network sought her out. In the US The Bachelorette is usually someone the audience loved in The Bachelor, but the bachelor himself did not. I guess Channel 10 was too eager to get another hit out there and started production of this series before they knew how invested everyone was in Nikki. But OMG. The publicity machine at Channel 10 must have been getting all moist over this choice.
The girl’s name is Georgia Love. Love it.
Her father is a surgeon and not just any doctor, but one who specialises in men’s rude bits. Doctor Love. Love it, love it.
She already has a media career, so isn’t coming in to this just so she can get her mug on the tellie (only on mainland tellie). Love it, love it, LOVE IT!
Georgia says she has taken a big risk in giving up her job in her quest for love. I’m not sold on the degree of risk involved in leaving a job as a Channel 10 journo to take up the position of Channel 10’s Bachelorette. I’d say there would be considerably greater risk in say…a teacher giving up a career to be a full-time Bachelor/ette blogger (cough!) and the latter doesn’t even serve up any opportunity to pash hot men.
Georgia’s love by name, but not yet love by nature. She just wants to find her forever human, which sounds a little bit like she’s adopting a dog from the animal refuge. Let’s just hope that she isn’t served up a bunch of mongrels.
So before we see what the producers have lined up, I think it might be nice to check in on Facebook conversation I was having with my friend Holly last Thursday after the whole he-picked-Alex-are-you-shitting-me debacle, which went something like this:
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So imagine my surprise (not) when the first guy out of the limo is another desperate and dateless Western Australian, Cam the firefighter. He’s not just any firefighter though; he is Mr May in the firefighters’ calendar. If Mr May can’t make a relationship work, then what hope is there for the rest of us?
He is followed by Jake, a sales professional from the Gold Coast. Sales professional. What does that mean? He’s from the Gold Coast so he could be peddling anything from real estate to used cars to hookers. Georgia doesn’t know that he’s a sales professional, though she is impressed with his eye contact.
The limo then spews out Rhys, entrepreneur/model/pretentious wanker. Well, if “sales professional” is generic, “entrepreneur” is totally nebulous and difficult to define. “Pretentious wanker”, by contrast, is easily identified by wearing brown shoes with a dark suit and stumbling through lengthy introductions in French.
Next is Courtney with his pretty boy face and appalling hair. I think he may have asked his barber to mutilate his coif to distract Georgia’s attention from his hideous shirt. That didn’t work. She calls the shirt, so he whips out a bracelet made of pasta (Yes…penne. Both quirky and whimsical). My mother-in-law used to say that the only difference between a bad haircut and a good haircut is two weeks, so if he doesn’t get chopped too early, we can look forward to Courtney getting better looking every episode.
Dale is the next guy and he gives Georgia a rose. He must have tossed in his sleep for weeks dreaming up that gimmick.
Ryan, a sailor, offers Georgia a seaman’s sack.
Next is Matt. “I have a little something…” says Matt fumbling around in his pants. Little does he know that Georgia’s dad can help him out with that. But it turns out he had made Georgia a mixed tape of songs that they will both like.
Carlos is another entrepreneur. At least he has a vignette which gives us some insight into his entrepreneurial skills. It seems he launders money through his night clubs during the week and lets women shove money in his undies at the weekends. You can cart around as many Tiffany boxes as you want, Carlos, but it doesn’t give you any class.
Lee the mechanical plumber (what’s that? A tradie?) is next and he has to get the prize for most effort put into a one-liner by turning up with a donkey. Surely a donkey wouldn’t be allowed in the back of a limo? Of course not. The donkey must have been the driver, which accounts for his chauffeur’s hat.
It’s probably not such a stupid idea as it gets Lee used to being surrounded by jackasses, but bringing a miniature equine to first cocktail party is soooooooo Ben’s season of The Bachelor US.
Aaron, Jay and Tommy are filed through in quick succession. That usually doesn’t bode too well.
And then Osher Ginsberg hops out of a limo. WTF? Turns out it’s not OG, but his doppelganger, Matt.
Hmmm. I’m sus. I will wait to see if Osher and Matt are ever in the same shot. I sniff a conspiracy.
We’ve had to wait until number fourteen for the total misfit to arrive, this time in the form of dog loving, fast living, poor dressing, facial piercing Ben, a miner from Wollongong. His attempt at making a good first impression involves detailing his triumvirate of faecal movements. It’s OK though. We all know (including Ben) that he is the guy who it is easy to eliminate if it all gets too hard for Georgia. He will probably survive the first cull, because no one wants to be seen to be nasty to “special” people, but his days are numbered.
The penultimate bachelor is Clancy from Queensland. Immediately AB Paterson rings through my head:
Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving
And we don’t know where he are…
While in Queensland, Clancy bought a battery operated device which he secretly hopes Georgia will be happy to use on him…
But last but not least is pretty-boy Sam He’s looking for a special girl, one to keep his attention… from straying back to his own reflection.
He establishes his relationship with Georgia by asking a mob of stupid questions, in fact they are so inane that they could have been the basis of that god-awful compatibility challenge on Richie’s season of the Bachelor.
So Sam walks into the cocktail party and Ben is so enamoured by his beauty that he forgets all about Georgia, his dogs, his fast cars or his heterosexuality.
The boys observe that there are some good looking roosters in the room. They reckon Ryan looks like Heath Ledger (or at least his uglier younger brother) and Jake looks like Taylor Lautner (myeh), but they missed one of the most obvious celebrity lookalikes:
It’s not long before Osher interjects with news about the First Impression Rose.
“And whomever is given the rose, also ends up with a golden date.”
Half the men assembled already think the sun shines out of their arses. A golden date might be less special than Osher thinks.
Finally, it’s time for Georgia to make a first impression of her own…by slipping down the steps. This could have been a disaster, but like a true blue Aussie sheila, Georgia doesn’t spill a drop from the wine glass in her hand.
Ben is almost as excited about this as he was about seeing Sam for the first time.
“If she can go down with a drink in her hand, she’s marrying material.”
Indeed. That is multi-skilling at its best.
But it is Jake who takes her off for the first one-on-one chat, the highlight of which is finding out that her father is an erectile dysfunction specialist. Once upon a time, the buzz phrase for The Bachelor/ette was “this journey”. Now it’s “erectile dysfunction specialist.” I don’t believe that I had ever typed the words erectile dysfunction specialist before JoJo’s season of The Bachelorette US when Evan, the erectile dysfunction specialist emerged as one of her potential mates. Then Evan, the erectile dysfunction specialist, remerged on The Bachelor in Paradise, and here we are again.
Cameron makes it all family-friendly again when he reveals that he is both a firefighter and Disney fan.
“What’s your favourite Disney film?” Georgia asks.
“Aladdin,” says Cam, “because the Lion King’s too sad.”
“Favourite character?”
“Aladdin,” he shoots back, almost too quickly. “Duh…of course it’s Aladdin…like my favourite character would be…Princess Jasmine…no…Aladdin. Team Aladdin all the way.”
He is sooooo team Princess Jasmine.
There’s not enough of a party vibe in the house, so Carlos issues a yoga challenge. Geez, his nightclubs must really go off. So Rhys, Ryan and Jake (the latter at the insistence of Aaron) get all downward dog.
This gives Courtney the opportunity to take Georgia off and slip how he makes allergy bracelets for kiddies into the conversation. Good move, Courtney. Like she’s going to boot off the kiddie allergy bracelet maker on the first night.
Carlos follows Courtney. He notices that Georgia is wearing the bracelet. He takes a look to make sure it is the one he gave her:
“Anaphylaxis warning. Nil nuts by mouth.”
Well played Courtney. Well played.
In other cocktail party fun, Clancy re-enacts another AB Paterson classic by shaving off his beard, but despite this, and even though he has the worst barber in Australia, Courtney gets the first impression rose.
And that means that it is rose ceremony time:
Lee
Cameron
Clancy
Jake
Ryan
Jay
Matty
Tommy
Matt
Aaron
Rhys
Ben
Sam.
Well, we all know what this means. In the tradition of all Bachelor/ette franchises, the last rose on the first night almost always goes to the villain. I can hardly wait until Sam takes up the baton from Keira.
It also means that Carlos and Dale are going home. For his part, Carlos is nonplussed. He’s just going to go back to doing what he does best; bumping and grinding and handing out Tiffany bracelets with gay abandon to women he thinks might be desperate enough to date him.
Now before I sign-off on this episode, I must go back to my chat with Holly. You will remember that I was dubious about even watching this because the trailers in which Georgia featured. Well I can say after this first serving, I love Georgia Love. After potential disaster and avoiding a broken ankle on the steps, she brushed herself off and had a good old laugh about it. It’s like that time Jennifer Hawkins bounced right back after her skirt fell off on the runway, like nothing ever happened.
So I raise my also intact wine glass to you, Georgia, and hope that among these blokes there are, in your own words, “a few good ones.”
friday night with kath 