As far as fairy tales go, this one is pretty fractured. Forget about all your princesses falling into deep slumber after being fed poison apples by evil queens or having their fingers pricked by vengeful fairies. Nothing compares to the slutty princess who is slapped across the senses by a heady mixture of chardonnay and interruption and falls into a deep slumber, with a snore that could suck the petals right off a rose…
Previously on The Bachelor…it was night, and Nick was compelled to confess his relationship with Liz to the girls remaining on his group date.
Suddenly, it is morning, and the girls remaining from the group date are compelled to tell the others about Nick’s relationship with Liz. Kristina gives it a go first, but the combination of Russian being her primary language and that whole chipmunk-with-a-cheek-full-of-nuts thing that she has going on, the message just doesn’t seem to register.
Christen tells Brittany. Astrid tells Danielle M. Alexis notices that everybody is going crazy, which is pretty rich coming from someone who made a first impression in a shark suit. Josephine takes Vanessa to a mountain top and tells her. Vanessa is shocked.
I know. Why couldn’t Josephine have told Vanessa in the house?
They barely have time to get down from there because it is the shortest day ever in the house and pretty soon it is night time again, and we are treated to the rose ceremony we were cheated of last episode.
Nick begins with his confession and it goes something like this:
“Nine months ago I met Liz at Jade and Tanner’s wedding where we both got sloppy drunk and f*cked each other. The next morning she decided she didn’t see a future in f*cking me, so I f*cked off. Then she f*cking turned up here and I thought ‘F*ck Me!’ but now I am not interested in f*cking her, because there’s a few of you I’d like to f*ck. And that’s the whole f*cking truth.”
The women stare back at him with the disdain of twenty-one vestal virgins. Seriously, are we expected to believe that none of these women has had sex in the last nine months? Corinne’s in there, FFS! If the nanny caters to Corinne’s every whim, then surely she has served up more than a bowl full of cucumber portions?
They are so outraged!
Not so Corinne. Before you can say “Jade and Tanner’s wedding”, she has morphed into a slutty Inspector Gadget with cans of whipped cream for hands and a bionic tongue.
Nick mistakenly gapes in something between shock and lust and his mouth is injected with so much Dairy Whip that his head looks like a pimple ready to pop. Now would be a bad time to discover he’s lactose intolerant. Corinne courteously licks it out so that he can return the courtesy and clean up the ‘accidental’ spillage on Corinne’s chest.
Luckily, Jasmine stumbles past and Nick remembers that he has twenty other women in the house and some of them can keep their girlie bits in their pants until they are invited otherwise. Corinne melts down over this rebuff (even worse than a re-interruption, apparently) and sobs.
The rest of the girls have been watching the exchange of cow juice from the convenient vantage point of the floor to ceiling windows. They are soooo outraged. They are so very outraged that some of them might even go home! Until…
Nick arrives with his tray full of roses. He notices the absence of Corinne and the girls clamber all over each other to tell Nick that Corinne is upstairs having a sleep.
“Not cool,” says Nick. “Lucky I gave her a rose already.”
You can cut the tension with a knife. Apart from Corinne, Danielle M has a rose from the date that seems a lifetime ago and Christen has managed to snag herself one. I don’t even remember that happening. They are not giving up their spots, so just who will leave in outrage over the JATWSS (figure it out)?
No-one, that’s who. Not in outrage anyway. There’s not enough roses to go around, of course, so Hailey, Lacey and a blonde, who I can’t remember the name of and don’t believe I have ever laid eyes on before, are packed off into the awaiting limos.
How can an episode top that?
Only with the Backstreet Boys of course, who turn up to the mansion the next morning to lead a chorus of “I Like it That Way” and take seven of the girls off on the first group date.
“Don’t worry we haven’t abducted Nick,” one of them says, and it takes me a while to click about what he’s talking about because there is Nick in all his 1990s, boy band, larger than life self (see what I did there).
Ooooooh! You mean JATWSS Nick. I get it now. Haha!
So Christen, Kristina, Whitney, Taylor, Jasmine, Corinne and Danielle-L-L-L-L are off to Burbank studios to prance around in tiny shorts and flail their limbs about like they’re drowning as back up dancers for the Backstreet fellas. Well, Corinne is flailing. She can’t dance.
“I’m a whore-able dancer,” she says, proving that she could also have done with a few elocution lessons as a child. It must be because she has ‘short-term memory’ and as a child she sent her nanny off to take the dance lessons for her, so she pouts away in the corner during rehearsal, stomps around the stage like a lumberjack and still seems genuinely amazed that Danielle-L-L-L-L is chosen over her as the winner of the challenge.
Danielle-L-L-L-L’s dubious prize is to slow dance with Nick in front of 500 Backstreet fans who just want a bit more Howie action.
“This is my worst nightmare!” says Corinne as she is forced to watch Danielle-L-L-L-L and Nick pressing their ugly bits together. Thanks Corinne for reminding us about how we viewers feel whenever you are alone with the man.
At the Backstreet cocktail party, Corinne again grabs Nick leaving the rest of the girls to stare at the rose on the gold tray.
“Corrinne! Corinne! Corinne! I’m so sick and tired of always talking about Corinne!” Jasmine explodes, before spending the rest of the episode doing nothing else but talk about Corinne. She is so fixated about her that she loses the ability to walk and talk at the same time.
“Who would marry a girl like that with her nip slips and her nannies! If she gets the rose, I’m going to smack her across the face.”
And then Nick gives the rose to Danielle-L-L-L-L, and a potentially classic television moment floats away into the ether.
Speaking of floating, back at the house Vanessa has received a single date card where the only clue is “floating”.
The next day, Nick takes Vanessa to the airport where they board a zero-gravity plane for a bit of romantic frolicking floating around in space. It’s all very nice and surprisingly free of gastric juices. They don’t call these things vomits comets for nothing.
Nick wonders if they are the first people to share a kiss in space.
Then next minute….
I know how she feels. There’s nothing quite so humiliating as vomiting in front of a potential mate. I once had a spew in the car park of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre just before my now husband and I were to see a show. Of course I had not been on a zero-gravity plane – far worse. It was just before Christmas and I had unsuccessfully tried to run the gauntlet of all the ladies in the perfume section of Myer and the heady concoction had made me nauseous.
But I digress. Back in zero gravity, Nick has shown all the sensitivity of a James Arthur ballad and he kisses her right on her biley mouth. He says there’s nothing to worry about, and that’s true. Every cloud has a silver lining and at least it makes a difference from throwing up after dinner.
He takes her to the top of the tallest building in Los Angeles where Vanessa tells him that limos and roses remind her of funerals and then Nick rehashes his Bachelor history again and then gives her a rose and Vanessa thinks it must be a sign from her dead grandfather. Nick cries. They kiss.
There’s one more group date to get through and the seven chosen girls squeal with excitement, clearly not looking at the compilation of the group: the dolphin girl, the lesbian, Astrid with the natural boobs, Dominique who we haven’t seen since she first stepped out of the limo – basically a group of no-ones who have no chance of going to the end.
They meet Nick at a sports field where he has just finished a few laps. Turns out this is not to impress the girls, but Olympian Carl Lewis who is clearly down in his luck and has been forced onto The Bachelor to run lame events like Limo Long Jump just to earn a quid.
After three events, all of but three of the girls are culled and a dark cloud hovers over the stadium and the storm that is brewing is called Hurricane Dominique.
The three finalists – Rachel, Alexis and Astrid – have to humiliate themselves by running a hundred metres to be the first to grab a garish novelty diamond ring and jump in a hot tub with Nick. Rachel and Alexis sprint to the lead while Astrid is hindered by her poorly supported boobs bouncing up and hitting her in the face. All of a sudden she does a Bradbury* when Rachel drops the ring, collides with Alexis and Astrid saunters through to take the hot tub time with Nick. Dominique doesn’t even crack a smile when Rachel’s foot nearly grinds Astrid’s hand into the tartan running track and this is clearly HILARIOUS.
Cue the meltdown.
At the group date cocktails, Dominique is not amused.
She simmers when Astrid gets to speak to Nick first.
She froths when Alexis rolls around with Nick on her giant Nick mat, no mean feat in her dress.
She boils as Nick tells Jaimi that he doesn’t just see her as the crazy lesbian (which obviously she is) and then…
KABOOM! She lets her Little Miss Psycho out in the form of whiny, needy tirade, and in a scene which is a carbon copy of Jubilee’s demise last year, Dominique is gone. Seriously, it’s like some of these girls have never watched the show before.
And nice, level-headed Rachel earns herself the rose.
There’s little time for mourning Dominique’s departure however, because Nick has organised a pool party for the next day to lift everybody’s spirits. Well the world is paved with good intentions, and then people like Corinne walk along it before the concrete sets properly and leave their mark forever.
While some of the girls find the pool party a little intimidating, Corrinne’s all over it, because she has something up her sleeve.
It turns out that it’s her crotch and while her sleeve is an odd place to keep it, she has pulled it out and is bouncing it around on a pink jumping castle.
Straddled by Corinne as soon as he enters, Nick admits that he loves Corinne’s sense of playfulness and fun. Well maybe you should marry a Labrador puppy, Nick. They’re playful and fun and they too will hump your leg.
Pooped from all that bouncing, Corinne retires to have a nap and dream of living in a huge bouncing castle; just her and Nick and a thousand nannies bringing her an endless supply of sliced cucumber.
But the rest of the girls have had enough. Raven, rocking a yellow bikini, tells Nick that Corinne has a nanny.
“Say what?” says Nick.
“She didn’t know how to … wash a … spoon,” continues Raven with her tirade of put downs.
“Say what?” says Nick and then one by one the other girls start telling Nick about Corinne’s faults.
But it is Vanessa who finally cuts to the chase.
“It’s you who I hold responsible for riding Corinne like a pony on the bouncy castle.”
“Say what?” whispers Nick, sheepishly…
…and the beach party is TO BE CONTINUED.
Many apologies for the tardiness of this post. It is both cricket season and the Australian Open Tennis at the moment and this Aussie girl has been a little distracted!
*To ‘ do a Bradbury’ is an expression used in Australia to describe when the underdog comes through. It recognises the achievement of Olympic ice skater Stephen Bradbury who was coming last in the final of his race, when all four of his competitors crashed on the final turn, allowing Bradbury to win Australia’s first ever Winter Olympic gold medal and elevating him to folk hero status in this country.
The Bachelor screens on 9 Life, 8:30 pm Tuesdays
Photo credits: 9 Now
friday night with kath 