The Bachelor Australia (Season 5) – Episode 4: That time when the helium budget ran out

This episode is so confusing on so many levels!

It’s no secret that Channel 10 is in a bit of financial strife, so it’s no surprise that evidence of budget cuts is starting to appear in The Bachelor.  I mean, there seems to be much less champagne flowing this series, and there was THAT deficit of fabric in Leah’s red carpet dress.  But four episodes in and the purse strings really have been tightened…

Where are the opening credits?

Where is the bitchy banter over a breakfast beverage?

WHERE THE HELL IS OSHER?

Without warning, Matty J is just strolling about in the rain, dreaming of polo ponies, in the expectation of the arrival of Cobie.  Cobie’s the girl who arrived at the mansion on a diet of helium, and her demeanour has been all sunshine and lollipops ever since.

On cue, Cobie arrives, just as Harry the Well-Hung Horse decides to evacuate his bladder.  Forty-five seconds in, Matty tries to excuse Harry’s shocking on-camera equine etiquette by explaining that it means that the horse is relaxed around her.

Flashback to episode one when Matty confessed his arrest for public urination.  Let’s hope that he doesn’t start feeling too relaxed around Cobie.

Matty says he is going to take Cobie horse-riding.  She says that she has never ridden a horse and Matty seems pleased that after that drawing fiasco he will be better at something than his date.  There is some footage of two people riding through a grove, but I’m not entirely convinced that Cobie ever got on a horse, because this looks exactly like the date Matty took Georgia on last season on The Bachelorette.

At least Cobie does get to WASH the horse, and almost as if she knew there would be both waterplay and horse play, she has conveniently worn a white top.

Back at the house, the girls have discovered that Cobie is missing.  Some bright spark surmises that she must be off on a date with Matty and there is some brief discussion as to the threat that this poses.

“I think Cobie can pull sexy out of her hat,” says Tara, putting the rest of the girls at ease, because they pull their sexy from elsewhere.

On the single date, Matty has taken Cobie to a room full of candles (which has blown the grapes and cheese budget this week) and a single bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, from which two nips, and ONLY two nips, have been poured.  No matter, because a couple of fumes of JW is enough to wash any last trace of helium from Cobie’s vocal chords, and all of a sudden she starts speaking like a…woman.  And the banter seems to be going well…until Cobie produces the dreaded, hand-written…poem.

“May I read it to you?” she asks.

God no.

“I’d love that,” replies Matty.

Kill me now.

“Roses are red, violets are blue,

I have no idea about rhyming scheme,

Or rhyme

Or anything

I want you to love me

Like leaves love a tree”

Or some similar shit.

NOTE THIS NOW. This literary horror show will only stop when bachelors stop appraising poetry with their penises and dishing out roses willy-nilly.

So rose in hand and Poet-Laureate nomination in the mail, Cobie suggests a kiss, and having limbered his lips on Laura the day before, Matty’s up for the challenge. He seems relaxed around Cobie, but thankfully not as relaxed as Harry.

The next morning, the girls are milling around having a Cobie date post-mortem.  It’s at this time that a date card normally arrives.

STILL. NO. OSHER.

Instead, Matty rocks up himself in his HYUNDAI and invites all of them to a group date, because, you know, those fancy cards and envelopes are pretty expensive…

All eighteen girls pack into the back of Matty’s economical hatch and soon they arrive at their secret destination and are greeted by…Osher!  He’s been busy laying out a human-sized board game and beating off the copyright attorneys deployed by Parker Bros.

What ensues is a combination of Monopoly, Pie Face and Have You Been Paying Attention.  Michelle quickly lands on “Go to Jail” (hilarious, because she’s in the police force, don’t you know?) where she spends the next six hours drinking wine and watching girls stand on squares and answer questions about Matty.

There is one tense moment when one of the blondes gets to pick someone’s face to plant a pie in.  Leah is so confident she it will be her that she starts pulling her hair back, before Liz is picked to cop it. I’d almost forgotten Liz existed, and yet she started that whole putrid dress controversy.

So after about eleven hours, Michelle, who can hardly stand by this point, has one last throw.  She has to get more than a three and it’s…a…four…

It’s a four!  Michelle wins!

WTF DOES SHE WIN?????

I guess we’ll never know because in the blink of an eye it’s cocktail party time.  Matty doesn’t even make a grand entrance with Michelle on his arm. It’s just a cocktail party and I am very confused.

I am even more confused when Florence produces a blackboard and dresses like no teacher ever and teaches Matty a bit of Dutch..

“Reapten after me.  Dissen ishou tou defloua myne tulip.”  Or something like, that.  My Dutch is a little scratchy.

Feeling like she has made enough of an impression, Florence then willingly hands Matty over to Simone. Cobie watches on, emboldened by the last fumes of JW…

Now I’ve noticed that Simone’s English accent becomes more rural when she is angry, so when Cobie (who already has a rose, remember?) interrupts and takes Matty away, she unleashes:

“Yooo’ve got to be fookin’ kidding, ri’?  Sheez ‘ad two group daytes an ‘all an I’ve ‘ad nuffin!”

And just like that the battle lines are drawn.

And Leah is having none of that.  She goes into fight for Simone’s rights.

“Excuse me,” says Leah, “Maybe it’s just the maternal, caring nature in me and I’m playing devil’s advocate, but I think it was rude of you to push in. So can I interrupt?”

“No.  And I don’t care,” retorts Cobie.

And I suddenly remember that Cobie washes coal for a living.  She’s a little bit TOUGH.

Leah can’t wait to spread the story to her minions.

“Hand on heart…” Leah feels around her chest for a minute in hopes of locating one, “she said she didn’t care!”

And in some sort of hiccough in the time-space continuum, Simone seems to now be on Leah’s side of the house, with golden girl Laura becoming Cobie’s great defender.

Jenn is pissed off, and her wine glass is empty.  The rose ceremony comes in just the nick of time.

Osher, now on minimum wage, appears briefly, and one-by-one the girls are saved.  Natalie and Sian are still safe, even though they haven’t had any screen time for two episodes.

Belinda, who arrived on the red carpet with the egg timer, is eliminated.  There is no real reason for this.  Maybe her ovaries exploded off-camera.

But there was nothing left in the budget to fix that.