Blake is a tea drinker. Who’d-a-thunk-it?
Mind you. Who could blame him? Anyone would need a double-camomille nerve-calmer in the hope that it might prevent them from putting their fist through Sam’s face if he mentions…
“Double Delight still hasn’t come my way,” whinges Sam.
Despite this, Osher has been told that he has to earn his keep. Begrudgingly he has turned up, but he makes a big point about how he is not going to pull anything out of his trousers. No way. Instead he is going to make all of them have a plank (I hope I heard that right) competition in the pouring rain.
This is not purely for Osher’s enjoyment, however. Sophie has arrived and the plank competition serves as the elimination phase for the group date. Today the boys will be participating in “The Real Man Games” where they will have to compete in man things like building shit and changing tyres, but only the eight longest plankers will be able to participate.
Needless to say, Sam drops out of the plank first, mostly because he hasn’t shut up long enough to engage his core, and he is shortly joined by Brett, Bingham and Apollo. Brett perpetually looks asleep, so no surprises there. Bingham, accustomed to getting some sort of stable servant to shoe his polo pony, is clearly intimidated by the sheer manliness of the task. Apollo just proves how much of a gentleman he is, because with all that magic, he could just make a tyre reinflate itself, and that just wouldn’t be fair to the other guys. This has to be the explanation, because there is no reasonable way we could believe that Apollo could be out-planked by Mac…or Jarrod.
Now I have to admit, I actually thought this Real Man game was pretty cool, at very least cooler than chasing greasy pigs around a pen.
Round 1 sees the boys divided into two tyre changing relay teams – the tall guys (Blake, Jarrod, Luke and Hayden) versus the short-arses (Harry, James, Mac and Ryan) with Osher as the self-appointed nut checker.
“Boys, you should be able to change a tyre in a matter of seconds,” says Osher.
Sure, if you are a member of a Bathurst pit crew, but my husband has trouble remembering where the spare tyre is even located in our car, and those few extra minutes of searching aren’t necessarily a deal breaker.
The short guys, however, shoot off to an early lead while the tall guys languish. Not that Blake et al are worried.
“Jarrod’s changed like a million tyres in his military career, with bullets showering all around him.”
Wow. I guess his Victoria Cross must be in the mail.
Whatever it is, the silicon chip inside Jarrod’s head has switched to overload, and even though the short arses have been declared the winners, he goes on, feverishly loosening his nuts and tightening his nuts and turning red and standing erect in triumph in front of Sophie.
“It was important for Sophie to see that I don’t spit the dummy,” pants Jarrod, instead letting Sophie see him as a desperate try-hard.
Round 2 is all about assembling a flat pack and the four remaining contenders have been arranged into teams of two: the old guys (over thirty, but still younger than Sophie) and the young guys.
Now, the male brain does not fully develop until at least the age of twenty-five, so I am very dubious about the ability of Ryan and Harry to read a set of flat pack instructions, even though they are in pictures, and despite Ryan being a project manager in real life.
James and Mac get down to it and quickly get their cupboard underway, while Ryan impresses no-one in his ineptness at flat pack. So bad is his ability to put the thing together, that he takes to his drawers with a mallet in a little bit of roid rage which does not go unnoticed by Sophie:
“Ryan has his cranky pants on.”
Little matter, because Mac and James are into the final round, a fire lighting challenge, because every Australian male needs to know how to light a barbecue with a flint. You know, in case the automatic igniter fails, you can’t find the long stemmed Redheads, no-one has a cigarette lighter, and the corner shop is closed. Then, your only choice is a flint.
Osher decides this is the perfect time for a lesson in anthropology:
“This is what brought us down from the trees! The ability to make fire!” he exclaims in the most excited anthropological announcement ever.
Of course, once Neanderthal man was on the ground lighting fires everywhere, he had to cut down all the trees and this left him homeless. For the record, Neanderthal woman would have thought this through more carefully – if she weren’t punch drunk from being clubbed and dragged around by the hair all the time.
Despite Mac’s near Jarrod-like desperation, James lights his fire and Sophie’s as well.
“Who would have thought that a financial advisor from Manly would be the most manly man here?” suggests James. And he is right.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure every woman watching this season is falling in love with James, and should he ultimately get discarded, there will be no shortage of girls wanting to snap him up.
Later, on a couch on a pontoon in the backyard, Sophie too is gushing in her appraisal of James.
“You’re so good at everything. I’m waiting to hear that at night you dress up as a lady or something.”
“No that’s Jarrod!” laughs James, yet even as he jokes, Jarrod is laying out one of his mother’s dresses on his bed.
(Oh, and by the way Coalition for Marriage – hope you are getting bang for your advertising buck)
The next morning, Sam is still whinging about his Double Delight deficit. Jarrod thinks that Sam is losing the plot. I think that’s the pot calling the kettle black.
Then, without any pre-announcement from Osher, Sophie arrives and puts us all out of our misery by finally offering Sam a single-date.
And there was much rejoicing.
They drive for a long time, and Sam entertains her with some Tom Cruise impersonations.
“Pull your manners back in! Psychiatry is bullshit! Scientology is a real thing!”
Sophie keeps driving and just when I’m sure that she must be taking him to a hairdresser, they at arrive at a random house to use their kitchen to make red velvet cupcakes. Let’s just say that neither of them are likely to be invited onto Celebrity Masterchef and I hope that the homeowners have contents insurance.
Night falls, and over Baileys Martinis (note to self: Christmas drinkies!), Sophie gets to see the deeper, less frivolous side of Sam.
“What do you bring to a relationship?” she asks.
“Magic dust.”
Alllllllllrighty then.
“Misery likes company,” says Sophie trying to account for why they both use humour as a shield.
“Misery likes company,” ponders Sam. “I like it.”
“I didn’t make it up,” says Sophie. “It’s like a saying.”
It’s also a Good Charlotte song, and a Madden brother flashback here might be telling in the end.
Sam has managed to do enough to redeem himself that Sophie produces a rose from a container that has mysteriously appeared on the table.
Sam seems to be holding it together, but we just know that the minute her gets back to the mansion, Sam will straddle Jarrod and wave it in his face, and he might show Jarrod his rose as well.
Finally, it’s cocktail party time. Sophie arrives with Sam on her arm.
“Wow, Sophie looks hot in that dress,” says one of the men.
“It’s an olive dress…with gold half-moon earrings,” says Jarrod, through gritted teeth, because he is the only one who loves Sophie enough to notice such details.
He then has to look on as Apollo gets to talk to Sophie and bedazzle her with a kitchen fork.
Jarrod will have to pull out the bigger guns to counteract Apollo’s armory. So Jarrod has made a call to Uber-Bunnings and produces a couple of pre-named planter pots full of potting mix from an adjoining garden bed.
“We are going to plant the seeds of our love,” proclaims Jarrod, before making Sophie feel like an idiot by micro-managing every step of the seed planting process. Fair enough, because that is probably (hopefully) the closest any of his seed will get to her from this point on.
Finally, it’s rose ceremony time.
James and Sam have their roses and are happy. Brett and Ryan look like they have been smoking some of Jarrod’s potting mix, dopey and red-eyed.
Osher arrives, but tonight his job is easy.
Only one boy is going home, and it is no surprise that it’s Bingham. He did enter the house on the back of a horse, but that was so uninspiring that it didn’t make the episode one cut. Since then he hasn’t said a word, and in the real clincher, he looks like he has developed a cold sore and the mansion is all out of Zovirax. He HAD to go home.
So maybe Sam will shut the f*ck up about the Double Desire rose for a while, until next week at least, when we are promised…INTRUDERS!
See you all then.
friday night with kath 