I get it now. During the off-season, Osher has become environmentally conscious. Not content with bringing his own bags to the supermarket, he has thought about how many trees he can save by simple reducing the number of date cards he produces. So, he is more than happy to let Nick do the organisation himself.
Last cocktail party, Rhiannon handed Nick some sort of hand drawn gimmick which Nick felt obliged to…well…oblige. He has organised a sunrise hot air ballooning adventure, and to keep with the romantic themes of The Bachelor, he has personally stitched a balloon in the shape of a giant red scrotum.
You can see everything from up there – at least the Honey Badger can. He can see cows and sheep and dogs and rabbits fornicating on the ground, and all of this through a thick cloud of fog that blankets everything. He’s like a curly-mopped Clark Kent.
Back at the mansion, Romy, who is clearly only on this program to enhance her social media status is engaging in her favourite pastime: dissing on Vanessa Sunshine because she thinks that VS is only there to enhance her social media status.
Osher’s personal war on useless paper products has not extended to the group date cards and one arrives promptly. “We’re heading to Paradise” it claims (another thinly-veiled reference to Bachelor in Paradise, me thinks?). Brittany, Shannon, Cass, Alesha, Romy and Vanessa are picked, and they head off to pack for their paradise excursion. What the women are expecting, of course, is not what they are thinking…
Nick and Rhiannon are back on terra firma, and he has gone a bit rustic, fashioning the day bed out of bales of hay and a couple of horse blankets. Now it is obvious Nick has never worn one of those tiny little jumpsuits so popular with his ladies, and he most definitely has never sat on a bale of hay wearing one. Needless to say, Rhiannon no sooner sits down than the prickles of the hay bales shoot into her thighs, right up her spinal cord to her brain, and she loses the power of communication. Nick has a pile of questions written on little pieces of paper, but every time Rhiannon reaches for one she ends up with hay in her gusset, rendering coherent speech impossible.
“Oh…love is…um…I’m not sure….um…oh hell…giving not taking? Is that right….?”
And so it continues.
Clearly confident that he already has someone else in mind to eliminate this week, he gives Rhiannon a rose, because…why not? What’s the harm?
It is a decision Nick immediately regrets. Rhiannon goes in for a hug, attempts to ask for a kiss but fails at it. Nick offers her a hug and wonders how he can snatch the rose back.
“Oh wow! How huge are those grapes!” exclaims Rhiannon, and in Bachelor speak that is definitely DATE OVER.
Humiliated, Rhiannon has scurried off with the rose, grabbed a producer and insisted on a training session on how to pash the Badger. The eighteen-year-old can’t wait to tell his mates about this!
Meanwhile, Nick is left sitting on the hay bales, forlorn, and wondering why he is feeling prickles in his thighs.
The next day, the girls are headed to paradise in matching blue Hyundais (which I’m pretty sure is not a legitimate way of travelling to Paradise in any of the world’s major religions). Shannon has drawn the short straw and has to ride with Romy and Alesha and looks like she is just waiting for the car to get up to enough speed so that she can open the door and throw herself out. Luckily, it’s a Hyundai, and said speed is never attained.
They arrive at Paradise, which is a patch of grass in a clearing in a forest. Osher is there and looks particularly proud of himself. He has organised an overnight trip for the girls, camping in the forest. Even better, he has organised a guest appearance by Ivan Milat:
“And tomorrow night there will be a rose ceremony – right here in the forest! Six of you will enter, but only five of you will return to the mansion.”
The first task is to set up their swags. Immediately the girls start bagging on Vanessa Sunshine.
“Who’d wear stilettoes camping?” they chorus.
Well firstly, NONE of these bitches knew that they were going camping, so the fact that the rest of them are not wearing them is good luck, rather than any canny planning. Secondly, Vanessa Sunshine reveals that she has been camping before, and clearly her stilettoes are multi-function. Supposing, when you are out camping, some sort of nasty creature manages to sneak into your swag? Just grab a stiletto and club the thing right over the head. It will crack the skull and pierce the brain and the threat is neutralised.
Vanessa also is a deft hand at swag erecting and can swing a rubber-headed mallet like the best of them. She so impresses Nick that he invites her on the quad bike adventure, along with Romy and Alesha.
Vanessa looks unimpressed. What to do with her hair? Maybe she’s thinking about how ballet dancer Isadora Duncan died when the long silk scarf she was wearing while riding in a convertible wrapped itself around the wheels, dragged her from the car and broke her neck.
Or maybe she is just reacting to having to share the date with Romy and Alesha.
In any case, she has a strategy. If she hangs back last, Romy will end up getting a face full of dirt from the Honey Badger’s quad and then she will be able to glide on in and in like Stephen Bradbury and impress. It works.
Despite that, Romy gets some one-on-one time with Nick, all of which she spends telling him how horrible Vanessa Sunshine is.
Then Vanessa Sunshine gets her turn, and despite her impressive performance to this point, her flirting leaves a bit to be desired:
“When I first saw you it was curly mullet, curly moustache, and I thought what the hell? But that’s OK that I thought you were the last man on Earth I would have sex with, because for me CONVERSATION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. And you know, physical attraction comes later… haha!”
And that’s OK, if you are any good at conversation.
Back at camp, it’s dinner time and Vanessa Sunshine proves that she is a pretty deft meat handler, taking charge of cooking the patties. Romy, meanwhile, sits back with Alesha, planning her next move.
Now it needs to be pointed out that Alesha is a political advisor from Canberra. I’m just saying that with advisors like her and Vicky Campion, it is little wonder that we have just named our seventy-third Prime Minister in four years.
“Are you going to roll him in his swag?” she suggests to Romy (possibly the same thing she asked Peter Dutton about Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull), almost panting with excitement at the thought.
And has anyone else noticed that the only people Alesha seems to talk to are Romy and Cat and no-one else, including Nick.
Eventually everyone bunks down for the night, but the Australian bush has many nocturnal threats: bandicoots, red-belly black snakes, feral possums. Yet the biggest threat of all is the South-East Queensland Randicoot, especially when it is in season. Nick is rudely awakened by one sneaking into his swag and rubbing itself against him. If only he had a handy stiletto…
After breakfast the next day, Nick invites Cass for an early morning whine wine. She is most concerned about Romy’s advances in the swag, but he assures her that she was only there about ten minutes before he cast her out because he has TOO MUCH RESPECT FOR THE GIRLS. Besides, he had to get up early and swing down to Bunnings for a DYI Bush Swing kit, which he quickly assembles over the branch of the nearest tree.
“Well, Cass. I’m not there yet, but things are going in the right direction.”
Which they aren’t, because he is pushing her side-to-side instead of from the back.
Romy has spent the day in her camping chair, eating non-stop.
“I don’t mind a sausage in the morning,” she proclaims, scoffing down six as well as half a kilo of bacon. Nor does she mind a mid-morning bread roll, a few packets of crisps and a couple more loaves of bread in the arvo, all in camera view. This is all to help calm her nerves about the rose ceremony in the wilderness.
“I’m literally shitting myself,” she tells the others.
Little wonder.
In short order, Osher arrives, and remembering that Ivan Milat is incarcerated, tells the girls to ready themselves and meet HIM in the bush for the rose ceremony.
Night falls and they are duly assembled…and every last one of the bitches is wearing stilettoes.
The Honey Badger starts calling names.
“Cass. Will you accept this rose?”
Duh.
“Brittany.”
No surprises there.
“Shannon.”
OK…you didn’t speak to her once on the whole camping trip, but she’s seemed nice, so…OK…
“Alesha.”
WTF?
That means it’s down to Romy and Vanessa Sunshine – the ultimate rock and a hard place.
“Romy.”
OMFG. I know Vanessa Sunshine didn’t win over too many fans, but at least she told it like it was.
“Vanessa, it’s time to say your goodbyes to Nick.”
Crickets.
She just stands there. Is she going to faint? Is she gathering her words for Nick? Is she going to smack Romy across the face?
Eventually she moves forward, gives Nick a peck on the cheek, says nothing, then turns on her stiletto heel and wanders off into the scrub.
As a departure, it deposes Steph’s disbelief over shaving her legs, chops it into a million bits and feeds it to the donkeys.
See you in Bachelor in Paradise, Vanessa Sunshine, for surely you have secured your place ( and pack your bloody stilettoes).
friday night with kath 