Our episode opens with the Honey Badger emerging from the surf and shaking himself off like a shaggy dog.
The surf has made him think about the final group date. Like the plot of a cheesy Hollywood movie, Nick has been hit in the head with a surfboard and it has knocked him back in time to 1950s Australia when surf culture was dominated by bodgies and widgies…and bowling.
At the click of his fingers, he has transported himself to a bowling alley. His hair has been slicked back into the pre-cursor of the man bun, and his pants are tight and a little too short.
I’m not sure if he is meant to be a bodgie or a widgie, because he looks like he has put on a pair of ladies pedal pushers by accident, but it matters little, because none of these girls are old enough to know about bodgies and widgies. Unless they’re from New Zealand, where a bodgie is a small Australian parrot, and a widgie is when your undies ride up your bum.
The girls soon arrive under the flattering glow of ultra violet light, like six sets of teeth on legs.
Nick would have been happy for this to have been a simple 1950s bowling thing, but Osher knows his opportunity to make up silly games is at an end and has added a few degrees of difficulty. From his notebook:
- Source Cadillac
- Find bowling alley prepared to remove external wall to allow installation of Cadillac
- Install Cadillac
- Dress girls in 50s clobber (but make it a bit classy to make up for those segway pyjamas) totally unsuited to bowling
- Make the girls bowl. Source stiletto bowling shoes.
- Something about strikes
- Speed dating – OMFG! Yaaaaaaaaayaaaaaaaas!
- Fluffy dice. Red ones. Like testicles. Oh yes, Osher. Chicks love innuendo.
- Osher accepts Order of Australia award for contribution to entertainment.
Dasha is a bit excited about this challenge, because she always goes bowling with her five-year-old son. And she is clearly one of those parents who lets her kid win, because she is shit at bowling.
Sadly, Osher realises too late that Ten-pin Bowling is not that interesting, so he has ducked down to Officeworks to execute a canny rule change:
“In this 200-page notebook, with no prior warning, you must write a letter to yourself in ten-years.” Two hundred pages, Osher? Think about the planet!
In any case, it’s like NAPLAN for Bachelorettes.
“And then you will read your response aloud!”
Oh crap. Who checked their NAPLAN results for reading?
Cassie breaks in to tears as she struggles over a three-syllable word.
Dasha breaks into tears as she speaks about her future fifteen-year-old son.
I get it Dasha. I have one of those and I am often in tears: when I can’t find a clean bowl because they are all in his room; when I have cooked a batch of scones and they are cooling on the rack and I find one with a bite taken out of it; whenever I get a report card because Fortnite is not a subject studied at school…
Anyway, Brittany wins the one-on-one time and Nick tells her she is in for a chocolatey surprise.
Oh god no. Flashback. Richie and Alex… Ithought that I had finally eradicated that image from Season 4 from my mind, but it’s still there and the trauma is real…
Fortunately, they are just off to fondue marshmallows and foreshadow family dates.
The next day, Nick is off on a single date with Sophie.
Apparently, when Sophie produced that whiteboard at the last cocktail party, it reminded Nick of another white mass. He’s organised a skating date.
“I just opened the door and there was this ice skating rink there!” exclaims Sophie, as though she didn’t even see the Macquarie Ice Skating Rink signage.
Luckily, Sophie did ice-skating at school on Thursdays.
I did golf at school on Thursdays. I’m not sure what that meant for Sophie, but golf for me was hitting a wayward drive into the rough and spending the rest of the afternoon looking for it. Hardly prep for any future golf-themed dates.
Thankfully Sophie is much better at ice-skating than I am at golf, so it is a natural progression to ice hockey. Suitably kitted up, it’s a first to three affair where the stakes are high. If Nick wins Sophie has to pash him in the net, and if she wins she gets a surprise. What isn’t a surprise is that Nick wins and in no time they are in the throes of icy passion.
This means they need warming up, so Nick takes Sophie back to the Bachelor pad for a bit of hot tub action.
Now it must be said:
I am totally comfortable with the floss that you use to extract bits of meat from between your teeth.
I am tolerant of the Fortnite Floss dance that young teenage boys perfect in an effort to get their mugs on the big screen at the cricket (and hey, it stops them flipping bottles).
But I am totally not comfortable with the floss bikini. It’s just that I don’t think that any item of clothing should be so minimalist that you can also use it to clean between your teeth, and the entry point for said action is through your butt.
Finally it is cocktail party time, where the five remaining girls are all sitting around morosely contemplating their fates. Sophie arrives with back with Nick and clearly didn’t get the memo about wearing neutrals. Despite the smoking red dress, Sophie’s mood is also sombre because she didn’t get a rose – like a pool pash session and a stuffed polar bear aren’t enough.
Cassie knows she has to pull out all the stops if she wants to get a home date, so she has set up some sort of Hawaiian love trap in the garden.
“Holy snapping duck poo!” says Nick.
My thoughts exactly. Oh shit.
It may be all ukuleles and mojitos out by the pool, but inside it’s a dour affair. It’s a weird vibe for a cocktail party, but Brittany has figured out why:
Dasha spends her one-on-one time showing Nick one hundred and fifty-seven pictures of her son and then there’s no time to talk to anyone else as Osher turns up for the rose ceremony.
There are only six girls left, so no-one really needs Osher’s convoluted maths lesson, but there are no more group dates to plan and he needs to get his mug on camera.
“Ladies, there are six of you remaining. But Nick only has four roses. That means two of you will be going home.”
And those two people are Dasha and Emily, and there is no surprise there.
“I know that you will find the girl for you here,” says Dasha, “because I have fallen in love with each and every one of them.”
That’s not the way The Bachelor is supposed to work, but there you go.
friday night with kath 