Chicken nuggets, skipping and limes: How not to nail your first date

DEEP fried foods could be your best ticket to first date happiness as these sometimes excruciating encounters show. Jo Thornely recaps the show.

SOME of the dates on First Dates make you smile — the warm, delighted smile you do when you’re watching two people truly connect in a fancy restaurant while you’re sitting at home with chip crumbs in all your nooks.

Some of the dates make you smile. And some of them don’t.

The One With The Skipping

There’s no-one quite like skipping-obsessed Emma.

On dates she likes to go Double Dutch.

Okay, that’s not true — if you take away the braces and geek spectacles, Kane is quite like Emma.

Except she might still have change in her pockets.

Both Emma and Kane teach kids about physical exercise. Both have goofy smiles and nervous laughs. Both think oysters are a bit like boogers.

Mmmmmm, mucus.

Sure, Emma kind of has the edge on Kane when it comes to affectations like telling people you’ll only remember things if you put them in a song and describing everything that gets stuck in your braces in graphic detail, but Kane makes up for it by being attentive, endearing, and clinging to his one oyster booger joke for the entire date.

The date’s charming and goofy enough for us to be truly shocked come Awkward Question Time, when Emma rejects Kane for having too much in common with her.

Everything except wanting a second date.

I guess you can’t base a relationship on just boogers.

The One With The Citrus Puns

Alistair is cute as hell and twice as charming as he does what many have imagined doing: practising his flirting technique on Cam the Barman.

What an enchanting scent of Tooheys, mon cheri.

And well may he practice, as parts of his date Eliza arrive at the restaurant a full fifteen seconds before the rest of her.

Table for three please.

Alistair, who tells us he falls in love at the drop of a hat, falls in love at the drop of a hat.

He also reveals his twin skills of flute-playing and juggling — neither of which are euphemisms despite their potential — and while Eliza giggles through Alistair’s appeal, the waiter we’re not used to yet sneakily brings him some limes to demonstrate his talents with.

He’s good with his hands, this one.

Unfortunately he comes a cropper as the fruit tumbles to the floor, but soon we understand that this entire theatrical display has been for one pun — Alistair picks a lime up from the floor, offers it to Eliza, and asks if she likes his pick-up limes.

Impressive. And also terrible.

Alas, it’s not to be as Eliza rejects Alistair at the eleventh hour, wasting his skills as a punny linguist.

I guess you can’t base a relationship on just juggling.

The One With The Not-Hipsters

“We don’t typically use the ‘H’ word around my parts” says Adam of the word ‘hipster’ and of his parts, punctuating his objection with some robust finger pistols.

The H-word is Heeeeeyyyyy.

Vegetarian Adam is passionate about taking photographs of animals, and his date Alicia, who used to have a barbecue business and is now planning a sausage-and-papier-mache business, is passionate about eating animals.

Hey she looks nice and also like murder.

There are basically two things we have to decide on this date:

1. Whether we love or utterly hate Adam’s phrase ‘fish and chipocrite’ to describe vegetarians who eat fish; and

2. Whether we love or utterly hate Alicia’s joke about pirates loving the letter R but preferring the C.

The only thing Alicia and Adam have to decide on this date is whether or not, despite all their strenuous efforts, they’re interesting enough to go on a second date.

Yeah nah.

I guess you can’t base a relationship on just whimsical jackets.

The One With The Facial Expression

So Si seems like a nice, friendly bloke.

Expressive, too.

Si likes blondes, so he’s delighted when he meets fair-haired Sam — who thinks that 40th birthdays with photo-booths are exactly like weddings — and greets her with a friendly hello.

Hello human male.

Unperturbed by Sam’s restrained countenance, Si soldiers on, making small talk about careers, his children, and his enjoyment of sweets.

Sweetened foods are enjoyable yet troublesome.

Quizzing Sam in a relaxed, friendly way, Si asks Sam why she’s single.

“If I knew why I was single, I probably wouldn’t be single” answers Sam, encountering a feedback loop in her programming.

404 error answer that makes sense not found.

Obviously Si can’t WAIT to take Sam out a second time, and she agrees.

“We both hold the same values I think, with work. And with family. And with outside of work. Just three things” she responds, in exactly the way that a human not partially made of circuitry wouldn’t.

And furthermore, 110101010

I guess you can sometimes base a relationship on absolutely zero warmth.

The One With the Chicken Nuggets

“I do have a tendency to talk a bit” says tradie Chris in his introduction, throwing us our second set of finger-pistols in ten minutes.

Enjoy the silence, it’s brief

Chris is pretty pleased when he meets exactly his kind of chick/woman/lady, lunch-truck driving Holly, who’s looking for a baby daddy.

“I like her clothes, her hair, her eyes … and her boobs a little bit” he gushes, and then just keeps gushing.

First he talks for a long time about water.

It’s wet, y’know.

Then he talks for a long time about how his own sweat gives him eczema.

It’s gross, y’know.

Then he talks for a long time about how a mattress and a box of goon in the back of a ute is just about the best time ever.

I think my espresso martini had caffeine in it, y’know.

When he finally asks Holly some questions about herself, she pretty much just has the one thing to say.

“I like chicken nuggets”, says Holly.

Here, let me shut your mouth with my face.

It just goes to show: you can 100 per cent base a relationship on chicken nuggets.