James Weir recaps SAS Australia 2020 episode 9 | Honey Badger’s harrowing run-in

Nick “Honey Badger” Cummins has made a harrowing confession on SAS – but there’s one major scandal he’s strangely avoiding. James Weir recaps.

Honey Badger Nick Cummins makes an emotional confession on Monday’s SAS Australia and reveals a harrowing tale of death threats and murder but strangely dodges the big, obvious scandal Australia needs closure on: the time he double-dumped those two chicks on The Bachelor.

Meanwhile, Candice Warner is made, yet again, discuss the toilet tryst that has haunted her for years and this repeated punishment is just getting cruel. So what, she hooked up in a toilet stall. Who hasn’t?

The sidestepping of Badger’s scandal doesn’t make sense. The basic concept of this show is recruiting celebrities with big scandals and then trapping them in a concrete cell and forcing them to talk about their splashy tabloid mistakes.

Schapelle Corby got interrogated about the boogie board bag. Candice has been grilled against her will about the toilet incident and her husband’s cricket ball tampering scandal. Why are the soldiers playing soft ball with Honey Badger and ignoring the double-dumping?

The people want answers. Nay. We demand them.

JAMES WEIR RECAPS: Read all the recaps here

LISTEN TO THE NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS PODCAST BELOW

The nine remaining celebrities are split up into groups for one day and of course the exercise is designed to respect everyone’s integrity and personal boundaries.

“You will live together, you will sh*t together, you will p*ss together, you will eat together,” the head soldier screams.

They’re then driven to a remote rocky field where one person from each team is thrown off the top of a crane while their partner frantically pulls on a cable to stop them from splattering on the ground in a puddle like a Looney Tunes cartoon.

“It’s your job to make sure your partner doesn’t end up as a sh*tty mess on the floor,” one soldier growls.

Easy breezy.

This task isn’t as scary as having to empty the communal toilet bucket without a hazmat suit.

Honey Badger is the first person to be thrown off the crane and Miss Universe is tasked with yanking the break cord.

“I have trust issues,” the Badge tells us. “Through my experience in footy and … in the spotlight at times. People do things they weren’t thinking about. Just being stupid. Or making something up to better their career. I don’t trust people.”

Hmmm. This is vague yet intriguing. When he refers to these liars he got burnt by while living in the spotlight, could he be alluding to The Bachelor period of his life? A fun jaunt on reality TV that quickly turned into a nightmare when he double-dumped both finalists and became an outcast overnight.

This blunt statement is the perfect way to foreshadow his upcoming interrogation. The soldiers will definitely ask for more specific details, right? RIGHT? More on that soon. But you know in your heart of hearts what the answer is.

No one splatters on the ground during the crane challenge and the soldiers are visibly disappointed, so they summon the celebrities to a room for a fun new party game.

“Each one of you is gonna come up here and you’re gonna tell us something you’ve done that you’re ashamed of – something you regret,” the head soldier spits.

Try playing this with family at Christmas lunch.

This game should lead to fun scandalous confessions but it really doesn’t. Things get sad and emotional. A total downer.

Candice tries to be honest and alludes to the toilet tryst but then the soldiers start pushing her and demanding specific details even though they’ve already done this several times. The only details she hasn’t been forced to provide are the colour of the bathroom tiles.

“A long time ago, when I was young. I got myself in a compromising position, which, I regret. It had a huge impact on my family. Huge,” Candice says, never explicitly acknowledging the specific scandal but we know which one.

The bitchy soldiers play dumb and start heckling. “What was the situation?”

Candice tries to be vague. “So … it was just a personal situation. Too many drinks. Living with that and having to explain to my kids in the future is going to be very difficult. Especially when you’ve got three girls. I remember sitting on the side of the street and not being able to take it anymore. And just thinking, ‘If this is what life’s about then I can’t take it anymore’.”

Candice needs to create a new scandal just to stop everyone asking about the old one.

When Honey Badger gets called up we think we’re finally going to get double-dumping closure. Instead, we’re blindsided with an emotional and harrowing confession about his past.

“For me, when I was 13, I was going through a pretty tough time at school. Gangs and stuff … death threats,” he says.

“I was trying to handle it and my old man tried to help me. I was in a dark space and I told him to F off. Because, his brother was murdered, stabbed. And I didn’t want him to go through anything like that – but I added much more pain onto that when I told him that. And he didn’t flog me, which made it even worse. Because I always relied on … that (the flogging) was the evening thing.

“And now he’s got terminal cancer. And I think that situation has driven me through my career to work harder to try prove to him that I’m deserving of his love. And I just wanna make that happen before it’s too late.”

It’s a raw and compelling story and we have lots of questions about it – ones we assume the soldiers will ask when they summon him for interrogation but they don’t. When someone bravely reveals they once got swept up in some troubles involving gangs and death threats, there are one or two questions you might ask out of curiosity – some blank spaces that need filling in. Apparently the soldiers are not curious in the slightest.

Still have a few questions about this confession.

The tabloid headlines around The Bachelor double-dumping scandal are also ignored during the grilling. It’s arguably Badger’s biggest scandal and the one that we the people want him to be asked about.

In previous interrogations, we’ve seen the soldiers sitting at a laptop literally trawling through Google to find out about Schapelle’s and Candice’s scandals and then firing off questions and demanding exact detail.

But for some reason, the soldiers aren’t going as hard as they once did. It’s strange and doesn’t make sense.

It’s almost like we can’t trust reality TV anymore.

Twitter, Facebook: @hellojamesweir