Jo Thornely recaps episode 8 of The Bachelor

NINA decided to reveal the Bachelor’s dirty little secret in last night’s episode, but it backfired spectacularly.

EPISODE 8 of The Bachelor means it’s time for three things: go-cart crashing, pizza pashing, and Nina bashing. Will we ever find out if Emily has any opinions about Nina? Time will tell.

While we wait, I don’t see any reason why Sam can’t wonder which women he wants while wandering through an unrelated horse stud.

Oh, horsie. Whoever shall I pick?

The only way we can fill time between now and the inevitable drinks is to have a date. Happily Osher walks into the Womansion in a relaxed bleached-onyx shirt, clutching an envelope.

It’s a go-karting group date, but it looks like the opening credits from Law & Order: Jumpsuit Investigation Unit.

Ba-bummmm

It’s the best news ever for self-confessed revhead Nina, who almost bursts with delighted glee.

Pumped.

Understandably, the sight of someone enjoying something irritates Emily to no end, causing her to call Nina ‘fake’.

Look, let’s just save time and ring a bell whenever Emily voices an opinion about Nina.

“She thinks she’s gonna be last man standing. I mean it’s great to be that confident, I guess”. DING!

“I don’t know much about Nina. I know that she isn’t someone that I would be friends with”. DING!

“I just don’t think that he would be really attracted to her. She’s a bit ... crass”. DING!

This is really starting to take its toll.

Grumped.

With some private Sam-time as the dangled carrot, the competition is fierce, especially between Tokyo Drift Nina, Too Fast Too Emily and Mad Bec: Fury Road, who bounce off the barriers like a drunk navigating a hallway in the dark.

“As long as I’ve got the lead and I’m beating Nina” squints Emily. “That’s all that matters to me” (DING!).

It’s pretty much all that matters to anyone, as everyone on the track, in the production crew, and watching at home forgets that Sam is even there.

Guys! Guys? Helllooooooo? LOOK AT MY HORSE

We even pay more attention to Rachel driving her Daihatsu WhoAreYouAgain, as she dawdles endearingly around the track like Cadet Hooks in Police Academy, being lapped by two-stroke lawnmowers and dead snails.

Eventually Nina wins, beaten only by Emily, who actually wins. Nina is mistaken. It’s all very confusing.

What’s got two index fingers and feels like an idiot?

Emily spends her private-time prize making sure Sam is across her latest obsession: sticking the boot into Nina.

Unable to hear her over the sound of ringing bells, he guesses that Emily doesn’t like Nina much.

“There’s other people that I “connect” with better”, air-quotes Emily.

“Ding”

Relief from the hate-fest comes in the form of a single date-fest, with an envelope which must SURELY contain good news for so-far dateless Rachel.

“Snezana!” reads Nina from the card, irritating both Rachel AND Emily.

“Are you sure?” squeaks the self-effacing Snezana. No, babe. It was another name that just SOUNDS like yours. Yeah, she’s sure.

Sam picks Snez up in a speedboat and jeans so tight you can almost make out his Don Johnson.

Hello and welcome to Mi-SAM-i Vice

Sam explains that “La Dolce Vita” means “Italian stereotype”, and not “food and ice cream” as Snezana hopes.

The two are all over each other, so already we can see that the frontrunner for Sam’s affections is boat skipper Manny, who rasps “Let’s drive it like we stole it” before gunning the Evinrude and launching across the harbour.

The couple disembarks at what Sam calls “Little Italy”, and I call “Leichhardt Coles”, where they pick ingredients to make their own pizzas. It is the cutest. It is cutissimo.

Mediterranean cliches, aisle nine.

“It’s almost like he gets a feel for who I am, and what I’m about”, sighs Snezana.

She is all about the eggplant emoji.

He showers her in flours and admires her taste for meat. “If you’d said vegetarian, this might’ve been our last date”, he warns, stabbing a passing caribou and feasting on its entrails to prove a point.

Dessert follows, and Sam appeals to Snezana’s love of Star Wars with a gelato Death Star, which in order to avoid any LucasFilm lawsuits has been crafted to resemble a nuclear accident at the Pokemon factory.

Use the fork, Luke.

“It was basically a pink Death Star” Snezana coos, hopefully talking about the dessert. The date carries on with an understated Jedi theme.

Here Snez feeds rebels into the Sarlacc’s gaping maw.

And here Luke Skywalker kisses his sister.

While this is happening, Nina accidentally lets slip to the girls that Snezana and Sam had a sneaky pash at the barn dance. There’s a mixed response.

“Mixed”

Emily rails against Nina rather than Snezana, saying “Nina’s as two-faced as they come”, and “I don’t trust her at all”.

On the other hand, Heather chooses to quote directly from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in response, with “Go Snez. Cop a feel. Well played. Like, get in there”.

By the time the cocktail party arrives everyone’s out of sorts, and it shows.

Heather spends so long preparing for her role as Hotpants Bride that she forgets to check her hair for tumbleweeds and Danish pastries;

I KNEW I left those somewhere.

Nina confesses to Snezana about her indiscreet pash-dobbing;

Why, you stuck-up, half-witted scruffy-looking nerf herder.

And Emily, Ebru and Bec sip from crystal while saying really nice things about Nina.

“Really”

“Nice”

“Things”

Emily repeats that she thinks Nina is two-faced, and makes the outrageous claim that “I think she’s sooooo disingenuine”.

DONG!

It’s almost a relief when Osher ushers in the rose ceremony. While Sam squirts roses at the successful candidates, Emily alternates between Pick Me Face and Ugh Nina’s Safe For Another Week Face.

You might even say she’s two-faced.

It comes down to Bec and Rachel. Tension builds and throbs until suddenly, in a stunning anticlimax that nobody dared or bothered to anticipate, Rachel is sent home.

They’re pretty shocked, I guess?

Sure, it feels like somebody has ripped off a band-aid without ever having actually stuck it on, but if there’s one thing we can say about Rachel, it’s that she was probably there most of the time.

Bye, Rachel. We will always sometimes remember you.