Jo Thornely recaps First Dates episode 4: ‘The worst date I’ve ever been on’
FIRST Dates’ first lesbian date could not have gone more wrong. Aimee said nothing all night, and then the dam broke.
YOU might be surprised to know that “opposites attract” isn’t just a 1989 Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat song, the music video for which was considered at the time to be an innovative mix of live action and animation but is now a bit embarrassing.
It’s also something that happens on dates.
Sometimes.
Because not all of the people on First Dates tonight are opposites, and not all of them attract. It’s actually a pretty dumb way to start a recap, but here we go.
INTERNET VS INNIT
Look, Bianca is gorgeous, so it’s no surprise that she’s an Instagram selfie sensation, or that she’s sick of dating people in boy bands, or that she’s mastered that thing where people subtly adjust their hair extensions so that they perfectly frame their boobs.
Almost the opposite of the kind of guy you’d expect to see on Bianca’s arm is Will, an endearingly gormless Brit with pretty eyes and a constant “cor, have you seen me with this fit bird or what” expression.
Quite crafty in his flirting technique, Will suggests they clink drinks, insisting that eye contact be made during the cheers, and then continues to insist that they cheers at regular intervals throughout the date.
Will’s other technique is to sound like a geezer from the Carry On movies. “Oysters, they’re a bit saucy in’t they? Aphrodisiac, yeah. We get them, I reckon. Cheers”. It nicely offsets Bianca’s own technique of saying “selfie” at every available opportunity.
Basically the only differences between this date and the plot of Romeo & Juliet is the fact that everybody’s still alive and nobody’s done a face-swap yet.
Oh, wait.
Back on the Shakespearean tip, more time than is comfortable is spent discussing whether or not they should have a shot called a “wet pussy”, causing everyone in the restaurant, indeed, the nation, to shout JUST LEAVE AND AGGRESSIVELY HUG EACH OTHER WHILE YOU WALK UP THE STREET ALREADY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
MINING VS PINING
Say what you like, there is no better person on this earth than mine worker Rachelle.
She’s cute as a button. She’s warm, talkative and expressive. She doesn’t like posing muscle-boys with no body hair. Plus, as she puts it herself, she “blows sh*t up”.
After ordering a beer and letting us know which footy team she loves, Rachelle tells us “I’m not a bogan, I’m just not high maintenance. I’m easy to please”. At this stage we’re ready to vote for Rachelle as our next prime minister, and I wish that was more of a compliment.
Even though it doesn’t matter to us who Rachelle’s date is because nobody will ever be good enough, builder Adam is pretty nice.
Rachelle tells us she normally dates ... er ... let’s just say “fluffwits”, and is floored when Adam tells her he’s never had a girlfriend, not even at school. “Fluff off”, she says, astounded.
Then, just when Adam almost has a chance to make an impression on us, Rachelle tells the story of how her mum died when she was 11, and that taught her to abandon bitterness and not sweat the small stuff.
Basically all Adam has to do now is cross his fingers and hope that this divinely special human wants to see him again, and use his professional skills to build a shrine to her.
It’s a yes! Adam, be prepared to be overshadowed.
IRRITABLE BOWEL VS IRRITABLE
I imagine on a show like this that the number of gay applicants is probably a lot smaller than the number of heterosexual applicants, making the pool of compatibility for the former a lot shallower.
Does that, in turn, make the likelihood lower that a gay first date on First Dates will be successful?
Let’s see:
This is Renee. She’s relaxed, sweet, into whoever she finds attractive regardless of gender, and has an alcohol and fructose intolerance.
This is Aimee. She is a model, considerably less relaxed than Renee, and has an intolerance for both meat and meat-eaters.
Aimee admits to us that dating makes her “hysterically nervous”, but she’s developed a successful coping mechanism: To sit quietly without making eye contact, effectively acting as if she was alone in the restaurant.
Renee copes as best as she can with someone who hardly eats, hardly talks, and makes this face at people who eat dead animals:
Aimee says she can hear the animals crying, but that may just be the sound of this date plummeting earthward in a ball of angry fire. By the time the couple gets to Awkward Question Time and the producer asks if there’ll be a second date, two voices very quickly and succinctly say “no”.
Uncharacteristically for someone who spent most of the date mute though, the talky floodgates burst open for Aimee. “There was nothing that could have even made the date better, like for me, it was just horrible. It was probably the worst date I’ve ever been on”.
She itemises the lack of connection, the lack of spark, and the fact that there wasn’t a single positive thing she could conceivably say about the date.
Of all the times to not talk over the last hour, Aimee, this is probably it.
NERVES VS CURVES
Happily tonight for those of us who like groaning aloud at abysmal jokes, the hapless Shadi is back for a third time, ready to disappoint another woman so far out of his league she might as well be a maraca-wielding cabaret singer with feathers in her hair.
Danielle is gorgeous, confident, and articulate — the kind of woman Shadi is getting a lot of experience being rejected by. She explains to Shadi what being a cabaret singer entails, and he reciprocates by explaining the ins and outs of chicken delivery. It’s a short conversation.
Admittedly Shadi is keeping the god-awful jokes to a minimum this week, significantly lowering the chances that he’ll say something stupid and deal-breaking.
Well, marginally lowering the chances. He tries the “your hands look heavy, do you need me to hold them for you” line, not understanding that telling a date that any of her body parts look heavy is a pretty big risk.
Not as big a risk as saying “she’s not an escort, she’s a cabaret singer and there is a difference”, though. That would be REALLY stupid.
However in an unexpected victory of the type not seen since last week’s US election, Danielle agrees to a second date. Shadi thanks her profusely.
As do we, as it means we won’t be subjected to more of his jokes next week.
Jo Thornely doesn’t get enough attention at her day job, so she writes for various outlets, takes up way too much bandwidth on the internet, and loves it when you explain her jokes back to her on Twitter. Follow her @JoThornely
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