Jo Thornely recaps The Bachelor 2016 episode 2

WITH two steamy private dates and a sexy photoshoot, all the girls on The Bachelor were psyched. Except Keira.

ROSES are red

And some roses are waiting;

But Keira’s unhappy

With love, life, and dating.

Morning rushes into the Womansion, and with it rushes Osher, while I discover that “rushes Osher” is very hard to say with a mouthful of Pizza Shapes. Osher pulls a date card out of his ... um ...

... let’s say pocket ...

... which causes a flurry of treble to screech around the breakfast room.

Complete stranger Mia reads the single date announcement while the other girls hope they’re the chosen ones, with the exception of Keira, who is convinced she’s the chosen one.

Darling Nikki gets the date. How do you feel about that, Keira?

Well for starters I should’ve put some clothes on.

A helicopter arrives, taking time out of its busy schedule of taking sweeping shots of Sydney Harbour, and Richie whisks Nikki away in it while the other girls both seethe with jealousy and marvel at the size of Richie’s chopper.

Nikki hints at a fear of heights, so Richie lies and tells her they’re going to abseil down from the helicopter, well aware of how much girls love both abseiling AND lying.

Ha ha ha I am terrified to the point of evacuation ha ha ha

Landing on a private beach, Richie extends the date’s transportation motif by loading Nikki into a dinghy and pushing her out to sea where they can drink offshore without being subject to NSW’s prohibitive lockout laws.

They swim, they hack coconuts, they impress each other with how they look wearing not much, they talk about past relationships, they wear white on the beach like a 90s boy band music video, he gives her a rose, and they TOTALLY KISS RIGHT ON THE LIPS.

Return of the mack.

Please reassure the crew member who has to festoon a thousand flowers and light a thousand candles every week that it was totally worth it.

Nikki returns to the Womansion and brandishes her newfound flora with glee. How do you feel about that, complete strangers?

WOOO!

How do you feel about that, Keira?

BOOO

Meanwhile, complete stranger Kiki has found another date card, and reveals that it’s the stupidest kind of group date possible: the photo shoot group date. Ten girls are chosen, including three or four complete strangers and — at last — Keira! How do you feel about that, Keira?

I’m getting sun BOOOO-urn

The shoot has a 1950s theme, which means a large variety of outfits and enough sucking-things- in that the earth tilts slightly on its axis.

The first beach-styled shoot affords us some man-nipples, considerable va-va-voom from leopard-printed sex bomb Kiki, endearing ditziness from Faith, and the excellent phrase “Someone needs to lie on the watermelon”.

Richie greets Keira in the diner-themed second shoot with “you look like Sandra from Grease Lightning!”, not realising that there is, in fact, no such person in no such movie.

Russian Sasha — another Pizza Shapes phrase to avoid — acts as a waitress in the diner shoot and aims to keep as much of Richie’s attention on her. How do you feel about that, Keira?

A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam BOOOOOOOOO

The most heavily populated jukebox-themed date really only has three people in it: Richie, Eliza, and the screaming, twerking, twirling entity inside Eliza. The other three girls pretty much just stand there while Eliza bewitches Richie with her masterful squat.

Admittedly it’s a nice break from the singing.

The final shoot is a one-on- one with Richie and Alex and a Cadillac, which regrettably isn’t fitted with a child seat. The shoot is pretty up-close- and-personal, and Richie admits to getting butterflies, but unfortunately Alex doesn’t have room for insects of any kind in her tight satin dress. Despite Keira trying desperately to derail the fluttering pheromones from the sidelines, there are definitely sparks, which is generally dangerous around this much hairspray.

This is either love or chlorofluorocarbons.

Of course, before you get too comfortable thinking that this is already about four too many dates, Richie leaves Grease Lightning and rides in like Maxwell Caulfield in Grease Lightning 2 for a surprise single date.

I want a coo-woo- woo-wool rider

Richie, like the one third of people on Tinder who aren’t into fishing or sedated tigers, has a passion for motorbikes, and wants to share that with a lady who like all ladies will probably not.

Having accidentally dressed as 80s Boy George, Keira is in the wrong era and doesn’t score the date.

How do you feel about that, Keira?

Karma karma karma karma karma chamele-BOOOO

Instead, Richie picks my-bet-for-top-three uber-babe Olena, and they ride to a secluded picnic, trying to avoid making the classic powerful-thing-between-your-legs joke the entire time.

Olena keeps the conversation nice and light, limiting subjects to things like where-is-your-estranged-father and when-do-you-want-kids, that sort of thing. But it doesn’t matter, because Richie does the thing.

You know.

THE THING.

He takes her back to the Bachelor pad and tries to completely skew the result of Nipple Couch Death Match by getting his shirt off again for a swim, and basically sitting on the ground during every single date.

Obscuring one with a towel still totally counts

Olena gets a dress, a rose, and Australia’s unwavering attention.

Look, there’s only two things you need to know about the cocktail party.

Nikki accidentally walks nude through a green sparkly spiderweb:

Woah.

And Alex uses her white rose privilege to introduce the ONLY unique couch of the evening and several high-pitched giggles.

Also nice job again, flower-and- candle-guy.

So let’s see, counting up this episode’s nipples and couches, carry the one ...

THE NIPPLES HAVE IT.

How do you feel about the result and the whole white rose scenario, Keira?

The BOOO-sual.

There’s a bit of verbal barney between Alex and Keira, which is basically what you can expect with these levels of competition, alcohol, and boob-tape.

FINALLY we get to the Rosatorium, where there seems to still be roughly three hundred girls still in the running.

One last time this week, Keira, how do you feel about that?

The BOOOOOO-chelor

Osher, dashing in a scrubbed concrete suit, greets the girls and introduces Richie, who chucks flower darts at the deserving until only three complete strangers that we haven’t really warmed to yet remain.

Look at you, you people in front of a candlestick, you.

Laura and Mia are sent home, as we get closer and closer to a core group of girls whose names we can remember.

And to a day when perhaps, finally, Keira can be happy about something.

Dream on, comrades.