Jo Thornely recaps The Bachelor 2016 episode 3

THEY were supposed to pash and be together forever. But Richie’s bungled kiss with Megan may have ruined things forever.

VIOLETS are blue,

Roses are red.

Make sure your helmet

Is strapped to your head.

I ask you, has the potential for head injuries ever been this high on The Bachelor?

Lounging by the pool all together by chance one morning, the girls are treated to a visit by Osher.

“Every time we see Osher, we know that something exciting is going to happen” they say, provided you don’t find hair not moving at all in the breeze exciting.

Osher hints at a single date, smirks his knowing smirk, and brandishes a fateful rectangle.

CHA-CHING

Naturally all the girls hope they bag the date, because as Keira says “We’re not here to just like, smell roses”.

No ... not to SMELL them.

The actually quite lovely Megan gets the date and is predictably excited, Keira does not get the date and is predictably miffed, and that’s where the predictable part of the date ends. Because Megan and Richie are going to be on a platform, hanging from a crane, suspended over the water, at sunrise.

Admittedly the presence of a couch is pretty predictable.

They’re both nervous, and by this point I’ve noticed that, like a text message from a teenage boy asking about your bra, Richie pops a little “ha ha” at the end of sentences when he’s nervous.

Not that there’s anything to be nervous about. They’re just sitting around, eating chocolate and rappin’ about feelings in harnesses over sharp rocks and man-eating sharks, ha ha.

Ha ha.

The pair talk about love and passion and relationships, but weirdly not plummeting to their certain death, ha ha.

The second part of their date is on a different couch, in a house that we’re in for no clear reason, but that Richie assures us contains “so many things to look at”.

And like a couch.

Richie and Megan chat about politics, sports, their favourite shows and the asylum seeker problem. KIDDING! Of course they don’t, they talk about love and passion and how much they have in common and the nature of the date they’re only halfway through. To the surprise and shock of roughly no-one, he tells Megan he’s not the greatest wordsmith, and she responds with words like ‘graciousness’ and ‘moot’, which Richie promises himself he’ll look up later.

Dispensing with words altogether, Richie reaches for the language everyone understands: a rose. And a badly misjudged kiss trajectory.

The language of love is a sad trombone noise.

UGH, YOU DUMB IDIOTS. You’re supposed to pash and get married and be together forever. Now FIX IT.

THANK YOU. You’ve made a tromboner very happy.

Next thing you know it’s time for a group date, and Keira is so irritated by the fact that she has to share Richie that we get an early appearance of Keira’s Tongue Of Disapproval.

She’s tasting the air for signs of injustice.

The girls meet Richie at a velodrome and are enchanted by the sight of his guns in a singlet and his extremely noticeable helmet.

It’s very important to protect your soft parts.

Osher announces that it’s a roller derby date with a street party for the winning team, and that there are only two rules:

1. You’re either a blocker or a jammer; and

2. You have to look completely and one hundred per cent ridiculous.

Wow, television really does add a couple of kilos, huh.

They’re in a roller derby. In sumo suits. All dating the same guy. If an alien lands right now, bags not explaining this.

Keira instantly claims that any girl who says they like sport is lying, fouls, is knocked over, and flails on the ground for a few minutes. Ironically every girl watching suddenly really likes sport.

This is exactly how the rollerblading pros do it.

The team that Keira isn’t on wins, and celebrates around a couch made of milk crates.

Still totally counts.

While we’re counting couches, although it was disappointing to not see any man-nipples this week, I believe we now have a fight on our hands for Nipple Couch Death Match:

Be careful to not get couches and nipples mixed up.

The “street party” is actually a bit adorable, with food trucks and fairy lights and ice cream and champagne, and other things that make Zany Janey do this face:

Wheeeeeeeee kittens

Richie gets what he calls ‘snapshots’ of the girls by engaging them in brief conversations, discovering that Janey doesn’t like sport or competition, Tiffany is concerned about vomiting all over the Rosatorium, and Tolyna doesn’t like to open up her heart. Just her eyes, really quite widely.

Without so much as a backwards nod to the cultural-appropriation sumo suits discarded in a corner, suddenly we’re at the Womansion cocktail party, sippin’ on gin n’ juice and trying to contain our bosoms in dresses that may or may not be the right size.

Initially conversation centres around whether or not Megan and Richie kissed on their date, and whether or not there was any tongue. Keira, any thoughts on the tongue situation?

I was born on a pirate ship.

However when Richie takes Alex up to the hideaway couch without her even having to wave her magic white rose wand, irritation flares. The girls worry that the couple are canoodling, but save for a hand on Alex’s knee, it’s safe to say both literally and metaphorically that there’s not much going on upstairs.

The Rosatorium beckons, and we’re reminded that with cocktail party makeovers, some of the girls look completely different to their usual selves.

Nikki, I have literally never seen you before.

Osher, stoical in a suit made from reinforced obsidian, gets things underway by announcing that THREE ladies will be exiting via the gift shop this evening.

With barely a “ha ha”, Richie commences issuing rose-scented safety helmets to the lucky, while we sit through multiple close-ups and voice-overs, awaiting the result.

When we get down to four girls, we realise a terrible, terrible thing: either Zany Janey or Singin’ Eliza is going home tonight.

And we’re just not ready to lose that precious a diamond yet.

A day and a half passes, and Eliza stays to sing “Look At You” in F sharp major minor for another day.

Bye, Tolyna-with-the-big-eyes, Tiffany-who-plummeted-suddenly-but-gently-from-grace, and Zany Janey, who is hereby invited to eat cupcakes in every house in Australia forever. We’ll miss you.

Janey.

We’ll miss you, Janey.

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