Jo Thornely recaps The Bachelor episode 10

THINGS got intimate, squelchy, and extremely off-putting on The Bachelor as Alex finally got what she wanted from Richie.

ROSES are red,

Charcoal is black,

I’ve got melted chocolate,

In every last crack.

Look, by now you know the drill. Girls sit among cushions and possibly empty cups of tea, Osher rocks in with a date card, everyone hopes it’s for them, Alex grinds her molars to stubs with jealous anxiety.

Lucky for Alex, her new strategy of singling out Rachael for disdain because of that one thing she said that one time barely has time to progress, as she gets to go on today’s single date.

Richie picks her up in a Ferrari, and she tells us to camera that she really wants Richie to see that she cares about him.

You know, more than just touching his mouth while he’s blindfolded and licking his tonsils — something more obvious.

He guns the engine, crosses over some double centre lines and generally sets a bad example for young folk, while she exclaims breathlessly that she’s happy to be his passenger forever.

They pull up in front of a house virtually indistinguishable from the Womansion and find a chef dude inside stirring a large vat of something gooey, telling them they’ll be making their own chocolate today.

Happily for the timeslot, he doesn’t insist that they first make milk, milk, and lemonade.

It’s at around this point that Alex’s facial expressions start Photoshopping themselves into exaggerated caricatures as she emotes her way through the date.

For example, this is her I’ve-just-discovered-we’re-making-chocolate face:

People can do that? Make stuff? No way!

And this is her spilling-chocolate-on-the-floor-is-so-full-of-adorable-LOLs face:

I’m laughing my way to brown town.

It’s hard to tell whether Thomas the chocolate chef is more sick of their devil-may-care attitude around the kitchen or of the terrible things Richie says, like “It’s easy to flirt with chocolate,” and “I’m going to put a little bit of salt in mine, because you’re incredibly grounded”.

You see, Richie is an idiot.

Of course, every cooking-related date should naturally end in a bathtub filled with food, so Alex and Richie head outside — where all good bathtubs are located — to sit in a big tub o’ tepid brown. That’s a thing that happens.

It’s a thing that makes Richie propose a toast to “releasing the chemical of love”.

It’s a thing that releases a lot of slimy hand-holding, embarrassing caressing and all-too-audible kissing.

It’s a thing that releases a few more facial expressions too, like Alex’s that-better-just-be-chocolate face:

I think I just made an Aero bar.

And her it’s-almost-at-the-point-where-I’m-going-to-have-to-explain-this-to-my-gynaecologist-face.

I think this has nuts in it.

They agree that they have incredible chemistry and Richie hands her a slimy brown rose. We feel a bit like we’re intruding on a very private, squelchy, and reasonably off-putting moment, so we’d better just leave it there.

With this one last picture.

That’s one to show the grandkids.

When Alex returns to the Womansion she describes the date in excruciating detail, presuming that these other women clearly hired to be extras on the Alex & Richie Show will love it. Nikki squirms with uncomfortable jealousy, while Rachael offers her usual succinct commentary.

Oh my god, what business does a single mother have in a chocolate bath?

The next day all the girls head off for the second inexplicable date of the episode, a recreation of the highland games.

“It’s Richie!” scream the girls, surprised to see the focal element of the show.

“In a skirt!” they add, surprised to see a kilt at a Scottish-themed date.

So wacky, you guys.

Richie explains that his heritage is Scottish, but I suspect the producers just included the bagpipes because they needed a sound more irritating than his laugh.

The girls split into two teams, change into private school uniforms, and are led through a number of astronomically irrelevant challenges.

There’s the elegant and ladylike caber toss:

Aye lassie, that’s a big ‘un.

The graceful and feminine sheaf toss:

Like the moon over Loch Ness.

And finally the dainty and mannered haggis-eating competition.

Haggis, as explained by cultural anthropologists Nikki and Richie, is “a really gross balloon” or a “devil’s armpit”, depending on where it’s been stuffed.

They have five minutes to be all over the haggis like a Khaleesi over a horse’s heart.

It’s great when a meal can digest you back.

There’s no delicate nibbling or need for cutlery.

This is like watching a Komodo dragon swallowing a tennis shoe.

The point of the whole competition is further lost in the highland mist when it ends up in a three-way tie, so everyone goes off for a regulation one-per-series dance in a barn.

Richie whisks Sarah out the barn doors to a hay couch for a chat, forcing Alex to give us one more of her facial expressions.

Her I’m-the-CEO-of-the-company-that-owns-Richie face.

She needn’t worry though, as this handy picture outlining the ebbs and flows of Richie and Sarah’s conversation illustrates:

Even the crickets are bored.

The cocktail party follows closely afterwards, but conversations are kept relatively short, presumably due to the borderline atomic levels of haggis gas that must be emanating from all parties.

A large amount of the chat is about whether or not Olena is an emotionless, gorgeous monolith, and Richie finds the fact that she takes a normal amount of time to develop feelings for people highly frustrating.

The Rosatorium is filled with a heady combination of anticipation and blondness, as Osher, flinty in a flinted flint suit, readies Richie to deliver flowers and disappointment.

One by one, Richie tosses rose-shaped cabers at the fortunate victors until only Squeaky Sarah and Brunette Haggis Champion Rachael remain.

One’s a brunette, and the other one is also there.

Seconds pass, and Richie keeps a brunette and ditches Sarah. A satellite falls out of orbit in shock.

Bye, Sarah.

We’ll miss how you spoke a little bit like you were chewing a Mintie, but as you say yourself, the perfect man may be waiting out there on a dirt bike just for you.

A beautiful, tiny, high-pitched dirt bike.

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 or check out her Bachelor podcast.