Jo Thornely recaps The Bachelor episode 11
WE THOUGHT the Bachelor had already reached peak awkwardness. Last night, we discovered we were wrong. So very wrong.
IT’S episode 11 of The Bachelor, with coaching junior sports, parasailing skorts, and Nina out of sorts.
I think I’m going to vomit.
By now we all know how the opening scenes go. First we take a sweeping look at the Womansion ...
... then we hang around in the lounge room drinking super-realistic tea ...
... then Osher comes in and does this:
Osher’s envelope has a group date in it, and we finally find out what this show is all about.
Sam wants to see how the girls adapt to certain situations. And by “certain situations” he means “children”. In the distance, there is the sound of tiny, thundering footsteps.
Each girl has to coach the kids in a specific sport, with varying degrees of success.
Snezana’s motherly nurturing facilitates the skilled smashing of hurdles.
Sarah, who hasn’t played with a child since she was one and claims that “balls in general are not really my thing” fails to inspire the next generation of T-Ballers.
Heather is to cricket and rapport with children what Donald Trump is to natural-looking hair.
Rachel, ex-champion of the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump, high jump and probably the Olympics, has all the maternal warmth of a buried doorknob, and brings a holistic approach to playing soccer.
Lana is, in life as in basketball coaching, inoffensive and sweet with an undulating wall of syrupy hair that prevents her from being too uninteresting.
Finally Nina, entrusted with rugby tackling skills, is such an endearing and enthusiastic natural that I want to go to the park with her myself.
The real winner on the day, though, is this kid, who already knows the rules of soccer thank you very much and needs his own show:
While we transition to the next date, can we just go back and look at Lana’s hair? Seriously, it’s like molten chocolate in a vacuum.
The next date is a single one, which almost everyone thinks should be Nina’s.
It is not Nina’s.
It is Lana’s.
The first thing you need to know about the date is that Lana is wearing a skort.
The second thing you need to know is that Sam and Lana go parasailing, entrusting their lives to a giant emoji.
The third thing you need to know is that when you go for dinner, drinks and a private one-man concert, it’s a bit less awkward for everybody when you’re singing about waking up next to someone in bed if you hide the guitar amp behind a couple of pot plants.
They dance. They speak some Spanish. They feed each other. They spend their time together talking about how it feels to spend time together.
One of them gives the other one a rose and a kiss on the cheek. It’s lovely, but it will probably be a bit more interesting if we just stare at Lana’s hair some more.
Should we check in on Nina? Let’s see how Nina’s doing. She’s the tough one in the house, right?
Now, before we get to the cocktail party, can we talk about the fact that Heather rolled in something sticky and then walked through a room full of grandmas?
The cocktail party is tense, not helped by the fact that Lana arrives halfway through with a rose.
“So what did you guys get up to?” asks Lana, after gushing about her date.
“I put on a dress”, answers Nina, biting through her own jaw.
Should we check in on Nina? Let’s see how Nina’s doing.
Sam, who can feel the weirdness in the air, locks his Furrow of Concern into overdrive.
Whether or not the rose ceremony is a great farce, it certainly gives great face, from Nina’s ever-present tongue thing:
To Snezana’s sublime side-eye.
Osher, resplendent in a reinforced basalt suit, ushers Sam into the ceremony, and the first half of the roses are distributed to Snezana and Heather without incident.
Suddenly though, Sam becomes visibly distressed, either because these decisions are getting more serious, or because he’s concerned that he may be about to monumentally waste our time.
He picks a rose up. He puts a rose down. He WALKS OUT OF THE ROOM. Who does he think he is, Emily?!
Perhaps it’s a good time to check in on Nina? Let’s see how Nina’s doing.
Sam finds Osher deep in the Womansion’s bowels and they have a long, convoluted talk. Kind of.
Basically it goes like this:
Sam: “This is really hard”
Osher: “Yep”
Sam re-enters the Rosatorium, wipes a drop of unnecessary drama juice from his eye, magics three roses out of thin air, and lets the girls know that nobody leaves tonight.
Nobody except, y’know, for our faith in humanity and lust for eliminations. That’s already halfway home in an Uber, and Australia just entered the Guiness Book Of Records for Highest Number Of Television Viewers All Swearing At Once.
Let’s check in on Rachel. Rachel, how do we feel about this?
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. Jo will be faithfully recapping The Bachelor for news.com.au. Follow her on Twitter @JoThornely
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