Jo Thornely recaps The Bachelor 2016 episode 1

IT’S the return of The Bachelor, so you know what that means? Yep: Nipple Couch Deathmatch. Fancy a game with Jo Thornely? WARNING: SPOILERS

The girls compete for Richie’s heart on The Bachelor.

ROSES are red,

Violets are blue;

Why does that lady

Have only one shoe?

It’s back — the show voted most likely to fail the Bechdel Test four years running.

In case you’ve been living under a desolate, loveless rock (which is the best place to find Pidgeys, BTW), the bachelor this year is last-minute reject from The Bachelorette, Richie, who has the requisite good looks, flower-handling skills, and ability to look off wistfully into the distance.

She’s out there somewhere, past the cameraman.

He also has a habit of getting his kit off a bit, so I reckon we might see a man-nipple or two this series. My other prediction, based purely on previous series, is that almost every single date will at some stage involve sitting on a couch having a chat.

So let’s make a game of it, and pitch nipples against couches to see which we see more of over the coming weeks. Count with me! Let’s play:

Definitely not a waste of everyone’s time.

Episode One results are pretty close, with four different couches and six nipples. Granted, nipples have the advantage of routinely coming in pairs unless there’s been a horrible accident, but do we really want to complain?

No, we do not.

I guess it’s fair to offset that image with a picture of a bunch of couches.

Phwoaaaarrr.

Okay look, we’ve got a lot of girls to get through, so let’s get started. Some stand out straight away, some are less prominent, and some we inevitably won’t notice until episode four or five, when we assume they just wandered into the Womansion by accident.

In the stand-out-straight-away category, though:

UNDERWATER MEGAN

Almost immediately we twig that Megan, a free-diving adventurer skilled at coming up with free-diving-related analogies for love, could possibly be a front runner for Richie’s palpitations. I’m calling it: top three. Please note: my predictions are routinely incorrect, with no exceptions ever.

THE BACON LOVER

Noni loves bacon. Noni has the word ‘bacon’ tattooed on her ankle. Noni hopes the Bachelor also loves bacon. Well, he does describe himself as an ‘awkward dork’, so it’s not much of a stretch to put some pork on his fork.

In Victorian times, showing your ankle bacon tattoo was considered risqué.

ZANY JANEY

Janey is the kind of girl you don’t want standing too close to you while you’re defusing a bomb. Her main interests seem to be fictional creatures and weather phenomena, and she says “I am

passionate about myself, and magic, and sparkles, and rainbows”.

This picture says everything you need to know about Janey.

Janey claims she’s single because she scares people with her enthusiasm, then does a couple of

cartwheels while screaming to illustrate. She craftily drops a shoe in front of Richie in the hope he’ll get the fairy tale hint, and we hope he doesn’t mix his fairy tales up and lock her up in a dungeon.

Sort of.

ELIZA WITH A Z

Endearingly unhinged Eliza sings Richie a love song she’s written herself, which is all about looking at you and how her heartbeat is forever new, which sounds less like Adele than a potentially dangerous cardiac situation. It is, and make no mistake here, a very terrible song, and it looks like for however long she lasts, she’ll be singing it roughly every 10 minutes. Find it on iTunes on the album ‘Songs To Loosen Screws By’.

The remix has dolphin noises thrown in for free.

MUMMY ALEX

Not to be creatively outdone, blonde giggler Alex recites a poem that she’s written especially for

Richie. Well, “poem”. It rhymes occasionally and has words in it. He responds by saying “Wow,

nobody’s ever read me a poem before”, a statement that even stays true afterwards. Alex has a five-year-old son, a fact that might just come in handy later.

KEIRA THE OPINIONATED FLESHMOUTH

Keira seems extremely fond of three things: bitching about other people, wearing flesh-coloured

lipstick, and herself. She says she doesn’t care if the other girls don’t like her, which is a remarkable coincidence.

F**KIN’ VINTEA

Vintea asks Richie if he’s “sh**tin’ himself”, and says it’s “f**kin’ great” to meet him, following up with a cocktail party revelation that “my t*ts are up to my f**king neck”. Australia falls instantly in f**kin’ love with Vintea, and hopes she impresses the sh*t out of Richie. “If they can’t cope with me, they probably can’t cope with life”, she announces, a statement rare both for its stunning philosophical clarity and for its lack of the word ‘f*ck’.

I’m f**kin’ Aristotle, mate.

OLENA

Ukrainian Olena is almost upsettingly gorgeous. As most women know, if you’re in competition for a man’s attention with a tall, slim Eastern European lady, you’re better off staying at home in your pyjamas and most repellent underpants. Her flirting tactic is apparently to ‘attack with the eye’, which has the unusual distinction of sounding both sexy and extremely violent.

COMMENTATIN’ RACHAEL

Every series needs a girl who will basically recap each unfolding event to camera, using this face:

And this year that is Rachael.

The cocktail party commences, and everybody settles into their comfort zone, which depending on who you are is either eyeing everyone with disdain, inventing a ‘girl code’ that dictates a firm wait-five-minutes-before-cutting-someone’s-grass rule, instigating a ‘plank-off’, or pretending to slap people.

Ha ha ha there’s no WAY I want to hit you in real life ha ha ha.

Somehow amongst the constant stream of girls flinging themselves at Richie, Osher manages to

announce to the ladies that being given a white rose ensures some one-on-one time with Richie in a secret hideaway, which I can guarantee has a couch in it. Thighs and oddly flesh-coloured lips grind together with determination, but only three roses are to be had at this early stage. One to Megan, who Keira was sure wouldn’t get one, one to planking champion Tiffany, who Keira was sure wouldn’t get one, and due to wanting to hear more about her son, the coveted white rose to Mummy Alex, who Keira was sure wouldn’t get one.

Keira is very bad at guessing and at getting roses.

Finally we get to …

THE ROSATORIUM

Look, it’s a pretty standard rose ceremony. Osher’s there resplendent in a charred plywood tuxedo, girls wait until their name is called, staring their pick-me- faces at Richie until … WAIT WAIT WAIT.

Vintea decides she’s had enough of being a f**king lady, struts forward without being called, politely thanks Richie for his time and volunteers her own elimination.

F*********k

Anyway, Richie hads out roses, girls hold their breath and … WAIT WAIT WAIT.

Unremarkable until this point, Russian Sasha gets a touch peckish during the interminable ceremony and starts TAKING BITES OUT OF HER OWN ROSE. That’s a sentence. That’s something that happens. That’s not even a euphemism.

In Russia, flower eats YOU.

ANYWAY, roses are handed out until there’s only three girls left: Keira, a girl who hasn’t said much so far, and a girl we’ve never seen before in our lives.

L-R: Whats-her- face, Thingummajig, Keira.

An hour passes, and Keira just makes it through by the flesh-coloured skin of her teeth.

Bye, What’s-her-face and Thingummajig. You’ll be missed, a lot like you were during this entire episode.

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