Every Terrible Lesson I Learned About Love While Watching ‘The Bachelor’: Motorbike Edition
Sometimes the biggest intruder of all... is love.
Welcome to our Wednesday recap of The Bachelor — you can read Sinead Stubbin’s excessively funny Power Ranking on Thursday this week, because we don’t live by the rules.
Sometimes I think love is like playing a robust game of sport, in the sense that I see everybody else running around being very busy doing it, and I have no idea of what the rules are. Also, there’s a man with a whistle who gets very angry when I do anything wrong! Also, there are a lot of people watching me and judging my performance. And also because I am very bad at it. Great metaphor!
Our Bachelor, Nick “Honeybaby” Cummins also used to be a sportsman. That’s a flawless segue! He’s used to going out onto the field and grabbing the ball and pushing people over and achieving his goal.
Perhaps he knows exactly what the rules of love are, so he’s out there making it happen, in the best sports arena possible: the Bachelor mansion.
This week, I’m going to learn everything I can about love and romance and sport from another episode of The Bachelor, because what else am I going to do with my Wednesday night — go out and meet people? Heck no.
“This entire article makes no sense”
1. Add Yet More Brunettes To The Romance Soup
The big news in this episode is that three more almost entirely indistinguishable women have been added to the mix. They’re called intruders, and I’m 80% sure they all have names. But I haven’t finished being shocked and confused by the existence of almost every other contestant!
Together: “We ALL have names”
At first this seems like a confusing lesson, but I guess what The Badgerlor is saying to us is: play the field. I think that’s a sports term too. The more options, the more likely you are to find love. That’s why Tinder doesn’t just serve you up one generic looking boy standing next to a sad tiger — it serves you up around 50-100 dopey looking default chaps at a time, to better maximise your chances of success.
Date as many people as possible, is this lesson. If you’re dating one person now, date several more if possible. Do it secretly. You must find true love, and nothing should stand in your way. Divorce your doting husband, date a whole hockey team.
2. Be A Fucking Loose Unit
Of the three intruders who came into the mansion, I remember none of their names. I can really only recall two of them in any fashion, because one of them will later break her leg to great effect, and because another was just a fucking weirdo.
“I think you have some trouble on your hands, because I think I’m pretty funny!” says unnamed lady. She does a weird dance, she does a lot of nervous talking. She tells him that she went to Japan recently, and follows that up with “Konichiwa”. It’s a whole bunch of nonsense, so therefore wonderful TV.
“Jimminy-crinkles, I don’t diddly-doo understand what’s bloody happening”
This makes an impression, and that’s GOOD in dating. Nobody wants to be the third, least remembered lady. I’m sure she’s happy and normal, but she’s also forgotten.
“She’s a ball of beans” says the awed Bagchelor.
“She seemed a bit Jatz crackers” says one of the contestants.
3. Break Your Fucking Leg
The other intruder who did very well managed to hurt her ankle badly, during one of the insane novelty sports games that the Honey Bachelor seems to love making women compete in. He was running around all red faced, hooting wildly at their shenanigans as they competed for his affection. This match required bouncing on balls.
“It was fantastic, thank your mother for the rabbits, chitty-chitty-bang bang, and there goes your ribs, and that will wake you up in the morning, hoo-roo.” He literally said that, I’m not making this up.
It seems unlikely that anyone could truly distinguish themselves in such a ridiculous game of Bounce-Ball, but it turns out that going hard enough to shatter your bloody leg into shards of bone and gristle means that the Honey Man will carry you around forever in his long veiny meat-arms. And that’s how I met your mother.
“Tomorrow I am going to shatter my finger-bones with a hammer”.
“Jamie-Lee goes head over biscuit, rolls the old getaway stick.”
4. Buy A Big Motorbike
Broom-broom! I think the Honey Bachelor just enjoys driving motorbikes. If you have a motorbike, people will respect you, and therefore fall in love with you.
“WaaaaAAAaaaaaAAAAAAAaaaaAAAAAAAAaaaaaah”
5. Bees! Bees! AHAHAHAHAHAHAAH
This is another lesson that’s not immediately established — what do bees have to do with romance?
But the fact is, it’s a power move to not only command bees with your mind, but to also drink their sweet honey venom without fear. Even the process of eating honey shows dominance — the Honey Badger lives up to his name, and slurps the sweet nectar easily, whereas his date doesn’t know how, and ends up chewing wax forever like an idiot! You fool.
“She just jammed the whole thing in her laughing gear,” he says joyously.
“I will never find love because I ate wax on TV.”
6. Talk Down To And Patronise Your Crush
For no reason that I can see, Honey Baby decided to lecture this date on science in an incredibly patronising way. The lesson is: be a typical dude, and you’ll still have a house of beautiful woman compete to mash faces with you.
Bachy: “Do you know what the lunar cycle is?” Date: (Realising that he’s stopped talking at her and has suddenly asked a question) “the… moon?” Bachy: Too right it’s the moon, the big white sky face, the old space cream pie, the cheesy man, the scary night eye, the thinking man’s sun, vampire’s delight, louis armstrong’s summer house, the flag planet, the sneaky glowing darkness lady, a meteorite with airs. The moon.
7. Be An Absolutely Vile Trio Of Shakespearian Witches
This season features just about the worst people I’ve ever had the misfortune of consuming for entertainment. Their names are Romy, Cat from Bali and Other One, and they are genuinely terrible people. We’ve had villains before — blunt spoken, indelicate ladies who don’t particularly care about the feelings of other, who are carefully edited into Disney nemesi, but this is different.
These ladies aren’t even edited to look bad, and they seem to take a perverse pleasure in actually making other people feel bad, and acting like it’s OK. I don’t think it’s OK.
“I’m awful”
But — they’re all still in the house, so maybe we should all be the worst version of ourselves in order to find love. Is this what you’re teaching me, an impressionable little boy, Channel 10?
The Bachelor is on every Wednesday and Thursday nights from now until we all die. Junkee will be recapping them all.
—
Patrick Lenton is an author and staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.