Every Terrible Lesson I Learned About Love While Watching ‘The Bachelor’: Gone Fishin’ Edition
"Holey moley, I'm a big boy who is horny for women."
Welcome to our Thursday recap of The Bachelor — you can read Sinead Stubbin’s excessively funny Power Ranking from Wednesday here.
Love! My grandfather used to say it was like finding an old, worn river stone, and taking it home. As the years go by, you start to forget exactly why you wanted that rock in the first place, but you’re so used to it being around that you begin to feel lost and confused if you can’t see it. Then one day, a savage goose attacks you in your bedroom, and you throw the rock at it, killing it instantly. That’s what love is like.
Anyway, not all of us can find our murderous stream-pebble the normal way, so we must resort to national TV to solve all of our romance problems.
In this column, I will seek to learn everything about love that I can from the newest episode of The Bachelor, because let’s face it, nothing else is working for me.
1. Symbolically Go Fishing
One of the things we must respect The Bachelor for is the sleekness of its imagery, the deftness of its metaphors. Have we ever thought of the Bachelor as nothing more than a hungry boy, casting his “rod” (penis) into the waters of life in search of a “fish” (blonde/brunette woman)? I have a degree in literature.
So, in this episode, our strapping lad, the Badgchelor takes a woman named Dasha fly fishing.
“And she just comes tearing across the sand,” says the Honey Badger. “I thought she was happy to see me, she had these good high knees, comes running at me, but turns out the sand was hot and she wanted to get off it”.
“What are the chances,” drawls Dasha. “My child also likes fishing.” This is good foreshadowing for our next point.
“Theres one girl who tickles me fancy: Dasha,” mutters the Honey Bachelor, like a gold miner from the turn of the century, cryogenically frozen and released into our time.
Dasha is from Russia (they aren’t meant to rhyme, but the Badger Boy makes them rhyme), and she manages to look good in big waterproof pants, which she learns are called “waders”. She is not sure if “waders” are slang, because she correctly notes that Honeyman loves to make up words.
“Honky-bonky, she looks hot in the big pants!”
“I’m keen to get Dasha out and get a feel for her,” says the Honey Guy about a human woman who he thinks is a car.
2. Invent A Child
One of the things HunnyBadge loves about Dasha is that she confessed to having a five-year-old boy named Leon (Trotsky?). Botchelor likes this about her, because he thinks it gives her a calming energy and an emotional maturity. Clearly her child is working well for her, and provides a point of difference from the other, more barren contestants.
Which is why we have to assume she invented her child just to get ahead.
“My son is like my little shadow,” she says, having a vague idea of what a child is. “He’s my… little partner in crime.”
What do children do? They help you rob banks.
“My son was born the normal way and he has average interests in various things.”
Dasha from Russia: “I am looking for a man to protect and nurture me.”
Nick Badger: “You and Leon?”
Dasha: “Yes, because he is my… part of my life,” agrees Dasha, convincingly.
3. Touch Hair
After fishing together, Dasha and our lumbering arm-friend go and drink champagne somewhere, and talk about whether or not he’s ready for children. He is cautiously optimistic about having a child.
“What about you,” says the curly genius, to the supposed mother of a five-year-old child. “What’s your view on kids?”
During this entire conversation, Dash gingerly caresses the Honey Badger’s mop of stiff, oily curls, like she is testing a piece of rotten fruit.
I bet his hair feels like a clown’s wig.
I bet it’s as hot and moist as lunchbox devon.
It works, because she gets a rose. Let’s write this shit down.
4. Shoot Your Crush In The Balls
So much of this episode was taken up with an insane spon-con for Allianz Stadium.
“So cool,” says the girls upon seeing the mostly empty stadium. “This is epic,” they announce with palpable enthusiasm.
“I was thinking that there was gonna be something pretty epic today, because theres this big, how would you call it… field?” says another one, who definitely has a name.
Anyway, they play archery-tag or some bullshit, and really the only winner was the girl who shit Nick in the balls, because he respects her now.
“Right in the Jatz cracker, so wasn’t a good start for me.”
5. Talk Utter Nonsense
We’ve talked before about how Nick Honeyboy is like a robot that was taught how to speak by a council of coked up fathers, but we’re not here to mock, we’re here to learn,
“Two mice fell in a bucket of butter,” starts Honey Badger, in an earnest attempt to psyche up a team of furious warrior brides during the archery game. “The first one slipped around and didn’t manage to go anywhere.The second churned up the butter into cream. We are the second mouse”
“Nobody knew what he was talking about,” gushes one of the girls.
6. If You Get Rejected, Have A Mini-Stroke
Sadly, because both love and The Bachelor is a game, some people were taken out the back by Osher, and driven back to whatever their lives were before that were so sad that they felt like going on The Bachelor.
Two people were eliminated in this episode, as is tradition, and we are sad that they are gone both from the show, and completely from our memories. One of them left, fading into mystery and legend. The other one decided to end her time on the show with a snappy quip.
“I CAN’T believe I shaved my legs for this” she says, but her delivery was in such a way we can’t be sure if she’s joking or being deadly serious. Perhaps she truly cannot believe it.
TBF, i’m sure the Honey Bachelor attempted to machete the dense thatch of lantana he calls his pubes as well.
Anyway, while it kinda sounded like she’d suffered a small stroke, it did make me remember her, in deed if not by name.
The Bachelor is on every Wednesday and Thursday nights from now until when we all die. Junkee will be recapping them all.
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Patrick Lenton is an author and staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.