All The Heterosexual Nonsense I Was Forced To Endure During Episode 2 Of ‘The Bachelor’
Yet more redhead discrimination.
Hello, and welcome to Junkee’s recaps of The Bachelor, where we watch episodes of The Bachelor Australia and try to pretend we’re OK with all the hetero nonsense we see in front of us.
Hello everyone, we’re back! Did you miss me? I already know the answer is “no”, because we literally have not had a break from each other. What have you been up to since Bachelor In Paradise finished? Chilling around home? Oh cool, me too.
So it’s time for us to get stuck into a brand new season of The Bachelor, which to me is the most Peak Heterosexual of the entire Bachelor franchise.
I think this is because it reflects real life experience most closely, which is watching on puzzled as nice women throw themselves at a man who seems thoroughly fine. “He’s amazing” they gush. “He asks me how my day was!” they exclaim.
Anyway, I came into this not knowing anything about Locky, besides the fact that in my opinion, an adult man should not be named ‘Locky’ or referred to as such. Locky is the name of a private school boy who sells his mother’s valiums to fellow classmates, not the new Bachelor.
After the first couple of episodes, I now know two other things about Locky. First, he is tall and big and picks women up as much as possible.
I’m not judging him for this! If I were that big and strong I would constantly be wandering around lifting things to impress people. Who needs to be funny when I could simply pick up a woman or her friends in my beefy hands. Sounds relaxing.
The second thing I learned about Locky is that he bloody LOVES adventure. He can’t get enough of it! He loves to take on a challenge, push his boundaries, get outside of his box, give 110% percent, live in the moment, give it a red hot go, and one million other things that are written on blackboards outside of gyms around Australia.
He LOVES women that are also into adventure, and also willing to give things a go! This ranges from “dressing up as a penguin” to “dressing up as a bartender” to “spinning a wheel on a boat.” The man simply loves happy, adventurous women. In my mind, this is how we find Locky’s perfect match:
- Put a blonde wig on a mannequin (thin, but loves burritos)
- Put a phone in her hand
- Open Tinder on the phone to the most boring Tinder profile in existence
- Have lightning hit the display, imbuing the mannequin with the attributes of the Tinder bio
- Mannequin comes to life
- Locky marries the mannequin
- They go on adventures
But since we can’t do that, I guess we have to find him a match the old-fashioned way (on a dating reality show on TV). As per usual I will be ranking everyone based on how much they annoyed me! And I am very easily annoyed at the moment! It’s gonna be fun.
LEAST ANNOYING
Irena
Irena looks like Miss Honey from Matilda.
I’m gay. Irena is least annoying.
Areeba
This might be controversial because she is clearly set up to be one of the villains, but I am so glad Areeba exists. There would be nothing worse than at this point in the show everyone being nice and saccharine and sweet. We need someone to deliver the burns and the edge and the drama. Importantly though, Areeba does this role in a funny way. She knows her character type, and she’s playing it well. Unlike some of the other villains, she is obviously intelligent, and she hasn’t reverted to racism! Doesn’t seem that hard, but apparently it is!
She also is a great narrator, and a great facial-expression deliverer. She says things in an exasperated manner, like when everyone screamed about a group date card and she said, “it’s just Steph walking in with a card… it’s pathetic.” She then immediately switched to thrilled face, after being named in the card. Perfection.
Who, me?
During the group date, when she was getting annoyed at Zoe-Clare’s shenanigans, she explained that the more she laughs the more pissed off she is, giving us an example in a series of smile-into-glare.
Art. I am under no illusions that she will make it very far (see you on Bachelor In Paradise), but for the moment I am grateful for her.
Bella
Bella is on this list because she had a huge role in tonight’s episode, winning a solo date with Locky. She is very beautiful, has heavy Netflix Christmas movie lead vibes, and seems extremely sweet. Her name is “Bella” for goodness sakes.
Mice and birds make ball gowns for me.
Even though Bella was not annoying, the approximately 45mins-80mins we spent on her date with Locky was very annoying. He loves adventure, we get it!!! I really don’t need to hear and see conversations about sailing and boats and watching them each steer the boat and tilt it or whatever the fuck. I’m watching The Bachelor, not the Sydney to Hobart Yacht race. Locky was SO! EXCITED! about the boat, and the fact that it tilted.
Okay.
They had a nice date, he got to say that he’d never opened champagne before because he’s such a down-to-earth guy, she got to talk about how he’s so manly and blokey, and that is what heterosexuals love to do, so it was perfect. They went swimming, and he dove underwater (because he loves adventure) and came back up with a rose for her. And also TERF bangs!
I write for The Guardian UK.
Anyway then they had an average looking kiss, and she went home and told all the other (very jealous) girls about the date. That wasn’t really of note, but it did make me think of a fun gif, so that’s nice.
Steph As A Dad
She was funny! Funny women are automatically good!
MOST ANNOYING
Zoe-Clare
Sorry, I know this is the second episode, but I have not moved on from Zoe-Clare’s outburst in the first episode.
I will perhaps never move on. Zoe-Clare, in a room full of mostly white women, accused one of the only non-white women of attacking her – because she has red hair. Are these words real. Have I been hit in the head with a baseball bat. Is this all a dream. Has my life been a dream? Am I real? I am going to be stuck here in Zoe-Clare’s world forever. A world where thin white women are discriminated against, for having red hair.
Fuck you, concept of reality!
The group date involved a photo-shoot, with women given different roles in each photo scene, alongside Locky. Osher announced that the “best part” is that the photos would be “published in News Corp papers right around the country!” Wow…News Corp, how cool!
Best Part
Anyway, Zoe-Clare was annoying throughout the entire episode, and said again “Areeba is targeting me for being a red-head, there’s no point sugarcoating it.” Absolutely deranged behaviour!
Can only imagine this ‘A’ tattoo on her wrist stands for “Ahhhhh…discriminated yet again for the crime of having red hair.”
Roxi
Every season there is a woman who has seemingly stumbled onto the set of this show, unaware that the concept involves the Bachelor getting involved with 10-12 women. This season, that person is Roxi! For example, during the photoshoots, she complained that she “was not comfortable with girls getting so close to Locky.”
Sorry babe, the entire premise of this show is predicated on girls getting close to Locky.
Wait…what
At the end of the group date, the women were all surprised when we got a new contestant, who got to arrive in a wedding dress to do a special photo with Locky. Roxi was extremely upset, saying it ruined her whole day, and that because she had been dressed in a casual outfit, she had been “humiliated” by it.
Laura also hated the new woman addition, saying that seeing her in the wedding dress with Locky ‘triggered’ her. Absolutely calm down luvs, I insist. Please learn words before you use them.
Laura also said re: Bella’s single date that she was concerned because Bella is wife material. “I’d wife her. And I’m allowed to. It’s 2020, I can marry chicks. But I won’t.” I found this to be funny, sorry!
The Interminable Parade Of Blonde Women
Even though red hair has been high on the conversation list, in this episode we got yet another woman added to the contestants. She is blonde.
So many of them are blonde. Various shades of blonde, streaming into frame, making it hard for me to know their names, haunting my dreams.
I’m sorry, I can’t take any more blonde women. Leave us in peace. If you would like to do a drinking game for the next episode that will leave you comatose or dead, drink every time you see a blonde woman, or drink every time Locky says the word ‘ay’ at the end of a sentence.
So that’s the end of the first recap, may God have mercy upon our souls!! I’m excited to see what ADVENTURES befall us this season, stick with us. Patrick will be with you for the next recap. And as always, please buy your local redhead a coffee, they have been through so much.
The Bachelor airs on Channel 10 Wednesday and Thursday nights, and Junkee will be recapping both episodes. Patrick Lenton is next week!
Rebecca Shaw is the co-host of the very regular comedy podcast Bring A Plate. She tweets @brocklesnitch