All The Heterosexual Nonsense I Was Forced To Endure During Episode 9 Of ‘The Bachelor’

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.

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One of the scariest things about the pandemic, and the “new normal” we live in, is just how adept we’ve become at existing within it, how much we’ve adapted as a society. And by that I mean, I just watched an hour of people having cocktail party drama over a Zoom call, and it worries me about how un-weird that was. It was fine. It was just absolutely fine. I didn’t blink an eye.

We should all be running around screaming about how weird everything on this show is, tbh — and I’m not even talking about COVID.

Hi! I’m Patrick Lenton, and once a witch kissed me and turned me into a handsome boy with a brain as round and smooth and buoyant as a soccer ball, and which is so stupid that NASA measures it every six years in case it sucks the Earth into it, like a black hole. Together with my friend and colleague, Rebecca Shaw (the ghost of the dead tennis player from The L Word), we recap The Bachelor, because baby, there’s a global recession and we’re sluts for dollars, and have absolutely no useful skills!

This episode is the last of the “Love in Lockdown” series, where Locky and his harem were forced to conduct a massive, multi-part romance online. I’m too popular and athletic to know this personally, but my weaker friends assure me that it’s JUST like a raid in popular online game World Of Warcraft, except instead of winning magic rings or whatever, you win the heart of a beautiful blonde woman! Is this a funny joke? I don’t know, I am too cool to know if this reference works.

Frankly, there is nobody on this dizzily spinning earth more qualified to recap Zoom dates than Bec Shaw and I (once we were on a Zoom call and lightning hit our computer and now our minds are stuck inside the computer, and we spend all day watching other people’s dates and loitering in your company’s boring meetings to steal all the secrets, long story short).

This episode, while populated with some good moments, was pretty slow tbh. Last week, Locky got naked. This week, we had a couple of mum’s do a hometowns lite, and a bunch of drama. Bit of a shame, but still enjoyable! (title of my sex tape)

Let us… rank.

LEAST ANNOYING

A Bunch Of Beautiful Dogs

Listen, there is NO silver lining to COVID-19.

But, there are lessons to learn. Learnings. Teachables.

And one of those is that THE BACHELOR needs way more dogs. There are so many dogs in this episode, and they just calm me down, just quiet my cry hole. Every time I get bored of Locky’s big ham-face, there seems to be a dog ready to make things better.

We need to normalise dogs in the background of every shot.

Gnoll

Locky had to meet four of his bride’s beloved family members over Zoom, I assume because he recently displeased someone in power, and they were trying to think of the worst thing imaginable that they could do to him.

One of these people is someone I believe they referred to as Gnoll (Shannon????) and he is in my least annoying list because he was like “Locky, when are you asking Steph on a single date” and everyone was like “who tf is Steph????”

We still don’t know.

Lockdown Energy

Everyone is clearly DONE with lockdown by this point. Tempers are frayed. Patience, short. Drinking, clearly, occurring. It is, as the entirety of Melbourne can probably attest to, a big mood.

“It’s about bloody time,” says Roxi, when she hears they will soon be returning to the mansion. “I’m so sick of bloody laptops and the internet…”

Entirely relatable content.

But Bella is iconically, and very clearly done, and I love it.

“Osher… thank god” she says, rubbing her temples, as he pops into the Zoom and interrupts another interminable fight between Roxi and Juliette.

Later on someone just kinda stabs some butter for no reason.

Mood!

MOST ANNOYING

Lockdown Bec

An intruder in a lockdown episode??? why that’s an idea that’s so crazy, it may be brilliant!

But it wasn’t.

Anyway, Bec is ridiculous, she wants to live in a tent and have six kids, pretty stupid. Would have to be a big tent. Maybe one of those big circus tents. Maybe she could make all the kids perform? Like one could be really strong, one could walk the tightrope, one could be a lion and jump through a flaming hoop? Lotta career opportunities. Makes you think.

Wait, is this Bec SHaw? I’ve never seen Bec Shaw’s face, she only takes her mask off for lesbians.

Ronda

Look, we don’t need to reiterate why Roxi is annoying, we’ve been banging on about it all year. My first words were “Roxi is annoying”. It’s the word around town, the hot goss, the skinny, the 4-11. Everyone’s saying it.

But Roxi really grinded my gears, slapped my pickles, phoned in sick to the annoyance factory, when she was mean to her poor mother this episode.

“My mum is SO embarrassing. Maybe if he meets my mum, he’ll know why i’m mental,” she said.

Actually, Roxi’s mum is great, and has clearly suffered a lot. She even revealed that her family has named Roxi’s “alter-ego”, the one that comes out when she’s angry, as Ronda.

“That’s her alter-ego that we’ve given her. You know Ronda Rousey, well put two and two together”

From henceforth, Roxi is just Ronda. It’s like when Mark Ruffalo gets stuck as The Hulk — we’ve p much only ever seen Ronda.

“You just gotta make sure you say the right thing, otherwise Ronda might come out,” says Ronda’s mum, terrified.

“I think it’s safe to say I’ve seen Ronda a couple of times, and she scares me,” answers Locky.

Juliette

I think Juliette is just at that point where she hates Ronda so much that she cannot BEAR to even look at her, and that’s fair.

Nothing Juliette is saying is wrong, per se —  “I only speak the truth, it’s all on camera” she says, like some kind of glamorous, chardonnay chugging magic mirror, but it’s still annoying. Ronda is like a trenchcoat full of a wasps, and you know what they say about a trenchcoat full of wasps? “Best leave it alone, Patrick, stop touching that wasp-coat”.

Irena

Irena has made me feel uncomfortable because she has sensible mum vibes, and just feels too normal for this show. I am older than her, but I would call her ma’am.

Big example of this energy is when she tells Osher how to use the fireplace. “On the right side of the fireplace, there’s a button” she says, with the grim, everlasting patience of a mum in a Brandpower ad, cleaning up her husband’s incessant sandwich crumbs.

But sure. But now, she’s decided to get all weird about Locky — who she has no chemistry with — and end her friendship with Bella, really rudely.

“I just feel like i’m constantly the loser in this friendship with Bella,” she says, and well… you said it, sis. Sorry, madame.

“I think friendship’s done for me now.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — why don’t the girls in the mansion simply gang up, form a lesbian polycule gang, eat the Bachelor for his rich iron-infused meat, and become more powerful than god?

This is the opposite of that thinking. We’re more farther away from Voltron Lesbian Lady Mansion Extravaganza than ever before.

NEVER TO ANNOY AGAIN

Nicole is gone. She is blonde. But never fear, men of the world, Bec has replaced her. She is also blonde. Cowabunghole! Bye.

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The Bachelor airs on Channel 10 Wednesday and Thursday nights, and Junkee will be recapping both episodes.

Patrick Lenton is the Editor of Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.