Archive | November, 2013

The Bachelor: Finale Ultimo

21 Nov

SQUEAL!  We made it!

After weeks of bitchy stares, awkward pashes and shirtless jogging, ‘The Bachelor’ finally came to it’s heart-stopping conclusion in picturesque Thailand where Bachelor Protein Powder chose his future beard bride.  I, for one, was fortunate enough to witness this moment in TV history at a Bachelor party with other like-minded fans of this ridiculous show.  We settled ourselves down, champagne in hand, cheese platter at the ready, and buckled in for what was sure to be a momentous evening of spray tan and feelings.

Two crazy bitches left, yet only one rose remaining.  Well actually, it was a badly designed ring, but we’ll get to that.

We opened with a touching montage of the season.  This included LOTS of shots of Tim’s Vague-Face and toey bitches frolicking around in the mansion that Spotlight built. The senior script-writing team were back on board this week, though, with poignant statements like, “amazing journey” and “romance blossomed.”  Because there were roses.  Get it?  Clever.

Sticking with tradition, our fav bachelor took to his hotel swimming pool to perform his weekly thinking and rose calculations.  Something something about feelings.  Something something about Thailand and feelings.  Gosh, he was just so “deep” in thought in that water.  See where this is heading?

But before Bach could really make this hard decision, he had to put his ladies to the ultimate test.  Cue family.  In walked Tim’s mum, dad, brother and what looked to be his sister?  Or possibly his ex-wife.  Hard to say.  He astutely explained that the two bitches they would meet were different. They had different jobs. One was 26 and the other 27.  Which means they are younger than him.

What I wouldn’t give to sit in on a family dinner with these guys.

Rochelle was first bitch off the rank, and Bach helpfully explained that Mummy was a “psychologist” just as they were walking out the door.  I’m assuming this is the same as Tim being a “chiropractor” so I wasn’t too concerned. In another act of subtle symbolism, the editors showed us several shots of a storm brewing over the horizon and melancholy drips of rain on the roof.  Oooohh…it seems trouble was ahead. Straight away Rochelle jumped into her favourite topic:  her walls.  For realz, this girl bloody loves talking about them!  We know you had walls up.  We know Tim smashed them down with his massive, tanned biceps. WE GET IT!  By the time she’d said the word for the seventh time, I was looking for Miley to come busting through the door with a live version of ‘Wrecking Ball’.  Alas, that didn’t happen.  What did happen though was equally as shocking and entertaining… Tim’s mum was a bitch!

Obviously the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree, because, just like her stripper son, Mummy was ALL about the feelings.  Tim had obvi filled her in on Rochelle’s unforgiveable past as a beauty queen, so the girl was just stuck up the proverbial creek without a paddle or a tiara.  Despite telling her that she loved Tim, Mumsy was still convinced that Rochelle was, “… holding something back.”  Her dignity? Her self-respect?  Her SlimFast contract?

Anna was off to a better start by awkwardly hugging Mum as they walked out to her den of despair.  But she soon suffered a similar fate to Rochelle when Mrs Bach got all Judge Judy and started interrogating the poor girl on her past relationships.  She was v shocked and appalled that Anna hadn’t brought men home before!  Now I’m no dating expert, but isn’t that a lot better than having brought home a whole football team of men?  Or at least better than being a hooker?  Or a stripper?  Oh wait…

While Anna was busy playing the crying card, the editors cut back to the family, and the actors playing Tim’s father and brother pretended to care about something.  Probably related to feelings.

For their final date, Tim decided to blindfold each girl and take her somewhere really “special”.  In other words, he wanted to take them somewhere he could remove his shirt again.  Anna explained that Tim had “…kept her in the dark” about the date.  Yeah.  Probs cos you were blind-folded.  Aren’t lawyers meant to be smart?  Anyway, Anna found herself on a boat, then there was this section where they canoodled and talked about feelings a lot and I kind of zoned out.  I think it was at this point we went to get champagne refills.  We re-convened when they were back in Tim’s natural beach habitat, where he chopped up a coconut and splashed juice in Anna’s face.  Inappropriate.

She revealed that she didn’t want to tell him she loved him until the last moment of their date.  Something about remembering her?  So to illustrate her point, she showed up to dinner with her red box.  OOOHHH MYSTERY!  What was inside?  Rochelle’s heart?  Ali wielding nun chucks?  No.  It was what appeared to be a set of cards.  Cue cards for Tim, I assumed.  Again, no.  It was a list of the things Anna loved about Tim.  Ummmmm…..Isn’t that exactly what you said you would NEVER DO, Anna?!!  She seemed v nervous about reading her list.  So nervous, in fact, that she forgot how to do maths. FYI babe, a quarter of 40 is 10.  She had no reason to be worried, really, because there’s nothing Tim likes more than hearing lists of reasons why he’s so great.

Rochelle had a hard act to follow with that list when she met Tim, sans bra, somewhere in Thailand.  She too was blindfolded and led to a waiting elephant.  What’s that?  There’s no water there so how did Timmy cope with his clothes on?  Guys, don’t stress.  After their jungle tour atop the elephant, where Rochelle talked a lot about walls and feelings, the pair found themselves on a bridge.  Above water.  Phew!  Bachelor Shaving Cream explained that there was this Thai tradition that the woman performs to show her dedication to the man.  Sex?  Disappointingly not.  No, they just held hands and dunked themselves in the water.  Boo.

Later that night, they cuddled up on a couch somewhere and talked about feelings again.  Snore.  Pass the blue cheese.

FINALLY!  It was the last ever rose ceremony.  Like, EVER.  While Bach meticulously shaved off his permanent stubble *tear*, the girls put on their falsies, ghd’d their hair and got dressed for the end of their amazing journey.  Is it just me, or was Rochelle’s choice of fluoro evening gown not appropriate?  Sorry, babe, it looked like you go it off a sale rack at ICE.  Anna, on the other hand, was conveniently dressed in a very bridal-looking white and gold number.  Coincidence?  I think not.

All eyes on Tim as he took his place upon the alter of sacrifice love (surrounded by water, luckily), and we waited with baited breath to see which poor crazy bitch was going to walk around the corner first and miss out.  A hint of fluoro from Rochelle’s dress was all it took to reveal that Anna would be the chosen one.  Duh.

Poor Rochelle.  We, as intelligent viewers, knew that she was about to get dumped.  Although I was never the biggest Rochelle fan, I gotta say, it was a little like watching a cow being lead into the abattoir.  As Bachelor Squat Thrust was telling her how great she was (something he is used to doing in the mirror), Rochelle seemed to be hyperventilating.  Seriously, she was heavy breathing all over the place.  Tim was obviously without his usual cue cards, because he was stumbling stupidly through his speech and smiling at her inappropriately. I wouldn’t be surprised if she honestly thought she had it in the bag.  Until he revealed that his heart was leading him somewhere else.  *Gasp*

“Ok.  Yep.  Yep. Ok.  Ok.  Ok.  Yep.  Thank you.”

WHERE WAS OSHER?!! Isn’t that the part where he appears in his velvet suit and whisks the heartbroken mess of a girl away?  Osher was bloody nowhere to be seen and everyone seemed v confused and disorientated, because Rochelle awkwardly walked off and into a waiting station wagon.  Good one, Osher.  You’re fired.

Enter Anna in her faux bridal gown.  What followed was a lot of dumb grinning, more talk of feelings and amazing journeys, awkward laugh-crying and Bach proclaiming his love for the lawyer who’d never had a boyfriend.  Sweet.  He then presented her with the previously mentioned ring that, surprisingly, symbolized their journey together through a forest of 24 crazy bitches.  Because we are ALL about symbolism, right?

She stupidly accepted, there was a kiss, more laugh-crying and we cut to a badly edited CGI of fireworks over the coast of Thailand and I was left to cry into my Sparkling Brut.  The End.

But never fear, my dears, ‘The Bachelor: After the Final Rose’ airs tonight where all of the bitches will return with fresh botox and bruised egos to get all up in Tim’s grill.  I am actually peaking in anticipation for ALL OF THE FEELINGS!

I do hope you’ve enjoyed my Bachelor blog journey.  Feel free to go back and re-live the drama of the past 13 weeks while I figure out what the actual crap to do with my life.  I’m thinking alcohol.

Farewell.

The Bachelor: Dates With (No) Sex

14 Nov

*SPOILER ALERT*

This blog contains no sex.  So if you are reading this in the presence of the underage, feel free to read on.  Or if you are overage, like me, feel free to start getting angry as I recount the biggest disappointment in Australian television since the return of “Hey Hey, it’s Saturday”.

Dates with No Time Limits.

Can you hear me squealing for joy from there?  Well, that was my general state of mind for the whole day leading up to this episode.  I could not wait to get home, crack open the wine and party like it was 1999.  Because dates with no time limits means dates with sex (in a 7.30pm time slot).

HOWEVER.

As you may have picked up on from my opening comments, I have a bone to pick with the various producers and promoters of ‘The Bachelor’.  For three main reasons:

1) There was no shirtless running/push-ups/pondering from Tim.  Dropped the ball there, guys.

2) Tim is actually a huge douche.  I’ve renamed him the Emotion Police.  Get him a better writer.

3) THERE WAS NO ACTUAL SEX!  YOU LIED!

For starters, there was plenty of opportunity for Bachelor Premature Greys to be doing his weekly maths and astute observations about roses while being half-naked.  But no.  Evidently Channel 10 have decided that, since Bach has to pick a wife in a week, they’d better keep it classy.  Too little, too late my friends.  The fact that you kept him confined to a forest (fully clothed, mind you) might just be why he was unable to do the dirty with his bitches.  This is so very disappointing.

Worse still, was the fact that his full level of douchebag was on clear display.  Did the intern copy writer take over script duties? Just bee tee dubs, you better get someone else on the pay roll for next week.  I was watching the episode as well as following the twitter feed, and everyone was just SO NOT OK with Tim’s behaviour.  I realise he is an ex-stripper/fake chiropractor/greasy-haired actor, but we’re still supposed to like the guy!

But the biggest tragedy of the evening was the fact that, despite the promising ad clips of suggestive thigh stroking and oyster platters, Tim did not actually realign anyone’s sexual chakras.  I am so not ok with this.

But we will get to that.

First “extravagant date” of the night went to crowd fav, Ali.  She’s dropped the moon boot leg cast and opted for a simple double band aid, so she was ready to roll.  The theme of their date seemed to be ‘apples’. Bizarre. He picked her up in a Porsche and they went whizzing through the Blue Mountains, until conveniently stumbling upon an apple-themed roadside stall.  Now, I realise that ‘The Bachelor’ itself is not a high-level thinking show.  But how dumb do you take us for, Channel 10?!  No self-respecting apple grower would EVER leave that much Bed, Bath ‘n’ Table merchandise unattended on a deserted road!  My Grandpa used to stop at a popular roadside stall in NSW to buy pawpaws, and it was nothing but plastic bags on a bloody trestle table.   Never in my life have I seen homemade pie not being watched over by a crazy old lady in a hair net and an apron.

Regardless, Tim and Ali took their offending pie and pretty bag of convenient apples and had a picnic.  With apple cider, of course.  Ali told Tim all about the book she was reading, ‘How to Make a Voodoo Doll for Dummies’  ‘The Recipe to True Love’ and Bach cleverly related it to watching ‘Shrek’ on an airplane.  What the actual crap?  I’m pretty sure he was insulting her, but just like the huge kransky incident from last week, she was blissfully unaware.

They soon retired to some mountain chalet where the owner had kindly left them keys to the ‘Love Cabin’.  Can you feel the anticipation? Just as Ali looked like she would unhinge her jaw,  we cut to a shot of Timmy on a boat and the Love Cabin was forgotten!  It seems because Ali had proclaimed her undying, crazy white-girl love to him numerous times he wanted to “respect” that. Boo to no sex!

He also said no to Rochelle because…well…I’m not 100% sure why, but something to do with feelings and emotions and shit like that.  Speaking of poor Rochelle, once again, Officer Emotions had her on detention on his Love Boat, trying to work his brain around her v controversial past as a beauty queen.  Is it just me or is that a bit rich coming from a stripper?  They talked in circles for ten minutes about feelings and then Rochelle apologised profusely for some unknown crime.  It seemed to placate poor old Bach and he allowed her to join him on deck for a “massive and delicious” seafood platter and some sneaky under-the-table action.   But no sex.  Not even after a personal invite from the Captain.  Sigh.  Things were looking dicey.

This left me hanging my hopes on Anna to bring home the bacon, ifyouknowwhaddamean.

Their date was more feelings and emotions, mixed with words like “open” and “honest” and then more feelings.  Tim was v concerned that Anna wasn’t telling him, “…what it is exactly she likes about me.”  True story.  He actually said that.  Which was nothing short of a miracle, really, considering it usually takes the man an hour to spit out a decent sentence.  Even so, girlfriend refused to play that game and basically did a Sarah and told him she was choosing him as much as he was choosing her.  Preach.  Her intense lipstick really came in handy by highlighting her judge-y scowl.  Anna has been my personal fav for some time, and I have to admit, after Sarah’s similar efforts in putting the hard word on Bachelor Crossfit had backfired, I feared poor Anna would also be punished for having an opinion.  But not so…

Just when I thought my efforts had been in vain, Bachelor Spray Tan looked poised to ask Anna to spend the night oiling up his muscles and other man parts in the aptly titled Forest Lodge.  Or Ocean Love Suite…or…something equally naff.  Things were looking up!  Instead, Tim put on his serious thinking face and explained staying the night together wouldn’t be fair.  Because something something about feelings and something something about sleeping with one girl and not the other. And then she cried.  And I threw something.

THERE WAS NO SEX AT ALL!

Lucky they began the rose ceremony quick smart, or else my television and other valuables would have been in serious trouble.

All that pent-up sexual frustration from the week left the girls wallowing meekly on the recliner lounge by the pool until Osher/Andrew G/Oshy Gunsberg/Who Cares came and escorted them the 20 metres into the rose ceremony.  From there, he left them to join Timmy in his special, secret Bachelor hide-out where he was played messages from each crazy bitch on his iPad.  Ali, true to form, reminded him (very loudly) that she loved him.  Give her some credit, it is possible he could have forgotten with all the serious detective work he’d been doing.  Rochelle decided to express her love through a kids nursery rhyme poem where she tried and failed to rhyme the word chiropractor with something.  I’m guessing using poetry as her skill is what lost her the Miss Australia crown.  And I forget what Anna said.  Something logical probably.

And then all of a sudden he had the last rose in his hand, the ‘Batman’ soundtrack was cranked up a few decibels (seriously, IS it the same music?  Every week I am waiting for Christian Bale to crash through the glass doors and go postal) and it was Ali who missed out.  All around Australia, collective breath was held, waiting for the bloodbath.  Luckily, Tim picked a good week to give her the boot, since her leg injury prevented her from chasing after him with a knife.  She held it together, though, and told him she still loved him and regretted nothing as they said their goodbyes.

Then he left her on the bloody steps!  And it was here that the tears came.  Twitter was all abuzz with “Tim shot Bambi!” outrage, and I have to agree, it was v heartbreaking.  There was even snot.  But I’m sure Ali will recover once she gets her van parked outside Tim’s house.

So we say farewell to our favourite crazy and look forward to next week, as the Spice Girls once said, when two become one.

Vale Ali.

The Bachelor: Meet the Parents

7 Nov

Gird your loins, man!

The time has come…for Bachelor Speedos to meet the parents of his four fav bitches.  And, tbh, after last week’s slightly beige episode in a creepy amusement park with whatshername, I was practically salivating for this one.

BUT…

I nearly had a small heart attack at the beginning of this week’s ep because Tim was pictured on the beach IN A SHIRT!  Correction, not just a shirt, but a jacket too!  I got a little panicky, thinking maybe he’d had some sort of serious gym-related accident or maybe even Channel Ten had read my (and several others’) blogs and tried to class things up a bit?  I mean, what was this madness!!??

Guys, it’s OK.  I got a little too ahead of myself.  It’s fine, he took the shirt off and was soon enough doing laps by the beach.  THANK GOD.  Deep breath…

Anyway, Tim once again started proceedings off by doing his weekly calculation of  subtracting the amount of roses from the amount of girls left, (the answer’s one if you were worried), put his offensive clothing back on and headed off to Golburn to kick off his Mummas and the Pappas tour.

First stop, Anna.

Lemme just say straight up, Anna’s mum is a total fox, so already she’s got my vote.  Tim was initially met with both Anna’s mother and two sassy sisters.  Poor pet seemed extremely overwhelmed, although, I thought a room full of loud women was exactly what put a stripper at ease? No?

Eventually though, in walked Anna’s lawyer father, and, speaking of strippers, got right to the point and put the hard word on Tim about his v controversial, shirtless past.  Which he TOTALLY DENIED!  Dude, this guy is a lawyer! Anyone with wikipedia can look up pictures of you in leather chaps, but this man has files.  You know how you go to work and put people in the recovery position?  This guy goes to work and puts people IN JAIL!   In fact, Mr Anna reminded me of the dad of a friend I knew from school who was a doctor and completely bloody terrifying.  So, lying is never an option.  But we wouldn’t have a show if the very first set of parentals were already barring their daughter from continuing on, so Tim escaped fairly unscathed and all was right with the world.

Next up, Rochelle.  And again, Mrs Rochelle giving Mrs Anna a serious run for her money after telling her daughter she was making a shandy and using words like, “dishy.”  I liked her.  But the drama of this meeting was all hinging on Bach meeting Rochelle’s police sergeant father who had already done a background check on him and called his next of kin (most likely).  So there was nowhere to hide those fluffy handcuffs!

BUT AGAIN!  No bloody mention of it!  What was going on here?!  Were these people paid actors?  Wouldn’t be surprising really, considering Rochelle is one of the best actresses I’ve seen on Australian television in a long time.  My fav moment from her was when she confessed to mum she was afraid of being, “…exposed and vulnerable,” all the while wearing a v see-through chiffon shirt.  Oh the subtext!  But more der-ama struck at dinner time, when Tim noticed Rochelle had gone all quiet and reserved.  Obviously he was very hurt by this behaviour and decided he would get right to the bottom of it as soon as possible.  I mean, how COULD she?!  In my opinion, she just looked bloody bored.  And speaking of looking bored…

Enter Danni.  My favourite part about Danni’s family date was her poignant reflection upon Tim arriving in her home town of the Gold Coast.  (I freaking love that she is a GC girl.  Don’t tell me it doesn’t explain a lot, am I right?!)  Evidently she was looking forward to him visiting Currumbin as she’d…”spent a lot of time there.”  Umm….considering it’s where you grew up, babe, you might be understating it a little.  But I digress.  We got to meet Mrs Danni, who didn’t receive any flowers from Tim, how very dare he!  On the bright side, we got to understand where Danni’s impressive Resting Bitch Face comes from.  Luckily for our Bach though, Mum still gave her blessing to the man dating four women and keeping her daughter locked up in an interior decorator’s worst nightmare.  Winner!

BUT!  Once again, Tim was getting that pesky vibe, the one where he feels like *insert bitch’s name here* isn’t quite, “opening up to him.”  I wonder if he gets paid every time he says that?  So Detective Bach took Danni outside to really get to the bottom of her clearly unacceptable attitude.  And so started a very awkward non-conversation where Tim tried to use big words and Danni said, “yeah” a lot.  Riveting.  But that terrible anti-climax was remedied after the ad break when it was finally Ali’s turn.  Saving the best til last, Channel Ten?  Of course you are.

Doe-eyed Ali decided to take Timmy on a pre-parental date to a novelty German town in South Australia.  Where she ate a gigantic kransky hot dog.  Like seriously, it was huge.  Look, I’m sure it had some fancy German name, but whatever Trevor, that shit was inappropriately phallic for someone wearing an all-white outfit, just saying.  It was here, though, that Ali confessed her parents had never really approved of any men she had brought home before.  Sigh.  Is that because they weren’t real people?

Before Tim had said two bloody words to Ali’s parentals though, she was off with the tears.  Good God, woman, calm yo self!  Even your mum and dad think you’re cray.  And speaking of which, Mr Ali was totally Lou Carpenter from Neighbours!*  Another winner!  The best bit, though, was Channel Ten giving us several teasers of Ali ‘revealing’ her true feelings to Bachelor Chin Stubble before the ad breaks.  I posted on twitter that if she wasn’t going to tell him she was pregnant with his unborn child, I’d be bitterly disappointed.  Unfortunately, I was and, surprise, surprise!  She told him she loved him instead.  Which she has been saying since the second episode.  And then came the next totes awks moment since the infamous pash attempt from the series premiere….*Gasp*  He couldn’t say “I love you” back to her! But Ali’s logical reaction of, “He didn’t say it to me in words, but he said it to me in chemistry,” really just demonstrated the point of this ridiculous show beautifully.  Babe, if a guy don’t say I love you, there are no ‘buts’. True story.  Must have been the sausage breath.  Or maybe the crazy eyes.  Hard to say.

Regardless, the rose ceremony was upon us once again, after Bachelor Body Trim had officially been given the tick of approval from all the bitches’ families.  But he decided to punish both Rochelle and Danni for their bad behaviour by leaving them until last and making them really think about why they were there.  Before putting them out of their misery, though, he ushered them (no, not Oshered, he was still in the mansion) outside to read them their last rights i.e. have them tell him how amazing he was.  Rochelle pulled out the tears like a champ and she was home and hosed.  Bye bye Danni.  And twitter erupted with ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!’ type statements, proving, it seems, that Danni was officially the season’s resident biatch.  Such a shame. I see a spin-off in the making for her.

And then there were three.

Join me next week, as I recap the Dates With No Time Limit i.e. dates with sex.  My favourite type!

As we close in on the pointy end of the competition (no pun intended), I do have to say now I genuinely worry for Ali’s mental health.  If she doesn’t win, the producers better have Dr Phil on standby or someone equally qualified to prevent a possible mass murder.

Until then.

 

*He wasn’t actually Lou Carpenter, which would have been amaze.  But close enough, really.