We all think that we’re sophisticated modern adults but when it comes to dating it’s clear that we barely have to scratch the surface and we’re still in high school wanting the popular kids to like us. And goddamn if The Bachelor isn’t exactly that.
And it’s understandable – after all, love is about vulnerability and is there any time we’re feeling more vulnerable than while puberty’s doing a number on our brains, hearts and genitals?
Anyway: everyone in this episode is a child and it’s just weird. That’s the TL;DR version.
Life lesson: everything I needed to learn about love I learned in year nine
Even the dynamic is similar, at least for the women: a group of would-be strangers forced into close proximity with one another, competing over romantic conquests despite objectively deserving better, and dividing off into little cliques of rapidly shifting alliances, with the ultimate prize being a cheeky pash when no-one’s around.
And Matt is doing it too, right down to the frankly pitiful act of going around demanding to know who said what about him, as though he’s a detective solving The Case Of The Thing The Mean Girl Said About Me.
That was the fallout from last episode, in which Monique supposedly called him a “dog see-you-next-Tuesday” (to use the Matt’s preferred euphemism).
And of course, in the real world someone would go “hey, what was that about?” “Oh, I’m really sorry: it was a bad joke taken out of context.” “Oh, OK, so we’re good?” “Absolutely, I’m really embarrassed, let’s have a drink.”
But in the heightened sleep away camp that is the Bachelor everything is a HIGH STAKES SCHOOL YARD DRAMA, since this is television and you can see normal people being reasonable every day on a bus which is a) boring and b) doesn’t have Mary and Nikki acting as the audience surrogate by wildly over-emoting to literally everything.
And the thing is, Matt wasn’t even wrong to send Monique packing – which he did, even without the rose ceremony – since someone that lousy at coping with a basic faux pas isn’t someone you want to be teaming up with to face the stupid challenges of day to day life.
Also, watching a 26 year old sneering about how immature 23 year olds are is exactly like watching year nines mocking year eights for still being into Shopkins when everyone knows that all the cool kids are playing with Slime now.
Date tip: don’t involve catapults
No. Just no.
But at least he’s not getting a bunch of women to dress up as brides for him or anyt…
SERIOUSLY MAN COME ON.
Llamawatch: nothing to report
We’re back at the mansion and the Bachelor Pad and yet no sign of the llama, presumably because it’s sick of these high school shenanigans too? We can only speculate.
In the vacuum of llama-related news we can only assume it now has a spinoff series where it fights crime. Tagline: “this summer, ‘drama’ is spelled with two Ls. And no D or R.”
