All the Byron Bay nonsense I was forced to endure during episode 2 of Byron Baes
dragon bones are NOT real
Nama-slay, we’re back for another actually totally spiritual episode of Byron Baes, the show which has really taught me about a place called “Byron Bay”.
Honestly, watching this show has made me swing wildly between deciding to get lip fillers, enormous hair, some kind of billowing beige sack outfit, and many crystals - or deleting my instagram forever, and simply withdrawing from society. Not sure which one calls to me more.
But i’m OBSESSED with this show. It’s elevated absurdity. I gave it 4/5 stars for The Guardian.
I don’t know about you, but i’ve never been to this place - but in the past few years it’s kinda built up a bit of a weird mythology around it, as a mecca for capitalist infused white spiritualism, as a playground for Zac Efron and Chris Hemsworth, as the kind of place my mum’s most annoying friend would buy her kaftans. This show has taught me that I don’t really want to go there - it seems to combine all the worst parts of an overpriced Sydney club with Bali rich-person exploitative resort culture.
And I find this is FASCINATING. If the show was purely a documentary about how one coastal town in NSW became a little infected blister of elitism, wealth, and Hollywood stars, I would probably watch it.
The fact that they gave us a bunch of influencers, influencer wannabes, and people who hate being described as influencers (Netflix was forced to apologise to the cast for calling them influencers in the press release lol) to welcome us into their strange little bubble, is even more genius.
Furthermore, they’ve found the right balance of artifice and earnestness to make it work - every single one of these people KNOWS the fakeness of what this show is about, but they’re somehow able to engage earnestly with it at the same time - but that’s a line they tread every day as influencers anyway. They KNOW, but they also aren’t AWARE of their own place in it all. The audience knows, the show knows, the cast knows… but somehow that makes it real in a way that a lot of other Australian reality tv can’t manage. Its fascinating - and the show allows these people to build themselves up and cast themselves down, without really doing anything other than giving them the opportunity to be on camera. As far as nooses go, there’s an honesty to how it’s presented to them, and how they choose to coil it fashionably around their own necks, in a way that I think shows like MAFs doesn’t have, which is more exploitative. All of these people are just… being themselves… and that’s fine. More on this later.
Anyway, welcome, welcome to our recaps - if you’re new, Bec and I like to watch shows together, and rank it by heterosexual nonsense. Rebecca Shaw is such a delight that I could imagine that she’d be very popular in Byron Bay, but I also think that people wouldn’t get her jokes. They’d understand that she is funny, but not really know why. They’d do a lot of laughing, but very little comprehending.
This is Bec and one of her close gal pals.
I think that I would be able to fit into Byron Bay, but it would come at the cost of my soul.
We do these recaps by finding the things that annoy us the most and the least. It sounds extremely complicated, and it is, but the brilliance of our writing is that we convince you that our convoluted system is actually casual, chatty, like we’re just “blogging” on our newsletter. That’s why we’re the best. Anyway, we’re definitely monitoring the het nonsense in this show - there’s still a lot. There’s a lot of men doing weird repressed handshakes and fist pounds and stuff. But we’re incorporating a wider field of criticism into this series - the Byron Bay nonsense - which is hetero, but also full of wealth, woo-wa nonsense, and other stuff.
Also I have covid, so don’t look at me!
So. Let us recap.
LEAST ANNOYING
Jade
Look, I know Jade is going to BE someone who I will probably dislike later, but at the moment I’m really enjoying him. In this episode, he’s done a classic white gay thing of becoming super close friends with the bitchiest girls he can find, but then taking the time to find everyone who they’re feuding with and start playing both sides very gently. It’s… something I have seen before, and I’m enjoying it, because this feud is so… pointless. You need someone like him to stoke the fire a bit. You need someone to latch onto and be your avatar, and at the moment, he’s the person I relate to the most. Which… maybe is worrying for me.
Also his whole “I just want friends in a new place” vibe is relatable and fine and quite sweet. And he has the best line delivery of anyone on this show yet. “Dragons are NOT real”.
Sarah
Sarah is impressing me a LOT so far, because in most situations she simply knows when to… say nothing. When that bitchy awful talent manager guy is slagging people off, she simply says nothing. When the lady with the huge hair is being weird to her - she says nothing. Obviously things are going to escalate with the whole “love triangle” thing she’s being engineered into, but right now it’s good that she’s being silent lol.
Also the funniest thing is when you look her up on Google right now, the first result is her ABN.
Elias
He’s barely spoken yet, and he’s also very generically hot. THAT’S WHAT I WANT FROM MEN. NO TALK, JUST ABS.
Hannah
Alright so Hannah is… very out there. The way she puts on her strange mystic voice and then drops it, the fact she basically inferred to going off at Jess because she had allegedly done too much cocaine ( “i was partying too much”), the fact that she has gone full woo-wa with basically no understanding of it… it’s just so much. But hey, the fact is she’s entertaining me, she’s giving me life. She’s… well, she is what she is, and I kinda love it.
Also, she looks like Byron Abbie Chatfield. Tree of Life Wollongong brand Abbie Chatfield.
Anyway, my favourite thing, my favourite thing that has ever happened, is the conversation between her and Jade while sitting in a giant geode.
“How do they know it’s millions of years old” asks Jade, referring to the crystal. “Like, nobody lived for millions of years, nobody is old enough to remember”.
This clearly confused Hannah, and she managed to push through by saying “Oh they can tell these things, it’s like when they find dragon bones out in the desert”.
I’m just… I’m so thankful for this moment. This is amazing.
Elle
I love that every morning she wakes up and cosplays as an evil queen with huge hair. I love it.
Most Annoying
Fashion Jess
The interesting thing is that I probably respect Jess the most - she actually has a business going, and seems rightfully pretty invested in it, even if it is basically exactly the linen shorts boutique you’d expect. I also, as a virgo, understand holding a grudge and not believing in forgiveness.
That said, she’s one of the people I dislike the most on screen, purely because her whole schtick has become maintaining a feud with a floaty fairy lady, and it is the least entertaining thing to me. I’m also worried that she psychologically dominates her tall sister, who just kinda paddles around like a long necked idiot swan. And her fashion show was… fine. Looks like everything would breathe well in the humidity.
Nathan
Everyone says this guy is funny and stuff but i’ve never heard him make a joke. Make me laugh bitch!
Alex
I HATE this snarky little bitch, and I am living for it! It’s great when you get someone self aware enough to know they’re going to come across as a villain, and just lead into it, full of snarky nineties gay catchphrases. “Twitter darl? very 2012”.
I would also like to say “hello” to Alex, who just followed me on Twitter. Extremely 2012 darl!
The thing about him is that he’s not… wrong… about the mean things he says. His whole thing about being in the Handmaids Tale was… correct, and his ability to lie his way out of it was iconic.
Also i read that he used to be famous piss-baby Kyle Sandilands assistant, which is basically a war crime. BUT even more than this, I hate his whole “Jade has too many Instagram followers” Harriet the Spy moment. Get over it! nobody cares!!!!!
Although I do need to know lol. I need to know. Maybe I do care. A lot.
Anyway! Thanks for reading. Bec will be back NEXT episode, and we’ll also be moving back to Subscriber only… so if you love us and these recaps… please consider subscribing.
This show is next level entertaining, very good choice to recap 🙌🏼 Though they remind me of all the worst people I went to high school with so it’s a bit triggering