All the Heterosexual Nonsense I was forced to endure during episode TWO of The 3achelors

one of The Bachelors is the clear villain, and it's a surprising dark horse...

While it SEEMS like The Bachelor franchise has hit a weird flop era, that it’s become bad-ratings pilled, it’s been pulled off the air and delayed and then dumped into the first month of the year (the baby month), maybe there’s actually a kind of poetic genius to it all.

Instead of treating Bachie like MAFs or Love Island, where they bombard you with so many recurrent seasons and episodes that you can’t help but watch it, where you’ll be hanging out the washing or painting your baby or whatever and then suddenly through no volition of your own you’ve seen a full episode - maybe they’ve gone the opposite route with The Bachelors, and they’re treating the franchise more like a surprising comet, that only comes once every so often, and wise men with long beards emerge from their towers to gaze at it. I dunno.

Channel 10 to the Bachelor audience.

HELLO! We’re BACK, and we’re recapping, and it feels good. I feel refreshed after that year break, I feel like my brain is the opposite of old sponge cake. New sponge cake? Once again, my beautiful and talented friend Bec and I are united by this weird thing we do together. “can you recap tonight” one of us might say in our chat. “No, I have to see M3gan” we might answer. This experience draws us closer together, and considering i am emotionally cold and withholding, I am glad for it.

i learned a lot from this artwork I got made for Bec for her 40th… the meaning of friendship AND how slay i look in a backless dress

I thought the first episode was very fun - it was confronting to have the whole format changed, to have the red carpet unceremoniously dumped, to learn about something called “the gold coast?” - but ultimately I have decided it was good! Because, after what feels like 70 years of this show, I’m bored by the old format! And the new system really gave these three weird men (the Three Weird Men also came to visit baby jesus, but they brought with them as gifts a hacky-sack, an NFT, and a DVD of the Will Smith vehicle Hitch, so they didn’t make it into the christmas carols) the chance to shine, and by shine, I mean make some really weird decisions and kinda bum me out. That’s showbiz!

So basically i’m super excited to see what happens this episode. As per usual, we rank people by the least amount of heterosexual nonsense to the MOST amount, in an arbitrary but fun way. I love to rank…

time to pack up the newsletter, we just hit peak Hetero Nonsense

LEAST ANNOYING

Thomas

Well, the bar is officially so goddamn low that Thomas has come out of this as the only Bachelor even half likeable. I’m literally sitting here wondering if Multi Level Marketing Schemes are THAT bad?

maybe i DO want to be my own boss

In this episode, there was a cocktail night, a pool party, and then a rose ceremony, and Thomas didn’t really do anything or say anything interesting. He’s extremely dull, but that makes him the least annoying.

“The house party was probably the wildest experience of my life” he says, after he drank two sensible standard drinks and kissed a woman politely before heading off to bed before midnight. OK you know what, after typing that out, I realise it’s my perfect night, so he’s not dull, he’s just in his late thirties. Glad we have late 30s representation on screen, it’s very important.

spraying a cloud of ink out of his butt and then squeezing through a hole to escape

Anyway, apparently Thomas is the oldest Bachelor they’ve ever had? At 35???? That’s so young! he keeps referring to himself as old wine

Kirsten

Kirsten seems cool, but I also just really like that The Bachelor has 1) a 38 year old, which is a great age, and a young age, and not even an age to really remark upon 2) she’s really hot. Why wouldn’t she be hot, 38 year olds are hot.

the youth on tiktok are surprised when 38 year olds can walk unaided without breaking a hip

CJ

There is a woman named CJ, and I’m going to guess that this is her:

Ouch! sorry, i just tripped over the bar, it’s so low

But it might not be, we have an abundance of blonde women, so it might not be.

someone looks like Kristen Chenoweth, which is iconic

Anyway, whoever she is, she had some good lines, including saying Thomas is “hot as fuck” and “Jed? I can’t even explain that one”.

So true bestie.

Yuri

Every single look Yuri has had so far has been gorgeous and iconic, but she gets like a second of airtime.

she’s often wearing this electric blue shade and it’s gorgeous

She also gets just one line this episode, and it’s about horndog Felix, and she says:

“I think he’s just shallow, a shallow creature” and it’s so true. So true. Let’s get into why.

MOST ANNOYING

Felix

It took ONE episode for this rootrat to show his horny true colours, and it’s disgusting! So, condensing pretty much the entire night of drama into a line: this horny bitch just won’t stop kissing!

NARRATOR: unfortunately, he did kiss

Look, it’s not the horniness or the kissing that made me gag - although there were a few shots of his tongue doing various things (not even just sexy things, just tongue stuff) which should be illegal. I love horniness, even in men. And I think kissing is fine, if you’re married.

is he not aware of the LOADED nature of bringing out a blanket on an australian reality tv show??????

No, what I hate is his ATTITUDE. He acted like a frothingly hormonal teen, who knows he’s getting in trouble but won’t suffer consequences. Here’s just a couple of his lines, each which made me seethe with rage.

“is anyone else in the doghouse this morning”

“I hooked up on the cabana with tilly”

“if you step in mud, you may as well jump in the puddle”

“i dont regret kissing tilly, i regret getting caught”

“its very rare that you get to date a whole bunch of hot women and get away with it”

And then after kissing Tilly under a blanket, he did a big song and dance about how naughty he is, and then did the same thing the next day at the pool party with another woman. Naomi? Could be.

Anyway, he’s definitely serving villain vibes. He is the most annoying by a long shot, he’s giving horny private school virgin.

the look he gives you before he starts talking about how rich his dad is

Jeb

I didn’t gag at Jeb like I did Felix, but I sure did have cascades of ick, and waves of cringe.

So apparently he’s the YOUNGEST Bachelor ever, at 25, and boy does he seem to represent everything awful about young men.

he always dresses like he pissed himself in timothee chalamets trailer and had to put on whatever was lying around

“I live a fast life, and i don’t want to slow down but i do want to settle down” he says, confidently. He’s always saying nonsensical things like that.

“I’ve got the tattoos, colourful shirt, painted fingernails, and i’m the size of felix’s leg” he tells us, giving us huge “do you know why I wear this hat” speech from Riverdale vibes.

Jeb, you look like the edgiest guy from rural highschool, but literally nobody would bat an eye at you in any major city

But the cringiest thing was when he just started playing a limb beat on his drums in the middle of a pool party… very much “the worst highschool party you’ve ever been to” vibes.

idk what the drum version of smoke on the water is

Anyway, he’s in the most annoying list this week for consistently being like my favourite Rogue Traders album.

Tash

Hey look, we have the lady villain already established, and her name is Tash! Tash is the name of a modern villain. Tash is the name of someone out to get you! But not to be mistaken for Trish. Trish is the name of a woman who really has it together: athletic, natural…

Anyway, Tash has decided to do that whole “Tash gets what she wants” attitude, which is like, sure, fine. I think it’s fine to be a go-getter, but also, keep it inside yourself.

Tash is short for Potassium, which is good for stopping cramps in your legs. The more you know

“I’m here for jed and i always win” she says, and I don’t know how to explain this, but I feel this attitude comes from daytime talk shows from the early noughties, and they’ve poisoned a whole generation of people in a really unique way.

But she also got really jealous and angry about Jeb kissing some of the other girls on their first dates. “Finding out that he kissed other girls doesnt sit well with me,” she says wrathfully. Have you not SEEN the show???????

I know she has, because later it was revealed that she used to be engaged to a former Bachelor contestant. I was told his name, but I refuse to retain it.

Men Talking

So there were two scenes where the men TALK to each other and it’s horrible! The only good thing about The Bachelor usually is that the men only have women to talk to, so they have to act better than they naturally are.

Now they get to talk to each other and let it all hang out (scrotums, bad opinions) and I hate it! On the one hand, they do fail the Evil Bechdel Test (they only talk about women) but on the other hand, none of what they say is good. Yuck.

imagining myself in this situation makes me immediately depressed and scared

NEVER TO ANNOY OR NOT ANNOY AGAIN

Ella

Ella is the true winner of this season, because she had a bad time at the party on the first night and just decided to leave lol. She also didnt like that Jerb had kissed other people because she’d just gotten out of a relationship with a cheating boyfriend, but honestly, go home and watch Gilmore Girls queen.

Me, thinking about being anywhere I dont want to be for even a second

Three women

Three other women did not get roses. Farewell.

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Thank you so much for reading along, and for supporting independent writing, we appreciate it so much. This is the last of our free Bachy recaps, the rest will be for paying subscribers! Also - it’s really hard to tell when new episodes are, but we’ll be recapping at least two a week. On Wednesday, however, I’m seeing M3gan.