I’m not a competitive person. If life were a game of Bachie Monopoly, I’d be Michelle, chilling in the Go Go Cage Jail, sipping wine and judging people. No, I’m not competitive. But I really do enjoy being right. So when we returned from the loathed TBC to Matty asking Sian if she could talk outside, basically so he could send her home without the indignity of a rose ceremony elimination (because honestly how much can one girl humiliate herself in one night?), I felt a little smug.
He returns to the rose ceremony to let them know he’s sent Sian home and to bitch about her behind her back: ‘My main issue is that she was questioning what was real and what wasn’t’. He wants the girls to know that he’s not a puppet. He calls the shots around here. He decides who will go on single dates (note, he did not say group dates), he decides will go home.
Congratulations Matty, you just confirmed that you’re an idiot. I mean, which is worse? To admit that you’re open to influence from the people paying you an estimated $200,000 to date a bunch of women on TV, or to admit that you’re so dense that you are blind to the fact that you’re being blatantly manipulated by both Leah and Jen? I’d take puppet over muppet any day.
So anyway suffice to say I’ve really gone off Matty. But I’m very glad he finally made a good choice, because next we find that this week’s single date recipient is Tara. Our wise bogan queen.
With Tara, Matty wants to laugh the whole time, but also see her serious side. I hope her serious side doesn’t involve any personal trauma because he’s going to feel pretty bad about laughing.
You’d think that riding on a tandem bicycle in adorable stack hats would be a good start to the laughs, but it ends up being another episode of Matty Terrifies Unsuspecting Women. Turns out Tara hasn’t ridden a bike in years, and she’s not really digging not having control of the bike either. The amount of screaming is…substantial. And honestly, Tara is extremely loud this entire date and while we love her for her rambunctiousness, I think I will respectfully bow out from the competition to be her bestie, because my introvert self would find her exhausting. I’d still like to follow her on Twitter though for the hot takes.
They slow down the pace a little with some pasta-making. Often on these cooking dates there’s someone there showing them how to cook things, but it’s just the two of them and Tara takes full advantage. And I do mean full advantage. First there’s the recreation a Ghost with pasta dough:
Does anyone…wanna go to Pottery Barn?
And then Tara notices The Arse. It turns out Tara is an Arse Woman, and she is not going to rest until Matty really truly knows how spectacular his arse is.
Matty does not seem wholly comfortable with this blatant objectification, but he does accept a ‘Cheers to your arse’ as they down some wine.
They sit down to eat the pasta which is weird because no-one’s actually meant to eat the food on the Bachelor franchise. I have a strong suspicion Tara would not have been up for making pasta for the crew to enjoy. As they dole out the parmesan Matty tells Tara ‘I like a woman who likes cheese’ to which she responds ‘Then you’ve found your perfect wife’. The fun never lasts forever so eventually talk must turn to how quickly Matty can start interfering with her birth control families. Yes, Tara likes kids (she’s a nanny and is very fond of her charges) and wants kids, although she thinks that you need a very strong bond to have them. That’s basically what Liz said, in other words, but oh well. Suddenly Matty stops seeing her as a ‘quirky, funny kid’ (his words) and as a beautiful fertile woman. As they talk about her insecurities, and how she didn’t think he’d be in to her, he interrupts her with a kiss. It’s a move that I don’t mind in a romance novel but just seems kinda rude when you see it happen onscreen. Or maybe that’s just because I dislike Matty now. Anyway they have a nice pash and she gets a rose.
Meanwhile back at the mansion, a group date has been announced. It clearly involves heights judging by the clue, and Simone, who is terrified of them, is upset that she’s on the invite list, which upsets Jen, who is not. Anything that upsets Jen is a-ok with me.
The next day Leah, Elise, Elora, Laura, Natalie and Simone are in cars on the way to the group date. As soon as they pass a sign for skydiving, Elora and Elise are the middle of trying to talk Simone out of a panic attack. Tearily she tells the camera ‘I’ll do anything, but not this’. Long story short she jumps out of the plane but not without moaning and crying ‘No no no…’ when she and Matty are the last ones in the cabin, because this guy really knows how to organise a romantic encounter. The whole theory of this date is how much he wants a girl to step out of her comfort zone, but I think a plane is a perfectly reasonable comfort zone. After all, unlike humans, it was designed to fly in the air.
Can you tell I also have a bit of an issue with heights?
Matty’s the last to jump, and once he hits the ground all the adrenaline-filled girls conduct a stacks-on, as this might be their only opportunity to touch him all week. Matty chooses a girl for some one-on-one time, and it’s Simone, as it bloody well should be. They have no chemistry, but he can’t send her home for at least two episodes after her admirable showing of not shitting herself while strapped to another human. As he reflects on the way he got her jump out of the plane, he wonders aloud ‘What else could I make you do? while doing Doctor Evil fingers. We know what he’s thinking.
At the cocktail party, Jen makes sure Matty knows she loves the same things as him in the most bitchy way possible ‘I’ve just been sitting here saying how much I love skydiving…thanks, Matty’. Yeah girl we’ve seen how much you like your hair, no-one believes that.
Elise finally gets a bit of screen time after yanking Matty aside to “go fishing”. While I wish that was a euphemism, they do actually use a fishing rod to grab some stuff out of the pool, clues about Elise. Did you know that she was a Hockeyroo, and her family dress up as tacos for Christmas? It gets Matty’s attention, so good for her, but she probably could have just got her ovulation calendar out.
There’s more incessant arguments about who gets access to Matty when during cocktail parties and honestly if I was here for this I’d just go and hang around outside the Family Court. It’s another opportunity for Jen to be an incessant moll, however, as she eggs Michelle on to interrupt Matty’s chat and then swoops in when the other girls get caught up arguing about it.
Meanwhile Natalie has been fearing she’s been put in the ‘friend’ zone. You may remember Natalie as a fruit loop and hand-sniffer.
Unfortunately Natalie’s time as provider of delightful reaction gifs comes to an end at the rose ceremony. I think that’s fine, as it looks like Tara’s going to be around giving us the gold for a while yet. In the car, she tells us: ‘Rejection always sucks. It might not mean he doesn’t like me. He might like me, he just doesn’t want to date me’.
Maybe he just didn’t think you were fertile enough. Enjoy seeking your own reproductive destiny, Natalie.
Victorian Values 
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