Bachelor in Paradise Australia Episode 11: Farewell, Paradise

I think it’s been very clear over my series of recaps – my longest recaps yet, I would say I’ve clocked about 30,000 words so far this series with all the characters to cover and the ridiculous length of the episodes – that I have been frustrated with this show. Filling the cast with garbage men (including a guy convicted of assault), poor editing, the weird hyper-focus on ‘dramatic’ storylines over actual relationships. Nonetheless, I’ve devoted late nights and lunch hours to my writing.

But at some point, I must acknowledge that while writing about a popular show drives eyeballs to my blog (which I make no money out of whatsoever), it also serves as a promotional tool for the show. I become part of the hype that they reap advertising dollars from. And I no longer feel comfortable with that after last night’s show, so I’m going to cease recapping it.

I can’t get on board with the queerbaiting that came to light this episode. There was never any Megan/Elora story as heavily implied by the promos. They spliced in a shot of Megan and Thomas kissing amongst other shots of Megan and Elora to make it appear that way. It’s dirty and low to communities who are just looking for a bit of positive representation. And while I already felt it was a bit salacious to have at least three consecutive shots of them when the rest of the trailer was really random, I figured when you have a storyline so different to what this franchise normally tells, you want to make sure people know about it (obviously it doesn’t hurt that Megan and Elora are beautiful women).

To be clear, this is not a comment on Megan. She is obliged to represent no-one but herself, and if the only people she wants to be in relationships with on this show are men, then that’s chill. Bisexual people’s sexuality doesn’t  depend on whoever they’re with at any given moment.

This is purely about the manipulation on Channel Ten’s part. I don’t want to be part of the hype machine that told such a specific lie to bait people who wanted to see a representation of a queer relationship, finally, on one of these overwhelmingly hereto dating shows.

If you want to read some excellent recaps on the rest of the season, I can highly recommend Jodi McAlister at BookThingo for smart stuff and like 90% the same sense of humour as me with less swearing, and Tahlia Pritchard at Buzzfeed for the lols.

Thank you for reading. I’m yet to decide if I will continue livetweeting (I do really want to see what happens with Apollo….) but you can find me at Twitter here.

Keep an eye out for my next film review to hopefully wash this dirty taste out of my mouth. The worst part is, as misleading as it was, that trailer probably had the best editing of the whole season.

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