Undie-throwing, tears and dance-offs all for Sophie Monk

The talented and hilariously entertaining Jo Thornely is back with her latest recap of The Bachelorette.

You know how you tolerate kale because that means you can have chocolate afterwards? Well The Bachelor is finished, and The Bachelorette with Sophie Monk is here.

For the very first time, The Bachelorette is the more highly-anticipated of the two shows.

For the very first time, thanks to Sophie Monk, the word ‘bogan’ has featured prominently in all the promos.

And for the very first time, I’ll get to call the date couches ‘Soph-as’. I’VE WAITED SO LONG TO DO THAT.

But now that we’re here, let’s not waste any time. Let’s check our pockets and see if we’ve got the two most vital ingredients for the first minute of the episode:

Osher and an obscene amount of fairy lights?

Sophie staring out at the horizon?

And as a bonus, does this series have something no other series has had, being a bulldog and mild driving hazard called Rupert? YES.

“Look what I’ve got in front of me, it’s massive!” says a nervous Sophie, and we can only hope so.

We’ve met the completely blonde family. We’ve said we don’t care about looks. We’ve moved our ring eight times in an adorable display of OCD. Right. Let’s meet some blokes.

“AW CRAP, WHAT’S THIS?” says Sophie as her first suitor appears in a cloud of smoke. It’s a man named Apollo, which is not really a name, and his profession is ‘full-time magician’, which is not really a job. What we need here is a Sophism – for our Bachelorette to say something quintessentially Monkish to break the nerves.

“I always thought magicians were nerdburgers” says Sophie, obliging. “Apollo is one of the hottest magicians I’ve ever seen”.

They chat and Apollo assures Sophie he’s not just here to further his magic career – a thing that is actually impossible to do – and clearly he’s in with a red hot chance.

“He turned a napkin into a rose. Imagine what he could turn a bed sheet into”, muses Sophie. CLEAN LAUNDRY, AM I RIGHT LADIES, HOLLA.

Next is Jarrod, a vineyard manager who asks an alpaca if he should find a girlfriend – a question with only one clear answer. He walks in carrying a strong brow and a massive tub of grapes, prompting Sophie to ask “What have you got there?”

Knowing exactly what a woman wants, Jarrod offers Sophie a bottle from his vineyard. “But is it made from your feet, or your family’s feet?” she asks, not sure which answer she’ll find more acceptable. Jarrod invites her to stomp all over his grapes, which is pretty much a metaphor for marriage anyway.

“Oh no” says Sophie as the next Bachelor Eden arrives in full Adidas and a boombox.

Oddly Sophie doesn’t start talking about how it’s every little girl’s dream to meet her husband poppin’ and lockin’, and doesn’t remind Eden that she’s no longer a judge on Australia’s Got Talent. Instead, she just says “I could see his butt crack a bit”.

Suddenly the violins swell for James, and everybody knows that in this game swelling violins means there’s a husband in the hoouuuuse. Only James is excruciatingly awkward and says ‘yeah’ a lot. Maybe go and have about twelve drinks, James.

Hey, you know that saying “never send a boy to do a man’s job”? Well, ugh.

“We just want to say you look pretty, and will you date our uncle?” say the smarmy little br… er, adorable little urchins, and Sophie takes the opportunity to grill them about their uncle’s dating past and other traits. She asks them what the best thing their uncle has ever done is, and surprisingly her pants stay on when they reply “Taken us to Target”. Clearly the woman just isn’t turned on by bargains.

Anyway this is uncle Sam, which should go some way towards explaining why he needs well-groomed children to make his first impression.

Next is Jourdan, who really wants you to know something about himself. “I’m super-weird. I’m weird beyond all measures. I don’t really know what my type is, but I know that they have to be weird”.

He makes Sophie wear a blindfold emblazoned with the phrase ‘Sophie and Jourdan play hide & seek’, and then just wanders into the house. Possibly the weirdest thing about Jourdan is him thinking that anyone would find that appealing.

There’s this guy, who teases Sophie with a pizza box that only has rose petals in it.

There’s this guy, who made her a bad t-shirt.

This one, who tells Sophie she looks ‘dabulous’…

This one, who doubles his penile euphemism power by turning up with both a helmet and a horse…

One who wrote a song about himself and Sophie that’s just the words “you me” over and over again, exactly like someone who isn’t a stalker wouldn’t:

Aaaaand then there’s Blake, whose background footage and the fact that he says “I’m nothing like this show’s ever seen before” tell us everything we need to know about Blake.

His to-camera chit-chat includes the phrases “Ferrari shop” and “my parents have given me pretty good genes and I want to do the same for my kids, so I’m only gonna date and marry a hot girl” so we’re pretty sure we know who we’re supposed to hate, and are only too happy to oblige. He turns up with a giant present for Sophie.

Unfortunately the present is a pair of Ugg boots, a warm jacket and a bottle of wine, which DAMMIT is a really frikkin’ good present. I hate it when bad people make good choices.

“All the girls really love all that crap” says Blake, and we’re okay to hate him again. Phew.

Blake doesn’t think there’s much in the way of competition at the cocktail party, and Uncle Sam wonders aloud why there aren’t any douches there yet. I guess Sam hasn’t met Blake yet. And Blake hasn’t met Ryan yet.

“A girl’s gotta look after herself. She’s gotta be respectful” he says, adding that something called “sponta-nuity” is important. Ryan tells us that he has high expectations and standards, so he doesn’t want Sophie to muck him around. To make sure, he asks her questions about why her previous relationships have failed, mocks her taste in music, and tells her he might be able to change her.

But we’re not here to gawk at aggressive insecure guys. We’re here to learn stuff. And what do we learn at the cocktail party?

1) That Apollo the magician is the nicest and handsomest man in the whole world, offering his seat to people and trying to fit his shoulders through doorways and stuff.
2) That scruffy Uncle Sam does an incredible crazed Tom Cruise impression and basically never shuts up
3) That there’s a new rose called the ‘Double Delight’ rose, which gives the recipient two single dates. That’s the best value D in the room, for sure.
4) That the bachelors are complete suckers for breaking the fourth wall.

5) That Ryan is, as previously suspected, a colossal douchebag.
6) That Jarrod the vineyard manager used to be in the army, used to be fat, and could be a serious contender.
7) That Jourdan can really bring the mood of a party down.

8) That disappointingly, nobody took this opportunity to make a beaver joke:

9) Aaaand that walk-offs between so-called ‘man buns’ and ‘clean-cuts’ are stupid, but the prize for losing is a Double D rose for Uncle Sam. He says “I lost my heartbeat for a second” which is actually quite sweet for a guy who looks like he’s been dragged backwards across Velcro.

By now we’re tired. We’re roughly eight hours in. Someone’s already thrown their undies at Sophie. Let’s get this Rosatorium thing out of the way.

Look, let’s not pretend we’re particularly attached to anyone yet. These two complete strangers go home.

Yeah. Bye.

You can follow Jo Thornely on Twitter for more brilliant Bachelorette commentary.

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